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:

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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."

[DComeaux]

"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."

Very hard to do when you're passionate about something. Though my passion is waning.

[PorkChop]

..
It's going to be hard stop this machine. Money is changing, or has muted conservation.

I honestly don’t think I could’ve worded this any better! The economic impact of lowering limits and cutting seasons would be pretty big between all the decoy companies, all the ammo, clothing, and guides. Waterfowling is big business. Also not sure how Delta or ducks unlimited would fair. I could see their fundraising efforts going in either direction.

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but there’s a huge part of me that thinks there are a lot of tree huggers in the system now and their goal is to get the populations low enough where seasons will have to be closed. As we know it’s easier to get a season closed than it is to get a season reopened. Seasons will close, hunters will find something else to do and the desire to get back into it will fade. Look at how many people dropped out of the sport when they were forced to use steel shot. A good portion never came back to waterfowling.

On the other hand, these North Dakota guys to the best of my knowledge do the surveys at the same time every year and they survey the same places every year so the ducks may be there one year and then the next year they may shift 100 miles a different direction and they’ll never be spotted by these biologist. It’s the same thing with their pheasant counts. I believe they drive the same roads every year, listening for crowing.

It would be great if a group of biologists that were not affiliated with the government, Delta or ducks unlimited, start to do research to find out the truth instead of taking the easy lazy way out or trying to get money. I could only imagine if I drove the same roads every hunting season scouting. I would have great years and I would have bad years. You have to move around to find the truth.

Those are my very uneducated thoughts! Sorry for the run-on sentences

[DComeaux]

Rick, I apologize, I thought I had posted that on my log page.

[Rick]

Dave, we'll let it slide: was a crime of passion.

PC, back when the point system limits were to be cut in half from a possible 10 birds to a max of 5, Ducks Unlimited (which had from its onset claimed to be non political focused solely on breeding ground preservation, came out against the cut on the grounds that it would adversely affect hunter numbers and, therefore waterfowl conservation funding.

So I interviewed DU's PR director, who'd been the Cleveland Press's Outdoors columnist when I lived in that part of the country, and asked him about their non-political policy shift and whether there were historical grounds supporting it. Can't quote him verbatim, as Hurricane Rita incorporated my copy of the resulting article into the giant spitball she made of such record keeping, but his response boiled down to the organization having been founded and flourishing when the birds where in a crack, but now (then) feared that hunter interest would falter and the reverse would be so if limits were cut. The next time I tried contacting Jim at his DU office after publishing his response, I was informed that he was no longer employed there.

Will, while I'm at it, note that then head of USFWS enforcement down here, Dave Hall, was mistakenly called on then Senator John Breaux and others' carpets for writing the piece, which he informed them he hadn't but, God rest his soul, wished he had.

Meanwhile, a much bigger fish in the publishing pond, Field & Stream's Conservation columnist, George Reiger, was putting the pencil to it and concluding that something like just 5 to 10% of the continent's waterfowl population ever set a webbed foot on, much less substantially benefited from habitat funded by DU or duck stamp sales.

[Rick]

Call and I made it back out to the marsh this morning to check on, and be disappointed, by my transplanting experiments. Bulltongue croaked and Roseau is barely hanging on. Tried starting a few button willows from cuttings, per Google, while out there, but suspect the heat of summer is a pee-poor time to do so. "We'll see..."

On the plus side, I got some measurements needed to redo the blind's anchorage so rain water gathers deepest at a bilge pump in my back corner, instead of becoming stank water on the far end of the blind as currently anchored. Inadvertently found where the dog ramp had been poorly secured to the stand and needs redone.

Were a dozen or so woodies in front of our blind and scads of them in our nearest neighbor, Wayne's, pond. Also moved a few from my old spot at "AW's blind" for the first time. Otherwise our tour of the marsh turned up but a very few squealers. (Which have become increasingly common in our ag land travels, as if knowing the rice is coming on.)

Lots of SAV everywhere: mostly coontail.

