Just Wonder'n

[QuackerTracker]

Howdy, boys. Its been a while. Just wonder'n how season went this year in the great State of Mississippi. Things were a little slow in AR this time 'round. Gimme some stats on your kill this season.

[QuackerTracker]

I've found that it helps my hunting to keep track of what I kill, when and where. I say that to emphasize that I don't believe that hunting ducks is about the number of ducks you kill in a season -- it means far more than that to me. However, if I want to know the patterns of the birds on a particular season, I have to have some source for comparison. So here is some of my info for this year: The average size of our group of hunters was 4 hunters per day. Some days there were as many as 9 in our party, while others I hunted alone. I hunted 56 days of the sixty in season in the state of Arkansas.

Species #Bagged Avg./Day %Tot Bag
Mallard 280 4.67 57.5
Green Wing Teal 061 1.02 12.5
Gadwall 049 0.82 10.1
Northern Shoveler040 0.67 08.2
Blue Wing Teal 018 0.30 03.7
Specklebelly 013 0.22 02.7
Wood Duck 010 0.17 02.0
Widgeon 008 0.13 01.6
Pintail 005 0.08 01.0
Blackduck 001 0.02 00.2
Merganser 001 0.02 00.2
Ross's Goose 001 0.02 00.2
Total Kill 487
Average # Birds Per Day - 8.14

The reason I ask is because I've seen a big difference between this year's kill and last year's kill. Last season we killed 403 ducks on 37 hunts and averaged about 11 birds per hunt, with an average of 3 hunters in our group. What's interesting is that last year well over 60% of our birds were mallards and the next in line were gadwalls and widgeons. This year our second most popular ducks was the greenwing teal (only 5% of the ducks we killed in 2000-2001 were GWT's), while Widgeons fell to almost nothing. I know it's stating the obvious, but it tells me that many of the late migrators stayed north. Just wondered if yall saw the same results.

[MALLARDBUSTER]

take how slow it was in arkansas and multiply it times 10,it was that bad. my honey hole didn't even produce this year. for the past 5 years there have been over 200 ducks killed there, and guess how many this year? 30! 30 damn ducks!. just didn't see the mallards at all this year. did yall? i limited out only 5 times all season at a bean lease in the delta, but only killed maybe 40 mallards. gotta get better sooner or later, it's been slow for the last several years. send some our way next time around

really didn't keep good records at all this year, got to frustrated, but let me try to break it down by percentage

gw teal-30%
grey duck-20%
wood duck-20%
mallard-20%
widgeon,pintail-5%
shovelers,diving ducks,others-5%

[judge jb]

the QuackerTracker knows how too make it hurt...... i ate more chicken necks at the Shack than i took ducks..haha..... you need to take your poll futher north.... glad you had a mediocre season....

judge jb

[goosebruce]

QT, I had mo skunks than I did limits. I had mo days this year I could of hunted and didnt than the last 5 years put together (missed 4 days this year I cudda, but didnt). I killed mo shovelheads this year than past 5... cause i aint got to shoot em normally, but was damn proud of them this year. Basically, it was the worst we ever seen, and damn glad its over. Good to see you back qt. travis

[gyver]

with all of the inquiries i've made the average comes out to 1/10 of last years harvest per hunter asked.

[SCOOTER]

with lease prices, the ducks came to about $16.50 per bird, and thats counting a black bird are two. very bad season compared to the last couple of years.

[QuackerTracker]

Yup, I think it pretty well sucked for everyone on the south end of the flyway. One thing I didn't mention is that last year I hunted on the farm (less than 10 minutes from home) on 27 of 37 days, whereas this year I drove to destinations over 1 hr. from home on 35 of 56 hunts. On 19 hunts over my rice fields we never limited out. All our limits came from WMA's in the northern part of the state or off the rivers to our south. Worked harder this year for my birds than I ever have. Also gave back a small fortune to pay hunters. Rough season.

Good to hear you're still swing'n at 'em Trav.

[rebelduckaholic]

I counted all 9 of my ducks on 17 days of hunting THAT SUCKS lol