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AWESOME DUCK OPENER!
By: Ron Wilson
October 31, 2002.... Last
Saturday, the opening weekend of duck hunting was another successful one
for most
hunters who had good spots or were lucky enough to get drawn for a
reservation on the local refugees. You also had to know what you were
doing!
The limits varied from
mallards and pintail to teal, spoonies, widgeon and gadwall or a dukes
mixture of whatever flied died!
Water was somewhat of a
problem as there was not enough in some of the refugees for the hunters
to hunt over, and I know it was a big problem where I hunted, as someone
pulled the boards and let the water out of the pond I wanted to shoot
over! The only birds that liked the area were black ibis and a few teal
and spoonies. The good flock of mallards that had been staying, left for
deeper water!
Salt slough shot well for
those that braved the shallow water conditions and either spent the
night on the bank up by the stream or got up really early to go secure
the spot they wanted to hunt.
The reservoirs shot pretty
bad on the opener, however there is always an exception to the rule as
some hunters managed to have a fair shoot.
The grasslands, while hot on
the opener really cooled off on Sunday as the bird kill average fell off
sharply. Meanwhile the reservoir action picked up. I think the cool
breeze from the delta had something to do with this.
Sunday
I went hunting with a couple friends. I was threatened with death if I
wrote about where and what we were doing. Obviously I opted to kind of
keep quite about it, but if a picture is worth a thousand words then the
story is with me in the picture holding some nice ducks! We had a great
shoot and the last flock of mallards that came in were met with a volley
that dropped 6 drakes and a hen to finish off our days hunt. My new nickname
is hen killer and I had to clean the birds! I am looking forward to next
weekends duck hunting already.
For refuge reports, Tim Paes
has added a  nice waterfowl reports link on our homepage. Just a couple
clicks and you will be able to see how many hunters hunted on the
waterfowl refugees up and down the state and how well they did. As a
rule of thumb, usually if a wildlife area has a bird and a half to 2
bird average that means that the hard core duck hunters are bagging good
limits of birds! You might want to keep an eye on it also as the reports
usually show you just where the ducks are resting up and feeding in the
state and it could give you a general idea when they will show up where
you hunt!
Rule of thumb for the
grasslands is a good storm for a few birds to move through and then they
will show up in force come January! Good luck and remember that dam
steel shot just doesn't work good once the birds get past 40 yards!
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