| Hunt Introduction This Live Hunt takes place on the south Texas Gulf Coast, in public waters. I hunted this area two duck seasons ago and had a great hunt. I didn't come last year because the duck population reports in this area were very poor. This year I've been following the reports and the ducks seem to be back again in good numbers this season, so I made plans to do another hunt here. All the bays here that I'm hunting are extremely shallow water and a typical boat/motor won't run in them. Most transportation here is done by airboat, or in my case, by sneakboat/pirogue. I've got a little 12' "pirogue" that is powered by a kayak paddle and my arms. It gets me around pretty well in shallow waters like this. I arrived in the area on Wednesday afternoon and planned to just scout with my binoculars. That's what I did. I first checked a few areas where I had hunted 2 years ago, and found no birds at all. That had me a little concerned. Fortunately, when I checked some other bays that I hadn't hunted last time, I found a LOT of birds, in fact, a lot more than when I hunted here 2 years ago. I found 3 different bays that I would estimate had 5,000+ birds apiece. The real trick in hunting this area is location. These birds are hunted hard by local guide services all season, and they learn that a good place to be is out in the middle of the bay, away from blinds and shorelines. Of the 3 bays with lots of birds, one of them showed that a good group of birds were hanging around the mouth of a smaller cove, with a point of land extending out into the water that looked like it would be a good spot. That's where I planned to hunt this morning. Thursday A.M.  this morning was one of the prettiest sunrises I have ever seen I left shore at 4 a.m. this morning. The spot I was going to looked from the shore like it was at least a half mile or so from shore, and I wasn't sure how much towing of the boat I would have to do. I had about 100 decoys in 4 bags stashed everywhere on the boat, and many of them are cork, so they weighed down the boat pretty well. I knew there were probably some areas where I would need to get out and tow the boat so it wouldn't drag bottom. As it turned out, I didn't have to tow it much, but there were a few areas where the water was only about 3-4" deep and I did get out. I ended up getting to my spot a lot more quickly than I thought I would, though. When I got there it looked really good, the point had a good bit of brush that I could hide my boat in and cover it up with my woven grass sheets.  one side of my decoy spread  all those black specks on the water between my decoys and the islands are ducks!  my boat was stuffed to the gills! I spent the next hour putting out my decoys, a mixture of divers (scaup, ringneck, canvasback, goldeneye) and puddlers (mallard, gadwall, teal, pintail, wigeon). I got done way before shooting light, so I just sat on my stool and waited. Shooting light came and went with no duck activity. As it got a bit lighter, I looked around with my binoculars and saw that there were big groups of ducks landing out in the middle of the bay, about 600 yards away. This went on for several hours. The only duck that came close enough for a shot was a pintail hen, which I passed, wanting to take a drake instead. Airboats came through the bay several times this morning, getting the ducks up, but they would just fly around for a minute or so and sit back down close to where they already were. I figured the birds would be back in the same area this morning as they were yesterday, but apparently they didn't want to be there this morning. At about 10:30 I decided to pick everything up and move out to the middle of the bay, although I was skeptical that I might get anything but divers, as I didn't think a puddle duck would fall for me being completely out in the open. Regardless, I moved, and the ducks just picked up and moved too. I got my decoys set out again and hunted a few more hours, having only a scaup hen and a redhead hen come in range, and I passed on them, again hoping to take only drakes.  airboats kept the birds stirred up  did I mention there were a lot of ducks?  and more.....  and a LOT more! I was beginning to think that the large number of ducks was working against me in a big way. Every new group of ducks that came into the area sucked right in to the big wad already on the water and didn't even look at my spread. At about 2:30 I decided to pack it in.  my middle-of-the-bay set-up, after I moved  another view Thursday P.M. When I got back to the car, there were a few hours of daylight left, so I decided to go and scout out one of the other bays. When I got there, I could see with my binoculars that there were even more birds there than the day before. I decided to boat over there and try to find a suitable spot. When I got out there, there were quite a few birds flying around, so I sat on a shoreline and was lucky to have a nice redhead drake try to land nearby, and I got him. A few minutes before, I had watched two mottled ducks drop down into the brush a few hundred yards away, and I figured there must be a little pothole there that they had landed on. I decided to do a sneak and see if I could come up on them and jump them. I slowly moved through the brush, and sure enough, saw an opening a little ways ahead. As I got closer, I could see the water. I didn't see any ducks on it, but I saw the birds go down in this spot and hadn't seen them fly away, so I figured they were still there. I got closer and closer and still didn't see anything, but when I got within about 10 yards of the water, they jumped up right in front of me, and I dropped the bird on the left, which turned out to be a beautiful drake, my first mottled duck. They had been swimming on the near shoreline and the brush had shielded them from my view.  my afternoon redhead drake  a beautiful mottled duck drake - my first!  and more..... While out there, I found a small island out in the bay that had a lot of ducks all around it, so I'm going to hunt there tomorrow morning. Check back for tomorrow's hunt update!
Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. He also arranges exciting hunts through his business Longleaf Hunting Adventures. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children. |
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