Summer is here with full vengeance - temperatures are consistently kissing 100 degrees.  Most days are spent around the pool or finding enough shade to keep us from melting. But for Louisiana hunters, we are just a few short weeks away from September and the start of our annual hunting season. 

So far, a few of the 70+ blinds on the land are already brushed (Phil likes a lot of blinds and loves brush), and we kept the water on the property from the spring backwater, making a few hundred acres of “green-seed” swamp that will change the look of the land in the coming years.  Phil has been planting cypress trees for a while, and they are finally starting to take shape. Most are only 5-8 feet now, but they are giving us a glimmer of hope for a future filled with a cypress break that the ducks will love as much as we love hunting them.  There won’t be dry land to plant this year. The underbrush will start dying and some of the larger trees won’t make it. But the button willow will thrive along with the green-seed and the ducks should love it.  Gadwalls and Woodies will make this a home with the Teal and Mallards that come thru with the winter weather.  It is surely different than prior years when it was a dusty desert thru the hot summer months with us planting millet, milo, corn and other duck crops hoping for enough rain to raise some feed for the fall flight.  This has been a project that has consumed us for over 20 years – we are far from figuring it out, but are having a great time looking ahead, planning and dreaming about the fall migration and all that comes with it.

Keep tuned to see how this develops – more pictures and stories are sure to come.