HELP !! shead some light on topic plz...
 

Could it be overall population is up vs South LA population down? Don't know - just throwing out a real possibility.

i think most of the efforts are to retain populations and perfect areas for them way to our north. hey i could be wrong but its just hard to say that when you see pictures of the insane amount of birds that no longer come down here. why leave when the ponds up there are perfect?

Just my 2 cents. Migration patterns have changed. Landcape (ag practices) have changed. Hunting Pressure is not what it used to be which causes the birds to adapt and change. There are alot of factors at play. Dont be the ignorant one trying to pull conservation groups into this....What have you done to help the situation???

Seasons are too early! I've said it before and told larry reynolds face to face my exact reasons why I thought so. He continues to pull his data card of kills per effort.

You have to think about this. So many things have changed in the past 15-20 years. Just the farming practices have changed enough to screw it all up. There used to always be bottoms of fields that held water and canals with tree lines in every field. Now everything is flat. Canals and treelines have been taken out and everything lazer leveled. They've even started planting rice on dry ground. Also the number of hunters has increased dramatically. In the past there was always acres of water where the ducks could go and noone would bother them. Now you can't find a hundred acres of huntable ground without a duck blind in it.


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very true, rice isnt farmed near like it used to be and many of those huge areas are now nothing but sugar cane. i didnt hunt for 10 years, that was my conservation attempt. ive also donated money and bought items which support conservation over the years.

Exactly what I'm saying. Many more factors at play also.

I dont duck hunt but its just like anything else! Times have changed. Things are done differently now. Plus our population of ppl has doubled in sw louisiana since then. Within the next 5-10 years with the economic growth to our area we will double if not triple in population..... by then you wont be killing any birds!

I think the main problem here is the information given is way to vague or actually non existent. most of all these "facts" are just hear-say and passed from one beer to another... perhaps what needs to happen is DU needs to release more detailed information on this subject ( cause they for sure have it with all the research they do) so everyone will know the whole truth.

This will never happen!

thats why i dont like donating money.

I'm in Connecticut right now and when I tell you the amount of mallards and Canadians up here is insane. Hundreds of em in every lake and pond, and pass a little bitty 3 acre field with 200 Canadians walking around in it. There is absolutely no pressure on em. So why leave to head down south and get shot at. Oh and to boot, about 1/3 of all ths birds are banded. There's a ton of birds up here and there's no need for the to leave. Now that may change now because the snow is getting thick up here so they may have to start leaving to find food but realize that just started Saturday. So now in mid December the birds are finally gonna need to migrate a lil to find food

Opinion
 

This is my opinion from an "older" duck addict. Do some of ya'll know that Arkansas has twice the acreage in rice that La. does. I've been to Ark. in late January for farm equipment auctions. The ducks have it made. Flooded fields and timber resembling our Atchafalaya basin. If I was a duck the only reason to leave is ice or pressure. Duck hunting is no longer a "blue collar" sport. If you don't have the "big bucks" or land in the family you're screwed. Some Ark. farmers told me the "big wheels" come from Tennessee and others places to hunt. At the time, which was around '99 or 2,000, blinds were going for as high as $10.000. It pays the farmers to ring their cropland with levees and pump water. Rice hasn't been to profitable lately. Hell, the other day I was watching em burn mallards in Missouri in a "flooded" corn field. As far as I know corn doesn't required that much water(LOL). Duck hunting is now a rich man's sport. That doesn't help "blue collar" people like me. People like me hunted when duck hunting "wasn't cool". We did it cause we loved the sport. That's my story and I'm sicking to it :).

well you hit the nail on the head. same as deer now. if you have family land youre good, or you have the money to pay someone a crazy amount to sit in on their property and shoot something that is probably 1,000x's cheaper to buy from the store than pay for a lease of any kind.

Everything was "greater"when we were younger, the older I get the more realistic I get. Maybe it has a little to do with people just not realizing that? Maybe old timers don't hunt as much as they used to and constantly look in the sky at day break?

Anyone go back to a place you went when you were young, only to be disappointed and wonder how something so simple could be built up to the level of amazing ness in your little mind? That live oak at grandmas we used to play in turned out to be just another live oak when I got older.

Theory

Life in a paragraph

I often agree with that theory myself. My best example is your favorite restaurant as a kid you go back as an adult and the food is crap and you can't figure out how you ever loved the stuff

I think the biggest part is instant media! LOL

You also have to realize, these birds have been shot at for about 2 months before they get down here. Starting in Canada and working south.

I also believe the ag practices have alot to do, combines are more efficient, no waste. Can you remember when the geese and ducks would pile in a field after a cut********

On another take, i believe the weather pattern has plenty too, as animals, they will go where food, shelter & sex are. If it is there, why leave.

