by Duck Engr » Fri Feb 07, 2020 10:29 pm
Less than 50 birds were killed from our pit this season, with 20 of those taken opening day. Some members of the lease had decent luck on the river, and others, like myself, didn’t do so hot on the river either. As I sat in the pit in January, watching duckless skies and gobs of geese pour into the field to our East, I’d made up my mind to sell my field duck decoys and switch to an all goose spread and was trying to figure out ways to get my fellow lessees to follow my lead in the off-season.
That won’t matter now as the head of our lease, who is 63 and didn’t hunt the field but one morning all season, decided his bones are getting too old to fight the muck of a rice/bean field. That decision was followed up by another member bowing out due to a lost job, and another member leaving due to not enough time to hunt and an expected extremely large tax bill coming in April, and yet another (first year) member deciding he’d had enough as well (I think he was skunked 2 out of his last 3 days and got a bad taste in his mouth he couldn’t overcome). So in one day, we went from 6 members to 2. My buddy and I have decided to dissolve the lease and give up the field, as we don’t want to fool with finding 4 new members. It was a good run, but it was pretty disheartening to sit there and not even see high ducks, which we would always see in years past, hot, dry, wet, cold or otherwise (pits one mile to our east were business as usual).
As all of that was transpiring, another friend of ours was attempting to arrange a green timber/cypress slough lease directly adjacent to what used to be our “off the beaten path” public land spot that we’ve had good success on in years past. It seems he was successful in negotiating a deal, so we will have an 80 acre block of woods/slough that we don’t have to race anyone to, which will be nice. The only catch is that the land is for sale (for an astronomically high asking price), and if it sells, we may lose the lease. Regardless, glasses are half full again and spirits are high for the upcoming season.