IF it IS flooded, it is more than likely just worked over, rowed up mud, instead of the standing stubble it used to be. The more they can get prepped before the winter rains, the less they have to do in the spring...i.e. any food left is plowed under before season starts. No food = no ducks. You gonna keep visiting that grocery desert or go somewhere else to find food?? I know what they do!

Duck hunting has been terrible this year for us and most people I know. It’s been bad in Mississippi and Arkansas from everyone I’ve talked to for the most part.

Use to see ducks on all the big bodies of water years ago. Mostly divers. Don’t even see them now rafted up like years ago

What you doing in these parts Coosa?

Yeah most of those guys spend a lot of money to shoot a few crappy ducks a year and think they are duck hunters. It blows my mind. They will hold up their 2 duck stringer with big smiles. That’s a whole lot of crap for 2 ducks. If any ducks.

That Arkansas Navy parade you passed is probably the result of the fields freezing up. Anybody with a boat was hunting flooded timber bc it was the only place holding birds

If CNC saw how they are farming in the MS Delta right now he'd have an aneurism.

Farming practices have certainly changed several times over the decades but what they are doing currently could be the worst for wildlife that I have seen. Nothing but Mud as far as you can see in many places. I went by a field near Indianola that looked like it was at least a mile of mud across a place to a distant fence row. 20 years ago it didn't look like that I know I was there then.

Duck hunting has been pretty hot since last week. Problem is my kids have been out of school since the start of Christmas break. As soon as they go back I'll hit it harder. But, if I left my wife to take care of them and work while I was off everyday hunting I don't think that would be a good long term decision.

Just visiting. My wife’s sister and grandmother live over around Silverhill and I’ve got a bunch of cousins in Spanish Fort/Daphne.

Duck hunting has always been dependent on location and timing but those 2 factors in years past simply meant you shot a "few" birds because you were not on the "X" that day.

This season as an example.... there are no birds on those days and you walk away with 2 or empty handed. Because there are no birds there. They are riding the ice line north and only fly south because they are forced to do so.

I judge this by the numbers of birds I see in the air not what comes into my decoy spread. Seen less and less birds in the air for going on at least 10-15 years. Every year it's a little worse.

Someone somewhere is going to smack them on any given day. That's just how it's always worked but this does not mean there are not fewer birds overall and I personally think we've got far less birds that migrate now because we have shot the piss out of everything that migrated. Once upon a time back in the early 1900's when people had more common sense.... they put bands on their legs so that they could see they came back to the same spots year after year. They also in some locations released birds... thinking they would come back and bring more with them. Because that actually worked. Because that's how this whole thing works which we have known for 100 years.

When you shoot them all they don't come back.....

Everything in life doesn't have to be complicated. This was never just a "theory".

We always have birds where I live. Question is will they fly during the day. It has started warming up a little during the afternoons so the birds are feeding the thaw. Thus, we can shoot them. When it is warmer they just feed at night.

Gone are the days of sitting in my deerstand and seeing tens of thousands of birds flying around and thinking about being in my waders. Now I sometimes am in my waders only seeing hundreds (sometimes less) of waterfowl and thinking about being in my deerstand.

I keep forgetting you’re in MO but you’re saying you are not seeing what you once saw.

There’s been a lot changes to ag but also the popularity of duck hunting. It’s very much a status symbol these days and almost a rite of passage. It kinda saddens me to know I doubt the next few generations will see what I’ve seen. It’s another Outback truism of people screwing on a good thing.
No one will ever convince me that the biggest issue is the amount of pressure. It’s constant and it’s heavy. The lot sand season are twice as what it once was. It had nothing to do with the duck population but the experience these days. The hunts are consistently crappy instead of consistently good. We now base a good season on a few good days. Friends smacked them this morning in arkie but that was the only place I’ve heard from that did well. I’m sure there other shut it’s still few and far between.

We’ve not just shot them but we’ve run them back north. We’ve trained them to further north and ride the ice line.

There’s fine line between what’s good for the ducks and what’s good for the hunters. What we’re seeing is what’s good fore the duck hunting industry. Honestly ducks hunters did it to themselves.

Like you said the last 10 plus years is when it really ramped up.

