2001 Teal Season

Teal Season officially opened in Southeast Louisiana on Saturday, September 15th this year.  Joe Pecot and I were there, just as we have been for the past 15 years or so.  I keep losing count.  Teal Season is usually brutal because of the hot, muggy weather.  This year was a little different.  The temperature rose to the high 80's but it was not unbearable as in years past. Joe and I drove down to Venice, LA in the late afternoon on Friday.  We stayed at a trailer in Venice compliments of friends of Joe.  This trailer was very nice.  It was air-conditioned with a large screened in back porch. We arrived too late to go out into the marsh and check the hunting location or do any fishing, so we settled in for the night anticipating the early morning hunt.  We arose early, launched the boat, drove to the hunting location, set out the decoys and were ready to go just before sunrise around 6 a.m.  It was a pleasant morning with a light refreshing north breeze.  Perfect for hunting Teal. We had a great morning hunt shooting our limit of 4 each in the matter of a hour or so and at 7:15 we were headed out looking for redfish.  These are pictures I took of the morning hunt.

This is what the pond and "back" cut look like at dawn.  For this hunt we did not build any sort of blind, we simply landed the boat onto our "island" between the pond and the bayou.  I say "island" but it really isn't an island, especially Saturday morning because we were standing in knee-deep water.  Both pictures were from our hunting location with the pond to the left and the bayou to the right.  It's been one of our favorite spots for many years.  The water was so high, we had to stand.  Normally we sit on our shell buckets.  Since it took only an hour to shoot our limit, it wasn't bad at all.

Pictures of Joe across the bayou after collecting a teal.  Joe is such a great retriever, who needs a dog?

Three big Mottled ducks flying overhead.  We had several big ducks fly over and into the pond.  It was beautiful to watch them.  But it was Teal Season and these ducks were spared.  I didn't get any pictures of Teal.  The only shots they got were from my 12 gauge shotgun.

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