California Refuge Draws (2024)

Oldtool said:

We are going to scout tomorrow . Looking forward to being out looking around. If nothing else the marsh should be pretty healthy. I think they are holding back some of their water allotments if I read it right. . So they can flood fresh spots as the season goes. plenty of ducks but lot of water is always an interesting combo!!! Good luck all.

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im just going to shoot mendota at my usual spots, but since i had to work the night before i wont use my resi, ill just go arond 1400 for evening hunt.
maybe ill try to jump shoot some moorhens if its not to crowded while waiting for evening flight and scout some new sites then....

We had one of the best openers in recent memory at San Jac. We had been scouting all week and didn't think the area was holding many birds. Before shoot time the birds started coming in like crazy, and continued until 11am. Limits all around, 25 birds total checked in, 14 Mallards (10 Drakes), 10 Green Wings, and of course 1 Spoony. 3 birds were unrecovered. Real fun day!!

Wow. Now that’s a nice opening hunt !!!! Congrats. We didn’t do quite as well . We struggled with duck diversity . We scouted Friday and pretty much new what we we’re up against. Thousands of pintail and spoons. One we could only get 1 each the other we hoped not to get. Lots of speckle belly geese out there as well . I spent most of my morning making sure our crew shot a nice drake pintail and only one nice drake pintail. In that we did succeed. It was quite challenging. Limited on pintail. Passed on teal and spoons hoping for a speck or widgeon ,or anything. After it got truly slow we started to take a mix of cinnamon and green wings . It was a great day to teach my niece and nephew about cover concealment decoys spreads and duck identification lol. We averaged 4.5 birds between us. Sunday was a building storm all day and far more intense than advertised. The duck diversity was still lacking and the teal were far less. We still got our pintails and added in some Nice specks. Throw in a few teal and a couple spoons and we had a 5 bird average. Very Challenging hunt on a beautiful wet and windy day. Great opening weekend . Had some friends hunt a good grasslands refuge and did awful fired three shots between two very good waterfowl hunters. They had some friends at another grasslands refuge that limited on teal easily . Happy duck season everyone. Hope some others had a great hunt as well. I was real happy with ours . thankful to be out there with my wife and family .we had a great time . Thankful to be passing these experiences on to my family who is also getting their kids involved into it

Oldtool said:

Wow. Now that’s a nice opening hunt !!!! Congrats. We didn’t do quite as well . We struggled with duck diversity . We scouted Friday and pretty much new what we we’re up against. Thousands of pintail and spoons. One we could only get 1 each the other we hoped not to get. Lots of speckle belly geese out there as well . I spent most of my morning making sure our crew shot a nice drake pintail and only one nice drake pintail. In that we did succeed. It was quite challenging. Limited on pintail. Passed on teal and spoons hoping for a speck or widgeon ,or anything. After it got truly slow we started to take a mix of cinnamon and green wings . It was a great day to teach my niece and nephew about cover concealment decoys spreads and duck identification lol. We averaged 4.5 birds between us. Sunday was a building storm all day and far more intense than advertised. The duck diversity was still lacking and the teal were far less. We still got our pintails and added in some Nice specks. Throw in a few teal and a couple spoons and we had a 5 bird average. Very Challenging hunt on a beautiful wet and windy day. Great opening weekend . Had some friends hunt a good grasslands refuge and did awful fired three shots between two very good waterfowl hunters. They had some friends at another grasslands refuge that limited on teal easily . Happy duck season everyone. Hope some others had a great hunt as well. I was real happy with ours . thankful to be out there with my wife and family .we had a great time . Thankful to be passing these experiences on to my family who is also getting their kids involved into it

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Sounds like you had a great opener, it's always more about the folks you get to hunt with than the number of birds you shoot, especially when you get the youngsters involved!!

Well we didn't get any ducks but took all the kids and had a lot of fun anyways not much was flying and we ended up only hunting in the evening we weren't able to get out for the morning I think as it cools off it'll get better seemed like there was only the ducks that typically hold in that preserve nothing new from migrations yet I didn't even see any more hens to go take shots at.

Oldtool said:

Talking to others the ducks are in some places and completely absent in others . I like years like this. I will focus on a couple of big free roam areas. I will Start out going light till I start to get an idea of where they want to be. Good habitat means lots of room for ducks to roam. It really favors the people who like to scout be patient etc. my kind of year . Saturday afternoon up north was pretty crappy. Warm , they were burning rice. Not a lot flying for us either. Sunday afternoon was the exact opposite . Wet and breezy and definitely a better flight . Excited that our season is here .

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question, i got resi for gadwall and losbanos on same day, ive been to banos and like it, is gadwall any good?