Louisiana Flyway Lodge in Kaplan, LA

For more than a century, ducks and geese migrating from Canada and the central United States have poured into Southwest Louisiana to gorge themselves on surplus rice. This is the Louisiana Flyway. Under its skies lies a half a million acres of harvest spillings and naturally downed grain. Over it, migrating waterfowl have navigated the same air corridors for generations. Like Salmon of the skies, they return year after year to the same field, in the same family groupings, for the same waiting feast. How they manage this no one knows for sure. Maybe it's in their genes. Maybe they smell the feed on the air. Maybe it's as simple as following their leaders. Maybe they have goose GPS. Whatever it is, tradition rules. The Louisiana Flyway is a well-kept secret that has been producing birds for generations of hunters. Each year, over fifty million waterfowl arrive here in a hunger-frenzy, competing for landing space.

THE HUNT
We hunt dabbling ducks and geese under natural crop cover in comfortable pit blinds sunken into rice field levees. Transportation is by truck and/or four wheeler along farm roads, levees, and rice felds to the blind. We shoot ducks and geese usually out of combination duck-goose blinds, although separate hunting can be arranged. Because we control the flooding on each side of the blind, we can attract a variety of species. It is not unusual to bag assorted species. All our guides are proficient callers of ducks and geese. The local favorite is Specklebelly (or white-fronted) Goose, which works over decoys beautifully and, as we say around here "takes the call good."

At Louisiana Flyway Lodge our guides were not only born to hunt, some were born hunting. All live nearby and speak Cajun French, Cajun English, Cajun Duck, and Cajun Goose, but not necessarily in that order. Some are supposed to have webbed feet, but we can't guarantee it. On a typical hunt morning, if there is such a thing, they will wake you up with coffee, join you for a short breakfast snack, then lead you to your blind for some early action, usually zooming teal, love-lost mallard drakes coming in on the hen call, and/or B-52 sized geese lumbering overhead in the legal pre-dawn. After sunrise restores to us the world we recognize, just about anything that loves shallow water (3 inches to a foot) might fly in. We get mallards, pintail, mottled ducks, widgeon, greys, teal, shovelers, and assorted scaup. Our geese are Specklebellies, Blues, and Snows, with an occasional Ross' Goose mixed in with the Snows. We hunt our blinds mornings only, to preserve the roosts and reserves, but hunt rag spreads all day, by arrangement. Ask if you can join one in the afternoon.

THE GEOGRAPHY
Cajuns are known around the world for their hospitality. This could be the real reason why ducks and geese choose to stop and winter here, at the bottom of the country, in coastal Southwest Louisiana. Could it be that they prefer to linger here because the rest of the trip will be across a long stretch of saltwater. Are they fattening up for the flight? The Louisiana Flyway Lodge is located fifteen miles from the Gulf of Mexico, as the duck flies. Next stop is Mexico...for you birds who choose to fly on.

THE TERRAIN
The first Cajuns to arrive here found freshwater marsh and wetland prairie to homestead. From the 1880's on, it was converted to flooded rice fields via a vast system of canals to drain, contain and control floodwaters. Today, deep-water wells supply the flow more efficiently (the cultivation of rice requires precision flooding and drainage). Of course, this is perfect for waterfowl, especially when there's extra grain to be had in the dabbling. We Cajuns are frugal people. It's not in our nature to waste, especially food. So it does us much good to know that ducks and geese eat what we spill. We know them to be true conservationists and natural ecologists: they convert energy into protein within their bodies, which is how we receive and give thanks for them as they fall from the skies around The Louisiana Flyway Lodge.