Teal Scouting

Well with all this rain down in Wharton County and two broken combines, the rice farmers still haven't harvested our 220acres. Needless to say, I haven't done any scouting. Is anyone around Eagle Lake, El Campo, Garwood, Wharton, Edna etc seeing any teal yet? I'm hoping they will harvest by Saturday and reflood our property so I can get some teal sometime next week, weather pending. (my dad owns a 220 acre rice field but someone else farms it)
Thanks for any responses. (This is my first post ever on any forum)

Maybe give Johnny’s Sport Shop in Eagle Lake a call…?

If the birds are down, they should know…

We have a literal ton of teal around our plains water holes right now, mainly blue wings. We'll need a nice cool front to push them down. Doesn't look like a major one for weeks though.

I'd expect a good cold front on the 27th.

Exactly

I had a small flight of zoomers look at my dove setup near Abilene last night. I assume they were BWs; tough to tell with the sun angle. I thought it was early for ducks, but they were definitely teal.

I noticed a dozen or so on one of the lakes at the golf course yesterday in Midland.

there are several outfitters posting pics on Instagram on the coast and panhandle showing birds, looks like at least a few are down

They are here. Certain areas like always holding 1000's of birds. IMO temp/cool fronts have nothing to do with BWT migration.....

Really ? I always was taught they were the first to migrate because they do not like the cold. Seems odds, not any at all until we got a weak front about 10 days ago. But what do I know?

Hope they hang around til the 27th, our season opens Sept 25 for all ducks with a 2 teal bonus over our limit first part of the season.

Hope so for you Wytex, Teal are my favorite eating duck. Good luck,

Many variables can trigger a duck to migrate. Some ducks (bwt, mallards, all species etc) will migrate just because days get shorter, while others (all species) need change in weather to trigger a migration.

This is the way I understand it too. Calendar ducks and weather ducks.

We are east of Garwood and have a ton of birds in the rice fields and in our flooded rice paddy blinds. El Campo seems to have a lot as well.

Agree with TrackQuack...BWT seem to migrate based on the changing timing of daylight vs night time and less on weather. The stragglers may eventually get blown out by weather. It's always odd. Three years ago we had a ton of BWT through first split big duck, while last two years we did not have as many in big duck season. The El Campo guy I hunted dove with Friday (WWs-kind of slow but mostly they were all flying very high) said last year for 2nd split BWTs came back for them so they had a blast. Go figure.

BWT migrate with moon Phases. Next full moon 9-20. Expect more birds last weekend. I had 15 on smaller impoundment and about 50 in larger this weekend in N Tx. They are starting to build up now

That's exciting, I am going on my first early teal hunt here about 15 minutes from the house on the 18th.

We had a blue moon in Aug that got the elk rut kicked off first week in Sept this year, maybe that is why we have BWs around right now. The elk have been pretty vocal for early Sept this year.
Good luck with your early hunts, I remember them quite fondly.

I was seeing teal the second week of August.