Tallahatchie Duck hole

[feather]

Guys I just bought an established, proven hole about a mile or so north of Buzzard Bayou Lake. Bean field w a blind in a tree line that I’ll rebuild as it’s too big. Will still hunt public but this gives us a place to get away and finally relax a bit. Any advice or suggestions to keep it good? It’s surrounded by big clubs/outfits, etc. planning on using LOTS of dekes and pulling them after every hunt. Feel free to lend your advice..thanks!

[bigwater]

Pulling the dekes after every hunt . Definitely want to Tex rig your dekes. Pressure be mindful of how often you hunt it. If it were me I’d try and save the private land for weekends; if you hunt during the week I’d go on public , hopefully a little less pressure on public land during the week .

If possible try to flood properly in stages, so that as the season progresses you have new food sources available. This may or may not be possible with your property..

After the season if possible leave water on the field and pour the feed to it in an effort to get birds to imprint on it.

Something else To consider is the date and time of when you start pumping the field.. I’ve seen places that were pumped up and holding water say 2 weeks before the opener and the ducks/geese got on their place and feed it out.. ducks can find new food and new water in a hurry .
Hope this helps I’m pretty sure I haven’t told you anything you didn’t know already . In the old days you would have received a lot of good feedback on a topic like this . I sho do miss it

[novacaine]

are you going to farm it yourself or rent out the cropland?

[RNAIL]

I will volunteer to help work on blind...been a long time since we hunted together..It will be fun..

[feather]

I rented already to the same farmer Novocain and leasing the property to some hunting buddies out of Hattiesburg so I can get to go some lol Ronnie! Been about 25 yrs I’d say...too long!

[feather]

And thanks Bigwater for the comments...planning to do all that. I can control the water bringing it up slowly, etc.

[sondance]

Bigwater made a lot good points particularly about not over hunting it. One thing to think about since you will have only the single blind is what are you going to do if the wind isn't favorable to set up in it? I'd start thinking about the direction of the predominant wind and have a plan.

Bigwater was right about slowly raising your H20 to save groceries. Not knowing the size of the hole, ducks like that sheet water at the far end of a field. If you get too much water on it, they can land out of range. I saw something a couple years ago I though was pretty smart. Some guys in a field had cut some cane and as the water started spreading out they would stick a few pieces up out in the slack water so the ducks would avoid landing nearby, thinking it was a blind, therefore causing them to land closer to the real well hidden blind.

Hope it works out for ya

[feather]

Yeah Sundance that’s likely to be an issue so planning to have a portable cane type blind that we can move around as needed whether to hunt or just keep them from landing way off. About 20 acres will flood eventually and even more possibly. Thanks for the info!

[RedEyed Duck]

Guys I just bought an established, proven hole about a mile or so north of Buzzard Bayou Lake. Bean field w a blind in a tree line that I’ll rebuild as it’s too big...

Proven duck hole, make big changes immediately, sounds about right. Add more brush, hunt only as many folks as ya want not using the extra space and see how it goes for the 1st year. Just one mans opinion and it could be wrong.

[Wildfowler]

How big is the blind you’re wanting to rebuild?

[feather]

Gonna cut it down by a couple of feet as it is too tall and sticks out like a sore thumb. Wasn’t built correctly...no rafters a d few floor joists as it was built by high school boys who were in a hurry. Bones are good but designed like a beaver dam blind with windows to shoot out of. Not conducive to keeping an eye on the birds I’m calling so gonna reduce the height and add a shooting platform w lots of cover.

[7ducks]

We had a new place/ hole last year similar to yours that had established property around it .....we had success hunting it during the week....holes around us were pounded on the weekends pushing the birds to us. Spend double what you think you need for food/ make sure you get along with your farmer, I know you own it but he's got to farm it .....nothing worse than rutted up fields that they can't get the water off of and don't put water on it till we have a major push of birds....we usually don't worry about flooding anything (all fields) until Mid December...I've been keeping accurate kill records for the last ten years and we never kill that many birds until Xmas.

[feather]

Thanks 7 that’s good advise. I’m somewhat limited to rainfall though I can pump if needed. Thinking I’ll put a board or two in late nov and bring it up slow. Initial boards just to saturate some dirt so by mid dec ready to go. Previous owner said had done crops and no crops and couldn’t really see a difference as birds were steady both ways and were really just hitting it for invertebrates. Didn’t want to rock the boat w the farmer this first year so didn’t ask him to leave anything but to for sure NOT DISK the bean stubble under. Gonna be interesting to see how it works out.

[JaMak84]

Thanks 7 that’s good advise. I’m somewhat limited to rainfall though I can pump if needed. Thinking I’ll put a board or two in late nov and bring it up slow. Initial boards just to saturate some dirt so by mid dec ready to go. Previous owner said had done crops and no crops and couldn’t really see a difference as birds were steady both ways and were really just hitting it for invertebrates. Didn’t want to rock the boat w the farmer this first year so didn’t ask him to leave anything but to for sure NOT DISK the bean stubble under. Gonna be interesting to see how it works out.

If he's willing to do no till in the fall and is able to get his beans off by mid-August, you've got a pretty good shot at getting a decent stand of barnyard grass before first frost. Of course, a timely rain or 2 right after harvest wouldn't hurt either. If you've got the ability to pump, I would think real hard about putting in a few boards and flushing the hole right after harvest to see what happens. There was a lot of duck food disked under last year that was kicked off by that rain on the first weekend of September.

[feather]

You mean pump it up and then drain it? How long should the water sit on it before draining it?