Monday morning was a good duck hunt. There was no wind early, but we saw lots of ducks. We were wrapped up with teal early and then the wind picked up and the big ducks started working better.
Three of us got a limit of 18 ducks and five specks pretty quickly and we saw lots more ducks.
We’ve got six more days, so take advantage of the favorable weather conditions and the good numbers of ducks. It’ll be over before you know it.
Here’s a quick note from the latest LDWF duck survey:
“We have experienced continued delays in completing the January mid-winter waterfowl inventory due to weather and to date have completed only the coastal transect and Catahoula Lake cruise surveys and a portion of the coastwide goose survey. NW, NE, and scaup surveys, will be flown later this weather allowing. Despite limited data, the estimate of 3.07 million ducks on this survey is essentially the same as December’s estimate of 3.02 million. It is 50% higher than last January’s estimate of 2.05 million, 17% higher than the most recent 5-year average of 2.61 million, and slightly higher than the long-term average of 2.98 million. Large increases from the December survey were seen for mallards (94,000 to 188,000), green-winged teal (364,000 to 623,000, all in SW LA), shovelers (146,000 to 372,000, also all in SW LA), and lesser scaup (106,000 to 273,000).
Most of the ducks, more than 70%, showing up in the survey were in SW La. As stated, the crews were not able to fly north Louisiana, where large numbers of ducks are located in the last week of the season.
