God I hate that place. lol Here's a cool story. Used to hunt one hole in particular at Lac pretty hard back in college. Always a few groups racing to get to it. Me and 5 buds (had a plan to put out a big spread, about 12 dozen dekes) got there first, set up (decoys out, mojos on the poles but not running, pirogues brushed up for us to stand in while hunting, dog stand with the dog already on it, etc.) Well we had left our guns back in the big boat, so after guarding our spot until almost daylight we walked back to grab the guns (100 yds or so). Saw other groups coming in to hunt (pretty much 1 trail in & 1 out) and politely showed them where we had already set up (3 groups can safely hunt these ponds, have seen 5 before though) so they went a little further from us, no biggie. We're gone 5, maybe 10 minutes and make a short walk back to our spot, and sure enough, 2 cats were standing in our pirogues ,head lights on, had went and turned on our mojos, and were calling at ducks standing right beside our retriever... keep in mind it's just getting legal shooting time, and we just worked our balls off hauling decoys and what not. So we nicely ask *** is going on here, and they immediately start crawfishin. I'm a very non confrontational kinda guy but my buds are 180 opposites (6 of us, 2 of them). One of the guys was a good bit too big to be walking in the marsh and apparently fell in a few times just getting to our spot. So they play that card and say they can't walk any further/back because big guy will probably die. So I offer them to take my pirogue and go paddle themselves somewhere else. So by this time 10 minutes had passed and ducks are everywhere. We finally say screw it and just hide them right next to us for the daylight flight, and will just move them when it slows. By this time they feel pretty bad/stupid, and we give them the whole spill about we will call the shot, put your calls up, don't shoot our dekes, don't shoot over the dog etc. They are very polite and agree to everything. So we got 8 dudes spread out across the bank. We finally apologize for being dckheads to them and load our guns (got heated enough at first to where I made everyone unload, just in case lol). As soon as the first few groups came in it was alllll good. We ended up letting them hunt the entire morning with us, and come to find out they were pretty cool dudes that were just new to ducks. Didn't really know what was cool to do and what was not. Gave em the ol' public land do's & don'ts and they asked all kinds of questions about just ducks in general. It was actually kinda fun sharing knowledge and theories with people that had minimum experience. They were amazed by the dog, how well the ducks responded to our calling (isn't even that great but made me feel cool) and how we could manipulate the large spread to get them in better. 8 limits later everybody was buddy buddy lol. and they got to take home 2 limits of ringers, teal, and spoons lol. After that we ended up almost having 6 limits of mallards and pins, with a few greys. Annnnd that was the last time I hunted public. Or at least Lac & Sabine.
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