Went to Arkansas for the last five (5) days of their season to close out the 2011 hunting season. Here is a quick summary and some pictures of the hunt. Enjoy!
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Day 1 – We hunted the flooded timber of Rainy Break WMA and finished with our limit of 12 mallards in about an hour. Absolutely phenomenal! It was nice to be able to walk on hard bottom (versus our mud in the WI marsh). I still love their rules for WMA hunting: you can only take in 15 shells and you must be out of the area by noon. I wish we did that here!
Day 2 morning – We went back to the flooded timber of Rainy Break. We finished with 4 mallards and 3 woodies. The word must have been out, as there were a lot more hunters than the previous day.
Day 2 afternoon – We hit a flooded rice field. Other than the rain (thank goodness for pit blind lids), it was awesome! We were able to get 11 ducks, including 5 canvasbacks, 4 of which were grand daddies! Most of them are getting mounted this spring!
Day 3 – We again hit a flooded rice field. A great hunt, finishing with 30 ducks.
Day 4 – We went back to the flooded rice field. We were a little late getting there, which caused us to miss a great opportunity at smacking some snow geese. We finished with 14 ducks and 1 bonus speckle belly (white fronted) goose.
Day 5 morning – We went back to the flooded rice field. We were not late getting there, but the birds were. We finished with 6 ducks and 2 bonus snow geese, including a Ross’ goose.
Day 5 afternoon – We hit the flooded rice field. What a hunt! We spent the first 30 minutes moving ~ 150 decoys, as the wind had switched since the morning hunt. After that, nearly every bird that worked our field came right to us. We managed 11 ducks and 1 spec to close out the season – wow!
For our five (5) day adventure, we finished with 102 birds, including 10 different species! Compare this to the 78 bird count for our entire Wisconsin season! Less than seven (7) months until bird season re-starts, not counting that “one and done” turkey BS! Wake me up when September starts!
Nice looking birds 