I went to Oklahoma and Arkansas on hunts and the guides said it has to stay frozen for about 10 days for them to leave and head south. They will go only as far as they have to.

Not enough rice farmers. Years ago every farmer planted rice, now its sugar cane....the birds have learned where the food is, and where its not

When I first got into the sport in the mid 80's we were 30 days and 3 ducks.........loved every dang minute of it.

Duck hunting has always been somewhat of an esoteric sport. Many many people consider it a rich man's sport.

There are more ducks, largely in part to the decades of help from DU and other non-profit groups...........and LARGELY because sportsman have contributed many a buck to make it happen........all the while consuming masive quantities of alcohol as well.

I think migration patterns have changed.........I think they always have changed.......

I think what hurts us now are air cooled engines and lazy duck hunters.
Guys beleive they can let their blinds look like crap, no cover, leave thier decoys out all year, run all over the habitat with a gazillion HP surface drive and still expect to kill ducks.

Duck Hunting is as stealthy as tracking a big buck......when done correctly.

I watch thousands and thousands of ducks pass over every year, high as a jetliner.
I am convinced they know we are down here..........
If there is no food, and too many "booms" would you stop?
It would be like stopping at a Popeye's fried chicken that is notoriously out of food AND is loaded with a group of thugs carrying guns.

There is plenty of info out there. Point blank the two top contributing states to DU are Texas # 1 and Louisiana # 2 . They can't ignore those facts. DU recognizes both states as major wintering grounds for waterfowl and pumps a lot more money into this state than you might think. Point blank move the seasons back we would be a lot better off. Other main problem is birds concentrate in certain marshes where there are rest areas. Not a blind every 5 ft that they get constantly shot at. Rest areas are key to killing birds.


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The places that I used to hunt as a kid was my uncle's property. It was a brackish marsh with lots of open water, widgeon grass and the ducks loved it. Now the big hunting clubs have taken over the adjacent marsh built levees where the salt water used to come in and now the whole marsh is fresh. cattails have taken over and there is very little open water and almost no ducks. The hunting clubs have ducks but we don't. The opposite of saltwater intrusion. The big oak trees with moss in them are gone too. They cut them down to build pens for race horses. Oh well, that's progress. It's no wonder my grandsons would rather play video games.

http://www.saltycajun.com/forum/sear...archid=2584714

And there is your reason we're not seeing as many ducks down south.... They never make it past Ville Platte!

"IN" Before Page 10

Never fails bring up any conservation group, a Limit or widgeon grass and ole dubya is in. Only thing we missing here is a weir.

I've hunted the same lease in GC for 30 years. We have the same # of blinds, less people hunting them, less days hunting...mostly on weekends now. Area around us is the refuge to the south and east with no one hunting north of us.
Everything the same as 30 years ago with less pressure today.
We see a 1/10th of the ducks we had back in the early 80's. Ponds stayed covered in ducks all season long. The ride to blinds in the morning was nothing but roaring wings taking off the ponds.
Simply, we don't have the # of ducks in S. LA as we once had. Why?
Warmer winters, very little snow in the mid west and central flyway during winter.
New found hunting areas that have opened up in the central states because of this warming. Because the traditional migration has changed with ducks not flying further south, imprinting of yearling and young ducks have no instinct to fly down here. Case in point is the Canadian goose. Hate to sound the pessimist but if you want to shoot ducks go way north. We will never see the migrations we once had in S. La. The great hunting areas will now become just good. The good just fair. As the handful of good blinds become less available the more it will cost. Look what a fair to good blind cost today compared to 5 years ago. Duck hunting as we have known it has changed and I just don't seeing it ever coming back to its grandeur we once enjoyed. I still go out and hunt ducks but more to enjoy being with my son and up-coming hunter grandson. Learned to have fun cookin at the camp, fixin boats and motors, cutting roseauxs for the blinds...and all the other stuff associated with duck hunting. Still, it saddens me when I see an empty sky at daybreak knowing what we once had.
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It goes further than that. The guys up north figured out what to do to keep their season going. Back in the day when it froze they just quit. Now the do everything within their power to keep their water open. Also they've learned how to manage their property to keep ducks. Flooded corn, moist soil units, and so on. They've essentially learned how to keep the ducks from migrating and frankly u can't blame em.

With the advent of warmer winters they sure have taken advantage of this situation as you well described.

A lot of good theories. The biggest thing is probably the changes in the landscape, like someone said. Shifts in agricultural practices such as where rice is grown have made a difference. I read on another forum where someone referenced the amount of land switching from rice to sugarcane and crawfish production. That makes a big difference because they are going to go to those rice fields.

