2017-2018 Season Log

[aunt betty]

remember that super magnum decoy phase of everything it seemed---mallards---standard--,magnum,--super magnum,,,pintails too---which I like the big drake only pack by tanglefree

those Canada shells that were so big they doubled as a one man blind

then the giant big foots,then the next generation that was still too large,then the current generation that seems ok body size wise,but anchored by unrealistic sized feet

always wanted to try those eberhart pintail drakes used in California on cheeks they call them,,,looks like a levee to me

I am not sold on full body duck decoys,,,i use all pintails and a few mallards,just don't think they draw like good old floaters

Wayyy back before the time you mention there were quite a few guys in southern Illinois who were painting full size Canada floaters to be giant greenheads. Thought that was comical.

[Rick]

The first and only decoy/blinds I've seen in the flesh were at Doug's when I got there. The pair were painted as specks but, most thankfully, already relegated to yard "decor" status.

[Rick]

I agree with realistic decoy motion in the spread--I too am looking for a way too add that without looking fake --- I like the new Avery's for that purpose but I have something else that moves a little more but not to the point of absurd...

I've not taken a hard look at recent Avery's, but their old motion system has pushed off a lot of specks, and I was cutting notches in the cones to arrest it long before Avery did - and that was with but the relative handful I used to add motion to bigger HC and/or DSD spreads. During my own specklebelly heyday, when we shot enough of them to take seven neck bands one split, I most often used just four of the old hard DSDs with just one GHG for motion - and many were the windy days when picking up that one motion decoy made a world of difference in what would finish. Believe it's very easy to call too much attention to a decoy.

That said, I'm still probably going to add one or two to the specks around my marsh blind (where I can't readily pick them up) next year. Just try to hide them some with vegetation.

The clone decoy portrays realistic flying motion or the use of a real goose with motorized wings to give the same look---this is getting on out there but I commend out of the box approaches

socks add nice motion to a white spread when mixed in as do foam decoys---HOWEVER---socks turn into bad bad bad in rain or no wind so I would never deploy more then I cared to pick up every hunt

I was still writing a fair bit of waterfowling stuff during my big white spread period, and folks sent me several "flying" geese from actual kites to stuff that went on poles like Goose Magnets. Tim Peterson(sen?) sent six of the later with advice to set them like birds coming into the spread. Looked great to my hunters and I, but incoming geese repeatedly hung up, as if waiting to see what they were going to do. Moving them to the back of the spread worked better, but I eventually quit toting them. What I found best was an actual kite, the name of which I've long forgotten, that birds would also hang up on - unless you crashed it with quick slack while they were still well off. Birds seemed to love that the couple times we tried it, but it required a qualified operator in the back of the spread and couldn't be used on one-guide hunts, which most were.

My mad speck scientist friend, Ric, has tried more stuff than most could imagine:

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And he, too, is pretty well convinced that flying decoys need to "land" to be effective. Currently experimenting with Goose Magnets raised and lowered on crappie poles with Goose Hammer-like mechanisms hardwired to controls in the blind. Results have been mixed, but he laughs and says similarly rigged Clones are next.

My own pet goose movement project is an X-Flapper he gave up on (and sold cheap) that initially showed good draw at a distance but then spooked crap out of what it drew, even when still. Built on a giant GHG "honker," it probably looked like Frankenstein to them, and still looks like a gussied up Frankenstein now that I've remodeled it to blend the cloth wings with the body and the whole thing to look more speck-like. Had to shorten the wings to keep them from hanging up on vegetation or even plowed clods and weight their bottom edges to keep them from wrapping around themselves in a breeze, as well as rework the remote receiver's antennae to extend it's range enough to get it well away from more realistic speck decoys it won't compare well to.

Been periodically chipping away at that project since 2013, according to the date on this video of a February, 2014 test, where it was to the right of the camera's field of view and initially drew a wad of specks (just used it, didn't call a lick), then ran them off when I unintentionally flipped it right under them:


(Had a blue and a snow shell out in the field and was hoping to find one or the other still legal bird in the crowd to pop.)

