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ksgobbler

ksgobbler

5 year old buck +
Crazy morning. Snowing, North Wind 15-25 moh with higher gusts, temp in the upper 20s. Last year sucked so bad Maggie didnt get much work. This morning my brother and I shot 5 mallards with a gadwall a piece in 16 min. It was a magical morning. We stuck around for the geese but they finally arrived as we were about done picking up decoys.
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Nice. I'm ready to try some fowl myself.
 
Nice day. Hopefully, some of those ducks move on down to arkansas with this weather. We have plenty of water for them
 
Couldnt hit shit this afternoon. Still ended with a drake pintail, 2 drake mallards, and a shoveler. Shouldve easily limited.20181117_142057.jpg20181117_171637.jpg20181117_131733.jpg20181117_141648.jpg
 
Buddy called last night to ask if I wanted to hunt his pond. Said it had a bunch of teal and gadwall on it. It was crystal clear with a full moon and light breeze. Didnt expect much but we set up anyway and he said I could bring my 5 yr old son along. Birds all over 15 min before legal but only had one decoy after legal. We were gonna call it at 8 but at 757 3 gaddies showed up. We got one. Breckin was so pumped he asked when we could go again.
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Shot a limit today just before the blizzard hit. Was dicey getting out and getting home. A couple while conditions were still good enough to get my phone out.
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We almost never get pintail at our place! Love seeing your duck hunting pics. I'm going to have to figure out something to plant in our ponds that draws ducks.
 
Birds are stale but got a few tonight. Highlight was fooling a group of 30 mallards. Ice made it tough on the dog. She figured it out somewhat by the end. Passed some shots I shouldve taken but hunted all afternoon and saw quite a few they just have phd's.
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Literally took all damn day. Had to break ice this morning. This spot is a little over ankle deep
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Didnt decoy a ton of them but the ones I did sucked in tight and a limit of mallards didnt leave.
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Good cover for a layout and dog blind
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Shot them in the snow saturday when the split opened up
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I feel like a sub-par hunter. I've never gone waterfowling in my entire life. I'd like to, but I'm too busy trying to kill deer.
 
Honestly if I could turn most of my property into duck marsh with quail habitat on top of the dikes I would.
 
You seem to have a spot for them. I used to waterfowl with my boy....mostly dark geese and it was a lot of fun. However competition for the good spots is fierce and new spots worth messing with are a struggle. I also prefer to hunt over water if possible which around here is a big struggle. We also are not along a major flyway so what we see are mostly resident birds with a few who strayed to far. We had a great place one year but the owner of the property was pressured within his family about us "killing those poor animals" and he caved and we got the boot. It's a lot of fun when it works, it can be a lot of horrible when it doesn't. We killed a lot of geese over 2 floating goose decoys and about a dozen duck decoys being used as blockers to keep the geese from landing to far away. We ended up with a band a piece our first year solo.
 
Our ducks season in AR has been the worst I have seen in the 39 years I have been hunting here. Birds just never came down in any numbers. It is getting to be the new normal. Off ducks have been almost non-existent. Almost all mallards. We used to shoot a lot of gadwall and teal, also. We have still be able to scratch out a few decent hunts

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I dont shoot many banded birds. Have shot 2 in 22 years. Shot one in 2010 and another in 2011.
 
we don't shoot very many either. we figure about one out of 1000 ducks we shoot is banded - they come several years apart. That banded duck was doubly sweet - we were hunting a private hole we had developed on our own property - for the first time ever - and that was the first duck we killed.
 
I figured it took north of 1200 birdsfor my first one. Was bittersweet because as yhe dog brought it back a SAR helicopter flew by low. Little did I know that 3 of my friends had been killed when their boat sank duck hunting on a lake a few miles away.
 
I know around here a lot of the water is still open and we just got our first real snow of the year. As I understand it, cold weather and once the water freezes up is what helps push the birds south. Heck I had a group of sandhills flying over my place just a few days ago... headed south.

Most of what we see here are resident birds and I think 2 of our 3 bands are from resident birds....mine was banded in MI. The town/city I work in has a lot of industrial area with a decent resident goose population that they have done some banding...so...they are bands, but, kinda sorta not really. And ours are all off canada geese "flying rats".

But it's still a lot of fun when things go well!
 
Waterfowl dogs always amaze me. Water is cold as heck, and they can't wait to get back in. I've hunted with others that had good dogs, it's a blast. I've never owned a hunting dog because they don't do very well bow hunting deer :emoji_wink:
 
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