Bird Watcher

whoa! What a flock of DRAKES! Good to see a nice flock of bluebills after all the bad news surrounding them the last few years. Beautiful capture

I could either do the first weekend or the last weekend. I too have to travel a lot during the middle of the month. I'll have one of the middle weekends free too, I just don't know which one yet. Weird year for sure. If it stays like this the frontline birds may never get down here. I think I saw where Squaw Creek still had a load of them. Supposed to be another arctic blast next week, so maybe that will put them down in this area. Usually, by this time of year we are loaded with the the frontline adults riding the snow line but I've seen a whopping 4 snow geese sitting in a field this month. Some of my best hunts in this area have been around and shortly after Valentines day.

Supposedly, there are starting to be quite a few walleye in that stretch. Look on ODWC's website at the historical stockings of walleye in Lake Spavinaw in the last 5 years

That'd be good. I have some Goose brats that I'd bring to said gathering.

I can't find the motivation for Spring Snows anymore. Don't get me wrong, I agree that when it's good, it's the single best waterfowling experience a guy can have. The problem is it seems like it's about 1/12 or 1/10 good days to bust for me. That still wouldn't bother me, except for the mud. It's always so deep during the CO season. I'm also usually out of Kitchen Passes from the boss by February. I'd still like to meet everyone though. If everyone was getting together for a hunt, I might haul out to the field just for the social.

It's a nice place to talk about waterfowling. I frequent some other waterfowl forums, but I don't discuss much on them. This is a nice place to talk about waterfowling with some laid back waterfowlers. On a fishing forum...go figure.

I don't know if you were wanting to stay local or not, but this guy does really nice birds. World champion stuff. The only bad thing is, he's in Alabama. He'll ship it anywhere though. www.waterfowltaxidermy.com/ Really nice bull can btw.

nice! Better than what I did this morning here at work. It's always scary when someone slows down and stops to look at the decoy spread. I'm always expecting a .22 barrel to poke out of the window. I've cleaned too many geese with .22 bullets in them.

That's funny. I knew it would probably be destroyed by cattle or coyotes by the time I went back there and looked for it. He's good luck. Ever since I added 10 BigFoots to my spread, all the geese have been really keying in on them when they land. I don't know why, but I can put out my entire spread and most of the time the geese will go the part of the spread with the BigFoots when they land. I think it's because they are so big and visible. A lot of times, that's all I will put out with 3 or 4 floaters and it usually works just fine. Yep, you should look at rigging a jerk goose. It's the bees knees for glassy water.

That's crazy. That they are still North of us, and that you had some come in and land on Beaver. I saw some in a hay pasture down by Tiff City about 3 years ago. I love watching those things and have had quite a few of them land in the snow goose decoys up in the Rainwater basin in Nebraska while hunting spring snows. Watching those things glide down from the stratosphere croaking is a cool sight.

Haha! Yes I did. I think it fell out when the trailer door swung open somewhere out to the West of MVS two North ponds. Out on that prairie somewhere. I've been meaning to drive back there and look for it, but I haven't been up there with the four wheeler or four wheel drive. Is that where you found it? Keep it safe for me and make sure it doesn't forget how to hunt! I'd still really like to get together and hunt sometime before the season is over, maybe we'll reunite it with it's family then. I was up there Sat. day evening and watched the birds come off the pond on the interstate. They had four swans with them. about half of them went into Mike's South pond behind his house and the other half went over to the pond you hunt on E. There was still a good amount of birds around there.

