re: Duck Hunting in NE, and SE Arkansas,

The numbers are way off or they are somewhere else.

We used to be covered with birds in SWLA even when it was warm back in the mid to late 90's.

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I'm deluded by saying that if we're going to have them, we'll have them in 10 days? How is that deluded?

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Yes, you are. There are no ducks to come in after the front

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I know lots of people having good seasons. Maybe you're out of touch.

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bullshite

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You're basing this on what? Can you explain how many ducks the natives kill and how that has an effect on breeding success, recruitment, etc?

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I am basing this on the fact that they don't set bag limits for the tribes in canada, and their bag limits for canada hunters is insane compared to ours.

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By who?

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USFW, your state wildlife agency, DU, delta waterfowl, pick one. All of these agencies have a vested interest in hunters continuing to spend money to hunt birds that don't have huntable numbers.

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Maybe step back from this issue and return with some facts

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Facts from the same outfits lying to us now? Pure delusion

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Then they learn to move and feed at night and then lay up in the refuges all day

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Where? What refuges?

What refuges? I will start with the ones that affect NE LA and SE AR the most since that’s where I am from but I curse several down here in SE TX where I live now. For starters there is Overflow NWR in Wilmot, AR. It has a refuge that holds mega shite tons. No access from pretty much November-March. I haven’t hunted Felsenthal in years but they used to hold a few in their non-hunting zones. Upper Ouachita NWR has Mollicy but the mud motors keep those birds moving so they don’t sit long but when they do it’s epic. D’Arbonne NWR has the bean field. And the DU Project on 15 will hold thousands. It is East of Monroe that was once Ouachita WMA but is now Russell Sage. So you literally have 5 within a 100 mile radius that could hold damn near every duck that migrated down here and if they sat on them every day and only moved at night to feed then most hunters would never see them and say there aren’t any ducks. Now multiply this scenario up the flyway through Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois. I think the picture becomes clear. Ducks refuge skip all the way down the flyway.

Honestly, the only time you see ducks now is when it is a massive arctic blast when everything locks up and the birds are forced to eat multiple times a day or after the season is over when they know it’s safe.

I know where the rest areas are, and they are not holding the birds like you think. They used to hold tens of thousands, and we still killed birds every single day.

Long post coming but no one loves revisionist history like duck hunters, it always used to better.

The truth is the habitat south of the Dakotas is wildly different now and ducks are efficient animals. They need carbs and to hide and to mate. Mallards in particular are more than willing to ride out a multiple day-week complete freeze to stay on easy food and no one shooting at them. Missouri north zone closes in 5 days and it’s not close to frozen out.

I’ve hunted Arkansas and West TN since the early 90’s. There was a time when a mallard’s sole purpose was to find rice at daybreak then get somewhere to preen, digest, and snack on acorns while they hide. Things have changed, now a duck can get flooded corn an extra 300 miles south. They can do all 3 in a flooded leveled corn field.

Private clubs have also dramatically improved and expanded their habitats. My family has had a club on the Languille since before the outboard motor. For a century, we had water, therefore we had ducks. Then our numbers started dropping, so we cleaned up the buck brush and started thinning the woods. Then we started planting millet in the woods, then wild rice, then started closing off areas as rest ponds. Then we took a 80 acres out of rice and planted a stand of corn that we flood right to the bottom of the cobs. All of that to say, we’re spending good money to make it easy for ducks to eat and want to stay. And we’re just copying what hundreds of others have done.

There’s no denying the ducks used to be more spread out. There was a time in AR that if you had 16” of water you could have a handful of ducks hanging out. But there’s a ton of landowners in MO, IL, AR, and TN that have invested a lot of money in “duck farming” and it’s working. Couple that with 3 straight droughts and bad hatches in the prairies and we’re missing a good chunk of dumb juveniles breaking out of big groups.

I don’t know if there’s more or less ducks, I just know the ducks have better and more efficient habitats now and they’re taking advantage of them.

For some reason, a large contingent of people seem dead set to convince us not to believe our own eyes.

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Lunchbox48

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Great post!

Still doesn’t explain the lack of pintail, specks and snow geese in South Louisiana. Specks and snows used to show up in late September. There was plenty for them to eat and hold up more North in the flyway, yet they still migrated all the way to the coast.

Weather wasn’t a factor because we had massive flocks of snows while touching 90 degrees at times. Something is definitely off.

I read about and study this stuff way more than I should. First and foremost, there are less ducks now than there have been in previous years. Most experts estimate there are 6M Mallards vs 10M around 2000. I used to see 3:1 drakes to hens. Now it is more like 10:1. I think there may be 1M hens out there now. Breeding grounds are terrible shape due to drought, land conversion to farming and development. Plus, warmer temps have shifted ducks further north with more and more hanging around MO. North LA has suffered and South LA even more. In the last 10 yrs or so, SW LA has lost 180,000 acres of rice. That big time impacts Specks, Pintails and Teal. There’s so many different factors you don’t really know where to start but I think I’d tell the northern states that they can’t start their season before 10/1 and I’d end the southern states at 1/15 till numbers start to improve. I’d also reduce Mallard hen limit to 1. What’s crazy is that we have more data than we ever have and react to it less and less. When I was a kid season lengths and bag limits changed all the time. Now we’ve run with 60/6 for 20 yrs. I don’t want to go back to 30/3 so I hope we’ll see some changes before things get there. Just the thoughts of an old redneck.

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don’t want to go back to 30/3 so I hope we’ll see some changes before things get there

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We are already there, have been for a while.