Early Teal Season at STA 5 - Kayaking for Ducks

Never figured I’d find much use for a kayak. The vessels are popular with skinny-water anglers and eco-tourists in the state, but I don’t fish the flats much anymore, and I’ve smelled enough cormorant and pelican poop in my day to kill my desire to rise early in the morning and paddle through secluded mangrove islands to ooh and ahh at manatees and shorebirds. So I was surprised by my excitement when I procured a kayak for my first duck hunting adventure this year. Let me explain.

Over the last couple years, my buddies and I have been hunting the STA’s in South Florida. Properly, they are Stormwater Treatment Areas, large, shallow impounds of water south of Lake Okeechobee filled with flotillas of invasive hydrilla, pods of hyacinth, and cattail islands designed to filter nutrient runoff from the surrounding sugar cane fields before it reaches the Everglades and pollutes the River of Grass. With over 52,000 acres – and more being planned - of man-made, vegetation-choked wetlands, they are premier waterfowl destinations for those lucky enough to draw a permit.

The thing is, South Florida is an alien locale. The ground pulsates with biting insects. Bizarre, foreign fish, with nightmarish names like snakeheads and clown knifefish, crowd the waters. Snakes that have no place in modern epochs are spreading throughout the region to the point the Good Ol’ Alligator can’t even control them. Oh yeah, the alligators, some the size that they could easily leap out of the water and take down a great blue heron like a river trout snatches a mayfly. Then there’s Miami. South of Lake O is a weird, wild place which makes hunting here an adventure.

My first trip two years ago was a complete off-the-cuff, why-the-hell-not journey. Knowing the water wasn’t too deep, we brazenly decided to wade into this miasma clad with waders. In the heat and humidity of a September morning, there had been talk of slipping in without the oppressive Neoprene, but these are essentially retention ponds; no telling the flesh-eating bacterium that lurks in the weeds. And though there have been no reported cases thus far, I’d be worried about a Candiru attack. Just saying. We shot a couple of teal, but to retrieve them meant slogging through thousands of pounds of hydrilla that would curtain around your waist until movement wasn’t even a thought anymore and you'd want to give up, much like a poor soul dying of thirst in the desert. I’m quite certain that even if you trekked more than 100 yards in this stuff, a tentacle of ‘drill would eventually reach up around your neck to pull you down for keeps. And I suppose it isn’t too late to announce that motorized crafts were/are prohibited. Not like it’d matter to the sheets of man-eating hydrilla; that gunk would tear the unit off, drag it a half-mile across the bottom before spitting it back out like that swamp whale regurgitated R2-D2 in Empire Strikes Back. You get the point - it's tough stuff to navigate.

We toyed with a john boat on a subsequent hunt – too heavy – and inflatable rafts – too light and flimsy – before toting down kayaks which proved to be the proper conveyance for this work. In large thanks to this craft, we were able to reach a distant cattail island and fill a three-man limit of ducks on STA 3/4 last December. It proved to be my most memorable moment with a kayak since I told my wife at the Homosassa River a few years ago, “No, I don’t want to kayak down the Homosassa River.”

So duck hunting the STA’s fueled my torrid tolerance-affair with the kayak and sparked the search for one of my own or to borrow, “borrow” being the key thought. The wonderful thing about kayaks is they are easy to find. You can go to just about any sporting goods store and crank out a few hundred dollars for one. But, if you play your cards right and nose around, you can probably locate someone who’ll let you take one off their hands for a reasonable amount. Or for free. Kayaks are about like treadmills; everyone thinks they are a great idea at first, but then the will to use them vanishes. So they sit around hoarding space in the garage, breeding spiders and contempt for wasting money on personal fitness.

The neighbor had been storing a pair under the deck of my in-laws home in Homosassa for the length of my relationship with Carolyn and prior. In those years, I don't ever recall them ever seeing daylight. Had I not drummed up the courage to ask if I could use one, I'm quite certain they wouldn't have floated in anything other than floodwater for years to come. It didn’t take any serious pleading to gain permission for its use. “Paint the thing for all I care,” he told me. I didn’t go that far, though I may one day if it stays too long in my possession. But since it was silver, some form of camo was needed. A 15-ft bolt of camo burlap from Wal-Mart was plenty sufficient for concealment purposes. After hosing off the years of negligence and insect dwellings, I just had to wait for the calendar.

So the time came last Sunday. I had drawn an afternoon tag for STA 5 – my first trip to this particular string of ponds. It was the early September season which is notoriously spotty for duck action in the afternoons. Furthermore, in order for them to honor our permits we had to check in between 12:30 and 1:00 or risk placement in a lottery for walk-ins…which didn’t matter since there were two other trucks there, and no one came in behind us. It felt like we had the place to ourselves, though one hillbilly smart mouth at the check-in station was forced to comment on Drew’s bright orange kayak. “Boy, you ain’t gonna kill ducks out of that, der, der, der, dah der.” Ignoring Cletus and his clear assessment that we were slackjaw rookies ourselves, we blindly picked a couple spots off the map, and set out for the hunt.

