Ducks Unlimited sent me a little piece today talking about the 2011 duck numbers. The heart of the matter is right here:

A quick glance will tell you that most everything is up with blue wings being the most dramatic. Also note that the “ponds” section gives a good indication of why there are so many ducks… There’s a whole lot of water this year!

The whole thing can be read here.

Sorry for the massive delay in posting. I’ve still got an elk post and at least 2 whitetail posts in the works. I’ve had some… uh… disagreements with the management at Skinny Moose and it looked for a time like I might be moving The Daily Limit elsewhere. It’s not that things are settled exactly (you’ll notice that The Daily Limit has been removed from the Skinny Moose blogroll at right!?!) but I’m optimistic that I will not lose my work. As such, I’m going to write more of the longer type posts that take me some time to put together. Aside over.

Occasionally The Old Man and I talk about what we would like to do more or less of in the future. For instance The Old Man badly wants to kill a caribou with his bow and always wants to spend more days pheasant hunting. I’ve killed a pair of caribou but never stuck a muley like he has so I’d rather spot and stalk big bucks in South Dakota (October 2011!). Anyway, since I was about 10 at least part of my answer has been that I would like to kill more Canadas. Growing up I was fortunate to get to duck hunt a lot of great places with some of the best killers in the area, but none of those places reliably had Canadas. We’d get into a good shoot or two each year and I always wanted more. I just can’t get enough of those great big birds setting their wings and sailing in… they look like bombers… I’d give up a 2 great duck hunts for 1 good goose hunt.

Anyway, that brings me to a Friday a couple of weeks back. I was hopelessly buried at the courthouse when I got a picture from a friend who had the tailgate filled up with geese. He’d invited me and I just couldn’t get away. When I got a chance I gave him a call and got the details. They were pouring in as they picked up, and it looked good for the weekend. The hotspot was on public ground but obviously no one else had been hunting them based on the way they were coming in. A plan was hatched for the next morning.

And it didn’t disappoint. We tried to stretch it out. We had friends drive down from KC to change out the guys who were filled out. We shot one at a time. We only shot geese that were dead right. And still, before you knew it we were done. Then I got my video camera out. This little clip will give you some idea of how they were working. That thing you can see at the bottom of the frame is my foot. We are covered in white sheets laying in the snow.

You can’t be a real hunter and not get excited about that. That is what waterfowling is about.

I shot more video but you get the idea. I could have spend all day laying there… But unfortunately disaster struck. Classic public ground Mossberg toting disaster. That’s right, the idiot slob hunter (why do they all shoot Mossbergs?). We were the only hunters in the area doing any shooting. It was a calm morning, and you could hear us for miles I’m sure. Somebody had followed the sound to our field.

That wouldn’t have been a problem if they had been even, say, 25% competent. But as we picked up we wondered why they were hauling more grass than decoys in. It also seemed like they weren’t planning on actually getting into the field. Despite watching us and knowing exactly what the geese were doing, they somehow decided on a plan that included building a chickenwire blind (and brushing it in) about 15 yards from the road and hedgerow. They brought lawn chairs in. Seriously! I was so dumbfounded I snuck a picture with my cell phone.

Yup, 18 silouttes and a grass blind with a profile big enough to cover 4 morons in lawn chairs. I turned to my friends and told them the spot was ruined. These guys weren’t going to get a limit and get out, they were going to sit there and completely destroy the flight pattern with their incompetence. The first big bunch was working them by the time we got to the truck so I turned on the video camera again:

You can see in the first video that the geese (surprise, surprise) don’t want to sit next to that random pile of grass at the base of the trees. They want to sit in the middle where geese always want to sit. In the second video you really can’t see anything but you can hear me saying that they need to try them when the sail by at the edge of range. It was obvious to me that the geese would never work their “setup”. Lots of 3 1/2″ Mossys went off. They pulled a leg on one. Classic.

My rage wasn’t based on the fact that they were hunting there (it is public ground after all), it was based on my theory that they would ruin the spot for everyone else. I knew they’d stay all afternoon and keep the geese from feeding in the area. The geese would find a new field and the next day the pattern would be completely different. I had already committed to taking a pair of friends the next day and I was hoping there would still be some geese in the area.

There weren’t many. The next morning three of us saw maybe 10% of the previous birds or less. The entire feeding pattern had been changed. The guys I took had some accuracy issues that limited us to 4 (my limit, plus 1). In all honesty we still should have killed a limit, but it was nothing like the show the day before. Still, even getting just one goose to cut back and set his wings would be worth that work.

