Mallards dry feeding

[donia]

I do it in OK, where I guide for a few weeks every year.

so, since you hunt both places, what is your take on the "MS River" thread in the Waterfowl Forum and why there is a "shift" in the flyway (given that is actually what is happening)? http://www.ducksouth.com/phpbb/viewtopi ... 24&t=89425

[driveby]

I witnessed this Friday afternoon. I was priveleged to witness a mallard tornado in a dry field and discovered SEVERAL thousand mallards dry feeding in a corn field. I kid you not, it looked like the old Claypools photo but on dry land. 3 friends witnessed it with me and 1 took several photos with a high quality camera and zoom lense. They should be good. He's still hunting and will get me a disk so I can post pics soon. It was something most will never see and words can't describe it.

[Anatidae]

If you've never seen it - it looks like a swarm of ants. When they fly or re-locate to another part of the field, it looks like swarming bees or blackbirds. Awesome sight.

[olduckhunter]

as i said, you can see the tornado for several miles and they will hit the same field they fed in the morning that evening if not shot out. it is a sight to behold. and an even better sight to be under that tornado waiting for them to fill up the middle you are in.

[levi127]

Saw a dry field being hammered by mallards coming back from tunica yesterday. I have never seen them using fields like that around here.
Mallards were on one aide and geese farther down.

Then we had about 200 pintails in our cut bean field That's bone dry yesterday also when I was leaving.

[Anatidae]

Sorry - we don't have a 'Vortex'

I like it when the ducks provide the VORTEX !

As the story goes........on our first day in Canada this year, some fellas asked us to hunt a field of honkers with them. To sweeten the invitation he offered, "we have plenty of equipment"........"we have several spinners and even have a 'vortex'!!"

Man, that sealed it for me.

[quack_a_tack]

Our best hunt this year was 3 weeks ago in a dry disked rice field. We circulated hunters through and shot 85 most mallards. We put layout blinds on an old levee that still had a good bit of stubble on it.

[maggiedog]

Drove around 15 miles in Cash Ark this morning and every field that had ducks were in the mud dry feeding. Nothing in the water.

[billjohnson]

Donia,

My theory isn't that the flyway has so much shifted west as much as we have re-distributed the birds on our flyway. I started hunting ducks in the delta in the early 70s and the only fields that flooded then were from rainfall. Nobody pumped up a field! There has been so much developement for duck hunting along the MS River all the way up to MN. I just think that our birds have been scattered, shortstopped, etc. The birds out west are concentrated on the very limited water resources. They stack up on rivers that we wouldn't even call a creek. More like a ditch! They load up on small bodies of water that are plentiful and only retreat to the big bodies when it freezes. They just stay concentrated more out there, like it use to be here. They dry feed because they have to. There aren't many marshes or swamps to feed them in. I'll tell you what though, where you have one, it's loaded. That's the reason that you only have field ducks out there too. Mallards, pintails and widgeon. Every now and then you may see a teal but not very often. Those ducks are just programmed to feed in a dry field just like ours are programmed to feed in a wet field. It takes special coditions to get ours to dry feed. A prolonged freeze prior to mid January will do it every time. They just don't want to go any further south for some reason and I've never understood that. I've seen pairs of mallards taking turns sitting for two hours on a spot in milo fields in OK with 3 inches of snow and ice to thaw out a spot just to be able to scratch up food. Never understood why they just didn't fly to the TX coast but they didn't. JMO!

[digger]

Saw it on 1 of the places we hunt.Here's a thought got this idea from the great beaver trapper duck habitat builder banned from this site crazy man.GRIT

[Wingman]

My theory is that what little was flooded got fed out in December and early January. They had to go to dry fields.