We surveyed our locale, picking out teal amongst the moorhen and coots stationed in the impoundment. After deciding on a patch of cover that would conceal the four of us, we unloaded the kayaks and packed them with the essentials. I’d like to tell you I slipped on in there in the slick, Navy Seal style. The truth is, I’m not in peak physical condition. The “essentials” felt a lot less so after 75 yards. With the thick aquatic vegetation, it was like paddling through cold oatmeal though still a far better deal than poling a heavy-bottom aluminum boat. But that was just me. The other guys about had their kayaks on a plane. The slow, fat kid in the bunch, I arrived as they were pitching dekes in calf-deep water.

Assuming the depth was the same where I stopped to set up, I hopped out of the kayak and plunged to my chin whiskers in a death portal, that noxious water flooding into my waders. Luckily my boots hit hard bottom – or the back of a very large, very patient gator – and clamored into shallower water before the hydrilla sensed my struggle and enveloped over my head to commence sucking out bodily fluids.

I had a very real problem at this point. I could stay in the soaked waders and let my body heat excite the parasites and bacteria into a feeding frenzy or strip to my board shorts to wade to the island where we were to hole up. Oh, that slimy bottom was disgusting, even to my horse-hoof feet. My legs itch as I write this, and what I can only guess was dysentery subsided yesterday.

The kayak became a life raft. No way was I standing bare-skinned in that water for the next four hours that we’d wait for sundown or our limit. I slid the ‘yak into the grasses and sat with my feet propped in the cattails until I learned fire ants thrive in semi-submerged vegetation far from dry land. To relieve this pain, I soaked them in the water until noticing small minnows picking at my skin - South Florida. After this I elected to keep all body parts inside the ride, sitting Indian style in the raft, which made shots at passing birds rather awkward. But at least I felt safe. 

 

It turned out to be a banner hunt. We shot one bird shy of our limit of blue-wing teal, many sweeping right past my bare, welted legs and into the walls of steel fired by the crew. I retrieved my decoys and fallen birds from the dry embrace of the kayak and stroked it back towards the truck. With a successful outing under our belt, I barely remember the paddle back.

According to the game warden, we did better than the others hunting that afternoon, certainly better than Cletus and whatever plywood and palm frond contraption he surely captained. So if you ever find yourself hunting an STA or any number of places in Florida that forbids motorized vessels, consider using a kayak. Can't say they are for comfort or style, but they'll get you where you need to go.

Walk-In Duck Hunting

As I wrote in my last post, Travis and I had set up in a little slime pond hoping to bust a few beaks the morning after Christmas. We’d known of the spot, as we knew mottled ducks and whistlers knew of the spot. Our hope was a few teal would swing through, as well.

It didn’t happen. We spooked the whistling ducks early and had a few woodies fly overhead but it was pretty lame - which made it all that much better that I was able to bust a gorgeous mottled drake. I guess you could say I limited out since the bag for mottleds is one, but it wasn’t the duck hunt we’d hoped for. But, if you did read my last post, a little additional scouting remedied this problem as that evening a pile of whistling ducks and a few teal met their demise. For the record, my personal bag for the day was the one mottled duck, a bluewing teal, and 4 whistlers - awesome for this style of hunting.

Over the last three weeks I’ve about run gamut of Florida ducking hunting opportunities. Hunted the bigger lakes of central Florida for ringers and teal. Per usual, there were plenty of ducks and a few have died, but as also typical of a mid-December hunt for these birds on public waters, they were rather shore-shy from being blasted at for a few weeks especially having had no recent cold fronts blow down fresh birds. I hunted Lake Okeechobee one afternoon and was perplexed by the lack of birds I saw there, though a party did well the next morning, blasting ringers and teal.

From there, I hunted STA ¾ and had an exciting shoot, again increasing my bag of ringers and teal. December 26th will go down as a memorable day for all the whistling ducks, but a few days later, I hunted up by Cedar Key for sea ducks – bluebills and bufflehead. What a neat place to give waterfowling a go! I scratched down one hen bluebill – my first - and a common merganser, but the action was limited. That’s a lot of water out there, and it didn’t seem a lot of these ducks had arrived south yet. When you don’t have many sea ducks in that expanse, the shooting is typically limited.

It’s been fun, though, my limited knowledge of duck hunting increasing with each venture. I don’t want to disparage hunting from a boat with a large spread of decoys, mostly because I really, really enjoy a boat full of buddies emptying to their plugs on passing ringers. And I really, really want to continue to be invited on these hunts. With all the rivers, lakes and shorelines in the state, the ease of opportunity is there, but the most successful hunts I’ve been on have involved no motorized boats and far less hunting pressure. And that’s what I want to focus on today: increasing duck hunting opportunities through walk-in hunts on private and public lands, not only in Florida, but really anywhere you may want to pop a duck or three away from the crowds. These places are shallow water venues that require merely a pair of waders to retrieve birds and are fine spots to innoculate that Duck Hunting Disease

So, let’s delve through this spectrum of possibilities. The whistling ducks and mottled duck died on private land. The land is largely South Florida prairie pockmarked with sloughs, wet-weather ponds, flag lily ponds, and cattle ponds. All of these features are attractive to puddle ducks including the aforementioned mottled, but also whistlers, wood ducks and teal. The duck hunting has been fickle over the last several years due to drought that allowed tall dog fennels and other weeds to thrive in these depressions, choking out the ducks. The main trick to success has been finding where the ducks want to be and adjusting accordingly, as my opening tale related.

