Bird Watcher

real nice. I've got to get up there and try that fishery sometime. I've heard it makes the one I fish look like a dead hole. great fish.

I liked it. good job.

Found some more Sunday night in Jasper County. They are little, but they are coming up. This rain should really help things along.

I know it's not how we want it, but we need it. I hope that no one is harmed or endangered and secondly, I hope that no one loses property or suffers damages, but this country needs the rain. We are dry and the creeks are low. The farmers had a rough go last summer all across the lower midwest. I hate it that it always comes as an extreme these days, or so it seems to this hillbilly, but we still need the water.

I've been sleeping with the windows open in this nice weather and this morning I rudely awaken as I tried to sleep in by a gobble fest starting at about 7:05 and they didn't stop til 9 am. It's the first morning I've heard them, but they were rocking out this morning.

went tonight after work in McDonald county and found 27, but they were tiny. The good news is they have started coming up

I find about 500-800 a year. I'll share with you what the guy who taught me shared with me. Now, this is just what works for me. There are many other successful mushroom hunters that have many other proven patterns, but this is what works for me. With this pattern, I can drive down a dirt road and with about 50% certainty, I can spot areas that will have morels. I find them around Sycamores. Not just any Sycamore, they have to be "upland" sycamore trees. What I mean by that is, they can't be growing down in the creek or along the creek bank. You will find these in a few different types of places: Dry washes that come down a hillside, the shoulder of dirt roads, sometimes you will find them just scattered on a hillside, but the number one spot I look for is the edge of a cleared area - even better if the cleared area is on a ridge top. When a landowner comes in and pushes all the timber off the top of ridge maybe for pasture, a golf course, or any other type of development, they often push the timber and soil up in mounds around the edge of the clearing. Sycamores will be some of the first trees to take root in these old dozer piles. After about 10-20 years, the dozer piles will slowly decompose and what will be left is a ring of dirt mounds around the edge, maybe some with rotted stumps sticking out, and large sycamore trees growing out of them. You can often see this while driving down the road, especially this time of year when the trees don't yet have all their foliage. The white limbs of the sycamores stick out like a sore thumb. If you are driving around looking for a spot and you see a pasture ringed by white sycamore trees, 10 to 1 odds they are growing out of the old dozer piles that were left when it was cleared. I find these spots and then I ask permission if it's on private ground, but I also have found spots on public ground that produce just as many. Don't be suprised if the landowner already knows about them and picks them theirself on the private ground. Simply wait until you have 3-4 days in a row that average 70 degrees between the daytime high and the nightime low and start looking. I'll be going this weekend.

Fished the flats at Holiday Island Today. Two Keeper walleye and 3 jumbo blue gill. 12-16 fow drifting road runners with crawlers along the inside bend of the flats where they drop into the channel. Water temp was 49.1-50.3 Speed needed to be kind of quick, about 1.5 to 2 mph to get bit which was made easy with all the wind.

Umm, yeah. Earned my mortgage guiding those things for three springs from MO to SD. That's why I don't do it any more. Too much of it. Too much mud, too little sleep. Too much driving. Life is too short for me to chase light geese anymore. I know you like it though. Just thought I'd tell you what I've seen which isn't much, unfortunately. Good luck with them!

That's what I should be doing. I got mine out and started it Saturday. After sitting since October, it fired right up. I wish I was fishing Today. It's nice outside. F&F, I saw the most I have seen all year heading South around Sheldon on Fri. Granted, it wasn't a lot of them, but it was the most I have seen. probably 500-1000 birds.

That is awesome Marty! That's even better than I imagined. That baby needs to be driven. I'm laughing all over again seeing the pictures. It actually looks like a really good time.

Thanks guys. Yeah, I hear about the creeks down there F&F. That's what's so weird. I lived down there for 5 years and I never hunted it. I would drive around and see the birds down there when the conditions were right, but I always had something else in mind with more numbers when the conditions were like that. This has kind of been a theme for my season. I hunted more local stuff than I ever have before and the weird thing is we had a lot of good hunts within 20 minutes of the house. I'm definitely going to remember that in years to come. I really like the gas bill of all this local hunting. I can hunt three weekends and use the same about of gas that I use on one trip to vernon county and still have the same results.

I've laughed out loud to myself a few times since just thinking about it. That is an awesome story.

