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SECOND
HALF DUCK OPENER IS HIT & MISS!
By
Ron Wilson
December
5, 2002.... The second half of the duck opener was good news and bad.
Some guys did great with easy early morning limits while the majority of
the hunters struggled just to bag a few birds.
I
got all kinds of stories on the success, and lack of, from area hunters.
I can take this information to the bank from some of my fellow hunters;
it’s that good, while others would be like gambling with the stock
market.
I
heard up north in the Butte area, one of the better hot spots for
shooting ducks in California, there were hardly any birds in the air,
compared to normal. That's understandable when you stop and think about
it. Right now there are thousands of acres of flooded rice fields above
Sacramento, these fields are scattered all over the valley floor running
well past Williams. A good percentage of this land is not hunted so
guess where the birds are rafting up!
On
the opposite end of the spectrum, was the Hollister Club in the
grasslands. There several members had mixed bag limits of ducks in
minutes Saturday!
At
the local reservoirs it was hit and miss, some hunters did OK while
others watched them hunt. Its all about presentation and calling when
your on the bigger bodies of water.
I
was out on the second half opener with a group of 5 hunters last
Saturday. We knocked down 5 mallards, 2 bluebills and one honker. Not
very good, but there were a lot of reasons why we did as poorly as we
did. It wasn't our shooting that caused us to have such a low score, it
was the comedy of errors that comes with hunting in a group.
One
of the worst things that can happen when group hunting is trying to get
the birds positioned where you want them to be when you shoot. Where
they want to be and where you want them is two different things!
We
had several bunches come within range, but not the way we wanted them.
So we would let them circle again, and many of them would land just
outside of the decoy spread. We were trying to get them to decoy just
right so we could kill a bunch of ducks at one time. Instead we should
have been settling for 2 or 3 ducks out of each flock!
That's
hunting and I know 3 of the 5 guys that were very happy with the second
half of the duck season opener because we didn't have to take any bird's
home to clean!
Sunday
was a blue bird day with not too many ducks flying, high or low. It
looks like we have killed most of the local ducks that were raised in
the area. We will have to wait for a storm to bring down the northern
birds. The duck hunting will once again get “hot” when that happens! |
