Preseason 2016...

[Rick]

Date: 9/12/09

Time: morning

Location: 10-footer

Cloud Cover: drizzling

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE moderate

Temperature: comfortable in damp t-shirts

Barometer:

Moon phase:

Special Notes: teal opener

Waterfowl Activity: very slow for a teal opener with concentrations of birds apparently very scattered, just enough birds passing for a pleasant hunt - and not many more. Other end of same piece did poorly.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: most groups started out very high before breaking down for spinners and/or calling

Hunters: 3 fellow and his nephews

Guns & Ammo:

Malfunctions: on boy's pump was very troublesome, but maybe op error

Dog(s): Peake

Special Equipment: two spinners: teal in one cut and autoduck in the other, but didn't see a definite preference.

Curses: Felt bad for the fellows at the far end of our field who were getting passed by stuff we got, but took us too long to fill to help them with a move to my spot. And the coyote broke after one volley! Grrrr...

Kudos: Peake redeemed that lapse on more than a couple healthy crips.

Birds By Species: 16 bw teal

[DComeaux]

2009 opener of teal season there was some sort of tropical disturbance hitting the coast. We were hunting bundick lake where we grew up hunting near Deridder. As soon as we could see through the heavy rain and heavy cloud cover we were swarmed by huge bunches of teal. We killed our 16 quick and just watched the show. Any of you guys remember that opener?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Unfortunately not. That was the last year of my short time with my company's Mississippi deer lease commitment, and I came back to my passion the following year. It was hard plowing fields in September during teal season with a cool north wind blowing. My mind was always in the marsh and thinking of what I was missing. The first sounds of geese overhead in the fall would literally make me sick to my stomach knowing I'd not be in the fields. NEVER, NEVER AGAIN!!
I like deer hunting, sitting in a box overlooking a nice green food plot, on a cold clear afternoon right after frontal passage is a wonderful thing, but my heart is with the fowl.

[Ericdc]

Date: 9/12/09

Time: morning

Location: 10-footer

Cloud Cover: drizzling

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE moderate

Temperature: comfortable in damp t-shirts

Barometer:

Moon phase:

Special Notes: teal opener

Waterfowl Activity: very slow for a teal opener with concentrations of birds apparently very scattered, just enough birds passing for a pleasant hunt - and not many more. Other end of same piece did poorly.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: most groups started out very high before breaking down for spinners and/or calling

Hunters: 3 fellow and his nephews

Guns & Ammo:

Malfunctions: on boy's pump was very troublesome, but maybe op error

Dog(s): Peake

Special Equipment: two spinners: teal in one cut and autoduck in the other, but didn't see a definite preference.

Curses: Felt bad for the fellows at the far end of our field who were getting passed by stuff we got, but took us too long to fill to help them with a move to my spot. And the coyote broke after one volley! Grrrr...

Kudos: Peake redeemed that lapse on more than a couple healthy crips.

Birds By Species: 16 bw teal

Do you remember if that was some kind of tropical system?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[aunt betty]

You guys are sick. Almost as sick as me.
Waterfowl fever is not curable but you can eliminate the symptoms in a blind, pit, or boat.

[Rick]

Do you remember if that was some kind of tropical system?

No, I'm afraid I don't. But the 2008 opener sure was. Hurricane Ike had me boarding up one neighbor's broken windows and doing temporary repairs on another's roof as it passed through in the morning, but we hunted that afternoon, and five of us shot a total of eight birds:


Was the worst teal season I've known in Louisiana by a mile. You'd have thought it was Ohio,

2008-2009 September Teal: 72 bw and 1 gw = 73 total (down 77% from last year's 317)

[Ericdc]

We were done quick, I remember my hypothesis was that the weather event had pushed birds out of the marsh or rice. Maybe it was just new birds coming through??


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[aunt betty]

I'm afraid y'all are jinxing yourselves by going back in time in the preseason thread.


Aw heck...1999 was a heck of a season too. (for me anyway)

[Ericdc]

I don't believe in such things


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[aunt betty]

Been messing with people lately. It's what I do.