Dad and I could only hunt until 9 am on Saturday mornging, but we both wanted to try and sneak in a quick hunt before starting our chores, so we decided to hunt a itsy bitsy tiny little pasture pond by his house that has 20-30 geese loafing on it for the last week. We figured one flock would come in and if we played our card right we'd scratch a bird or two and go on our way. Well, that was pretty much to plan. One flock came in. I tripled and Dad had one shell in his gun so he shot one (Doh!) What we weren't expecting were the mallards. We had birds landing before LST until we packed it up at 9 am and we were limited on mallards by 8 am. We didn't see a single flock larger than 4 birds, but almost every duck we saw ended up hanging and peddling over the decoys at 10-15 yds and we didn't have a single duck decoy out. Just a beautiful sight with the sun behind our heads! [url= I wanted to share a little twist on an old trick I've been using this year with you guys that has just been deadly on ducks and geese. A Canada goose jerk string. This thing is the best thing I have ever found for those warm, sunny, calm mornings that we have had an abundance of this year. Better than a spinning wing, pulsator, flapper, flyer, swimmer, or any other battery operated gadget. We've had to hunt more water than we've hunted in 10 years and this thing has really finished birds on glassy mornings. I used a 10# boat anchor, a 3' bungee, a bigfoot floater, and 30' of twine. When we use it, we really crank on it. Picture a Canada goose taking bath. After watching flock after flock of ducks dive bomb a little group of geese bathing on a pond one morning at dawn, I went home and put it together. It's not as effective on cloudy and windy days, but glassy, sunny, warm days this thing is the ticket. We also went out Sunday morning to a residential lake by the house that the geese roost on. We waited until they left at 9:30 and then slipped in behind them with our spread. We were picking up at 11:30 with six geese and three ducks. Dad and I hunted both days this weekend, I spent less than 20$ in gas pulling the trailer and didn't drive more than 10 minutes each day. gotta love it!

Man, no kidding. I guess with as good as it's been for the last 4 or 5, a guy's got to expect an off year, but this year is tough. I went scouting for the weekend this morning. There's plenty of geese and a few ducks around, but you've got to put the miles on to find them and the warm weather sure doesn't help pattern them. At this point, I've given up hope on snow and am just hoping for some colder weather to consolidate all the little groups of birds into bigger ones, but I don't think it's going to happen. Oh well, just gotta play the cards you're dealt. Nice hunt DuckyDoty, when it's all said and done all you really remember is the time spent with people, I've forgotten most of the birds I've taken home over the years, or this year for that matter, but I remember everything about the people and the time spent. F&F, I can hook you up on the paddlefish until you are tired of catching them, if you want to go to Grand. Get ahold of me in March if you are interested. Billet, I didn't get up your way this morning, but I saw a lot of birds 10-15 miles South of you, FWIW.

It should be called a wifefish. J/K.

White-fronted goose. Commonly referred to as specklebelly or "specks". They usually blow through this part of the country the last week of October on their way to AR, LA, and TX so we don't get much of a chance to hunt them around here. This year's warm weather has a few more hanging North. Way to go Marty. Congratulations! Those are my favorite eating goose by far. The thoughts of a pot of speck gumbo get my stomach rumbling.

They are nice guys. They will probably tell you to go ahead. I'll put your number in my phone so I will have it with me if I'm up that way. I've got a few other areas that I have been watching birds and I might go look at some of them and see if the birds are doing something that I can work with, but I usually end up taking a route through there to see what those birds are doing while I'm at it. This warm weather drives me nuts though the way it makes the birds disperse. I've got half a mind to go crappie fishing insteaed.

Yep that was us. we hunted zglmn two days in row...you'll probably know what that abbreviation means. We had a couple good hunts there and that's where we shot the specklebellies. We saw a flock of about 10 that didn't work and a flock of 4 that did, we were able to scratch 3 of them. We had a good hunt on Tally's. I think we had 10-12 gadwalls, 1 mallard and 8 geese. If I would've been alone the day I saw you set up on E, I would have trotted out and introduced myself just to say hi, but I had buddies from AR in the truck with me. We'll meet one of these days. The way it's looking, we might end up hunting together one of these mornings without even planning on it. Which, BTW, if you ever pull past somewhere in the dark and you were planning on hunting and I'm already out there with the trailer, come on out and hunt with me. It'd be a great way to meet. I didn't see those specklebellies on Fri., but we were gone by 9 am so the boys could depart on their drive back to AR. There were some at 4R when I hunted there last Tues. I was surprised to see the ones we did shoot. I didn't see them scouting. See ya around Marty. I'll probably do a lap through there on Fri. morning scouting for the weekend. Maybe I'll run into you if you're out and about.

that's pretty funny Marty, I hunted that exact spot about three weeks ago. I actually drug that big Mulitflora rose bush down off the levee that splits that pond in half and put it down in those concrete chunks to hunker behind. You can barely see it on the left side of your picture. Good hunt and way to go. I think I saw you hunting a couple days. On Wednesday I hunted that big pig farm lake of Talley's with the gazebo in it and I think I saw you drive by with your trailer about 10. It sounded like you guys were volleying down there on that pond off E. On the another day, I was scouting and saw you set up on that lake on the South side of E we were talking about. Good to see you were getting on them. We did ok. We hunted 4Rivers on Tues, then hunted geese around you on Wed.-Fri. mornings. We actually shot some specklebellies on Wed. over the Canada spread up there.

