Depends where you are I have seen more geese in the salt marsh then usual.


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Depends where you are I have seen more geese in the salt marsh then usual.

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Agreed. We've seen a bunch of geese over the last few weekends. Flying high along the coast where we were duck hunting, but some of the rice fields along FM 2004 were loaded with resting/feeding geese.

 

Driving the Eagle Lake/Lissie prairie a couple of times in the past week I didn't see much for geese.

And driving on FM 1162 there are few geese there either.

Historically those would be two of our better areas for geese this time of the year.

 

Have you considered the lack of geese in eagle lake may be directly related to the lack of rice in the area this year? Also, most of the little second crop in eagle lake is just now being cut.


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Have you considered the lack of geese in eagle lake may be directly related to the lack of rice in the area this year? Also, most of the little second crop in eagle lake is just now being cut.

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Eagle Lake/Lissie to Egypt has probably the most concentrated area of rice farming. Either that or Garwood to Provident City

I see plenty of cut fields that have no geese.

Overall the numbers of ducks looks to be good whiich is encouraging but geese are on the low side,

Specklebelly numbers seem to be especially low.

The down trend for them over the past 20 or so years is pretty alarming. I am afriad they are going to be the next Canada goose for us.

Maybe in ten years we will have white goose numbers equal to the numbers of specklebelly numbers we have now if the slide continues?

But we also might see a huge herd of them show up on the next front?

 

No, there is way way more plowed ground this year than last (at least what we hunt). There are lots of geese around, but they are somewhat concentrated. Give it some time. It’s not even thanksgiving.




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Have seen VERY few here on my home ranch when usually my tanks are covered. Could be this weather too. Finally saw 6 sand hills the other day, first ones of the season.....la salle county

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Drove the Eagle Lake/Lissie/Chesterville/Altair area today.

Beale Road, Hunt Road, Hall Road, County Road 271, the Vineyard, Little Public Road, 3013 and bunch of other roads and country.

Saw 200 white geese and 7 specklebellies.

Drove my many cut second crop rice fields, uncut rice fields, volunteer rice fields, wetland units, plowed fields, winter pasture and a bunch of other stuff.

The sky and ground was devoid of geese.

Kind of demoralizing.

 

Hunted just west of Garwood this AM. Saw 10 specks flying & about 20 later on while driving around. Didn't see a duck in the air this AM. Saw 4 groups in the field when I left & bet I didn't hear 50 shots all morning.
Prairie definitely ain't what it used to be.

 

Coast has been loaded most of this year, Wednesday has been our slowest day and I still managed a pintail, redhead, and bluebill.

Seen more geese this season than I did all of last season.

Friends on the prairie paying $1500 and up for a lease have been struggling to pull out a few birds a hunt.

 

Ducks have been good around the Taiton/El Campo area. Last Sunday was the first day we haven’t limited out, but it went from limits Saturday to not seeing a bird Sunday. Been lots of geese flying around, just haven’t had the weather to hunt them. More cranes than I have ever seen this time of year, wish I could figure out how to hunt them.


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good numbers of geese west of el campo. Havent checked near eagle lake or the coast. Good numbers of sandhills since the opening weekend of duck as well. Duck numbers have dropped significantly - first 2 weekends were great but weve hit our late first split lull that's typical for this time of year...

 

Goose hunted north of Egypt today.

Saw, at best, 700-800 white geese and a couple hundred specks.

Miserable goose numbers.

 

We just haven’t had any weather since that first good front at the beginning of the season, and have been hunting the same birds thus far. Hopefully it gets cold again for the second half.


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The cold front we had at the end of the second week of November was one of the strongest in recorded history for that time of the year.

It was below 59 for three days and blew 40 MPH out of the north.

Every day that goes by and the geese don't show up makes it less and less likely they will

At some point they won't push south for long distances.

If someone would have predicted 20 plus years ago the number of geese I saw today north of Egypt that would have been considered so far fetched to not even be considered a possibility.

 

We’ve had great luck along the 1162 corridor SE of El Campo. Speck numbers have definitely seemed to decline slowly over the past several years, but we are still killing them. Our properties have been loaded with snows and the cranes are coming in pretty good. This photo was from last Thursday.

 

Duck numbers are bad here in central texas on the public lakes.

 

slowly but surely declining

the number of birds has declined drastically over the last ten years. a lot of the rice has been converted to crawfish east of town, and west of town for whatever reason, they don't grow the quantity of rice they used to. at one time east or west of town, it was wall to wall geese, those days are gone. a lot of birds have been stopping shy of texas, due to an abundance of food north of us. the flyway has been altered with time. :texasflag

 

Seen way more geese than ducks first split, west of El Campo...

 

Mojo you know where the ducks are.....?


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Duck numbers

This seems to be an odd year. oN the east side of Houston, plenty of water, quite a few white geese around I-10-Stucky's. Ducks more than previous years. Just made a day trip to Austin, did not see even one duck on any pond along hwy 290. The dryness on the west side has not helped them either.

 

Geese have finally arrived at Eagle Lake. They were thin in the area until now.

 

Drove through much of Wharton County this week.

Goose numbers were miserable.

I drove some of the most concentrated rice country that we have.

Saw only one group of some size. I estimated 6,000-7,000 and that was about it.

 

Decent duck numbers west of chocolate bay last week pushin down tha icw looked like mostly greys, baldpate, boot lips, and teal also a few specs mixed in

 

Drove through the middle of the Eagle Lake prairie today and from Eagle Lake I took Highway 102 to Interstate 10.

I did not see a goose. Hard to believe. And there were a considerable number of recently cut second rice fields. The sky is empty. Saw four small flocks of cranes south of Eagle Lake and one flooded rice field had an estimated 200 ducks on it.

All of the other areas holding water had no ducks.

I never thought I would see the day when the Eagle Lake prairie was almost devoid of waterfowl. And this isn't the first time I have seen it like that this year. It has been really weak all fall/winter from my observations.

 

We observed the same lack of birds on the Garwood prairie last week.

 

We hunted geese just off 102 south of Eagle Lake this past Saturday and there was a big roost close by. Plenty of geese coming up from the Bonus/Egypt area as well. We did not see any ducks flying all morning.