Butler Island Quoata Hunts

[DRBugman85]

Natural grasses in a managed brackish water environment will do just as good or out produce planted crop. That is not the issue. I have not been to this one to see what is going on. But my recommendation would be to contact the manager and have him take you around the property and explain his practices. If this doesn’t please you go to their superiors and ask for a change. But you better have studied what you are talking about so that you can have a valid argument, not a hey I saw a corn pond holding ducks in the mid state or a rice field in Arkansas.

Back in the 70s NATURAL GRASSES was all that grew in Butler,Retts & Champeny and THE WATERFOWL were THICK, and all but Butler Islands was open Wednesday to Sundays and Butler had Saturday management hunts and had good Numbers All On NATURAL GRASSES.But pressure from the hordes of INTERNET hunters that post on social media sites got every DUCK COMMANDER want to be,s hunting a very small WMA that can not hold duck's from the PRESSURE of being chased 7 days a week, if mommy duck don't migrate back here baby ducks don't return either that's exactly what's happened the duck hunting in Southeast Georgia. And BAD MANAGEMENT DID THE REST....I M O after hunting in coastal Georgia sense 1962 I've seen the fall of what once was a DUCK Mecca to a sightseeing boat ride.

 

[across the river]

Back in the 70s NATURAL GRASSES was all that grew in Butler,Retts & Champeny and THE WATERFOWL were THICK, and all but Butler Islands was open Wednesday to Sundays and Butler had Saturday management hunts and had good Numbers All On NATURAL GRASSES.But pressure from the hordes of INTERNET hunters that post on social media sites got every DUCK COMMANDER want to be,s hunting a very small WMA that can not hold duck's from the PRESSURE of being chased 7 days a week, if mommy duck don't migrate back here baby ducks don't return either that's exactly what's happened the duck hunting in Southeast Georgia. And BAD MANAGEMENT DID THE REST....I M O after hunting in coastal Georgia sense 1962 I've seen the fall of what once was a DUCK Mecca to a sightseeing boat ride.

People don't understand that much of the issues they see on public land are a result of over pressure rather than lack of food. I don't care if you are talking about Butler Island, Altamaha, Clarks Hill, Seminole, Juliette, or any other public body of water, they all have essentially the same problem, and that is over pressuring of the birds. I hunted the majority of the places mentioned above twenty years ago, and while they were people hunting here an there, it was nothing like it is now. Birds had an opportunity to land and hang out a few days with out being bothered all that much. Even on days people were hunting they still had somewhere to go on the place that they could light and hang out without being bothered. You could actually find birds in spot one weekend, and many times there would be birds in the same spot or area days later. It wasn't uncommon at time to find hundreds of birds stack up in a place, as they had built up numbers over a matter of days or even weeks. When given the opportunity to sit a while, they imprinted on the spot and would return the next year, the year after that, and so on. The problem now is birds don't have the opportunity to sit for any length of time on public water in Georgia. The birds now no sooner have there feet hit the water than someone runs them back up, shoots at them, etc.... Not only does it affect the spot itself, but it reduces the number of birds than come to a general area.

It isn't the food. If you want evidence of this all you have to do is ride all day on many of this lakes with grass and other "food" to not see anything, and then ride a few miles up the road and see more ducks than you saw on the entire lake sitting on a private pond, impoundment, refuge, or park. I don't care if every impoundment near Darien was full of planted corn, it wouldn't matter because of the pressure. The way to improve these places is to reduce the number of hunters and the number of days people can hunt them. They won't do that, because you have people complaining about not having anywhere to hunt and spending years worth of quota points to hunt this poor hunts everyone is fussing about.