[Darren]

Nice to discover some of those things now and not in September; there, now ya have some stuff to do

[Rick]

Nice to discover some of those things now and not in September; there, now ya have some stuff to do

Learned the dog ramp wasn't first class while outfitting it (and the dog stand, which I did fortify at that time) with non-slip fatigue mat last fall, but had enough other "close enough"-for-those-before-me stuff to tend to that it got lost in my last minute renovation shuffle - until the apparently untreated board it was tacked to broke under my weight last trip. So that one's at least kinda-sorta on me.

But getting the blind set as it should be after last year's drought would have required temporarily flooding it (or trying to) with marsh muck water for ballast while doing so, which I opted not to for that season in favor of dealing with clean rain water ballast, of which we've now plenty, prior to our next one.

In any event, all the necessary hardware, lumber and tools are in the truck, and Call will be supervising my work in the morning. Though the final adjustments can't be made until I pump the blind out after hurricane season. (Ballast takes pressure off the anchorage in times of extremely high water and reduces the likelihood of a blind popping or cratering.)

Re: "stuff to do," egg season is about to crank up...

[Rick]

...all the necessary hardware, lumber and tools are in the truck...

I lied. A hammer and galvanized nail guy by birth and inclination, I'd not not gone adequately prepared to deal with modern torque-head screws, as while the untreated board they "secured" the dog ramp to was rotted soft as balsa and crumbled under pressure, the screws remained hard enough to defy the old blade on the hacksaw "worst case insurance" I took. So a return trip to remove them and finish that job is today's first order.

Did get the two needed anchorage renovations properly done and saw that further midsummer transplanting efforts would plainly be futile, so those are checked off my off-season "to do" list. New on it is replacing the positive battery terminal clamp that gave me a thrill while reopening a shallow run on the way-the-hey wrong end of the marsh - believe that will actually be this morning's first bit of business.

[Duck Engr]

It’s never as easy as it seems on paper…

[Rick]

It’s never as easy as it seems on paper…

Sometimes that's a good thing. Hit something with the prop when I turned into my boat hide yesterday, and found what it was when I returned to make the dog ramp right this morning:

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Was already bloating through the hole the prop cut:

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But wasn't nearly so rotten and nasty to haul off as it was soon going to be. Nice to have that shore behind me, and I can't say I hate having one less such neighbor.

[Duck Engr]

Win-win there. Can’t beat that.

[Darren]

For all my blind building these days, it's those Torx head deck screws with impact drill. Can keep a grip at all sorts of fun angles common to doing odd blind jobs, and usually easy to remove them if you've need for un-doing whatever you did a while back.


Nice to see one less potential problem child around; saw a real good one in canal not far from one of our ponds over the weekend.

[DComeaux]

For all my blind building these days, it's those Torx head deck screws with impact drill. Can keep a grip at all sorts of fun angles common to doing odd blind jobs, and usually easy to remove them if you've need for un-doing whatever you did a while back.

My experience over the years with screws and pit blinds has changed my construction material use. Empty sunken pit blinds are under a good bit of vertical pressure and screw shear strength is no match. I've seen one take Blake for a ride, ejecting him from the hole like a bad-tasting mouthful. Long and large nails are key.

The front right side of my current blind has sheared loose. I thought it was the main driven 4x6 that had been pulled up a little due to the high water we had in the last couple of years, but on my last visit a couple of weeks ago, I did a closer inspection and found that it was the top main frame board that was sheared off. I sit on the opposite side, so I never did take the time to get an up-close look at the situation. I didn't remember using screws for this one, but apparently we did on some of the install. Screws are really convenient, but they don't hold up in our situation.

[Rick]

...and usually easy to remove them if you've need for un-doing whatever you did a while back.

Was pleased that these were the newer version that hadn't corroded beyond a torque bit's usefulness during the time it took an untreated 2x to completely rot.

