Kristan
Well-known member
Well I hope everybody has had a wonderful opener if you are open yet and for those the season is underway...This year was a complete 180 from last year in the Eagle Lake-Lissie Prairie area...Due to last years drought very few birds were shot both ducks and geese until around Thanksgiving into the first week of December...All of which were taken over a goose spread in what I consider "dry feeding"...We have been fortunate this year to have a massive rainfall the prior week+ before season receiving almost 6" of rain...The funny part about this region of the US is that an organization called the LCRA can restrict rice farmers from water due to water table levels so that the masses have ample amounts of drinking water...Plus near the same amount of water for just about every lawn and orginization within a 180 mile radius in the Eastern Gulf Coast region of Texas...Being that Houston has near 5 million people in the surrounding area, just think if half the city waters their precious lawns twice a day for 15 minutes, a sad sight my friends for nature...Well this year there is very little rice in the region...Only 15% of the 160,000 acres roughly available in 2013 from Houston to Corpus Christi were farmed for rice...Kind of sad day when that area could feed near the whole southern half of the US for a year through the 60s-90s, this year farmers can not provide enough rice to feed Houston for a month due to restrictions from LCRA...Well the Heavens delivered last week...I honestly saw more ducks this weekend then I have in any single weekend on both private, Manitoba and protected wetlands in my life...I was fortunate enough the past two years to have the opportunity to be apart of a 30 man 750 acres lease a few miles south of Lissie, Tx...The wonderful part is the noon cutoff time the club lease has which allows birds to settle and not be blasted out of the area...Nearly 50% of the fields available for me to hunt were ankle to knee deep in water...The other half had sheet water...And due to some normal rain conditions over the summer various native plants have been able to grow in these fields left fallow from not producing rice...Big contributors have been barnyard grass and Maidencane, with several other weeds and grasses that have made nothing but beautiful cover in some spots of the farm for resting.
I did get to hunt with three guys on Saturday morning and we ended with a four man limit of widgeons, pintails, teal and I had to shoot two spoonies for pictures to carve...But they were later wrapped in bacon...Sunday morning was with 3 different guys and it was amazing not because of the 14 birds we shot plus a speck...The amazing part for me is that we shot 9 species of ducks: Merganser hen, Canvasback drake and hen, Red head drake and hen, Widgeon Drake, Gadwall drake, Ringneck drake, Green wing drake(s), bluewing drake(s), and one bluewing hen...For some in the party whom have hunted the property since 1978 it was the first Canvasback duck they have witnessed taken off the lease though other have been shot in the past...Pretty nice day to see when a 50+ year man of waterfowling screams and dances like a girl after taking his first canvasback in his life...The debilitating side of it was when the birds b-lined our spread I knocked the hen down with 7 other shots ringing out before the drake fell...He did not let me live it down the rest of the day since all of them told me to take those birds coming in from my side and they would finish off, a true gentleman's hunt...Of course watching the birds progress through the 100 acre section at a distance I yelled out Canvasbacks and all of them told me I didn't even know what a canvasback looks like...All I could do was smile and cover myself-up in my blind while the heckling carried on...
Regards and Safe Hunting this season,
Kristan
I did get to hunt with three guys on Saturday morning and we ended with a four man limit of widgeons, pintails, teal and I had to shoot two spoonies for pictures to carve...But they were later wrapped in bacon...Sunday morning was with 3 different guys and it was amazing not because of the 14 birds we shot plus a speck...The amazing part for me is that we shot 9 species of ducks: Merganser hen, Canvasback drake and hen, Red head drake and hen, Widgeon Drake, Gadwall drake, Ringneck drake, Green wing drake(s), bluewing drake(s), and one bluewing hen...For some in the party whom have hunted the property since 1978 it was the first Canvasback duck they have witnessed taken off the lease though other have been shot in the past...Pretty nice day to see when a 50+ year man of waterfowling screams and dances like a girl after taking his first canvasback in his life...The debilitating side of it was when the birds b-lined our spread I knocked the hen down with 7 other shots ringing out before the drake fell...He did not let me live it down the rest of the day since all of them told me to take those birds coming in from my side and they would finish off, a true gentleman's hunt...Of course watching the birds progress through the 100 acre section at a distance I yelled out Canvasbacks and all of them told me I didn't even know what a canvasback looks like...All I could do was smile and cover myself-up in my blind while the heckling carried on...
Regards and Safe Hunting this season,
Kristan
