Duck reports?

Paging Larry...paging Larry... Mr Reynolds can you give us a timeline of when and where u plan to fly and when you will have your report out? I look forward to this post every year thanks in advance..

You're huntng partner blind or scouting after dark? Perhaps the yutes killed them all.

We dodged weather all day yesterday and got 4 lines (Crowley east to Intracoastal City) and Catahoula Lake completed, leaving 24 lines to fly. We had battery problems in the plane, barely getting it started after fueling up in the PM, and got back late due to weather. State hangar is closed today (Election Day holiday), so no repair until Wednesday. Planes are busy on Wednesday with coastal prairie tour for elected officials, WMA surveys, and Law Enforcement, so I won't fly again until Thursday and Friday.

If the weather cooperates, as predicted, and we bust a hump, we will get the westernmost 11 lines, and maybe 1 or 2 more lines over to Marsh Island flown on Thursday, and then finish in SE LA before dark on Friday. But there is no way to transcribe the data, do the analysis to generate the estimates, and produce the report before Saturday morning.

Kudos to my pilot and co-observer for being willing to work both Election Day and Veteran's Day holidays to get the survey done. Scheduling and approvals have been complicated; weather and mechanical problems are out of our control. We sometimes struggle in November with competing demands for aircraft. LDWF has 3 planes and 2 pilots, and we want to conduct Coastal, Catahoula, and NW LA aerial surveys, get the WMA surveys flown, and do the Law Enforcement prep the week before the opening of the Coastal and West Zone duck seasons. Bad weather, 2 holidays, and a big Departmental event really complicated things this year.

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NW LA aerial surveys

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Any idea if and/or when a NWLA survey might take place?

I have a friend that is crushing them in Canada right now. Probably not a great sign for Louisiana.

Sounds about right

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I have a friend that is crushing them in Canada right now. Probably not a great sign for Louisiana.

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I got a call from Dr. Frank Rohwer, formerly of LSU and current President of Delta Waterfowl. He ended his voice-mail with "I hope you are counting lots of ducks, but I doubt it. It is crazy this year with lots of ducks still in the mid-latitudes of Saskatchewan".

Like always, when I'm asked "where are the ducks" .... I can never know. They are up and down the flyway. There is always someone seeing large numbers of ducks somewhere as evident from a couple of youth hunt reports in Hackberry and Venice, facebook reports from some farms in Arkansas along with photos I've received of limits of bluewings last week in southern Saskatchewan. In this hyper-connected world, you can seemingly find evidence for whatever you want to believe.

I've got a lot of faith in what I see after flying a couple thousand miles in Louisiana, but even that is of limited relevance to my actually killing a duck. That, and it'll all change soon, of course.