re: Duck season 3 days in

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toledo was open?

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Think the Texas side was.. not LA

SWLA got a helluva shot of early fresh big ducks. Have a buddy pushing barges and he says its been heavy active since daybreak in the marshes.

OK, so is this gonna turn into one of those chicken little threads where the sky is falling cause we didn't limit out on the first weekend. But then cold weather drove ducks down, so now all is well?

kind of like there weren't any trout in the spring and early summer, and now anybody can catch a trout cause the marshes are loaded with them.

don't you think the birds are evolving and getting smarter? I mean, they aren't gonna go further than necessary for food, but they aint gonna keep going to the same spots they got shot at either. They been shot at, called at, and seen every decoy imaginable by the time the get down here, especially in late season. I can't imagine they aren't learning from that and moving over to the central FW if there is less pressure. emphasis on if there is less pressure.

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but they aint gonna keep going to the same spots they got shot at either

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Ducks these days have become very adaptive on refuge hopping and adapting to hunting pressure in those areas. For example, in NE LA, we have three distinct rest areas on 1 WMA (Ouachita/Sage) and 2 NWR's (D/Arbonne/Upper Ouachita) that hold shite ton of birds during the season. These birds sit on these areas all day and then will leave to feed at night. Now there are exceptions and there are times right when the birds first get here where there are windows to kill them before they go nocturnal but by and large after the dumb ones are dead, it is really hard to kill ducks. Every once in a while you can catch some of these birds moving during daylight when they need to feed more due to colder weather but by and large, most hunters in that area typically never see much of those ducks.

Never hunted SE LA but certainly have in SW LA. Had a little shitty lease where pasture meets deep marsh due south of Lake Chuck. It was 15 minutes from in town to sitting in the blind. Always good for a few ducks (teal or black mallard, sometimes blue bills) before work. Then some professional group (I think CPA's) leased the section or so due south and put blinds in every single pothole on the lease with no resting areas. Freakin ruined the hunting there. I hardly ever heard them shoot after they added more blinds and removed any rest areas.

Otherwise I hunted elsewhere with friends and we always had limits of good ducks. Even got to watch several thousand mallards the last day of the season one year. Blue bird day and they were bodied up in the middle of the 3 blinds. They kept rising up and flying around like big body of snows and blues. We all stayed until noon that day just to watch them as we had our limits early. Then we started scooping up all the empty shell casings from around the blinds from second half of the season.

I don't think that that has much affect. They aren't eating any rice in the marshes.

There used to always be an early flight ahead of the cold weather that stopped with DU's short stopping actions.

South wind is usually better hunting. North wind and many are offshore rafted up off the coast. Saltwater is great for getting rid of mites and such.

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eased the section or so due south and put blinds in every single pothole on the lease with no resting areas. Freakin ruined the hunting there.

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people greatly underestimate the value of resting areas...

bump birds once they go a little ways... 2nd time a little further.. 3rd time they leave the area....


had one guy complain to me for 20 minutes about everybody riding around his area in go devils... said he almost got in two wrecks when he was out "trying to push up birds"

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Also there are 100s of new outfitters all over who try to hunt every single day morning and afternoon especially for specks

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I'd like to see the limits return to 4 or 5 birds daily at some point. Every jackleg is an outfitter across the country now and they all just want to post kill piles on youtube and instagram. While killing birds has always been a part of it there is so much more to enjoying hunting than some of these people think. Pressure would come down immensely.