Al I can think of is the Louisiana biologist Larry on the express boat series

From a biological standpoint the same number of ducks are being killed but the average number per hunter has declined
Hunter satisfaction is down
Also when asked hunter’s said they would want a longer and more liberal season

There ya go!!!!!!!!

Since when did folks duck hunt all day. A long day for us used to be 9 am and usually was done before 8 with limits

Farming changed but so has the river systems here. Pickwick didn’t have grass in the 80-90s but early 2000s or so we got grass and a ton of ducks. Ducks used the river as a refuge basically rafting up. We’d get bored with mallards and go hunt divers on the river and see those mallards rafted up. Now they get chased away by numerous boatloads of hunters. Gone they are.

I’ve seen the sky late in the season covered with ducks and geese
I’ve seen 8-10,000 ducks drop into a swamp or creek
I’ve seen the wheat fields in arkie full of ducks and geese and they’d be right in the edge of the blacktop where it got really really cold.
They no longer plant much wheat because of the geese and fields are prepped differently. There was time period where hunters begged any and all farmers with rice ground to put in a pit and flood it. Those spots never came to fruition and in a few years went away. That kinda cooled some folks down for a while but it’s back wide open and stupid money is winning the game. If you got multimillion and can buy or lease up around your kill holes you can still have a decent season. Otherwise a day here and day there is all you’re gonna get.
That’s the truth about today’s duck hunting.

I think you just see more people bragging about duck hunting on social media; not more people hunting. Federal Duck stamp sales in 1971 were 2.4 million; 2023(last year reported) 1.5 million. There was a big drop off in the 80's and have been between 1.3 and 1.6 million since then.

See that’s the funny thing about playing the numbers. Gotta look at the picture in its entirety and not cherry pick. The industry tells how much money is in play. Look at guns, loads and all other things duck. It’s gotten stoopid. It compare to bass fishing per se. guys I know up and down the MS flyway are all saying the same thing except Missouri north.

Maybe nationwide but here in NWAL it’s tenfold more. Arkansas is a cluster of who has the deepest pockets and cutthroat is an understatement
We quit posting pics cause people would seek and lease out from under


I’ve been duck hunting here since the mid 80s. On pickwick there was no more than 3 groups hunting from 7mile to waterloo. Nowadays there 20-30 boats on the weekends in that same stretch. One of the 3 in our group has been a mussel diver since then so he’s on the river system everyday then and now several day a week. From Decatur back down to Pickwick. Depends which mussels the buyers in Asia want as to where he goes.

He quit duck hunting a few years ago it’s gotten so bad. He called to tell me he ran into a group of hunters and they were excited they “saw” a few ducks 😂 he said there was 4 brand new duck boats at the ramp mid week. He doesn’t hear the volleys he once did at his farm. He can hear for miles where his farm is. The back of spring creek isn’t far from his place. Used to wear
Them out in there. Not so much nowadays. We used to hunts from Redmans back thru the shoals to the line. If there was duck hole we knew of it.

We've been shooting ducks from the same blind less than 10 miles off the MS River approx 37 miles south of where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers come together since the end of WWII. This blind has been hunted nearly every day of every duck season for that entire length time.

Every. Single. Day.

There are no ducks.

I can go to the blind in the morning and look in the air and see I don't know what... but 30 years ago I could go out there and I couldn't look into the sky and not see some ducks in the air somewhere. I have spent far too many days out there the last 5 years watching black birds.

Nothing has changed. The hunting pressure has not changed. There are no ducks there many days and for sure far fewer than there have been since I have been alive.

just an observation.

Absolutely goatkiller however pressure here has drastically ramped up
A guy I know has had a duck hole since the late 50s and texted me still no ducks today. I was kinda thinking about trying it in the morning but nope.

The last time I’ve seen the sky black with ducks at pickwick reynolds swamp or at Bellsink bottoms swamp or brush lake or anywhere here in north west Alabama has been 20 years or so.

Buddy in Green Bay says they’re stacked up with ducks and we’re colder and have had more snow than they have
Duck season goes out end of November right before they open gun deer. So there’s lack of pressure. Mid Missouri closed last week I think.

My duck hunting has picked up a bunch since they made corn legal

Hope you bought your baiting permit. 😁