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GOOD YEAR, BUT QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE FUTURE
By: Ron Wilson
January 30, 2008.... This waterfowl
season was very unusual to say the least. There was great weather on the
east side of the valley for hunting with very little fog to deal with
this year. This was not good news for the grassland hunters who really
like the fog. The ducks that feed when the fog sets in get disorientated
and fly where they normal would not. That's when they get shot!
The season started off pretty good on the
east side of the valley with mostly local birds being harvested,
Canadian Geese (honkers), mallards, gads, teal, and the old standby a
spoonbill duck or two.
Then a couple weeks into the season here
comes lots of Sprig, Widgeon, Canvasback ducks and then a few snows and
White Front geese. These birds usually don’t show up until December at
the earliest.
I hunted more days this year than I ever
had the opportunity to before, being retired enabled me to stay outdoors
and watch for the waterfowl migration. From
Thanksgiving until the end of the waterfowl season I only missed
two days hunting.
The mass migration was never seen by me
on the Easy side of the valley, oh we saw a migration but the birds were
coming from everywhere north to south, south to north, there were no
flight after flight of ducks heading south like the old days. It seems
that man has changed the east side of the valley flyway by changing the
farming practices.
 The
rice fields around Escalon have all but disappeared. The foothills on
the east side of the valley that used to be planted with hay and other
grains have now been replaced. The miles and miles of winter vernal
pools that held shrimp and other critters for the ducks and geese to eat
have disappeared.
The pond we hunted was better than we
expected and produced lots of specks and honkers, limits of sprig and
cans almost daily with a wide variety of other waterfowl that came
through.
While our objective in duck hunting is to
have them decoy in and shoot them with feet hanging, most of the time
this year it didn’t happen as often as we would of liked it to.
The sprig worked in singles and small
groups just fine but the big flocks didn’t want anything to do with us.
We had a few flocks decoy in within 20 yards but that was not the norm.
The canvasbacks were all passing shots as those flying bullets just love
to fly and all they did was buzz the decoy spread and if they came close
enough you had to be ready to take them or else just watch them fly off
on to new water.
We were disappointed with the mallard
kill this year even though the duck numbers were up our bird kill was
down for them this year.
The last couple weeks of the season we
had killer weather and anybody who had a decent place to plop there
butts down to hunt killed them.
One can only guess what next year will
bring for the hunters. The goose outlook is not good as EBMUD had a
kill at Lake Camanche with over 500 honkers killed there on consignment
so I heard. It must be nice to be
able to get paid to hunt. Last year after the season closed I heard that
150 honkers were killed at Modesto Reservoir.
With the coming honker hatching the next
couple months I hear that the eggs will be sprayed so they won’t hatch
or gathered by people. I can’t help but wonder how many mallard eggs
will be taken or destroyed because of the goose situation.
With man encroaching on the wildlife and
waterfowl habitat and then destroying it as he sees fit to meet his own
needs, its not a pretty picture for the dwindling number of hunters and
water fowlers in
California. |
