BIG BRANCH

On opening weekend a buddy and I road out to the kayak launch in Big Branch WLR. Absolutely no parking room... Did anyone do any good at all or has anyone been seeing ducks? Or should we not even waste our time?

LA Av8or,That non-motorized pipeline USED to be golden spot til folks started packing in there like sardines,guess what happened to the ducks,no doubt they avoid that place like the plague!!!Get on Google Maps and seek the most difficult-to-access spots and if NOTHING else,at least ya get in great work-out.If ya can hunt mid-week,lot less pressure on heavily-pressured duck populations.There are a few sloughs that were decent wood duck spots and beauty of chasing dem fine-eating woodies is dat by 7:15 the wood duck flight typically over!!Good luck out there,can be great hunts without ton of hunters!!

Mandevillian

Went there 2 weekend ago and some guy try to net my decoys because he thought they were real ducks. The boat in front of him was his friends and yelled HEY JEFFERY THOSE ARE DECOYS!!!! Lol was really funny but scary how clueless some people are out on public land.

Many years ago saw morons in moving Lafitte skiff shooting coots and these fools came mighty close to me and I stood up,waving my shotgun so the idiots would not 'mistake' my dekes for de real thing!!Woulda been very dangerous situation and the one thing I did was to take a pic of boat with wake behind it and made damn sure the Fed Agent I know got that pic!!!

Mandevillian

Yeah that’s exactly what they were doing, taking a bay boat and chasing and corralling coots abt 200-300yds away the bay boat would chase until birds were tired then the flat boat would be behind trying to net the tired birds! We were hunting in the lake and was standing in waist deep water when Jeffery was running flat out with a person on the bow with a net they ended up getting to my decoys abt 30yds from us in the water before the guy in the bay boat yelled out to him. I thought I was about to have to shoot in the air to run him off if he didn’t veer off at the last second! Me and my buddy just shouted and threw our arms in the air at the guy but he didn’t have the decency to look at us and apologize he just cowered his head and sped off.

When all this is happening where in da hell is the game wardens at ??? Surely they have to be hearing all that racket ? Probably sitting in their trucks drinking coffee waiting for legal hunters too come back in to check their limits !

Funny thing is bunch of years ago at least 18 tickets were issued to folks who could not resist the urge to get an edge of other duck hunters by jumping the gun and launching well before you can legally enter Refuge(4:00 am). We NEVER even consider entering before 4:00 am and today legal shooting was 6:09 and think we entered Refuge around 4:30.

Mandevillian