Like Marty, I was finished.... This season has been akin to a bad relationship for me. I try to leave it and then I get drawn back in with the promise of change and that things might be better this time. We have some fun, but in the end the same dissapointment and shortcomings creep back in and I am left with the feeling that there must be something better than this out there. In the end however, the season is what it is and you can either go because you love going or you can leave it if you are that dissapointed by it not measuring up to your expectations. So, that on my mind, I made a trip down to McDonald County to pick up my W2s Saturday afternoon. I'd forgotten to change my mailing address with my employer and they went to my old house. On the way, I swung in and looked at a place that will hold geese from time to time, but I have never hunted. As a matter of fact, I had never hunted McDonald county for waterfowl even though I lived there for 5 years. Well, sure enough, there was a nice flock of geese on a cattle pond in the pasture. The problem with these geese is that they spend there entire day in a 250 yd radius. They roost on the pond, then make a short jump to a rye grass pasture to feed. That's a big reason I've never hunted them. It kind of seemed too hard. Well, with nothing better to do, we decided to give it a go. The plan was, wait until they jump out to feed, try to sneak in behind them with blinds and decoys and maybe get them when they came back....Nothing doing. The geese sat there in the field with their heads up and watched us set the entire spread. I had a bad feeling about how the hunt was going to go. When they finished feeding and started flying back in, it was like there was an invisible dog fence around the pond. They would come to the pond, but at 100yds, they would skirt us one way or the other. A change was in order. What we were doing wasn't going to work. So,we went to town, ate lunch, took the garden shears and cut at least 20lbs of dead grass, came back and moved the setup and tried again in the afternoon. We had a little bit better luck as the day went on. After all these years, my first McDonald County waterfowl hunt, on the last hunt of the season, and I spent it hunting all day with my Dad and Uncle. P.S. I had a little fun with the flickr editor to protect the identity of the participants I had a good time talking about waterfowling with all of you on here this season, it was a pleasure to meet and hunt with Marty-I know we will do that again sometime. Here's to the 2011-2012 waterfowl season...it might not have been what I wanted, but it was all that I needed.

We will get them next time. A guy has to get blanked every once in awhile to stay hungry. That was a good time.

Looks great Marty. I'm glad you and Pat were able to get out together one more time. I had a really good time visiting with you the other day. For all of you who haven't met Marty, he's definintely like an onion. He has many interesting layers. I highly reccomend sharing a blind with him sometime if you haven't already.

Sorry, I just saw this and asked you if we were good to go on your other thread. It will be a good time. I am looking forward to meeting you and hanging out in the blind tomorrow. See you at 6

Looks Good Marty! I don't know that one! Are we still on for the morning?

I haven't dug a hole for a blind in 5 years. The last time I did, I had 6 guys hunting and we tried to hunt a cut soybean field. NEVER AGAIN! I know it's effective, I'm just sworn off of it. I might dig a little depression every once in a while for my headreast to reduce my profile, but I won't dig full size holes anymore. The other thing, I wouldn't dare dig a hole of any size on this farmer. If you saw how much time he spends on a dozer building levees and terraces you would understand. Heck, I get embarassed if I drive through a wet spot in one of his fields and leave ruts, even if they are small ones. I really try to keep it simple. I live by three cardinal rules when I waterfowl hunt. The first two are paramount. 1. Be where the birds want to be...Scout, find the X, find the X within the X, Find where the birds are landing, not necessarily where they are walking or swimming into. 2. Hide....I mean hide....If I can see you from 20 feet away, the geese can see you from 200 feet away. Big geese have every bit as good of eyesight as turkeys in my opinion, definitely better than humans. 3. Realistic decoy set. If you saw 25 birds, don't put out 200 decoys. If they were all standing in a low spot, put the decoys there, not up around the blinds or whatever else is convenient. Sometimes I want to look like the refuge and sometimes I want to look like the first birds to arrive at the party. It just depends on the circumstance. If I follow these three rules without compromise, I will never be skunked. That's easier said than done though. Sometimes you have to emphasize one rule if the circumstances dictate you are weak on one of the other two. I don't do a lot of traffic hunting. I will if there are numbers of birds to support it, in other words, a lot of birds in the area but most of the time I scout for the X. Some may call that gimme hunting, but that's how I like it:) Marty, I was suprised he was leaving that red gate unlocked. Every other year, he's always had that one locked and you had to come in from the North. Tomorrow morning sounds good. What time do you think? About 6? at the North Gate? I'll bring my entire trailer and we can use whatever we want or we can use none of it and leave it all in there. Sound good?

It's amazing how politics weave a thread through every aspect of our life. Even fishing. Legislate it? Leave it up to the individual to decide for themselves? That is always the question it seems.

If we hunt that windmill pond, I'd say Thursday on a North Wind. If I remember right, there is a little more hide over on that North side towards the tree line. It would be hard to hide on that levy on an East wind. What do you think?

Slider, You should try it sometime. Waterfowling is a great way to rid yourself of uneeded income, practice sleep deprevation, making excuses and lying. F&F, anytime. I have a KS. license in my pocket too and you can shoot geese over there until Valentines day. Have any vacation to burn? I think Marty and I are going to put together a hunt this week sometime Marty, Let me know, I'll do either. If you see those birds hitting one of the fields around there Today, I'll go do that Tomorrow or we can wait until Thurs. or Fri. and hunt the lake.

We were hunting about an hour or so NW of Wichita. Duane, I saved all of the tailfeathers from the birds on this trip. If your buddy doesn't have them to send, let me know and I'll send you some.

Oh, I just saw that. I hadn't looked that far out in the forecast yet. It would be a good day for a field hunt with snow showers possible in the afternoon, but I think I fried the voltage regulator on the 4wheeler this weekend so a field hunt is kind of out of the question for me until it gets out of the shop. Let's keep an eye on it and keep talking about it. We'll make it happen one day this week.

No 4B birds here, lol. 100% completely wild indtroduced species. I have the blisters on my feet to prove it. Man, those things run. Thanks guys.