Only other time I've had the X-Flapper and a gun in the field together was another foggy morning, only specks were open, and I killed my pair when they followed the then-pup to me while we were still walking in. Could surely have killed some blues over it that morning, but was borrowing Beau's then-lease and didn't want to risk putting his birds off it. Am adding some after-hunt video I then shot just for the audio, without which it would be entirely worthless, so crank the volume up:


This past season I was really, really going to give it a go at the Mudhole and even cleared a likely spot and set a stand for it on the flotant - but that's as far as the experiment got. Just not anxious to fool with another electronic gizmo, I guess...

[SpinnerMan]

I know very little when it comes to Canada geese---I do hear comments at some of the bigger contests I have been too from guys that know their stuff--in their experience, higher pitched tones seem to work better in the field

I definitely agree with that. Most people like the deeper "goosier" sounding, but if you listen to geese on the ground when other geese are coming in, it is normally higher pitched, let's throw down. They aren't saying welcome, but get the hell out of here. Geese on a good food supply aren't looking for company. They are defending their turf. The deeper stuff is more relaxed geese, which is normally where I start because if the geese are looking for company and not a fight over food, you don't run them off and then go up in pitch and frequency from there.

This clicked because I have a lot of geese settle in across the street from where I live and have watched a lot of geese come in to geese on the ground.

I know the cacklers down here really respond to a rapid fire speck cluck and a cackler call pitch is not too far removed from speck like pitch

For the small geese, I think several callers that can really dial up the high pitched clucking would do the trick. None of the guys I hunt with are up to the task.

Maybe I need to do some cardio so I don't run out of air as quickly

[aunt betty]

Spinner.
You need to hook up with Brian Malone, Gary Perinar, and Cody Fink.
They all speak Canada goose. Cody is advanced.
A three-guide hunt is not going to be cheap but it can be arranged.

Here's Cody. That growl he does...
The guy who says "lets break em" is Gary.


Imagine 3 or 4 Cody's at once. That's what we're talking about!
My cutdown is NOT for sale. Not happening. Not ever!

[Rick]

I've a very long, mostly very dull, VHS video of specks that a friend with permits for them shot for me from his carving shop window, on which a birds will cluck at others from outside their little group (family?) that they feel are coming too close, while others in the clucking bird's group buzz. Appears for all the world like a gang leader or two is talking fight trash while the gang eggs it or they on. My results with buzzing in the field have been mixed: sometimes seems the bomb clucking was twenty years ago, sometimes seems wasted wind.

Alas, most often the later, though I may stack the deck against it by generally holding it in reserve as a come-back for birds that have shut off for one reason or another.

[Rick]

Re: Ric's decoys, he's a big spread believer and was fielding 22 dozen DSD and Blue Collars (all repainted to match) until near the end of this season. Started out like a house on fire, then hit the wall in January. Or, more correctly, an awful lot of birds started acting like they were hitting a wall then. Since he has no trouble at all pulling birds to the rig from under the cover of a very well concealed roll-top, I'd bet something real nice that the rub is the stale spread the area's birds simply know when they get there.

Which makes your big standing spread consistency all the more remarkable to me. Don't know how you do it without fresh traffic.

[aunt betty]

It would seem that a hunt with john requires blood goggles and a poop suit.

Has been a while since I got to watch speck traffic in NEAR. It's the most exciting thing I've ever done. Canada geese are easy compared to specks.
The speck call kicks my ass.
I can yodel like twice and then uh oh.

[Rick]

It's spooky when some guys from Idaho or Montana show up late like 10 am, walk in, get the X hole, kill limits, and are done in 2 hours but it does happen. Seen it happen too many times.

When I was dumb enough to write about waterfowling destinations, I did a piece on Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, which was then (pre-hurricanes Rita and Ike) about as strong as anywhere in the country. Asked its manager what advice he had for newcomers, and that was his: launch at daylight to avoid the pre-LST boat race, and hunt where the first folks to limit have left.

where can that write up be found?


