Rice Fields -- How long to thaw? -- Forecast Included

[mattuga]

These fields are in SEMO

The rice fields are about 6-8 inches deep and completely frozen right now. I assume the will stay almost completely frozen until Saturday when the thaw begins but really not much real melting until Sunday. My question is looking for experience to how long it will take to thaw the field out completely? How soon would it be easily huntable but maybe not completely thawed? Anybody have some input on hunting a frozen field as it thaws I'd be interested. If this is a silly question with too many variables that would be answer enough for me.


Forecast is as follows:

HI/LOW Temp

Wed 22/16 sunny
Thu 38/23 sunny
Fri 44/31 sunny
Sat 45/42 cloudy
Sun 57/50 cloudy
Mon 47/32 sunny
Tue 50/31 partly cloudy

 

[mizzippi jb]

Hunt em with help Saturday am...maybe pm, but probably sat am. By help I mean busting it up Friday. regardless, plan on Monday and Tuesday being as good as it's gonna get. ( I'm crossing my fingers too)

 

[roperdoc]

Frozen solid, or just on surface?
Any chance of pumping a little water on the field to speed things along?

 

[jeremyledford]

Get a four wheeler out there Saturday and see what you can do. And keep movement in the dekes even if it’s just a jerk cord. I like small spreads in the thaw. 4-10 decoys.

 

[mizzippi jb]

Frozen solid, or just on surface?
Any chance of pumping a little water on the field to speed things along?

First sentence says 6-8 inches of ice

 

[mattuga]

Frozen solid, no pumping available.

I will have the 4 wheeler so it sounds like we'll be breaking it up with that and moving the ice blocks. I'm not disappointed to hear the preference for small spreads even though I have a lot of new decoys. I like to get away from the metal pits and hunt from a layout if possible this late in season. On top of that I got a feeling there are dozens of decoys frozen into the field in front of the pits that would make for tricky 4 wheelin breakin the ice Gonna throw out a snow goose spread for the afternoon possibly, maybe do a field if we have any being used.

Thanks for the input. Ironically my daughter was born opening morning last November, so for the first day of duck season 2017 while the sun was rising and yall were shooting ducks I was holding my wife's hand while she was in labor! So I haven't been out west yet... I'll be happy with a few ducks and a few good retrieves from the ole lab.

 

[across the river]

Even though it isn't going to get above freezing on Wednesday I would still start pulling out ice chunks that day in and around the area you think you are going to want to hunt. Sledge hammer, 4 wheeler, chain saw, whatever you have to do to get some ice chunks out and bare ground showing. If you have several holes open in an around the spots the water will back fill the open spots and speed up the process. If you are waiting on 6 inches of solid ice to melt enough to break with the quad you may have to wait a while.

 

[hrstille]

Knock a good hole in that ice Friday morning. May require a chain saw but you'll be hunting Saturday by lunch

 

[jeremyledford]

I throw a 1/2 dz or dz specks out in the field behind me and sometimes add a single or a pair of snows for visability. Heck I think I kill more ducks sometimes because of them and often get a limit of specks

 

[mattuga]

I throw a 1/2 dz or dz specks out in the field behind me and sometimes add a single or a pair of snows for visability. Heck I think I kill more ducks sometimes because of them and often get a limit of specks

I've got spec shells and spec socks and we will mix some of them behind/around us if the setup if right on the levy.

For the ducks I'm going to have almost half butt feeders in a spread of 12-18 duck decoys. 3-5 of them will be on the jerk cord.

I am looking forward to an afternoon goose spread in a field if we have some traffic in numbers.

 

[mguthrie]

I've seen 6" of ice disappear over night with a 30 mph south wind

 

[Core Lokt]

So how did it go?

 

[mattuga]

Pretty slow but somehow I still consider it a useful trip. As suspected a member left his decoys out and were frozen in creating quite a pain to clean up. I probably won't join next year due to this being ridiculously common and the area is over hunted. After the wind came the guy had decoys all over the field with 2oz weights! At the end of our efforts we had the same ole looking spread with crappy beat up decoys like every other pit within 50 miles. I was told to not bring my layout blind which was the biggest mistake of the trip. I know the birds are pit shy by now and that is why I wanted to hunt from layout. We also wouldn't have had to mess with the crap decoy spreads in front of the blinds and could've used my decoys to make a very good looking spread, oh well!

Sunday morning we opened a small hole and I shot a snow goose that afternoon, dog made a good retrieve. Monday I killed a pintail drake and that was it for me. Tuesday all the ducks and geese were flying high, nothing wanted to work so I headed home after the morning hunt. The first day with all the fields frozen the birds were really liking the slackwater fields that had already thawed.

mguthrie was dead on, the 25 mph S wind cleared the fields overnight. Problem is, they took the birds with them.
Once the big south wind came through most of what we saw were high flyers, nothing wanted to work. This area has WAY too many pits and more get added every year. If the area has new birds it can be good but it simply doesn't hold birds well because nearly every field has a pit in it and there isn't a good sized refuge nearby.

All in all a good educational trip on how to spend my time when out there and to rethink what I'll do next year. Got to hang with some good guys and made a new contact.