Oo yea because DU did something so we didn't have a winter to push the ducks down and made it rain like crazy to flood everybody up.


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Ducks like water. Rain shoulda helped

You must be one of these duck dynasty hunters. How about you let the grown men have a meaningful discussion.


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My ideal duck season dates, what's your?
 

That's the most ludicrous statement on this thread. As hunter numbers increase, flooded duck habitat increases. Also an increase in hunters increases the probability that more duck food sources are being planted locally. I agree there a a bunch of knot heads hunting these days, but that is just a product of a good duck population. Weather is our #1 factor in being successful. If you don't like the cost of leases, then by all means go buy your own land. I am so sick of the middle age hunters crying about new hunters on the scene. You all sound like a bunch of Obama voters, like you are entitled to the holy duck waters. Get a life dude.


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I agree the weather was a big issue this year. But with newer hunters that haven't been brought up hunting they don't understand how to hunt correct and the sky busting and all doesn't help the ducks from becoming educated. Just because hunters increase doesn't mean that new habitat is created there are still the same amount of rice fields and marsh as there was a few years back before the numbers of hunters went up.


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I've been hunting a long time. Numbers were increasing way before Duck dynasty This ain't a drop in the bucket of numbers of hunters in the 70s. Drink that DU kook aid though

X2


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i will disagree... what about all of the crawfish ponds with all that water? how many ducks do you see on crawfish ponds? just because more hunters are now hunting does not mean more habitat..

think about all of the farmers that flood one cut and leave the other cut dry? what about the farmers that roll/buffalo a 50 yard radius, or shall i say, bulls-eye, around your blind.. that does nothing.

so your comment of more hunters creates more habitat is a joke.

3 Splits or Bust
 

I disagree about 50yard radius does accomplish something; it almost guarantees you will not have geese fly over your blind, man I hate seeing ponds like that.

Let's try to get back on track here; does anyone else care to propose dates for the 3 split duck season?

the reason NE La doesnt open till late november is they are still cutting rice there early in the month. It doesnt seem like its that far away, but the growing season is alot different.

I agree that every little puddle may be leased up... But that sure doesn't mean it gets hunted..
Also not picking on you or anything , just happens you say stuff I like to quote and give my opinion on lol


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Not taking any offense to it what so ever. I think one thing we can all agree on is we would like to try a different configuration for duck season.


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You obviously don't have much experience hunting rice fields if you think that "bullseye" means anything to a duck.


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You can wiggle the dates and zones around all you want. If you don't get the big freeze north of LA the ducks just don't come down like they would if it did. Plenty of food and moving water. Why would they leave that?

EDIT: I'm not saying the dates and zones don't need to be changed. I'm just not blaming that on my below average season.

Zones vs splits
 

In a state with very different large-scale habitat types, like NE vs SW Louisiana, zones are always a better choice than splits. There is no need for hunters in NE LA to have early hunting days to satisfy the guys in SW LA, AND there is no need for SW LA to have later days, when they have such good success earlier in the season, to satisfy the hunters in NE LA.

On a small scale, splits may seem better, and with 60-day seasons it doesn't make a lot of difference. But zones are a better choice, especially when season length is reduced, as Tucan pointed out.

Lastly, frameworks are not likely to be set later anytime soon. The wintering grounds serve a need for the migratory waterfowl resource beyond providing opportunity to shoot them. The shooting has to stop sometime so birds can survive, regain body weight, start pre-basic molt, and prepare for the migration north. Paired birds do that more effectively, and there is a cost of losing a mate late in winter. We also know from radio-telemetry studies that after mid-January, nothing kills a duck except hunters. Not predators, not starvation, not collisions with wires like earlier in the season. So hunting mortality after mid-January is shooting into the breeding stock; it is not compensatory mortality.

Southern hunters have been complaining that the season closes too early for decades, maybe longer. My first exposure was in the classic 1964 book, "Waterfowl Tomorrow" where starting on page 683 "A Letter to a Hunter" details the regular complaint. And in those days, the season closed closer to the first Sunday in January rather than the last.

Know that the proposed season dates for 2016-17 were presented at the January Commission meeting (I saw someone posted a link), and you have the opportunity to comment until the April Commission meeting when they will be finalized. Changes can be made at the February and March meetings before the final approval in April.

Excellent point, and the foundation of my support for traditional dates in the Coastal Zone. In 2014, we set the seasons a week later, and we got a very early freeze pushing the birds into the state such that our November survey was the highest since 1995. In 2015, we set the season a week earlier, and the warm weather and excessive flooding up and down the flyway reduced our number of birds.

Leave the dates alone and just deal with the annual variation in weather and habitat conditions. The harvest data clearly show that on average, we kill lots of ducks in the Coastal Zone in November, and noticeably fewer by late-January (both total and birds/hunter). There is no magic formula to maximize kill every year, and no way to satisfy everyone every year.

Hell, our hunter-opinion surveys show those hunters who have hunted the longest, hunt the most, and kill the most ducks are the LEAST satisfied. But they won't quit.

Tough crowd .........

To answer the focal question of this thread:

I hunt the Coastal Zone and prefer:
Open the second Saturday in November and run for 3 weeks.
12-day split.
Re-open and run until 1 week before the end of the framework.

HA.. if you only had a clue.


you have no argument here.. good day sir

Explain


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so in other words... the same way it has been since waaaaaaaaaay before we ever thought about a coastal zone....