How Is Your Duck Season So Far?

[Deltamud77]

We are spoiled down here. On a scale of 1-10 its been a 30. Haven't seen this many birds since we baited them. Don't know what's been the deal with this year but it's been amazing.

Jeff, you guys killing a lot of gray ducks and teal or what?

[SWAG]

Been above average for us, all hunting has been in brakes, not a huge number of ducks in the area but our hunts have been highly successful. I do keep my son's numbers and he has been 6 times so far with personal duck harvest of 6, 6, 5, 4, 1, and 6 on those hunts for total of 28 which includes 7 mallards, 13 gadwall, 6 wood ducks, 1 wigeon, and 1 shoveler. He also has a hooded merganser and a Canada goose to add as far as total waterfowl.

We usually have a jam up opening weekend hunt and then maybe a decent hunt or two between then and Christmas. Pretty much deer hunt till the rut tapers off around that time. From Christmas till end of the season has certainly been the time we hunt the most and also see the most success. This season started with ALOT of ducks in the area and I am sure a bunch of great opening weekends, but the area numbers have certainly dwindled. Have been very lucky it seems to have held ducks over this down period and have some quality hunts.

My son did a science fair project last year using his harvest numbers that I started keeping for him his very first season. Numbers, species, dates, and location were data I put on a spreadsheet everytime he hunted. He really is the one that adds to it now and so glad I started it for him when he was a youngster. Surprising what the data tells you when you look at it over a decade....sort of squashes some myths. He broke the hunting time down for his project into (6) 10 day periods. Question he tried to answer for the science project was "If a man only has a 5 day period to vacation for duck hunting in Tallahatchie County MS, what 5 day period would historically give him the most success?". Well of course we assumed the last 5 days of the season would always be the best bet. Data proved otherwise. If the man is looking to kill the most ducks he can in that 5 day period regardless of species then almost any five day period after Christmas was historically pretty consistent. If the person really wanted to zero in on killing mallard limits then there were "spikes" in the data over a 10 year period that repeated enough to look at them as good chances for success. Because we had splits and weekend only hunting season dates for part of the periods being analyzed, it did skew the data. But for the most part, there were definite advantages for hunting opening weekend, second week of December, and second week of January. Mallard numbers more than once or twice were a higher part of the average harvest during these times. Interesting stuff....to me anyway

[FoldedUp]

Been above average for us, all hunting has been in brakes, not a huge number of ducks in the area but our hunts have been highly successful. I do keep my son's numbers and he has been 6 times so far with personal duck harvest of 6, 6, 5, 4, 1, and 6 on those hunts for total of 28 which includes 7 mallards, 13 gadwall, 6 wood ducks, 1 wigeon, and 1 shoveler. He also has a hooded merganser and a Canada goose to add as far as total waterfowl.

We usually have a jam up opening weekend hunt and then maybe a decent hunt or two between then and Christmas. Pretty much deer hunt till the rut tapers off around that time. From Christmas till end of the season has certainly been the time we hunt the most and also see the most success. This season started with ALOT of ducks in the area and I am sure a bunch of great opening weekends, but the area numbers have certainly dwindled. Have been very lucky it seems to have held ducks over this down period and have some quality hunts.

My son did a science fair project last year using his harvest numbers that I started keeping for him his very first season. Numbers, species, dates, and location were data I put on a spreadsheet everytime he hunted. He really is the one that adds to it now and so glad I started it for him when he was a youngster. Surprising what the data tells you when you look at it over a decade....sort of squashes some myths. He broke the hunting time down for his project into (6) 10 day periods. Question he tried to answer for the science project was "If a man only has a 5 day period to vacation for duck hunting in Tallahatchie County MS, what 5 day period would historically give him the most success?". Well of course we assumed the last 5 days of the season would always be the best bet. Data proved otherwise. If the man is looking to kill the most ducks he can in that 5 day period regardless of species then almost any five day period after Christmas was historically pretty consistent. If the person really wanted to zero in on killing mallard limits then there were "spikes" in the data over a 10 year period that repeated enough to look at them as good chances for success. Because we had splits and weekend only hunting season dates for part of the periods being analyzed, it did skew the data. But for the most part, there were definite advantages for hunting opening weekend, second week of December, and second week of January. Mallard numbers more than once or twice were a higher part of the average harvest during these times. Interesting stuff....to me anyway

That's neat diving off into spatial and temporal data for harvests. I, too, keep a personal spreadsheet of location hunted, date, who was in the group, which dog used, and species harvested for the entire group on the hunt.... as well as totals for me personally. I was doing it mainly to just start logging my numbers and locations, but I hadn't thought to put it all together and look at it scientifically like that. I'll have to see what my analysis is like using your sons' application at the end of the season.

Thanks for the idea!

[jacksbuddy]

How's MY season? Well, umm. My daughter is 1 now.

[SB]

SWAG - tell us the rest of the story? How did the boy's science project grade out?

[SWAG]

Ha...first place @ school, first place @ district, and placed @ state I think. He is going to use the data again + 2014-2015 season and try to make some graphs that show trends by species and overall duck numbers by hunting dates. Not just a 5 or 10 day period thing but more so over the course of the season. May can go back and get some temperature data to go along with it (NOAA) but that would be as much as he would do. He needs help from someone who can run stats Doesn't MDWFP want this data??? After analyzing they can give it back in a nice report

[SB]

EXCELLENT! He did well. Sounds like he would be a 1st round draft choice for the MDWFP. Maybe he will give us a shot if he does not get a 1st round pick in the baseball draft. I know baseball is pulling at him pretty hard.

[Anatidae]

Let's 'sang' a song.......

[H20 Fowl]

Arkansas started off hot. The first four days, I wasn't in the pit past 7:05 shooting 4 to 6 limits of good ducks. It did not taper off, it just died!

I've had some really good shoots in North Ms on public land but Arkansas is still sketchy.

Some of the higher end clubs are struggling big time. We have one pit that has killed more birds than one particular clubs total that runs around 18 grand a year!

[arduckslayer]

We have one pit that has killed more birds than one particular clubs total that runs around 18 grand a year!

And that's per membership!

[420 racin]

Been three times this year, including two draw hunts...aint knocked the gun off safety....

[Dr. B]

So far it's been pretty fecal! Little rain, few ducks, warm weather, south winds.

Dr. B

[Jeff]

We are spoiled down here. On a scale of 1-10 its been a 30. Haven't seen this many birds since we baited them. Don't know what's been the deal with this year but it's been amazing.

Jeff, you guys killing a lot of gray ducks and teal or what?

We are trying not to shoot teal that much and shooting big ducks. Our numbers have been Grays , weidgon , Red heads , Cans , Teal , Pintail (where the heck are they this year??) in that order. Have yet to hunt over an hour this year, worst hunt was limit of 24 in 51 minutes best hunt was limit of 42 in 34 minutes.

[teul2]

Been three times this year, including two draw hunts...aint knocked the gun off safety....

That's "improved hunter experience" right there people.

[littlesmacko89]

mine is going good. only been a handful of times and we have had slow mornings but it hasn't been a total bust yet. here are some pics from the last two days not counting today.

Tuesday 12/16/14



Wednesday 12/17/14