Perfect weather for ducks

I don’t duck hunt much but just riding around I don’t think I’ve seen more than a handful of ducks in Tensas all year

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Anyone having any success in N. LA?

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In the other duck thread, it was mentioned that the Robertson's have been doing ok on their stuff South of Monroe. They pretty much film most of their hunts live now for Youtube so you can get a real time report from their hunts. I haven't got a 15 report in a while. No clue what is going on there but I know SE AR is doing pretty decent around Wilmot. Commanders Corner beat them up pretty good Christmas Eve.

Ducks now are so imprinted on closed areas on refuges and not getting shot that most people don't see the ducks that are in fact here. I can promise that there are ducks on the no hunting area on Ouachita WMA, and Mollicy, and I know that the closed area on Overflow is probably loaded. Those ducks sit there all day and then leave to go feed at night and then go roost until daylight when they leave to head back to the refuges. It never fails and the only time the cycle breaks with that broken record is when it gets so brutally cold that the ducks are forced to feed multiple times a day or the weather gets so nasty that they have to move.

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most people don't see the ducks that are in fact here. I

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Nope. There are no ducks. The counts are all lies. The other thread said so.

I will say this in all seriousness tho, I’ve never seen so few ducks in the coastal marsh - Venice/Houma- as I have the last couple of years fall fishing. Ten years ago I’d see thousands airborne over the coast as we fished the aforementioned areas. Now I might see 100 total. The contrast is stark. Don’t know why it is, but it’s striking.

There are places on hwy15 and north of Mer Rouge that are still killing a good many birds but they are giant tracks of water and they’re rotating where they hunt. Even being able to do that it’s still not all that consistent or good.

I’m going back to the same spot tomorrow so I’ll keep y’all posted.

Probably helps that Creole got hammered and Sabine Refuge is closed, so a lot of ducks are untouched here

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Most ducks I’ve seen in my life in Johnson Bayou

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Used to hunt there when I was a kid. Lots of teal, grey ducks, spoonies and pintail. My brother in law killed a cinnamon teal there. But the best hunting I experienced in SWLA was Big Pasture which at the time was a free lease per a friend who worked for a land company. And that place was loaded with mallards. Oh, the olden days!

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Also, some WMAs can be artificially flooded and they used to do this. Now they have quit that practice so the WMAs are now totally dependent on rainfall or river flooding which pretty much eliminates any hunting during the first split. Game and Fish here are destroying public duck hunting.

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They are doing that to preserve green timber hunting. It’s not natural for oaks to be flooded every year from November til January. Happens naturally some years but they need a dry cycle occasionally or you will slowly kill the trees and you start getting undesirable trees to move in
Russell safe is a prime example of this. The public wants somewhere to hunt but it’s detrimental long term. One just has to look right across Lafourche at sage to see what water mismanagement will get you - a dead timber brake

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But the best hunting I experienced in SWLA was Big Pasture which at the time was a free lease per a friend who worked for a land company. And that place was loaded with mallards. Oh, the olden days!

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wish this was still true!