That dog! No kidding, after the big Christmas snowstorm two years ago, I went by that trailer and that old red dog was the only one home at that place. I don't know where the owners were, but that old red dog had caught and killed a rabbit and was sitting in the driveway eating it. He's a survivor. He's never really given me any real problems, but I've never let him close either. He looks like a bad one. I wouldn't want my lab to tangle with him. She thinks she's a lot tougher than she is and he really does look tough. Good luck. I hope you hammer on them things!

I would! They won't stay there long and then they'll be back over on the interstate. They mostly hit that one when it fills with runoff, at least that's what I've seen. The pond that I know of East of there about 3/4 on the South side of the HWY I always thought was leased by a hunting club at one time, but I haven't tried to find anything out about it in 3 or 4 years. I could be wrong. I was acutally wondering about those Pecan groves on the West side of that conservation area 3 miles North of there. One year I caught it during a bunch of runoff and the mallards were in there thick! It's probably crested back out of there by now though.

You can't shoot that flock of geese out of a 5 mile square around that pond. Trust me, I've tried. They get wily, but they won't leave.

Too funny. He'll have that pond drained in about 5 days. I just talked to him on Saturday. When he came to check the concrete on MVDS's north pond. Shoot the tar out of them. Was that you that hunted the levee on the big lake to the North during the second Sat of early goose?

Marty, I'm about to be free to hunt for about 11 days straight. Thank goodness for Christmas shutdown here at the the ol salt mine. What rig do you run around in up there? Maybe I'll run into you somewhere and we chat it up and lament the lack of birds for awhie. I'll be in a dark green ford with a dark blue trailer when I'm hunting or a red ford ranger when i'm scouting.

Do you know where the old "Georgia City" Bridge is just down from the mouth of the the little North Fork on the Spring? Man, 20 years ago we would stack mallards there when it was frozen. It was really good when the river starting freezing and was only open in the riffles. It's all different now. Landowners have changed and it became a well known spot with lots of competition for the ducks, but back in the day, wow!. Somewhere I have an old VHS tape of mallards filling up 3-400 yds of the river while I stood right in the middle of them with a camcorder after we limited out one morning. I can still get permission on the property downstream of the 43 bridge, but it's just not the same, or at least I've never been able to catch it when it was anywhere near as good.

Marty, I hear ya. My ol man started dragging me along on fishing trips when I was 6 months old. He used to put me in one of those swings on the bank next to him while he was bank fishing or me made me a place to lay on some blankets under the console of the boat. Heck, I've even taken naps in the dry storage under the deck of his old bass boat. One of my first memories of he and I is when I was about 5. He put me on his back "piggy back" style and wrapped a belt around both our chests, stuck my feet in his back pockets and took me frogging all night long. Dad used to seem like a giant to me. I loved being his bird dog on rabbit and quail hunts until I was old enough to carry a gun myself. Dad's getting a little long in the teeth now and it's hard for him to cover the ground we once did. He'll be 59 this February. He's got a bad hip and he's carrying around a little extra love around his waist, but the four wheeler gets him across the muddy cornfields and he has the back deck of the fishing boat staked out as his territory. He doesn't go as much as he used to and sometimes it seems like I'm dragging him out now where he used to drag me, but I'm thankful every time I get to spend a day outdoors with him. I've thought many times that someday when he can't go, I'll probably stop going too. It just won't be the same without him. Here's to good Dads who made sure we were able to get out and enjoy the outdoors. God bless em. Thanks for causing me to stop a minute and relfect. Good hunting to you! When are we going to get some weather up North? by IMG-20110904-00239 by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/23354935@N05/]