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That and a similar one on Lacasine NWR was in the LA Sportsman during the late '80s/early '90s 3 and 30 days, which I only recall because Sabine hunters were averaging an amazing (compared to other WMAs and our private lands' 1.something) 2.6? birds per.

[Rick]

I KNOW 100 percent that blue goose ground murmur works---but if that is not done right,bye bye---it works on specks too, but you must execute correctly---blue goose murmur

The only electronic call hunts I've ever made were three with Rick Olsen when the then LSU grad student landed the grant to run around the country testing their effectiveness prior to the so-called "Conservation Season" being instituted. Johnny Stewart's snow goose tape and I took 15 minute turns, and the real deal beat me 3.8? (geese killed) to 1. And it was plainly due to murmuring.

Those who've hunted the type of mostly rag and sock spread we then used know it's a numbers game where most birds will see the mess for what it is and push off, and only a relative few stay on auto-pilot long enough to get over the guns. When I was yelping by voice, birds that pushed off were done, and there wasn't any getting them back. Same when the taped birds were just yelping, but if the tape hit a loud murmuring spot while birds were leaving, they'd generally come back for another look - and maybe get too close to the guns that time. They'd sent me a copy of the study (which made me feel pretty good about how I'd done), and the difference between human to electronic callers' birds tolled within range was appreciably less dramatic than that between the two in terms of birds killed, which seemed to support my observation of what was happening.

As a side note, I'd heard so many stories about recorders calling birds to trucks and barns and such, that I was somewhat surprised to find they held no magic at all in situations where we wouldn't normally have been successful. Though the tests took place after the season was closed, when we set up in a spot with a heck of a flight but that had been gunned daily, next to nothing bought in, and when someone's flat tire stopped them too near the body we were feeding off in another spot and moved it a half mile or so the wrong way, we were dead in the water.

[Rick]

Re: the speck stuff, I get lost in your calling descriptions and doubt I know or understand, much less could replicate, half of what you're talking about. I'm too out of the callers' loop to understand your terminology, much less smart enough to study and break down their vocalizations like you have. Just a meat and potatoes hack who still hasn't found a better general rule than the old standby "echo the bird" I was taught by a fellow named Harvey Johnson back in the mid '80s I fish with different sounds until I get a positive reaction, then take my tone and cadence cues from it. If things fall apart, I start fishing again. Other than that, every time I stumble onto something universally slick, I start running into birds that disagree.

Not much of an issue, as my speck days seem pretty much behind me. But there was a time when we had a lot of fun with them:

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[Rick]

Put just 16 specks out of an indigo patch where there'd been closer to three times that last week. Party's almost over.

And my old friend Peake, aka:the coyote, fell in a pit blind for the first time since puppyhood. Long been my assumption that they learned to avoid them by smell after that first fall, which makes me wonder if his nose is going the way of his hearing - though a good breeze was working against him.

Thinking now of coyotes, mine also put out what I'd guess a coy-dog, as it looked more like an obese show golden than our standard coyotes. Roly-poly in motion and looking more like a sheep than canid. Wished for a camera, though it broke back into its version of flight when it spotted me.

[Ericdc]

I assume Peake had his senior citizen “ive fallen and I can’t get up” alert detection thing on his collar?

And more seriously, he’s ok?


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[Rick]

I assume Peake had his senior citizen “ive fallen and I can’t get up” alert detection thing on his collar?

And more seriously, he’s ok?


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Somehow missed that. I didn't see him go in but was, thankfully, getting my own exercise by wading alongside the blind's grown-up levee. Didn't know what the heck was making the commotion when I got close and my first thought when I saw what had happened wasn't a good one. But Peake was fine, jumped on the seat and could nearly get out on his own, needing only my hand on the back of his head to lever himself on out, as if climbing back in a boat. Might well have been stuck without that hand, though, and I can't say I'd of thought to check that or any blind had he just turned up missing. Cheap reminder of the possibility...