Delta Region Archives - Page 16 of 25

When you have a clean field like this one, you’ll need about 60 Avery Outdoors Full Body Specklebelly Goose decoys to hide three hunters. If you have an additional hunter, add two-dozen more specklebelly decoys to your spread when hunting a clean field.

Hunters welcomed!

December 1, 2012 John E. Phillips

Since geese are so destructive to agriculture and completely can destroy crops like winter wheat, most landowners welcome goose hunters with open arms. […]

One of the Rat Pack Duckers sets early morning decoys. Few moments are as exciting to waterfowl hunters as the sunrise breaking over a duck pond.

The Rat Pack — Young hunters ban together to hunt Mississippi’s public ducks

December 1, 2012 John J. Woods

In a state full of hunters dominated by buck fever, high-powered rifles, high-tech compound bows, food plots, rubs, scrapes, proprietary brands of camouflage, family deer camps, Bad Boy Buggies and big-buck bragging rights, would a group of young guns forego all that tradition to take up duck hunting? It makes one wonder just what they were thinking. […]

Muddy Water Camo out of Madison has exploded on the national waterfowl hunting scene.

The right camo

December 1, 2012 John J. Woods

What could be a more-natural surrounding sitting out in a flooded field duck hunting blind than water, mud, cattails and corn stalks? That’s what Steve Maloney thought after duck hunting in marshes and flooded fields for 30 years. […]

The right shot

December 1, 2012 John J. Woods

When I was a kid, my dad was a big-time duck hunter, but I was too young to go. […]

Howard Miller WMA

December 1, 2012 John J. Woods

Howard Miller was a natural born hunter and overall great conservationist. He served as a state wildlife commissioner for a number of years, and was highly respected for the wildlife support he gave to hunters in Mississippi. […]

Shipland WMA

December 1, 2012 John J. Woods

Ever heard of this wildlife management area? It is not a well-known public property in Issaquena County within barge-hearing distance of the Mississippi River. […]

Specklebellies are much easier to decoy and usually come in smaller flocks than snows and blues, so many mornings you’ll have more shooting, and your hunting will be much more productive if you target the specklebelly geese.

Speck Specialist — How to hunt Delta specklebellies

December 1, 2012 John E. Phillips

Goose hunting has never been a major part of the Mississippi waterfowling experience. There just haven’t been that many of the B-52-sized birds migrating through the state to attract that much attention. But that has changed in recent years, as agricultrual practices along the Mississippi Delta have changed. And, so while most Magnolia waterfowlers dream of that perfect flight of greenheads cupping into their spreads, Canton’s Jacob Sartain and his buddies have spent every available minute trying to outsmart wave after wave of geese. […]

Goose numbers are up in Canada, and this season we can expect to see a good amount of snows, blues and specklebellies along the Mississippi Delta.

Scouting critical to specklebelly goose hunting success

December 1, 2012 John E. Phillips

Sartain and his friends burn plenty of gas riding through the Mississippi counties in which they hunt, looking for large flocks of geese, especially, specklebellies. Once they find concentrations of birds, they start patterning the movements of the flock. […]

Bobby Cleveland and his 10-pound Chotard Lake Thanksgiving holiday bass from 2003.

My Thanksgiving trophy

November 21, 2012 Bobby Cleveland

All the days I spent in a deer stand around Thanksgiving, the holidays have only produced one trophy moment. And the trophy I nailed didn’t walk on dry land, it swam in an oxbow lake. […]

The weather should be kicking off some fine crappie fishing in Mississippi Delta lakes, but the fish have veteran anglers confounded.

Delta crappie confounding best perch jerkers

October 23, 2012 Bobby Cleveland

Fishing conditions could not be more ideal in the Delta. The temperatures have fallen to a more comfortable autumn range. Passing fronts are few and far between. […]

Baldwin's Tyler Nelson, aka "tnelson" arrowed this 160-class buck Oct. 9 on his girlfriend's family land in Marshall County.

Marshall County bean field produces 160-inch buck

October 15, 2012 Andy Crawford

Baldwin’s Tyler Nelson had been watching a Marshall County buck develop a massive set of antlers all summer long by using trail cameras set up on property owned by his girlfriend’s family.

“I’ve probably got 1,000 pictures of him over the summer,” Nelson said.

And the deer wasn’t a secret to his girlfriend’s family because it routinely visited a cut bean field every evening.

But Nelson took advantage of the fact that his girlfriend’s family didn’t have any big bow hunters, and now that monster buck — which has been greenscored at nearly 164 inches Pope & Young — to arrow the deer on Oct. 9. […]

Patrick McManus held off shooting a buck with his bow for years, waiting on a trophy to walk by. That patience paid off Oct. 3 when he arrowed this 160-class Claiborne County 9-point.

Claiborne County yields opening-week trophy buck

October 9, 2012 Cliff Covington

Having grown up hunting his family’s farm in rural Claiborne County, 23-year-old Patrick McManus is no stranger to massive whitetails. His walls are adorned with a number of these monsters, but none had been taken with stick and string.

An avid bowhunter since the young age of 12, McManus has harvested dozens of does with archery gear; however, due to an intense deer management program combined with his own personal choice to hold out for a mature whitetail, McManus had yet to realize his dream of taking a trophy buck with his bow. […]