THIS IS WHY! Habitat managment

When people ask us why, THIS is the answer! Some great footage David Ferguson captured on one of our properties. Habitat management is key and seeing the birds stack up like this makes all the off-season work worth every second.

**CLICK ON LINK TO WATCH VIDEO**

[img]http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/...jtjiz.mp4[/img]

Is that a millet field or moist soil plants???

Moist soil.


You can also view it here if link doesn't work: https://youtu.be/mHpoT0plnVk

Cool. In your experience, how many acres do you need to flood to attract a large number of birds if you are in a good central TX area? I plan to buy my own place in the next five years and shooting for flooding 60-80 acres. Trying to figure out if it will be worth it to go for 60-80 or if 30-40 will give the same result and cost a lot less.

Toledo;

The spot shown on the video will not support that number of birds for more than a couple days.
You would be amazed how fast large numbers of birds can "clean" a field.

A good approach is to partition off your property with smaller sections that you can flood sequentially.

Besides, last I checked the limit was six ducks. You don't need to attract a thousand.
A bit like drowning... 10ft of water is plenty, 1000ft is just over kill.

Reading my own post; didn't mean to be picking at Run-N-Gun.
He's put in a lot of hard work and the video certainly shows the results!
Hope he gets to chase birds out of there every day.

As to buying your own duck property, location is 100x more important than size. (joke goes here)
1000 acres in the wrong place wont be nearly as good as 5 acres in the correct place.
Think how many ducks are killed each year in Texas tanks smaller than 1 acre.
How many ducks could you fit into just one acre of flooded brown top? TONS!!
The problem would be that the food wouldn't last long.
There's were being able to direct water to different sections, no matter how small, can really be a plus.

I'm not sure how central Texas is set-up in regards to waterfowl and where they roost, feed etc.

I'll give you my thoughts on it, but remember they are all with background in how the Texas coastal prairie is structured.

-Roost(probably the most important)
the birds have to have somewhere they can go roost on big water and not be harassed, hunted, etc. usually they roost with the geese in our area and in 40-100 acre flats of water 4-12" deep.
-Food
the right food at the right time. they don't eat the same thing everyday, it depends on the weather and whether they need protein or carbohydrates. when it's warm they usually feed on protein and when it's cold they'll switch to carbs.

If someone else is roosting the birds for you, then I would set-up smaller compartments(10-15 acres) and flood the next one as soon as the birds almost had the first one eaten out.

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION
No matter how much food/water you have, if you're not in an area that holds birds, you're not going to make them come to you.

The video is of one of our big roost ponds, probably only 1/3 of it is actually shown in video. With 10-15K ducks and the 10K geese that are roosting on it, the food source will only last a couple of days(no more than 5-7), but that's fine because it serves as a roost for that property. It was an awesome site to watch all the birds spiraling down from the stratosphere before and after the front to the roost. This property has been a roosting ground for waterfowl for 50+ years and they just know where it is.

Buy in a good area, do your homework as to if the birds can roost elsewhere and then provide them a food source that you can control by when you flood and you should be good.

Hope this helps.

That is very impressive. Do you guys have any roost properties around the Francitas area? We hunt just north of there. Have one roost pond that is about 70 acres flooded

Yes we do. A few birds in that area, but not like normal yet. No geese have shown up either, usually the ducks really show up down there once the geese arrive.