With 80-degree temperatures on Christmas Day and a warmer and wetter December than usual, results from January’s aerial duck survey should come as no surprise: far fewer birds were counted in the state this month compared to last.[…]
If you think the odds were long on winning this month’s record-breaking $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot, that was nothing compared to what Matthew Courville accomplished this duck season out of Grand Chenier.[…]
Shane Bergeron’s duck season got off to a rough start last fall, but wrapped up with a bang in January when he shot a startlingly white leucistic spoonbill over a rice field near Ebenezer in Acadia Parish.[…]
“I’ve always been fascinated by ducks,” Mike Carloss said with a grin. “My dad bought two baby ducks for me when I was little. They grew up to be Muscovys and ran loose around the yard.[…]
Mike Carloss loves to hunt with coot decoys. By this time of the season ducks have been hunted the whole length of the Mississippi Flyway and then another month here, they have gotten pretty wise to the ways of hunters.[…]
One of the main reasons (besides enjoying his company) I button-holed Mike Carloss for a duck hunt was the chance to get him away from distractions to pick his mind about the future of waterfowl hunting.[…]
Errol Dennis Sr. recalls it quite well.
“It all started with me wanting to give both of my sons pirogues as Christmas presents,” Errol Sr. said. “The design of the pirogue came from a cypress pirogue built in the 1930s from which a fiberglass mold was made.[…]
Scott Dennis runs Fanny’s Family Guide Service (named for the nickname with which his grandfather had been tagged), where he is able to share his family’s hunting traditions with others.[…]
Officials with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries have cancelled all lottery waterfowl hunts on the South Farm Unit of Sherburne Wildlife Management Area because of extensive flooding.[…]
All of the prep work earlier this fall will culminate in the next few weeks as another duck hunting season heads into the history books.[…]
Fasteel, the flagship of the Kent Cartridge brand, is the go-to standard for waterfowl hunters. It has established a reputation among steel shotshells that is unrivalled.[…]
His blind was ridiculously simple.
The hunter was perched on his shell bucket on one end of a poke boat-style pirogue pulled up on the marsh bank under a rattlebox plant.[…]
“I was born in 1940. Things were a lot different back when I was growing up as a kid on Delacroix Island. There was no electricity or running water.”
Errol Dennis Sr.[…]
The number of specklebelly geese wintering in Louisiana has fallen sharply — from 80 percent of the mid-contintenal population 20 years ago to an average of only 32 percent spending the winter within the Bayou State — and the state biologist are working to understand why through a new study of goose distribution.[…]
Despite a well-timed cool front and brisk temperatures Saturday morning, many Louisiana duck hunters didn’t have the second-split opening weekend they were hoping for.[…]
The second split of duck season opens in all three Louisiana zones on Saturday morning, and if the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries’ annual December survey is any indication, hunters might see more action based on the sheer number of birds in the state.[…]