Weirs Closed

[Natural Light Kid]

Unfortunately, the number of ducks you see along Hwy 27 is not always a good indicator as to how the duck season is going. I hunted just west of Boudreaux Lake and our hunting sucked last year as well as the people that hunted around us. Also, freakin duck leases are so hard to come by, you sometimes just have to take what you can get. Our side of the marsh has freshened up more and more over the last 3 years. I do know people that hunt further west, closer to Big Lake, and it's more brackish.

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by Natural Light Kid

Unfortunately, the number of ducks you see along Hwy 27 is not always a good indicator as to how the duck season is going. I hunted just west of Boudreaux Lake and our hunting sucked last year as well as the people that hunted around us. Also, freakin duck leases are so hard to come by, you sometimes just have to take what you can get. Our side of the marsh has freshened up more and more over the last 3 years. I do know people that hunt further west, closer to Big Lake, and it's more brackish.

Do you mean how your duck season is going is not a good indicator of the quality of local habitat? There were more ducks along 27 than I'd ever seen in my life.

And my daddy had some sweet duck leases back in the 1970s. Judging the duck population by what you see when hunting is worse than judging the fish population by how many you catch. It just isn't a sound approach.

I remember being frustrated turkey hunting. All winter I'd see tons and tons of turkeys on a 100 acre farm where I had permission to hunt. Then the spring turkey season would roll around and they'd all disappear to some neighboring properties. The same thing happened my first few deer seasons until I adjusted the habitat and planted some food plots to keep them around during the season. But habitat adjustments don't create ducks (or deer), they just put them in the right place for convenient harvest. (Kinda like the artificial reefs CCA puts in). Our habitat improvements may have increased the carrying capacity by a handful of deer, but we killed 40-50 each year.

Now, it's not wrong to want to improve the habitat so the ducks land on your duck lease rather than somewhere else in the neighborhood. But I don't see why it's the government's job to do it for you, and they certainly shouldn't put other land at greater risk for erosion to improve your hunting.

I'd kinda like all the marsh and land to still be there when my grandchildren are old enough to hunt.

[Natural Light Kid]

Originally Posted by MathGeek

Do you mean how your duck season is going is not a good indicator of the quality of local habitat? There were more ducks along 27 than I'd ever seen in my life.

And my daddy had some sweet duck leases back in the 1970s. Judging the duck population by what you see when hunting is worse than judging the fish population by how many you catch. It just isn't a sound approach.

I remember being frustrated turkey hunting. All winter I'd see tons and tons of turkeys on a 100 acre farm where I had permission to hunt. Then the spring turkey season would roll around and they'd all disappear to some neighboring properties. The same thing happened my first few deer seasons until I adjusted the habitat and planted some food plots to keep them around during the season. But habitat adjustments don't create ducks (or deer), they just put them in the right place for convenient harvest. (Kinda like the artificial reefs CCA puts in). Our habitat improvements may have increased the carrying capacity by a handful of deer, but we killed 40-50 each year.

Now, it's not wrong to want to improve the habitat so the ducks land on your duck lease rather than somewhere else in the neighborhood. But I don't see why it's the government's job to do it for you, and they certainly shouldn't put other land at greater risk for erosion to improve your hunting.

I'd kinda like all the marsh and land to still be there when my grandchildren are old enough to hunt.

Sorry for the mix up. I was just stating that just because you see a lot of ducks along Hwy 27 doesn't mean the hunting is good in the surrounding marshes. In no way was I trying to relate my duck hunting to the health of the estuary. I agree with everything else you said. Biggest part of our problem was our particular section of marsh. That was our responsibility not the governments. I understand that a healthy marsh may not result in limits of ducks on our particular section as well as limits of fish everyday on the lake. It ain't a perfect world.