My inner circle's waterfowl season preview

I personally have several close friends who are dyed-in-the-wool duck hunters and probably scores of acquaintances who are as well. When you add all of the waterfowl hunters who I communicate with on Facebook and through this column, it’s a small army. And this is just my circle.
What I can tell you about my circle of friends and acquaintances is come this Saturday morning, one half hour before sunrise, every one of them is going to be in the marsh or rice field somewhere hunting when the 2015-16 Coastal Zone Waterfowl Season officially gets underway.
Monday morning I got a little inkling of what Saturday’s opener may be like when I read the Hunter Participation/Harvest Summary from the youth waterfowl weekend that came from the coastal Wildlife Management Area’s that include the Atchafalaya Delta Halloween weekend. Overall, the kids averaged 2.8 ducks per hunter on the wildlife management area, with youngsters on the Wax Delta side averaging 3.4 birds each.
I also spoke with one of the guys in my circle that hunted his lease on Forked Island below Abbeville with his next-door neighbor’s 11-year-old son.
According to my buddy, Danny Womack, he had never seen so many ducks the weekend prior to the opening of the big duck season than he had last Saturday morning. My buddy happens to be 75 years old with nearly that many duck seasons behind him.
Womack, who lives in Lafayette said, “They had big bunches of blue-winged teal that flew together, along with good numbers of gadwall. My partner went through a box and a half of shells, but he got his six birds. He had him a good time, and it was all over by 8 a.m. That was his first duck hunt ever, and he didn’t shoot one of them on the water, so that kind of tells you how many we had flying near the blind.”
In addition to these promising reports from the youth waterfowl weekend, if I were to provide a waterfowl season preview to St. Mary Parish hunters for this coming weekend, it would go something like this.
For 21 straight years, all of the stars have lined up on the upper Midwest and Canadian prairies with adequate moisture hitting the pothole region known as the duck factory this past spring, just in time for breeding season. As a result, duck breeding numbers topped the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service charts, where Louisiana waterfowl hunters will get yet another six-bird, 60-day season again this year.
I’d also make mention how white-fronted goose numbers are so good the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission set an 88-day season back in early August.
Moreover, how by all accounts from what guys in my inner circle are telling me, the southwest rice fields appear to have a bunch of specks.
A phone call last Friday from good friend and world champion speckle belly goose caller, Jack Cousin, confirmed what I’d been hearing that there are plenty of geese for what should shape up to be a great opener for rice field hunters.
Cousin said, “There are some big bodies of geese down right now that aren’t broken up yet from hunting pressure. I’ve been seeing good numbers in the area around Wright, Kaplan and Gueydan where I guide. I can’t wait till next week.”
I’d also say, annual statistics year in and year out tend to show the majority of ducks harvested by Louisiana waterfowl hunters occur during the first three weeks of the first split duck season. I know that’s hard to believe, but the statistics don’t lie. What’s more, the early migrating duck species tend to be blue-winged teal, northern shovelers, green-winged teal and gadwalls with a sprinkle of other species like pintails, widgeons, redheads, mallards and scaup.
When you toss in the local mottled and wood ducks, a hunter’s bag can show a lot of variation those first few weeks.
During the youth waterfowl weekend hunt on the Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area, gadwalls made up 34 percent of the duck species harvested, followed by blue-winged teal at 22 percent, green-winged teal at 20 percent and northern shovelers at 7 percent.
It’s sort of hard to argue with these numbers that reflect what the statistics have been saying.
However, what most hunters are looking for is what they refer to as “quality” ducks and bunches of them. There is nothing like a bag limit mix of green-headed mallards, rust-colored tuxedoed pintails and a bonus widgeon.
Yet, these birds over the past decade have come down to Louisiana’s coastline in less numbers, leaving hunters clamoring for the seasons to open later in November and stay open later in January.
It’s anyone’s guess what happens this duck season. It takes ice to take away resting areas, snow to cover grain fields and food resources and cold air to push ducks southward.
It’s clear there are plenty of ducks and geese down for this weekend’s opener. But, with the wet weather we’ve been having, there are plenty of areas for ducks to spread out once the first shots are fired Saturday come daylight.
I was one of the lucky lottery winners to draw out for a White Lake Conservation Areas marsh duck hunt in Gueydan this year. What’s more, on opening day, a first-ever for me.
If I were to forecast the upcoming waterfowl season, I’d have to say it’s shaping up to be a good one, much like last year. What’s more, it’s just nice to have another liberal 60-day, six-duck season.
If you wish to make a comment or have an anecdote, recipe or story you wish to share, you can contact John K. Flores at 985-395-5586, or gowiththeflo@cox.net or on Facebook at gowiththeflo outdoors.