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                                                             There is nothing better after making a long car trip to Chauvin, LA than pulling into the hunting lodge at                                                                      Ducks Plus and being greeted by Pete Petrie, his wife Donna, and a hot meal.  After a big dinner and a                                                                   couple of drinks, sleep comes very easy in the cozy lodge at Ducks Plus.  Four AM comes early, but                                                                         luckily all of the transportation to the blinds is done with John boats that have powerful mud buddy or                                                                         ProDrive motors, so it doesn’t take much effort on the hunters’ parts to get to the hunting grounds.  It is                                                                     hard to describe the conditions for hunting in the bayous and marshes of Louisiana without seeing it in                                                                     person.  The hunting style is very similar to hunting the marshes of South Carolina except where we have                                                                 6-8 foot tides every 6 hours, Louisiana has 1-2 foot tides every 12 hours.  The puddle ducks that frequent                                                                 the marshes and backwater potholes come to this area because of the slack tides and shallow water.                                                                     The conditions allow for the puddle ducks to feed on the flats because the water is so shallow thus making                                                                it easier to target species of ducks that you may not be used to seeing in marsh settings. 
My first trip to Ducks Plus came in early December, 19th through the 21st to be exact.  The tide was not particularly cooperative for hunting the saltwater marshes, so the first morning we ventured up the road by truck about 10 minutes to hunt another section that Pete leases called the Upper Bayou.  This section was diked off many years ago for hurricane protection so it created non-tidal brackish water habitat.  The area holds many species of ducks similar to the salt marshes.  The three of us in my blind had hot and heavy shooting for the first couple of hours killing 12 green winged teal, 1 bluebill, and 1 mottled duck (needless to say we missed a few along the way!).  All of the hunters seemed to have pretty similar shooting as well the first morning.  As the morning drew on the shooting slowed some so we all made the decision to back out of the Upper Bayou in case we needed to hunt it again that trip.  Lunch is always a Cajun feast as well at Ducks Plus generally being some dish of Cajun rice & beans or Jambalaya.  Although you technically are paying to duck hunt with Pete, the fishing is just as good as the duck hunting.  Basically you get all of the feeling of being on a cast and blast trip while only paying for the blast portion.  Red drum, black drum, and sheep head can be caught in great numbers right off of the dock at the hunting lodge (if you catch some keepers then it also turns into dinner by the hands of Pete and believe me, Pete knows his way around a fish fryer!!). 
The second and third days of hunting we were able to go straight from the dock at the lodge and travel out                                                          into the salt marshes to hunt the pothole blinds.  I don’t know exactly how many blinds Pete has set up, but                                                               I would venture to say it is between 30 and 40.  Needless to say you do not have to hunt the same place                                                               more than once unless you really want to.  I hunted by myself the second day and ended up with 2 mallards,                                                            1 drake pintail, 1 green winged teal, and 2 gadwall.  I was very pleased with the second day of hunting,                                                                 and the rest of the hunters seemed to have similar success to me with the prize being a total of 4 drake                                                             pintails taken that day.  For my group, the third day was going to be a quicker hunt since we decided to                                                                  make the trip back to Charleston, SC on the same day.  I again hunted by myself and by 9am I had 1                                                                  widgeon, 1 gadwall, 1 green-winged teal, and a stray ruddy duck in the bag, and I decided to call it a                                                                        day.  I knew that I would be back, so I decided it was ok to leave some ducks for that trip.
My next trip to Ducks Plus came later in the season, January 13th through the 15th.  The conditions were eerily similar to the first trip with the tide not being completely right to hunt the salt marshes.  These conditions make for tough hunting, but it is also quite rewarding when you have a good day knowing that you earned it.  We hunted the Upper Bayou each of the three mornings, and we hunted the salt marshes the                                                                           second and third afternoon.  The first morning came with fast and furious diver duck shooting.  An                                                                              assortment of bluebills, ringnecks, redheads, and shovelers frequented the hunting grounds all morning                                                                    with an occasional gadwall, mottled duck, and teal mixed in.  All of the ten hunters killed a mixed bag                                                                        limit that morning and got plenty of shooting to satisfy their hunting desires for the first day.  The second                                                                   day brought similar bag limits as well in the Upper Bayou.  Pete’s Daddy’s Blind, as they call it, was                                                                          where we hunted which was very hot the second morning.  We killed mottled ducks, bluebills, ringnecks,                                                                   and finished the morning with a beautiful drake pintail that was brought back to Charleston to be                                                                                mounted.  The afternoon hunting was a little bit slow, but the majority of the hunters were able to finish                                                                       off their limits in the salt marshes killing teal, mottled ducks, and gadwall.  Needless to say, everyone                                                                        was pretty satisfied with the second day’s hunting as well.  The third day in the Upper Bayou was a little slower for us but we were still able to kill a variety of ducks and get two thirds of our limit.  As my hunting partner will tell you, we managed to have a group of 30 blue winged teal drop in on our heads and all 30 left, so we definitely had our                                                                      opportunities.  We again chose to make the trip back to Charleston on the third day, so we left                                                                           shortly after lunch.  I called Pete later that night to get a report on the afternoon hunt, and I will tell                                                                               you I regretted hearing their success because it made me wish we had stayed.  All of the hunters                                                                           seemed to do very well in the salt marshes killing mallards, pintails, gadwall, and teal. 
There is no doubt that duck hunting is the main attraction at Ducks Plus, but the fishing,                                                                                    cooking, and storytelling that goes along with the duck hunting makes for an extremely memorable                                                                           trip and a truly enjoyable experience.  Pete, Donna, and the guides Glenn, Dustin, Kenny, and                                                                               Lucky make sure that you never leave Louisiana without plenty of stories and plenty of laughs.                                                                             After three total trips down to Ducks Plus, I now consider everyone associated with the operation a                                                                           friend, and I look forward to going back in the future. 





DUCKS PLUS HUNTING LODGE- CHAUVIN, LA