DuckSouth.com

I am surprised by the lack of griping about low water or no water conditions this year. Maybe you all have water in your areas but we have been limited by lack of water. We had no tropical storm type rainfall this year and the fronts never dumped much rain on us. The water we have has had ducks but it has been tougher to hunt and we have had be careful and not overhunt as there was no next place to go. The blind in the brake is about 20 yards from any water. There is not enough water in the brake for a boat. The only way to hunt is slog through the mud, laydowns, cypress knees, holes, and beaver runs to get out to the hole they use to come in. It's been mighty rough on the dog too but without him we would loose most of the ducks. Most of our field holes are dry. We have hunted a ditch that normally would not have ducks that has been the most consistent thing all year. Last year we could not get to our normal hunting places because water was too high. I will not gripe too much however, as I have been able to go and had several good hunts so far.

I'm curious to know what yall's take on the year has been in regards to numbers of ducks and water to hunt.

Due to the lack of water I've had one of the best years I've ever had. Over 300 ducks about 240 of those mallards and other assorted big ducks.

Def. helped out the public land hunting. No where else for the birds to go and limited access for outboards. Had some good hunts that way.

We have water and we've had ducks. This has been one our best years, just lucky I guess.

Best year out of the last 4 here. Last year we had way TOO MUCH water.

Sure better than last year. But disappointing in some ways. Haven't been able to hunt some places that I like to hunt. We definitely went from one extreme to another between this year and last year.

I will not complain 238 ducks and I had to quit two weeks ago due to work getting kicked off and started weekend classes. I had a very good year.

Deltaduk wrote:Haven't been able to hunt some places that I like to hunt.

I agree with this.

It's best to have high water possibilities covered as well as low water. We're going to get both from time to time.

Same here. over 200 two years ago and under 50 this year. No water

I would like to know for those having great years, is most of your hunting in sloughs, brakes, open water? Or, field type hunting among a vast area of row crop. Just curious -

We hunted almost exclusively in rice and bean fields, I hunted timber 5 times on invitation hunts and also did well. I chalk it up to karma after two years of killing less than 100 ducks.

2008-2009 was a fantastic year for us, especially the last 20 days of the season. 2009-2010 was the worst duck year I can ever remember in our area, of course you could drive just 3-4 miles to the Tallahatchie River and it was plenty of ducks during the big freeze that lasted a couple of weeks. 2010-2011 has been far more normal from a numbers standpoint. We have had low water conditions and no water in a few spots, but good numbers of ducks and enough water so as to not over hunt any one particular location. Lots of limit hunts that included mixed bags of mallard, gadwall, and wigeon.We have seen a decrease in ducks over the last week, especially the gadwall who seemed to have really moved on during the snow/freeze. Hunting mainly sloughs and brakes that went dry for awhile during the growing season (a scenario we see most years).

really dry year...

no doubt driest year.