Well folks teal season started off with a bang this year. We got a cold front early in September that brought a pretty good wave of teal to Northeast Louisiana. The first few days were as good of hunting as you can ask for. There is nothing like getting back in a duck blind for the first time in 8 months and hearing the sound of the wind on the wings of teal! They sound like little fighter jets when they come sailing into your spread. It will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, and when you look like we do that is a pretty big deal!
Opening morning was as good as you could ask for in our area. We shot about 20 teal and there was a great deal of tension relieved. The teal hunting remained good for the next 4 days, then reality set in. The teal that loaded up our area were gone come day 5. We have done this long enough to know to not get discouraged though. Our teal hole is just a pit stop for the ducks. We are far away from their final destination, and we are fine with that because we know the next change in weather will bring new ducks our way and on day 8 that happened. We saw bunch after bunch of flight ducks and scrapped out 10 ducks but were hamstrung because our neighbors decided to hunt that day too when they hadn’t hunted all season. That's the way duck hunting goes sometimes! It has been slow the last few days but we still are not discouraged because we know teal are also photoperiod migrators.
Okay, so I'm going to go total nerd for just a second. Blue Winged teal travel a long ways each year. They are the first ducks we see and the last ones to leave to go back to the breeding grounds. They generally winter in Mexico, Central America, and Northern South America. That's a long ways from the Dakotas where they breed so they travel early and often. The ducks know when the days start getting shorter and that causes them to migrate regardless of weather. It is pretty incredible to think that a bird with a brain smaller than a pee can determine the amount of daylight is getting less and less. It seems unlikely to me that kind of skill could’ve been acquired without the design of our Creator. It is just more evidence of God in nature if you ask me! So we will trudge on with these last few days of teal season knowing that more ducks will be migrating and there is nothing we would like more than to welcome them to our area with a 21 gun salute! Take care and God Bless!
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