2025-2026 Season Log

[Darren]

Sounds like a sweet one, birds and company combined.

[Rick]

Going a little stir-crazy waiting on our planned 8:30 departure for camp, and the dog with his chin on my arm ain't helping. But we've vowed to wait until the remaining camp guests have finished before doing anything that might adversely affect their morning's hunt.

Don't mind missing the heaviest rain, but hate to be missing the spaces in between, and hoping something pretty will still be flying after...

[Rick]

Date: 1/25/26 Sun

Time: Didn't leave the boathouse until the last boat, Clark's, came in from the morning hunt around 10 and stayed out until noon.

Location: 3

Cloud Cover: Raining when I went out and in fits and spurts for my hunt.

Wind Direction and Velocity: NW whipping

Temperature: mid 30s

Moon phase:

Special Notes: I'd not missed much in the way of big ducks, as Clark and his hunters, Charles and John Bell, had tried waiting them out, but eventually settled for teal and black-bellies. Will note that our ex- Gov. was wind and rain whipped bright red-faced and smiling ear to ear.

Waterfowl Activity: As noted above, the big ducks still hadn't arrived, but the marsh was alive with teal, spoons and jacks.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Can't say the teal were particularly "responsive," mostly just ripping willy-nilly through the marsh and mostly in great waves that made it a treat to be among them.

Hunters: Just Call and I

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Was tickled by how far down gusting wind Call's nose pegged a blue-wing in the grass I'd only chipped. But I doubt he was at all amused by how many birds he wasn't getting to work.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Just the no-show big ducks.

Kudos: Grand morning to be in the marsh.

Birds By Species: 1 blue-wing and 2 green-wings (today's fresh bird supper)

Photo Ops: Call cleaning up my mess...

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Lagniappe: Looking forward to seeing what a week of cold north winds and no gun pressure might provide veterans' weekend.

[Darren]

Sweet outing

Looking SUNNY and cold next weekend for vets, sure hoping it delivers for those heading out to try it

Though EZ goes to next Saturday, my gun's clean and racked, dog box out of the truck.

[Rick]

Date: 1/31/26 Sat

Time:

Location: 3

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE whipping

Temperature: low 30s

Moon phase: full

Special Notes: A veterans weekend I'd been anxious for since spending an hour or so at my blind Tuesday morning watching the show the deep freeze to our north stocked our marsh with.

Waterfowl Activity: Didn't see the number of big ducks I'd enjoyed watching and listening to Tue, but there were still plenty, and the little duck show was spectacular.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: The chop in our decoys didn't help me finish much as I wished for our new waterfowler, but enough came well enough to get him in the game.

Hunters: 2, my gator co-worker,JJ, and his fellow sports girl dad, Don, a long time deer and perhaps first time duck hunter

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Call and I butted heads harder than I should have over his not handling to a long water blind, but he was invaluable on both a mallard and a sprig that made it to "land".

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: We fell well short of the dream 9 greenhead and 9 sprig limit.

Kudos: That's an incredibly stupid thing to bitch about on such a spectacular morning.

Birds By Species: 8 mallards and 4 pintails

Photo Ops: Call doing what he does:

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Don practicing his kill shot:

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Lagniappe: At one point, while great waves of teal and jacks were whistling past, I heard JJ tell his buddy, "This is really special." Don't know if he heard it - or needed to.

[Ericdc]

Awesome. We said that a few times over the last 2 days as well as we watched birds come through decoys. A rare opportunity these days.

The 3 pintail 3 mallard limit is an intriguing bag I had not thought about.


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[DComeaux]

What a spectacular hunt. It's got to feel good.

[Rick]

Date: 2/1/26 Sun

Time: Stayed in the blind until just after noon enjoying the company and trying to make our season last.

Location: 3

Cloud Cover: clear

Wind Direction and Velocity: NE light to moderate

Temperature: mid 20s

Moon phase: full

Special Notes: second day of vets' weekend and the last day of 2025-2026 ducks

Waterfowl Activity: I was expecting a repeat of yesterday, only without the wind. I was wrong, and the marsh appeared nearly barren, aside from occasional dribs and drabs of this or that until something stirred "the body" to raise swarms of birds that then sat back down in place. Maybe worn out from yesterday's flight fest?

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Many of the mallards we saw worked much better than yesterday's, but most of the pintails we saw were buzzing around in crazy, teal-like courtship flights that responded not at all. Teal came as pretty as early season, as if knowing they had a pass.