For instance I killed 20 ducks one day. (base 3)
If you're into math that's 6 in base 10 lol.
See how I am?

[Rick]

PJ, you're alive!

[Rick]

Believe I finally have all my stuff repaired, more or less "together" and ready to all go out today. (Am somehow reminded of a Modern Novels prof who described an author as having his shit together but being unable to lift it.)

Didn't make it to the marsh yesterday, but am hoping to find some minor miracle has dropped the water enough to feel good about trying to hunt the blind without standing in bilge water. Otherwise, I'll settle for setting it up to eventually do so and leave the floor and big deep-cycle battery at the boathouse. Do expect to get whirligigs, modified mallard machine and decoys out, as well as brush the blind sometime today. Bugs pee out of me not to have had my own stuff done ahead of the inevitable last minute camp crunch.

[Darren]

Checked my log, it was Ike for the 2008 opener and for 2009 a low pressure system sat off our coast and pounded water at us raising tides. Will be poking around tomorrow morning early to see if anything showed up

[Rick]

Heat just put me out of the marsh. Only lack about twenty minutes of being ready to hunt, but it came to get in the boat and go now or maybe not be able to. Just wasn't thinking when I left this morning and wore a dark t-shirt that baked me. That, and forgot to load a cooler and grabbed what soon became hot drinks on the way. Ate up with the dumb-ass and payed the price.

[Ericdc]

Rick it's hot. We did our first site prep burn of the year today and I don't remember it ever feeling so hot. I'm probably out of shape too due to a slow summer in the timber business also.

We need some cool dry air from the north in a bad way.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ericdc]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rick]

Finally finished prepping in the marsh this morning but forgot to take the traditional Mudhole ready-for-action shot in my hurry to get to a rice farm we've seven blinds on that I knew was well behind schedule and supposed to be buffaloing ponds today. Found no landowner, no farmer, no flooded fields and no buffalo. Did find this character:


But he had his head up his butt, too:

[Ericdc]

The estimate of 97,500 blue-winged teal is far below the 247,500 estimated last September from an incomplete survey, and is the second lowest estimate on record for this September survey. Only the 50,000 estimated in September of 2013 was lower. This estimate is 33% below the most recent 5-year average of 145,000 and 59% below the long-term average of 236,000 bluewings for this survey. The estimate in SE Louisiana was the lowest on record by far. Small numbers of teal were observed in only 2 locations on all SE survey transects. Distribution was similarly poor in SW Louisiana, with nearly all bluewings counted in agricultural habitats and only 2 notable concentrations, both in fields north of White Lake near Gueydan . The 2,000 bluewings counted on Catahoula Lake was only slightly less than what was seen the last 3 years, but far below the 18,000 counted in 2012 and 49,000 in 2010. The estimate for mottled ducks is also the lowest on record for this survey and 57% below the most recent 5-year average of 28,000.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rick]

You wouldn't be talking about the farm I really hope your not talking about would you?

Jarren's probably at their camp by now and learned not only that I was, in fact, speaking of the farm their blind is on but that the news gets worse.

[Rick]

Naw, I volunteered to take that hickey. Plan on having a big time critiquing y'all's marksmanship. Assuming a teal comes by to provide demonstration, that is. Won't know until the morrow.

[Rick]

Hunted with an old friend yesterday afternoon who raises all kinds of birds and had four specks circling the enclosure where he keeps Canadas and two pairs of lesser whitefronts (Eurasian specks) that morning.

[Rick]

Finally got back out in the marsh to pick up, clean up, cover up and put teal season behind me. Even took a speck call, just in case, but no such luck. In fact, three bluewings that passed me heading toward the rice as I left the boathouse were the only ducks I saw.

Might also note that even with no significant rain since the 17th, there were still four stretches of water across the hardtop road that very seldom sees one. Has to be getting mighty old for folks who still have dead, stinking water on their drives and in their yards.

[Ericdc]

I visited some public green timber in northeast LA last week and was surprised how wet it still was.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Darren]

Name of the game for October is DRAIN BABY DRAIN. Out of yards, off of roads, and out of rural ducky areas that birds can hole up in unbothered, be it fallow fields or timber backwaters.