where did the ducks go???

[BeastMaster]

Well, I finally had one of those mornings..... I thought i was going to make it without out one but...... Never took my gun off safety saturday morning.... Where did they all go? Any of you have similar day this weekend?

[Bullet]

I hunted in Tallahatchie county this weekend and killed a 6 man limit sat. and killed 20 this morning. Saw hundreds and hundreds huge flights of teal saturday and big flights of mallards this morning. Dont know, kinda weird but we had a bunch of birds.

[fivemile]

Great hunt Friday morning. Mallards flying all morning. Nothing Sat. and even less on Sunday.

[Anatidae]

What do ya'll mean...."Where'd they go?"........I didn't know they ever got here.

I hear stories about 2000 birds in a field off such and such a highway........and how they're pourin' into some field over yonder.......and how they flew all day over at Joe's place. For God's sake , somebody lob some 'Bird Bombs' out into that field and run'em UP! As long as they're sitting somewhere nobody can hunt, it ain't doing any of us any good to know about it.

Run them Sum-bucks UP, will ya?

[GulfCoast]

I watched several thousand sitting in a 'fuge all weekend. Killed 14 in 3 days, and hunted ALL DAY to do that. No one that I know (and I know a LOT of duckhunters) had them real thick the last few days. But hope springs eternal......

[jroc]

Having a hard time believing that anyone is seeing many birds. I've been hunting AR and MS hard and I have not seen huge flocks of anything but geese. Some guy told me tonight that a "buddy" of his told him that they had "thousands" of birds this weekend in the central delta area. "Hmmmmm" I said "they must be walking because they damn sure aren't flying"

[MemphisStockBroker]

Strange. Hot weather this afternoon.... and watched a couple hundred groups pile into this hole at dusk. pintail, mallards, woodies.... saw them really really well -- through the scope mounted on my .270

Nothing like watching ducks from a tree stand overlooking a green patch...

[HARLEY]

They all flew back north to finish working on their suntans! Weather sucks..............

[Skycarp]

We had over a thousand birds before legal shooting hours in the field we hunted. 15 minuted till legal time 2 s.o.b.s open up and run them off, and we were helpless to watch them fly 20-30 feet over our heads out of that field. Would have opened up too but we could see the game warden sitting in his truck watching us. Odly enough, no ticket was issued to those jerks. I thought that legal shooting started at 0633 on sat. not 0615?. This will be my last year on public land. I am tired of all of that BS. Fights, argueing, retards who call like a screaming monkey setting up 100 yards away, and if you ask them to please move, they tell you to piss off. I love duck hunting but am getting tired of all that driving to get P.O'd and come back with nothing but a bad attitude. Anyone have room for a hunter and his lab that only get weekends to hunt?

[Joe Kain]

I went Friday morning and only killed one duck. We didn't hardly see any ducks but we saw a lot of geese flying. I was hunting public land and there was some shooting early but I think they were mostly shooting woodies. I didn't hunt Saturday due to what I saw Friday. We need some strong fronts to come through to give us some cold weather but I don't see any on the web site weather.com coming anytime soon.

[jebster]

This is really a bad season for most MS hunters. The answer is the weather. All of our "cold fronts" are coming by way of Dallas, that is, from the west. What we need are the Artic type fronts which come from the north and push ducks down the flyway.

Over the past two or three weeks, the folks in Illinois and Missouri have enjoyed warmer weather than we have had. With that, no ducks are going to move further soutward. We need for all the upper northern states to freeze up and stay frozen. Then we need the middle Mississippi flyway states to freeze up. After that, we will have some fine waterfowling. But these western fronts are only displacing exisiting ducks.

This is more or less a repeat of the last two year's weather conditions, plus we are having a lot less water than normal. Something needs to change, and soon. We only have 28 hunting days left !!!

[Meeka]

Take a look at the weather forecast on weather.com; highs in the 60's and 70's for the next ten days.

I hunted deer this weekend, except Sat morning I was on a lake fed the the Miss. River somewhere between Vburg and Natchez. It has been dry so grass has grown but at 22' it now has water. A fair # of ducks rested there Friday night. I hunted 'em Saturday morning as a guest in a boat. We managed to get in late even though it is just 1 mile from the camp. The other boat got a mallard, 2 teal, a Gadwall and 2 woodies. We got what they call a Blackjack. There were enough ducks flying to keep one interested until 8. I went back to the camp and they went upriver.

Had everything been right we might have gotten our share of Mallards; a fair number were seen coming down river and dropping, somewhat, to give us a look. We were not concealed well, but the big ducks were AWEFULLY SHY. Lots of Shovelers and those Blackjacks (some kinda diver) were seen and they rafted up in the middle.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday I hunted deer close enough to Mahannah to see and didn't see any ducks.

[Anatidae]

We're suppose to get some cooler temps around the 5th......but it doesn't look like enough to make a strong 'push'.........too much open water up North, still. Jebster's got it right.......fronts from the West don't cut-it! Same pattern it's been for the last 3 years.

Right this one off, guys!

Come-on now.......I know someone out there has a good 'conspiracy' theory.

I follow the 'usage' theory when ducks are hung-up Up North. Too many hunters with too much invested + not enough ducks to go around = NO usage by the ducks that are down here, because folks are GONNA HUNT, regardless. You can't blame'em, though. I mean, after all, it IS duck season. But ducks are gonna congregate on those areas with little or no pressure, under these circumstances. That's just the way it IS.

[Wingman]

I still like David's theory: the snow geese ATE the ducks!

Jebster, are you getting tired of me driving by and honking at you in the blind yet?

Wingman

[Hookup]

Hunted Saturday morning and didn't see jack! Hunted Sunday morning and seen several. All public land. Sunday, the birds were there and wanted to work, but they are shy. No new birds here yet in my opinion.