Buck

I have one duck call on my lanyard, and it is cutdown PS Olt D2 Keyhole. I absolutely love it, it's from the 40s, sounded like a duck then, sounds like a duck now. If anyone has keyhole Olts laying around, let me know and I will probably buy them.

@JohnP Got lucky the other day and killed 5 mallards and 4 geese with a buddy recently in your neck of the woods. That recent weather system did some good.

My go to goose recipe is a BBQ pulled goose. Saute a yellow onion and some minced garlic, then brown two goose breasts in the same pan. Put it all in a crockpot with some Worcestershire and beef broth, cook on high for about 6 hours or until you can pull it apart with forks. Toss in BBQ sauce and let it sit in the fridge over night.

Very slow for us. We killed a pintail, woody and gadwall opening day in the middle zone. Best I heard of was one group of guys that had been hunting the area we were at for the past 20+ years killed 14 teal.

Late reply, but in my opinion the best call to learn on is a Haydel DR-85. It is what I always recommend to my friends. Very easy to blow, sounds great.

Well we got 21 between 3 guys today in a few hours. Hoping others did better.

Going out in the AM as well. Seems like a lot of birds left with the cold and rain, but there's still quite a few in the fields I am hunting. Good luck to all!

That's what happens when they make a rule saying you can't enter the WMA until 4:00 AM. They have managed to cut down on the racing pretty well by making a single file gate for leaving the staging area in many areas. This year was a lot less boat racing, and a lot more foot races due to the lack of water. I saw people on bicycles, as well as people in running shoes and running shorts.

Great deal. If I didn't have one already, I'd be all over this.

Hey you can't complain about that! I'd be happy with that most days, a nice mixed bag. South zone I'm guessing?

Last week was pretty good, however with this warm spell and south winds I believe many of the birds have retreated back up north.

I usually run around Four Rivers with a 40HP outboard with manual trim and it gets us everywhere we need to go, and we usually get deep into the marsh. My advice for your first hunt there is to launch at daylight and see where the birds want to be. You'll be able to find cover in tree lines or buck brush.

Sorry for the late reply, been hunting and scouting a whole lot lately. Banded in Arkansas 2 years ago, shot in Arkansas, all banded together. It was a group of four mallards, two drakes and two hens. Saw the jewelry on one of them, and we killed the whole group. I normally try to wait until after season to post kill pictures, but with the extremely warm weather in Arkansas and Missouri, and lack of water in the woods in Arkansas, there's already more hunters than ducks out there.

My hunting group needs to go buy some lottery tickets. Had a great hunt the other day, but had one really special group of mallards come in. The picture tells the whole story. It's been a great season so far!

We'll be near there Thursday and Friday I believe. We hunted Saturday morning and it was fairly slow, lots and lots of high flyers though. @BilletHead I've been wanting to hunt Horton Bottoms for a while, but were going to wait until later in the season for mallards to show up, and hope the river gets out and floods the woods.

Personally, I'm a big fan of A-Pool. However, if your boys are younger, I'd probably stick to the blinds in the main unit. Sometime before season either call them, or go by there and ask lots of questions. They have good maps at the headquarters, and I've found the staff are usually a lot more helpful in person. In the headquarters they have a kill board with the previous day's kills at each blind. PM me and I can help with a little more.

Another day another limit! Slowed down a little from yesterday, but still decent action. Hopefully I can get one last limit tomorrow before I have to head on back to Arkansas and my mediocre fields there. The action should take a sharp turn for the worse starting Tuesday anyways.

Yesterday was pretty slow out in public land, this morning we put a smacking on them (on private land for all you internet scouters). 2 man limit, going out again in the morning. All this dove shooting is getting me ready for the ducks!

@BilletHead Great story! And congrats on the limit! we only killed 7 today, very slow. The weather was amazing though.

@jbooth Any public land managed for dove will be packed on opening weekend, probably less so in the morning than afternoon. Make sure you use steel shot at Aldrich.

Ketchup, if you need help with anything real estate related, shoot me a PM, I'm with the largest real estate firm in NWA. Welcome to the area! I've found the fishing to be hot some days, and really, really cold others. I love the abundance of small streams and rivers to fish around here though.

Wow, for some reason I didn't get notifications on this and thought no one liked me! Quillback, I'm very familiar of Frog Bayou, and I read about the expansion. I used to go to Frog Bayou to try to duck hunt freshman year of college before I had my boat here. I am very optimistic that with the new expansion it will be a good roosting place, and the river hunting will be better. I don't hunt that WMA anymore because of all the people that hunt it, I prefer to take my chances elsewhere. Anyways, I'm still looking for a field, worse comes to worst I go to Missouri and hunt the corn field.

I hope everyone has had a good off season! My off season has been filled with lots of catfishing and a little work mixed in. 2017 dove season sure is approaching fast. I got lucky enough to have a buddy let me in on a private corn field for this upcoming Missouri opening day, so we don't have to deal with the madness that is opening day on public land. I recently graduated, and moved to Northwest Arkansas full time, and still haven't found a place to shoot dove down here though! If anyone has any land I could lease just for dove, I'd be very interested! How's everyone else's prospecting looking for opening day so far?

As much fun as it is catching giant flatheads, my absolute favorite are 3-5lb channel cats. They're the perfect eating fish. I've been out about 3 evenings in the past week, catching lots of channels around a foot long, but only a handful of good eaters. Liver has been catching the numbers for me, but cut bait has been catching the bigger fish.

Well, I'm just going to use this thread as a record of my Beaver Lake catfishing successes and failures. We went out tonight and had a decent night as far as Beaver goes, we set out 20 jugs at about 6:00, and packed up at 8:00. We didn't have time to get cut bait, so we just used hot dogs. We got 5 channels, 3 were just little guys, but the two we kept totaled about 10lbs. All in all it was a decent night, we'll be out again Friday night.