re: Have the good ole days of duck hunting become a thing of the past.

I started duck hunting in Central LA during the mid-80s. Have hunted the same areas that you mentioned. Southeast Arkansas (Felsenthal & Stuttgart), Cenla (along Red River & Boeuf WMA), and Kansas (Cheyene Bottoms).

When I lived in Stuttgart, I enjoyed learning about the early history of their duck hunting industry. Farmers in the early days had to employ guys to watch the fields overnight to try and keep the ducks and geese from tearing up the shocked rice before it could be loaded on a wagon and delivered to the mills in town which continued on well into November.

Looking at today's early maturing varieties of beans and rice coupled with the vastly increased harvest efficiencies and greatly expanded mill capacity, there isn't much left in the fields when the migration begins.

Arkansas has also imposed significant changes to the regulations for hunting on their WMAs. Hunting Bayou Meto is completely different than it was when I moved to Stuttgart in 1994. So many guides would meet hunters at local restaurants and then boat them into Bayou Meto WMA for guided hunts in holes they had developed over the years. Can't do that anymore.

When the mojos first came out in the mid-90s, it seemed like a return to the good ole days. Full limits, early finishes with guides running multiple groups into the same hole on the same day. Then the ducks started to adapt.

Lodges in prime locations with flooded timber and fields that once hosted paid hunters getting full limits of greenheads have been gobbled up by rich individuals or small groups that have taken them private.

Now a days, I'll hunt NW Missouri, Kansas, and Stuttgart during a season. Everything is public, except for when I spend a week hunting with buddies in Stuttgart.

Didn't go to Kansas this year because it was so dry. It seems like, regardless of where we're hunting, we kill a similar number of ducks. We'll have a good day mostly mixed in with more slow days.

Some of the "just greenheads" guys I know have quietly convert over to becoming less loud, proud, and picky. Back in the late 90s, I remember hunting with guys who wouldn't shoot a "trash" duck until they'd limited out on Mallards. Those hunting conditions allowed them to be the way they were.

These days, those same guys are glad to have mallards, gadwalls, shovelers, and teal on their game straps at the end of a hunt.

See Page 15 for LA - USFWS Harvest Estimates 2010-2011

See Page 15 for LA - USFWS Harvest Estimates 2021-2022

They gone pecone.

I started duck hunting in the early 80's on the gulf coast of Texas. When I moved back to Georgia I kept at if through the late 90's, mostly in Georgia but did a lot of traveling as well. For that 15 or so year period it was not unusual at all for us to kill 20 birds or less a season hunting 30-40 days in Georgia. Almost all of them were either woodies or ringnecks...Georgia, with the exception of the coast and the SW corner of the state, is not and never has been a great state to hunt ducks in but in that period it was TOUGH. This was back in the point system days. The only saving grace was there probably weren't 500 true duck hunters in the entire state...folks would shoot wood duck roosts a couple of times a year but trying to decoy birds was almost unheard of. It ain't no more...everyone with a shotgun is hunting ducks in Georgia...and still seeing or shooting almost NOTHING. I slowed down hunting in the early 90s and quit altogether in by 2000. Took it back up in 2014 and the hunting was FAR better than it was in the 80s and 90s. Even in Georgia. It is better right now in Georgia than it was in the 80s and 90s...at least in central Georgia. Still not a lot of good ducks but as many ringnecks as you care to shoot and a good mix of redheads, bluebills and Cans. The problem in our area is pressure...I don't know how it caught on but duck hunting is a major past time in my area now where it was unusual just 30 years ago. Given the expense and the hard arse work required I can't imagine how all of these people became duck hunters but they are everywhere you look. Me and my old dog stay out of their way and shoot decoying ring necks and cracker fed Canada geese on wind swept main lake points where most of them would never dream of hunting, and we do pretty good....its better than it used to be, but again this is in an area where ducks are pretty rare.

quote:

---

Decreased total numbers surviving is the problem, be it habitat, environment, over harvest or whatever cause hits your hot button.

---

For whatever reason, when LA folks talk about hunting or fishing, they never want to focus on loss of habitat....which is huge.

I can remember seeing so many more ducks in the 3 man limit days. They just simply don't come down any more.

Loss of food and habitat and changes in migration patterns.

quote:

---

A decade ago it was common to kill over 600 ducks in a season where I hunt. 200 seems to be the ceiling now.

---

Wonder why there arent as many ducks! I'm an avid duck hunter but with constant high pressure of hunting and reduction in farmland takes its toll eventually.

Thumb down all you want!

quote:

---

For whatever reason, when LA folks talk about hunting or fishing, they never want to focus on loss of habitat....which is huge.

I can remember seeing so many more ducks in the 3 man limit days. They just simply don't come down any more.

Loss of food and habitat and changes in migration patterns.

---

I've been beating this drum since the late 80s.

Sitting in the blind now with my grandson. Front just passed through last night. This is our count this morning. One single pintail, one merganser, maybe 20 wooducks. No migration of any type of waterfowl whatsoever. Good north wind 5-10 mph.

I mainly hunt 2 locations, the minnow ponds in paragould and a rice field bordering the Cache outside of light, between paragould and walnut ridge. The ponds are basically 2k acres of water that can't be missed. My rice field has water and there are plenty of flooded fields around, but they all have pits.

What we are severely lacking is the fields that are normally boarded up as rest areas that are naturally flooded. Normally at this point of the season we should have had roughly a foot of rain, so far we are sub 3 inches since Halloween.

Last "fantastic" hunt I took part in occurred a couple years ago with a guide service in Walnut Ridge.

First year with them was the fantastic one. All Mallards and Pintail for both morning hunts. Next year, same hunters, same guides, in the same fields...nothing!

Right now, there are a bunch of dry fields in the Stuttgart area. No one in Eastern Arkansas can be accused of hogging up the rain fall.

quote:

---

crayfish

---

écrevisse