And sunset that night brought the end of the 2010-2011 Kansas waterfowl season. Another one in the books… A good one…

I got a call a few weeks back during the Kansas late season from a friend who is a fantastic scout. Actually when he called I was scouting myself, maybe 60 miles West of him, but he found a better plan than anything I could glass up. You could tell from his voice that he was excited… He’d found a pile of ducks and geese using a public field in an out-of-the way area that had apparently escaped less dedicated attention. We talked over the details for a few minutes and agreed to meet early in the morning. Because it was on public ground we would need to carry all our gear into the field in bags, in corn stubble and mud.

One of the challenges with field hunting is the nature of the gear itself, it takes at ton! Shells are OK, but they don’t look great. If you’re serious, particularly with geese, you need full bodies. But full bodies are like carrying a whole goose into the field. To set up right you need plenty of the full bodies plus probably an equal number of shells. Then, as in this case, you may need both ducks and geese. Most people who seriously hunt fields have some type of trailer to put all this in, and they simply drive to the spot and unload. For this hunt we had the schlep in something like 5 dozen full body geese, 3 dozen ducks, and 4 dozen goose shells. With the huge numbers of fowl in the field the day before, a big spread was a must. If 1000 ducks look down at a field that had 5000 ducks in it yesterday and they see 8 geese they’ll just go elsewhere… probably wherever the 5000 ducks have gone off to.

And so we hauled gear and got set up in the corn stubble with a nice spread. At shooting time we had ducks working and before long there were ducks on the ground. But we had the classic field hunting problems: 1) too many birds 2) too hard to follow them.

The first problem seems like it would be a good thing right? But once you get by the “wow” factor of it you discover that big bunches take up too much space and have too many eyes. There’s usually that one lead hen that wants in real bad, but the 200 ducks behind her are more cautious and you have to make the call between shooting one or two and educating a couple hundred, or waiting and risking losing them all. Part of the problem is that they can simply see everything, and that was a problem in this hunt. It’s hard to hide in a field, layout blind or not. But it’s also difficult to put 200 or more ducks anywhere. They’ll sit out, or they’ll split up, or they’ll funnel around you so that ducks are in front and behind you… It’s just difficult to get them in tight. At one point in the first 30 minutes of this hunt I had 1000 ducks swirling around us… Perhaps the biggest group I’ve ever worked… And we ultimately killed a few out of that group, but only the 3-4 that finally committed. The rest went on. It’s both frustrating and awesome at the same time.

The second half of problem is something you always deal with on field hunts. It’s hard to follow the birds. You can’t peak out of a blind, and you really can’t move around, so if the ducks are behind you, good luck. My style is to try and keep in contact with them, calling softly, but more often than I normally would. Too many times I’ve had them get behind me cutting hard and looking good and the next thing you know they’re gone from the sky. So I try to stay engaged with them and I wear a facemask so I can at least move my head. Still, it’s tough, especially when you’re dealing with the big bunches and they are all split up and going different ways.

We ended up making out OK on this hunt, but honestly it was a disappointment when compared with the waterfowl we saw. We struggled with the things mentioned above but also with yet another problem with field hunts: They can go anywhere. With wetland ducks you can usually assume that they will go somewhere in the marsh. But on a field hunt they can go anywhere in the area. Put a little pressure on a corn field and they will quickly discover that Eastern Kansas is full of corn fields. That’s part of why you need a big spread. Beyond that, and being an efficient hunter, you need to jump anything that lights out on you. Unfortunately for us, those huge bunches of ducks and geese eventually changed their pattern and found some safety. Once you find yourself competing with several thousand real ducks and geese you might as well pick up. And we did.

The last of the regular seasons ended here on Sunday. I cleaned birds, bags, decoys, and guns in the afternoon, and I’ve been a bit depressed since then. Shed season then turkey season are next up but neither is the same as the real action of the fall. I’m also looking forward to chasing some bears around Alberta in May. Until then I’ve got some pictures and even a few bits of video that are pretty good. To say I went out with a bang would be an understatement.

More to come when I find time.

So Kansas has this late duck season around the end of January every year for 9 days. The last two years I’ve absolutely crushed the fat, red legged mallard drakes during this crazy-cold opportunity. Both times I’ve found small pieces of water that were still open when the rest of the county was frozen. Unfortunately those places were frozen up this year. It actually got down to -4 one night! Even the big irrigation lakes and areas with light current were frozen over. So what to do? Well, I tried a couple of things.

One was to go to the river. Actually I had nothing to do with this plan other than get in the truck. The Old Man and a pheasant hunting buddy had hooked us up with a couple of kids who had an awesome advantage no one else has:

I’ve been lucky enough to duck hunt around some real killers. I’ve seen a lot of places and operations. This was the single coolest piece of duck killing equipment I’ve laid eyes on. It was big enough to carry 5 guys, 2 dogs, and lots of gear with complete safety on some pretty big water. But better yet, it can run across ice and even dry ground! When you get to place where the river is frozen all the other boats have to turn around, this boat just hops up on the ice keeps going. I’m jealous, and plotting a way to convince my wife that we need one.