To take it out of the state of Florida, we did something similar in Montana last year. We hunted flooded shallows on the edges of wheat fields. Ducks rafted on the nearby river would shuffle over in the mornings and evenings to feed. 2010 was sort of a down year for our trip, but a group this year pounded mallards and other puddlers that came into water barely ankle deep.

I mentioned wood ducks earlier; they are extremely conducive to walk-in hunting. Here, they’ll settle in cypress swamps and creeks surrounded by oaks. In Georgia, I’ve blasted them in beaver ponds and probably could when I visit North Carolina each year if I weren’t so fixated on deer. It’s quite an experience to have a flock of woodies whistle down through the treetops first thing in the morning. Like above, the trick is figuring out where they want to be. I believe woodies - even more so than other waterfowl - wake up in the morning knowing exactly where they’re headed and little will sway the stubborn buggers, so not each puddle will hold them.

This all translates on public land, as well. You know, mottled and whistlers are largely unique to Florida, and many WMA’s share the same features of the private ranch I’ve hunted. And duck hunting is allowed on most WMA's during open seasons for deer, hogs, or small game hunts. Many more WMA's have an abundance of cypress swamp land that woodies call home. The Green Swamp, Chassahowitzka, and Lake Panasofkee are a trio of public lands where I’ve noticed a plenty of wood ducks recently. And since most folks are concentrating on deer and hogs, the potential is there for great shoots.

For the ultimate walk-in hunts on public land in the state, the STA’s are the cat’s meow. These lands are designed to clean runoff water before it reaches the Everglades and is loaded with a variety of ducks. If you live anywhere outside of South Florida, it is a haul to get down there, but it is worth a trip or two a year if you draw the tags.

The STA’s require a touch more planning than a few of the other options. Last year, we waded through the hydrilla to a line of cattails. We got a limit easily but ached like Hell after slogging through that mess, dragging weeds behind us like wet wedding dresses. This year we toted kayaks down which made it a lot easier to get hunters and gear in and out.

But that’s as complicated as these hunts should go. Typically we’ve hunted with few decoys, if any, in the case of wood ducks. If you’ve done your scouting and know – or reasonably hope – the birds will be there, tons of dekes are burdensome. A couple decoys and a Mojo Duck never hurt mallards or teal, but sea duck-like spreads of them are unreasonable. For blinds, just cut surrounding vegetation (check regulations on WMA’s!) and put those Boy Scout badges to work. In Florida, cutting long palm fronds and planting the stalks in the mush is a popular method of concealment. Of course, care must be taken on where you splash the birds; most of these joints are wader-friendly, but the deep spots may require a retriever - either by canine or by a fishing pole with a snatch of some variety.

Duck hunting, oftentimes, is what you want to make of it. As I said, I certainly enjoy hunting from a boat on the lake with buddies and hoping for a limit of teal and ringers. It does happen, especially early in the season and after cold fronts when new birds wing South. There is something to be said for going beyond this formula, though. Not everyone is gonna get excited about that one bird limit of mottled ducks. Or even three wood ducks.

But it’s reasonable to expect, with a little scouting and luck, to enjoy a day of waterfowling without worry about other hunters or hauling a boat around.

September Duck Stuff

The only flock of teal Saturday morning were blasted by another group of hunters that had set up super close. Since it’s early fall in Central Florida, huge bluewing numbers on Toho weren’t all that expected. The wood ducks held court.

We got our limit of eight woodies – and somehow managed not to get pictures of that. Two other boats of friends hunted nearby and experience solid action. It was scattered shooting but consistent. This appetizer September duck season was the first serious outing of the fall. But then again, duck hunting isn’t all that serious.









With the newborns, I couldn’t participate in any long range trips. Most of the guys headed south on Sunday to hunt Okeechobee and the STA’s. Word out of Uncle Joe’s in Moore Haven is the water levels were low prohibiting access to the back marshes. Bad news was, FWC officers told a buddy that the level would remain low while a part of the dike around the lake is being repaired. This could carry over into the regular season.

Also, remember to have functioning navigation lights when underway in the dark. The Man ticketed two boats on Toho Saturday morning. Of course, they had to run through their “How Dangerous It Is To Not Have Lights” bit. Nevermind the vessels in question navigated by spotlights and that the FWC boat had no lights itself. But they are safer than us. You aren’t going to avoid a ticket. Their budgets need the money.

The Early Teal and Wood Duck season ends Wednesday the 28th. The daily limit is four ducks, with no more than two wood ducks in your bag.