2025 Preseason...

[Rick]

Post season DTs had passed, and I'd gotten away from ducky projects to ease them. Well, other that Call and my morning exercise/training rounds of friends' farms.

But another CR guide, Neil, who's the camp's real work horse, and I have been spraying cutgrass and salvinia that's encroaching on parts of the marsh of late, and that taste of it gave me the envies to make a pass by my blind. So Call and I changed up our routine and did so yesterday morning - and now I'm itching to get busy on next season.

Hadn't seen much at all in the way of ducks while focused on spraying or even while looking for them en route to our blind, just a very few mostly passing squealers and fewer flushed mottled pairs. But as we entered our pond, a few dozen presumed woodies (which apparently bring their young to the marsh for invertebrates) blew out of the flat between our and Wayne's ponds. Probably sad that that little show was enough to stoke my fire, but it did. So I'm plainly still OK with the remaining state of things duck.

Gave up on the notion of pushing up islands with prop wash (to take some of the odd/dangerous brush pile look out of my blind) as a dumb idea and am, instead, going to experiment with transplanting button willow, bull tongue and cane to three or four existing shallow knolls or particularly thick floating black dirt patches. "We'll see..."

[DComeaux]

I went down to chenier this morning to check on things and trim a little grass around the camp, and I drove out to our launch area to take a look at the water level. It is low and at a perfect level at the moment for the growth of wigeon grass again this year. I just don't have much confidence of it being there for the season.

[Rick]

...just don't have much confidence of it being there for the season.

'Tis "hold your breath season" here by the Gulf of Whatever.

[Rick]

Don'tcha know this 6ish tataille just had to homestead the least combine rutted and likely to tear a dog's ACL crawfish pond Call frequented:

thumbnail_PXL_20250609_114833616.jpg

No shortage of smaller ones scattered around our morning exercise AO, but this one's "big enough"to have me wondering if I'm missing others like it when running marks beyond line of sight elsewhere:

[Rick]

Finally got back out to the marsh to dodge lightning and take some soakings while trying my hand at transplanting native plants to some spots around my blind this morning. Had no luck digging out button willows, which wasn't surprising, given what good gator line anchors they make - but later, thank Google, learned they can be started from cuttings. Did dig out some super tall bull tongue, but found it breaks easily and is apt to fall over in its new site.

Hadn't found getting Roseau cane started from fresh cuttings as easy at my new blind as it had been at my old one, which left me wondering if some isn't better adapted to deeper water than others. So I dug out several clumps growing in calf deep water along a boat run to experiment with. (And may have stepped off the edge and over a hip boot in that process.)

Circled the marsh in my travels and, again, saw but a very few squealers and mottleds, but was, again, treated to a good mess of woodies on the SE end of that loop. This time they were split a couple dozen in Wayne's pond and a like number on the east end of mine, rather than on a big flat between them. Made my morning.

Looking forward to getting back out there some time next week to see how my transplants look and try my luck with button willow cuttings.

[Rick]

More signs of summer along our journey to September teal: rice has been heading out, traps are coming out of less productive crawfish ponds, getting to tease more and more squealers with the whistle, and Call has followed the lead of the dogs before him by starting to spend much less of his free time in the shallows and more in the cooler tall, dew laden grasses. And seeing a big flight of seemingly early wood storks on the drive home cinched my excuse for being ringing wet with sweat.

[DComeaux]

https://greenhead.net/nd-reports-underwhelming-breeding-survey/

North Dakota reports underwhelming breeding survey

The North Dakota Game and Fish Department in June released the results of its 78th annual spring breeding duck survey.

Conducted in May, the survey showed an index of approximately 2.66 million birds, down 38% from 2.9 million in 2024 and 3.4 million in 2023. However, Mike Szymanski, migratory game bird supervisor at the NDGFD, said the index did exceed the long-term average by 7%.

“Things are continuing to decline a little bit as far as duck populations go. The mallard population estimate was down 26% from last year and is the lowest estimated mallard breeding population on our survey since 1993,” Szymanski said. “Blue-winged teal, green-winged teal and pintails also had significant population declines, whereas the declines for gadwall, shovelers and ruddy ducks were not as significant. We did have a few species – wigeon, canvasbacks, redheads and lesser scaup – that showed increases from last year on our survey.”

Szymanski attributed the continuing decline to several factors, including poor wetland conditions for early migrating species like mallard and pintail, loss of Conservation Reserve Program lands and perennial grasses used for nesting cover and a dry May.

“We’ve lost so much grass on the landscape that it makes it really hard for duck populations and other ground-nesting birds to do well,” Szymanski said. “One metric we look at is going back to 1994 to 2016 when we had really good wetland conditions and a lot of grass, a lot of CRP on the landscape. Our total duck population is now down 34% from that time period’s average, and our mallard breeding population in North Dakota is down 57% from that average. Those are pretty significant declines.”

A crew from the NDGFD counted wetlands and waterfowl over 1,800 miles of transects.

“We do our survey based on phenology and migration ecology of ducks coming through the state and this year it happened to be timed before we got quite a bit of rain later in May. So, not having much snow melt in the spring, our wetland counts were down quite a bit,” he said. “Conditions were pretty dry and that affected how ducks settled in the state. The western third of the state was very dry and then the eastern two thirds of the state was still quite dry, but a little bit better when we ran the survey.”

However, Szymanski noted that the department’s July brood survey could show more positive results, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s fall survey.

“We’ll see how July goes when we do our duck brood survey,” he said. “Wetland conditions are a little bit improved from where they were in early May, but they’re still not great. We likely would have had disastrous production if we didn’t get the rain we got. Hopefully, having some fair wetland conditions going into June will help us out and get a little duck production this year.”

Greenhead editor Brent Birch noted that while the report is bad, the survey only took place within North Dakota.

The North Dakota survey follows the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s late January aerial survey, when duck population estimates were down more than 400,000 birds from the long-term average, but more than 40,000 birds above the 2024 estimates from the same time period.

[Rick]

Love ya, Dave, but nope, no way, you ain't dragging me down with you.

[DComeaux]

Love ya, Dave, but nope, no way, you ain't dragging me down with you.

I've been saying for some time and pushing for shorter,earlier closing seasons and lower bag limits because of the thought that we do not have the numbers we once had. Now theyve lowered the threshold for liberal and restrictive seasons with an explanation of we will never have the ducks we once had, so......
It's going to be hard stop this machine. Money is changing, or has muted conservation.

[Rick]

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."