Saturday was a good opening to the 2016-17 East Zone duck season, especially after the terrible end to last year.
We got off to a fast start and killed 30 this morning. It was a real mix of ducks. We had teal, gadwall, mallards, pintails and a couple of wigeons. We also had four specklebellies and we got out of the blind with a limit of ducks before 8 a.m.
That is a much better hunt than we ended up with at the close of last season. We killed more out of this blind today than we did all of last year, so I can’t complain. The bottom line is that everybody that had pumped in water and it had been there for a while had ducks. Folks with “newer water” killed some, but not as many. The bad thing is there isn’t any water unless it has been pumped.
All these federal refuges are dry. Wham is dry. There’s no where to hold ducks, so once we shoot at them a few days, they’ll be looking for somewhere else. The good news is we get another little cold blast tonight and that can move some more down from Arkansas. They opened Saturday, too, but they are in the same shape as we are as far as water goes.
We thought we were going to mop up on the specks because there are a lot of them, but they got up about 100 yards high and just flew around all morning.
Just about everybody we talked to at the store today that had water killed some ducks. Most did really well, but some only killed a few. How they’ll be the next few days is an unknown, but we don’t get out there and go, we will never know.
Be safe. And as always, if there’s something you need, come by Simmons’ Sporting Goods and we’ll fix you up!
