John K Flores: Wrapping up the waterfowl season

Back in early November, when the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries conducted their aerial waterfowl population estimate, you’d never thought that the words coming from Louisiana’s duck hunters would be “best season ever,” “strong season,” or “awesome season.”

The November estimate was the lowest since the survey began in 1968. Moreover, what most waterfowl hunters were seeing leading up to opening day of the first split wasn’t much to get too excited about.

Yet, what a difference a few weeks of icy cold conditions in the nation’s heartland can make when combined with drought conditions across much of the prairie. When December’s aerial survey rolled around, the duck count went from an estimated 802,000 in November to 2.1 million. A whopping 164 percent increase in just a matter of weeks.

By the time the Christmas holidays rolled around, even Louisianans wouldn’t escape the northern cold fronts as Old Man Winter pushed his way down to the bayou state. And with the cold weather, the ducks came too.

Dale Bordelon, owner of Bayou Beast Game Calls, does most of his duck hunting in Avoyelles Parish. The Deville resident said, “It was an awesome season. On the average I hunted four days a week and I limited out every hunt except four. We had a big front in October and it pushed a lot of ducks down. And just before Christmas we had a big cold front — 15 degrees here — ever since then we been killing good.”

It was the same for Kaplan area waterfowl hunter Andrew Trahan.

Trahan said, “It was an above average season for us. Early and frequent fronts helped as well as the freeze before Christmas. Specks were a lot harder to hunt this year. They were very shy, but the ducks were abundant. There were lots of bigger ducks like pintails, mallards and gray ducks.”

Darren Digby is a Mandeville native and resident of Baton Rouge. Digby hunts the salt marshes in St. Bernard Parish, agricultural land in Avoyelles Parish, and the freshwater marshes in southwest Louisiana.

Digby says his hunts in St. Bernard Parish in the southeastern part of the state were good overall with plenty of gadwalls (gray ducks). By contrast, Digby mentioned in Avoyelles Parish, as usual, there were plenty of geese with lots of teal, northern shovelers (spoonies) and pintails.

Digby said, “The season overall was strong. We killed 205 ducks on 23 hunts averaging almost 9 ducks per hunt. The few hunts in southwest Louisiana’s freshwater marshes were very good and they did well all season long below Lake Arthur. There was a whole lot of green winged teal, ring-necked ducks, pintails, black-bellied whistling ducks, a few mallards, gray ducks and widgeon.”

Owner/operator of Bayou Guide Service Bill Lake has kept a record of every duck season he’s hunted since 1972. In comparing records from the 70s and 80s, Lake says those years will never be matched.

Lake, who hunts below Gibson, said, “We had 502 birds total this season with 279 teal and 179 ring-necked ducks being the bulk of our birds. Better than last year, but by no means out best season. We continue to do it because it’s in the blood.”

Chackbay resident Chase Livingston also hunts below Gibson in the Bayou Black area. According to the young hunter who works for Team Industrial Services, the 2022-23 duck season was the best season yet.

Livingston said, “As far as consistency and numbers for us, this was the best season in the history of the lease. While there were not huge numbers of birds in the first split, there was just enough teal around to make limits consistently. Once the cold weather showed up around Christmas, the ringnecks showed up with it, which helped carry us through the final weekend.”

Steve Strodered from Carlyss says he primarily hunted in the Johnson Bayou area marsh in the extreme southwest region of the state. Considering the conditions, Strodered felt the season wasn’t as good as it should have been.

Strodered said, “Everybody had the same story as myself. Considering the conditions we had this year, the marsh had plenty of food, drought to our north, early cold, we should have had a better season in my opinion. There were hotspots throughout the region I hunt, which is southwest Louisiana, but overall hunting outside of those areas was OK to poor.”

There were good reports that came from the Atchafalaya Delta WMA this year, though hunters say you had to wait them out when looking for limits. Unfortunately, the LDWF no longer conducts bag checks on the WMA, so it’s difficult to place anecdotal information into any context.

In spite of what appeared to be a good season, January’s aerial population survey showed duck numbers had decreased by 3% from the previous month. The 2.0 million ducks estimated was 16% lower than the most recent 10-year January average and 23% lower than the 20-year average. But, let’s not put a damper on what appears to be an above average duck season for many Louisiana waterfowl hunters.

It’s already generating excitement for the 2023-24 season.

John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.