Haven't been pleased that my boat's been taking on a good deal of water between my near daily trips out there. Initially checked the usual mudboat suspects: driveshaft and rudder packings and found them watertight. Then checked and replaced the drain plug I found old and worn beyond proper expansion, but learned that wasn't it, either, this morning. So I trailered and pulled it out and. eventually, found it's leaking through a 5" crack under the portable fuel tank. Probably been too hard on the little old boat while reopening trails, though I've not hit anything harder than floating turf "hippos". Not happy about needing a welder, with "a couple weeks" wait, but much better to now than in season - and that puzzle's solved.

So, naturally, a new, infinitely more exciting, one arose this morning, as Call met his first deer moments after being let out of our truck in the camp lot and did his best to remain in their company, rather than obey a whistle he may not have even heard over his own excited yapping, as he chased them down a mile long "ridge" into the coastal marsh. The first half mile of that ridge had been hayed over the years, though that portion's only been rough plowed to hold the trees back in recent ones, but I did my best to keep up through the ruts and titty-tall regrowth before giving up on that and taking a perch on an old double seed cart to continue my series of recalls through a whistle designed to be heard during major international soccer matches.

Was the longest, spookiest half hour I've spent in a very, very long time before my "partner" finally showed, this time following my trail out the ridge. He was absolutely woofed and very likely only spared heat stroke by the evaporation-cooled dew on the high grasses. But not too woofed to try to detour on our way back where I'd watched one of his deer cut over the ridge top ahead of me during the chase. Given his exhaustion and close proximity to me, my very loudest "No! Leave it!" took, but it's plain we've a new "quirk" to deal with.

(And one of my wrecked knees has ballooned to remind me I somehow really have become "too old for that shit".)

[DComeaux]

...and usually easy to remove them if you've need for un-doing whatever you did a while back.

So, naturally, a new, infinitely more exciting, one arose this morning, as Call met his first deer moments after being let out of our truck in the camp lot and did his best to remain in their company, rather than obey a whistle he may not have even heard over his own excited yapping, as he chased them down a mile long "ridge" into the coastal marsh. The first half mile of that ridge had been hayed over the years, though that portion's only been rough plowed to hold the trees back in recent ones, but I did my best to keep up through the ruts and titty-tall regrowth before giving up on that and taking a perch on an old double seed cart to continue my series of recalls through a whistle designed to be heard during major international soccer matches.

Was the longest, spookiest half hour I've spent in a very, very long time before my "partner" finally showed, this time following my trail out the ridge. He was absolutely woofed and very likely only spared heat stroke by the evaporation-cooled dew on the high grasses. But not too woofed to try to detour on our way back where I'd watched one of his deer cut over the ridge top ahead of me during the chase. Given his exhaustion and close proximity to me, my very loudest "No! Leave it!" took, but it's plain we've a new "quirk" to deal with.



(And one of my wrecked knees has ballooned to remind me I somehow really have become "too old for that shit".)

My Remi did a similar thing a few weeks back on my limited time home for lunch. She winded something and my call to her was taken with an erect stance and stare. She then proceeded to do whatever the heck she wanted. After a chase through two neighbors yards and crossing the road where I had to stop traffic, I finally got my hand on her collar after cornering her. This was the first time seeing this behavior with her....... We've since worked on this issue.

Haven't been pleased that my boat's been taking on a good deal of water between my near daily trips out there. Initially checked the usual mudboat suspects: driveshaft and rudder packings and found them watertight. Then checked and replaced the drain plug I found old and worn beyond proper expansion, but learned that wasn't it, either, this morning. So I trailered and pulled it out and. eventually, found it's leaking through a 5" crack under the portable fuel tank. Probably been too hard on the little old boat while reopening trails, though I've not hit anything harder than floating turf "hippos". Not happy about needing a welder, with "a couple weeks" wait, but much better to now than in season - and that puzzle's solved.

If you have access to a welding machine near you set up for aluminum I can take care of this for you.

[Rick]

Thanks, Dave, but it's already with the fellow we use down the road from your old lease south of Gueydan, and I'm as done as need be in the marsh for a while. Just don't like not having "my" boat available, should I feel the itch, even knowing there five or six others available most summer days.