re: Duck results from this weekend???

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In February, when we go out to pick everything up for the year, the lease is usually chock full of birds.

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That is because there is no pressure...

Great opening morning Saturday at my boss's spot in Holly Grove, Arkansas. Mainly mallards with some teal and gadwalls mixed in.

Just got back from guided hunt at Bayou Meto in Stuttgart - didnt kill much and it was opening weekend. There are a lot of birds in the area, but they are spread out because there is water everywhere.

This may get interesting

More importantly why is there no waterfowl shootout this year!?

Catahoula looks like Lake Superior! Everything is under with water level approaching 40ft. Ridiculous and bad unless you’re into shooting divers ring necks and scaup. Sorta like Chesapeake Bay.

I'm in my (early) 6th decade and don't duck hunt anymore. But when I was in my 20/30s I used to hunt the rice fields south of Lake Charles and the marsh area in Big Pasture now known as Grosse Savanne. Though my memory may be faded somewhat we used to hammer the pintail and mallards in both places. During a dry winter with no water in our rice field lease we went to Lacassine Refuge a couple of times and on a hard, cold north wind I was able to kill a full limit of green heads (four or five, don't remember). This may have been late season hunting, I just don't remember. Do you active hunters still kill mallards like that in south Louisiana? We also had our teal and gray duck days and we avoided spoon bills, ring necks etc. but on better days if we were patient and waited a little later we often got our pintail and mallards. We also had our bad days when we didn't kill squat. I'm just curious if active hunters observe that mallards still migrate in large numbers into south Louisiana?

NWLA 2 man woodie limit yesterday morning, including a banded drake, my first.


Hunted a lake blind in central LA a few times last week with slow days, few teal but mostly jacks.

I used to see thousands of ducks on the wax and especially Venice when we had a 3 duck limit and 30 day season.

It also used to be cold during duck season, freeze up and snow more in Canada, and upper US. Farmers used to till their grain under.

There used to be a Katy Prairie, now it's all subdivisions.

Giant salvinia used not to be here also.

Every other Hunter didn't have a mud motor and could not run all over atchafalaya bay with a handheld GPS.

All of these contribute way more toba lack of ducks than some du baws wanting to hunt early in Cameron.