I don't buy into the global warming or warmer winters argument that much. Not saying its not a good theory, just saying weather patterns are cyclical. Look at the intensity of some of the cold fronts we have had this year. I saw a comparison of the same date this year and last year--there was something like 60% snow cover across the nation as opposed to 30% or something like that on the same day last year. It's not so much the weather as where the birds are able to stop at.

I hear reports all the time of blinds limiting out every day. I know people that do. There are birds getting down here; its just a matter of where they are going now. That tells me its not so much the weather as it is changes in the landscape.

And to the comment of moving the season back vs. the data--waterfowl seasons are probably one of the few that is actually based in one way or another on data, unlike other species. As long as the harvest per hunter effort is staying relatively stable, they aren't going to change the season dates. There has to be some logic to it.

Smalls you back!


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could not agree more.......guy pounds them.......but was Ville Platte a place your grew up thinking "man, I need a duck blind there"?

migration patterns are a changing and big C is in the new pattern

Big C sets the patterns


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I hope he owns that place and doesn't lease it. If not, it's about to be bought out from under him.

I wish the season would open and close later for a few years to prove to yall that is not the problem

Then please explain what your theory is .

Geese are a different story. The big migration movements of ducks are late November and December do you disagree there?


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I agree. Later in nov and dec we get a bigger push of ducks. But there are plenty of ducks around opening weekend. So why open later? Ducks are usually here in a pretty good number early nov. Now if we opened at the same time and hunted later with more days, im down with that. Thats something we can all agree on

Your area and south of you from Klondike to the marshes is an exception. Y'all hold the largest concentrations of birds. When the first few pushes come through y'all have plenty. How many dead days do y'all see a couple weeks later though? Why not hold off two weeks you have 2x the birds the first week and 3-4x more than average by the end of the split?




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whit that being said, too keep me from looking all over the web. whats you reasoning on a split in the hunting season ?

The one and only.....took a break, chilled out alittle, and I'm back to raise he'll.

I think opening the season later wouldn't show much difference. We do get more of a push, but its ststill more to do with the landscape changes.

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1: Give the birds a break
2: Give time for more birds to push in. (Since the Feds only allow a 60 day season.)
3: Give your self a break
4: To please the wives
5: shoot blues and snows no hold bar


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Just been lurking huh


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So how can we fix this problem? what can we do to keep the future migrations to keep coming south?

That's a difficult task, and probably impossible. You would have to manage the landscape over an entire flyway, something that will most likely never happen.

You may be thinking "Why Not?"

Well, because there are many factors that would go into that. If you start with what is actually there, the land practices, that MIGHT be manageable. But when you consider how much work that would require to manage millions of acres of land with millions of landowners......that's not going to happen.

The other big factor you have to look at is Climate. You aren't going to control the climate, simple as that.

Temperatures, ice/snow cover, and availablility of food drive are the majority of the driving factors in the overall migration. Availability of food and cover will drive where the birds are locally.

I've seen rice fields north of I-10 loaded with wood ducks, mallards, and pintails because there was timber near by that they could duck into during the day. Not to mention that only about a 1/10th of an acre had been cleared to make a pond. The rest was still 2 or 3 foot tall. Good cover and feeding opportunities.

The birds are going to go where they feel safe and have food when they get down here, because they've been shot at all the way down. BUT THEY HAVE TO GET HERE FIRST! If the weather isn't forcing them down, you won't see them.

And as far as moving seasons around, they will always base that on harvest numbers, and until there is a drastic, long term swing in the numbers (later migration, lower harvest), that will probably not change. There was the opportunity this year, but more people voted to leave it as is if I'm not mistaken.

We kill more ducks in Louisiana than any other state and TWICE as many as Arkansas (over 1 MILLION more ducks than they do).Edited to add: We kill 1 MILLION more ducks than the next highest state. Kinda hard to tell the states up north that there is a 'problem' and something needs to be done when you look at the numbers:) Still plenty of ducks coming down.

Again, there are all kinds of things that factor into migration of birds. Black-bellied and fulvous whistling ducks were a rarity not that long ago. Many many other bird species that we see in Louisiana now regularly were once pretty rare here (roseate spoonbills for instance).


and 10 pages for sure:rotfl:

Solution = figure 8s in bodies with helicopters!!!!

Don't forget whooping cranes.....:D

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tree hugger:rotfl:

Now look here friend, I'm not much into that whole tree huggin thing. Get too many splinters doin that.....lmao :rotfl:

On a serious note though......YOU'RE ONE TO TALK!!! lmao!! I flipped teams.....the bad guys offered more money......lol.....