Heading to South East Illinois on the 8th

[HT]

Will be my first trip out that way hunting private and public land. Will be hunting Reed lake and surrounding private properties. Any advice on the hunting out there? How's the birds looking?

[SCH2Ofowler]

I talked a buddy in Southern Il. on Tuesday. Birds were pretty thin. Most everything frozen. They were expecting some better temps. towards the end of the week. Are you hunting reed lake or rend lake. I have never heard of reed lake.

[HT]

Rend lake is it.. sorry for the typo.. Just talked with my buddy up there and he said they just got a good push of birds the last couple of days...Hopefully the bird numbers would get alot better before we leave on the 8th.

[Mergie Master]

Talked to a guy in a club up there a few days ago. He said they been slaughtering the mallards until last week and all their birds left. Maybe the push will come for you in time. Good luck.

[Crafty]

Just got back Monday night from Horseshoe and had good hunting until Saturday when the storms came through. The hunting is alway better in the afternoon than in the morning.

[KneeKnocker]

Just got back Monday night from Horseshoe and had good hunting until Saturday when the storms came through. The hunting is alway better in the afternoon than in the morning.

Any pics?

[UMTduckhead]

how did it go?

[romeocadet08]

any update on the hunt?


Am headed out there toward the end of the week....might be a bad idea with this weather, but gonna give it go anyway. Will be hunting private land. Cypress Pond NWR/appleorchard NWR are holding a combined 78,000 mallets. Horseshoe Lake is holding less than 15,000. According to the refuge, the Cache is where its at. Said every bird they were holding is flying out in the morning and feeding in the cache... we'll give it a go

[HT]

Didn't do much at all.. Friday hunted a private slough.. they had a big freeze the night before and everything was frozen solid.. had a few fly byes.. but after we broke ice to set decoys.. it just froze back up on us.. tried to get up on some geese only to see about 50,000 birds hold up on a refuge.. I do have some pictures that i will post later of that... didn't pull the trigger any of friday..

Saturday woke up to 45 degree weather.. Decided to hunt the lake.. even though temps were going to be dropping at daylight and wind was picking up to 15 to 20.. overcast and cloudy.. hunted till 9 am.. started white capping bad.. had to leave. ended up with 3 blue bills, one golden eye, and one drake mallard..

Had some boys in our group that decided to go to an outfitter to hunt.. they ended up going to Pikes hunting club in marion,il.. Now they did real good.. killed 11 ducks (mixed bag of wigeon, mallards, and shovelers) also killed 3 Canadians.. Sitting in a heated blind, eating good grocery's, living the life.. all for 125 a person a day..

Going by what steve, terry, and a couple of the guides at Pikes were saying is that the lake is not holding alot of birds, mostly divers.. All of the birds that are still there are staying in the refuge, most have already left though.

We were all going to go to pikes on the last day, but one of the boys with us had something to come up and needed to get back home early. So we decided to pull out early sunday morning and get back to SC.

All in all it was an ok hunt.. We are already planning a trip back out there for next season hunting at pikes. Had an older fellow that came with us (65+ years old) that has been anywhere from Delaware and maryland to Texas/louisana/ and Arkansas and states in between hunting ducks, both public and with an outfitter. And this fellow talk very highly of the Pikes operation. So he convinced us to give it a shot next year as he said he is going back there and i rechon i'll be tagging along with him.

for those of you that are interested, i have Pike's number. They also have land in Arkansas (if i'm not mistaken, i think it is one of the guides that actually has the land). but anyway you call him up.. Tell them you want to hunt and were are the birds at.. and they'll tell you to either go to IL or ARK.

Oh yea, those boys do have some deer.. Big deer too and big bucks. I now know what a 225 pound doe looks like.. I am planning on going up there doing some public bow hunting at the end of next october.

[HT]

Hope you have a good trip/hunt romeo. i hunted the Cache about 7 or 8 years ago. Had a pretty good hunt back then.. Let us know how you did..