Been hunting private an hour outside of Houston for 5 years now and this is the worst season we have seen. We have food and water and only 8 guys on the lease, of which 4 of us are the only ones that hunt after opening weekend. And to add insult to injury, the birds that we did have for the last month are educated. They flare off of anything that is not 100% "right". Over the weekend they were flying right over our wetland and lighting into the middle of the reservoir that is used for flooding / pumping.

Updating on my post above - Went out yesterday mid-morning to scout and had (best I could count) 4 ringnecks, 12 gadwalls, and 40 widgeons sitting on the water. Numbers are definitely up with this new front. Next week should bring down even more. Doesn't mean they will come in when we are on the water of course.

Most ducks we've had on our property in our memory although we did add much more water this year so probably not fair to compare. Had lots of blue-wing early season and we normally only get green wing. Scouted the big pond two days and saw ~200 ringnecks, 20 gadwall, 5 mallards, 5 woodies on day 1. On day 2, only 50 ducks but they were all woodies. Never seen that before.

Odd 2 weeks- we have 9 total to show for, and have a pretty big feed going on my property. We whiffed on pair of mallards feet down, shot some long traffic ducks, and didn’t pull trigger on group of pintails @ 15 yards. Sometimes things all go right and other times everything goes wrong lol- pluses and minuses of big water. - been fortunate. I figured out why we’ve been focusing on my north blind even with south winds… The shadows back in the woods, etc. we stick out like short, thumbs despite brushing efforts.

Moral of the story- your hide is everything, even when you have large numbers. I have been a proponent of this, but didn’t simply look from the ducks point of view until 9am today from decoys. Soooo wooded behind us, we still were sticking out bad.


We saw 150+ today and over 100+ last week. More mallards today, mainly gadwalls, wigeons and teal. A few big groups of canvasbacks, but preferred open water. We heard fair amount of shooting in Fannin today. Imagine more tomorrow being Saturday.

Will hunt North blind in am, which is on open water- maybe will be easier to decoy them.

My second private spot in VanZandt nil so far, but lots of dove

We are loaded at both properties- hunting VanZandt Co Thursday, Fannin we shot 18 Sunday, big feed after thaw, and 2 guns 8 today- had to get off pretty quickly. Worked on steady w pup and basically backed up buddy on singles, and shot at multiple ducks when they came in 2+ - pair mallards, pair Canvasbacks, pair of gadwall, teal and a Pintail drake