Hunters: 2, JJ and Don again

Guns:

Malfunctions:

Dog(s): Call's lack of reliable handling cost us a long fly-off greenhead his predecessors would have recovered. Don't know if we'll ever get past the ADHD issues that have retarded his training, but that will be the focus of our off-season.

Special Equipment: SOS

Curses: Was too pleasant of a morning for bitching.

Kudos: Sometimes what seems slow turns out to be "just right".

Birds By Species: 2 gadwall (one our only hen), 9 mallards, 2 pintails, 1 wigeon and 1 speck

Photo Ops: Too rare specklebelly:

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One that didn't get away:

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[Duck Engr]

Suhweet finish!!!!

[Darren]

Oh my what a couple of days. I'd imagine the overall area being quieter sure helped too in finishing big birds.

[Rick]

Oh my what a couple of days. I'd imagine the overall area being quieter sure helped too in finishing big birds.

Byron's blind to our north was still banging with impeccable timing, but he only had one vet hunter, so it could have been much worse.

[Deltaman]

Glad to see your finish so strong Rick

[Rick]

Glad to see your finish so strong Rick

Credit for that goes to fortunate weather. Spent the day undoing most of my preseason work and feeling like I gave a party and nobody came.

[Darren]

Glad to see your finish so strong Rick

Credit for that goes to fortunate weather. Spent the day undoing most of my preseason work and feeling like I gave a party and nobody came.

The prettiest guests were fashionably late at the closing bell

[DComeaux]

Spent the day undoing most of my preseason work and feeling like I gave a party and nobody came.

Very good analogy, and I know how that feels. I've become somewhat numb to it.

[Rick]

Have read, reread and reread this log again and again and been waffling fore and aft and back again on even doing a season summary, but here goes.

Date: September teal was both abbreviated and hampered by low numbers, and the regular season was frustratingly inconstant.

Time: mornings only

Location: 3 remains my primary blind, but I did try 5 and, at times, borrow Neil's blind, 2, to fill on black-bellies. That said, Clark's remains the only Cherry Ridge pond I'd prefer, due to its location and configuration, and I'm blessed to be where I am.

Cloud Cover: My preference for clear skies and disdain for ground fog remains unshaken. Though even ground fog can bring lost black-bellies to our otherwise least favored corner of the marsh.

Wind Direction and Velocity: This is something I tried to track in terms of relative success during my rereads, but relative success seemed about as inconsistent as the wind, itself.

Temperature: Still thinking cold a good thing.

Moon phase: didn't look for correlations

Waterfowl Activity: We were, again, more often than not the last party in. Often by a good margin, simply because we've next to no nearby black-belly habitat and are well off the other ducks' primary natural flight lines. Becoming more of an issue as marsh activity becomes more and more black-belly dependent, but we still have our days.

Waterfowl Responsiveness: Though I've generally been pleased with how combining on-and-off teasing with spinners and screaming distress calls to pull black-bellies from some of their distant preferred locations, I was disappointed by both the over-bored, Butch-cut extra loud MVP and Singleton cutdown's leverage on real ducks. Too often found myself fearful of losing calling touch in my dotage, and was most pleasantly surprised, albeit in the days after season's end, by how much better my long time go-to calls of seasons past, an early standard MVP and Stanley Deceiver, sound and run than the past two seasons' experiments with lower pitched calls. So physics be damned, I'm fired up to go "retro" next year.

Hunters: Still way the hey more folks who hunt than hunters through my blind.

Dog(s): From very early on, Call's nickname has been "Podner," and, aside from increasingly occasional ADHD flare-ups, he's become a fine one in most meaningful regards. But handling while swimming remains a tenuous at best "sometimes" thing, and he even blew me off on "land" on our last day. So handling drill will be our greatest off-season training emphasis. That, and trying to figure out how to get him to save trips with multiple retrieves, something that simply needn't have been discouraged with his predecessors.

Special Equipment: Can't say how much installing timers in the my spinners might have helped their draw, nor that it hurt, but expect to experiment with reprogramming them for longer pauses next season. Also tickled to have apparently solved the MMM dependability riddle.

Curses: Aside from the migration trend I can't influence, just the lack of guest respect for the birds' vision I've apparently just as little influence over.

Kudos: Still absolutely blessed to be out there.

[SpinnerMan]

As always, thanks so much for the time and effort that you put into your log. Very much enjoy my back seat view of your season.

I really hope to somehow manage to get out with you some day. Unfortunately, I think that has become a very remote possibility.

Look forward to your off season commentary on Call and all you do in the outdoors.