re: Maurepas Swamp Duck Hunting

The control burn sounds nice

I have at least 3 shovels.

There are no ducks left in the swamp. Trudge through the slop for a couple of woodies and maybe a teal or two. I've been hunting there for 20 years and have seen one green head. I just go because my uncle loves it and now needs someone to get him to the pond.

It was awesome! Here's a slideshow - the hunts in the taller thicker cypress are on Tatoon's and other parts of Maurepas Swamp west of I-55. LINK and slightly different pics here LINK

The more open areas are on east side of I-55. Salvinia, along with floating mats of fourchette LINK (the "beautiful" yellow flowers you see from I-310 in November/December) have ruined all the habitat in all of the freshwater swamps from north of Lake Pontchartrain to the Morgan City. May as well have paved it over, for what good it is now to waterfowl.

Could it be that pic was taken before the hard limits were put in place by the DWF.

Man golden that was awesome. I used to hunt tatoons myself mid to late 90s with a guy Ben Perret. Man the hunts we had. Solid mallards. Had trouble filling limits because all they had was mallards. By far the best hunting I’ve ever experienced

Well, I’m not that old, at least I don’t think of myself as old, but I lived and experienced some of the best Duck hunting that the Maurepas Swamp had to offer from about 77 to the early 90s. I got plenty of photos from that era and many memories, sadly I have probably forgotten many due to the copious amounts of wine that we drank on the weekends. A few of my buddies that worked in construction and I would get layoffs at the end of October. We would hunt the whole season until mid January then go find a job. At the time we thought that duck hunting was like this everywhere, little did we know most duck hunters didn’t kill the green heads in the numbers like we did. We thought nothing of it , as a matter of fact we wanted to shoot pintails and widgeons. When I tell you that , that swamp would darken with thousands of mallards in the evenings, I’m not exaggerating. I remember one evening I was where they wanted to roost for the evening and swatting one with my gun barrel. Not a tall tale, it really happened. I have a scanner and plenty of old pics laying around if someone would teach me how to post them , I will. Some of my stories will make you wonder how I made it this far. I’ve sunk one boat, been thrown out of one and run over and have wrecked one and been in another that ended up about 50 yards in the swamp while running full throttle in a fog. We were bringing spaghetti to some friends of our at the mouth of the lake on blind river. We made it .....but they couldn’t figure out why the spaghetti was cold and what was the seasoning that looked like cypress leaves. I got plenty more ....

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Believe the swamp needs to be enclosed with levees at this point. This way it can be pumped in and out. It doesn't ever dry out, just stays moosh. Think like a green tree reservoir. Imagine if they could pump it dry and control burn it, and flood for duck season. This would do wonders for the invasive aquatics too.

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. So why does it no longer dry out? What changed?

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they didn't have fancy mud motors our lazy asses

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He told me Phil and Warren coco hunted near them a lot back then but nobody knew who either were.

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Cool