re: The golden years for ducks are gone....

I too believe the Mississippi Flyway has shifted west.

NW La has always been the desert compared to other ducking areas within driving distance. When I was growing up it was basically all of South La and Stuttgart. NE Louisiana began to get good in the 80s.

I have records of every hunt I made from 1990 to present. In the 90s we could count on regular mallards and then toward the end of that period gadwall started showing up. NE La rice fields were epic. My best hunt on record was the opening three days of the second split of 2000. In a three day period we killed 75 ducks with 50 of those being mallards.

Things began taking a turn around 2003. Throughout that 20 year period half of what we killed were mallards and 20% were gadwall. By 2010 it got to where I rarely saw mallards. It also got to where I would stand and look at blue sky.

NE Louisiana has turned into teal hunts all season. Oklahoma has become the place to go if you live in NW LaEven Stuttgart has got worse and worse since 2010. NW Louisiana lives and dies on divers.