Anyway, we actually started out on a small side creek and got a bunch of ducks out while setting up:

But they all went and sat in an open spot in the middle of the river. So we loaded up the boat and got out on the Kansas River (“The Kaw”) proper.

But no wind and bright sunlight doesn’t make for very good duck hunting. We let a few browns go:

And killed a pair of classic late season drakes:

And that was it. It was as much fun as I think I’ve ever had for a pair of drakes, mostly just because I was in awe of the boat. Over the years I’ve hunted the Kaw several times, mostly around Lawrence and Lecompton. This was quite a bit further upstream near Wamego, and the river was quite a bit more rugged. Like I’ve said before, BE CAREFUL. The Kaw is dangerous, especially when it’s 8 degrees outside. This time last year a kayaker capsized and his body wasn’t found for several days. Just a few weeks ago a small boat filled with water close to my home and 2 duck hunters were extremely lucky that another boat was happening by at the perfect time or they’d almost certainly both be dead. Please be cautious if you get out on the big water! If you don’t know what you’re doing it’s best to at least start with some expert advice. I’d give these guys a call.

But my late season was far from over; in fact the best was yet to come…

If you’ve seen any news in the last few days you know that a major cold front blew through the midwest Saturday. That means new ducks, and lots of activity. In the morning I hooked up with a couple of friends for a fantastic shoot in some shallow water marshes where I like to chase Missouri deer.

The wind was howling out of the North by the time we were done. The plan was to chase river geese in the afternoon but the decoys kept getting blown away. We hooked up with a couple of friends who hadn’t hunted the morning shoot so they could kill 10 mallards and we could kill a total of 15 geese. Unfortunately the wind, cold, and equipment failed us with respect to the geese but we did add 9 mallards to the tally. A fantastic day.

This morning we woke up to a windchill of -9 and very little open water. By tomorrow most of the ducks will be in Oklahoma and Texas. Still, I’m glad we got to enjoy it while it lasted… October 2011 seems like a long ways away.

I split from the courthouse yesterday afternoon and changed clothes while I drove. The destination was a cut corn field along the Kansas River. Most of the small bodies of water around here have frozen and the ducks and geese have gone to what little open water you can find.

What is really fun about this hunt is the size of the bunches. Not long after we were set up a bunch of maybe 75 started swinging. As I was working on them another 3 bunches about the same size dropped in from way up. Before you knew it there were 400 mallards looking hard. It’s hard not to just be in awe…

With a few of those big bunches getting just dead right and three guys bearing down pretty good it wasn’t long before we had our limits. The day was clear and bright with a nice south wind. I think that’s why we didn’t see many geese until dark. We did kill 3 but we saw a fraction of what was around Saturday.

I love Kansas this time of year. This morning I got up and chased some of the biggest bucks in the country around. It wasn’t a great morning for deer hunting, very windy, but still I saw a few. With it blowing like crazy I tried a draw that feeds into some grassy bedding areas with a good slope. I figured the deer would want to bed uphill and look back down the trail since they wouldn’t be able to hear anything. The plan worked great for two younger bucks and a few does, but no shooters.

I quit by 10:00, check on some areas for tomorrow and scouted some waterfowl, then came home and traded deer gear for duck gear. A friend had some ducks and geese feeding in a field along the Kansas River.

We had an interesting shoot. There were so many ducks in the area that it was difficult to work any of them. With the great big bunches they just wouldn’t settle in and we passed on ones and twos several times trying to get 100 right. Any long time waterfowler knows how that usually works… Anyway, we killed our geese and added a few mallards.
Hunts like this make me wonder why I spend so much time chasing deer…

Anyway, it’s off to bed now so I can get up early and do it all again tomorrow!

I’ve had some memorable hunts on Thanksgiving day. One year we had the quail hunt that led to the name “Turkey Slaughter Draw”. Someday that would make a fun story to tell. At least once we went duck hunting as a family and then had Thanksgiving dinner at a truck stop. This year brought the first big cold front of the year and some new ducks:

I knew we would blow most of those ducks out after Saturday morning’s hunt but they were piling into the timber as we were walking out. There had to be some left Sunday right? Well, sorta. We saw maybe 1/5th the ducks Sunday that we did the day before. Little ducks, smallish patches of flooded timber, and hunting pressure just don’t work well together. The good news was that there were still enough to have a good shoot, even if we were stuck on 17 for almost an hour…

Rumor has it that this spot may get hunted again Wednesday, but not by me. It will be interesting to see how they do, and what number of ducks come back. I’d figure they could kill a few woodies but I’m worried the big ducks and teal will be completely blown out. Maybe a post on how to manage pressure on waterfowl would be a good idea…