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SLOW KICKOFF TO THE
WATERFOWL SEASON
By: Ron Wilson
December 13, 2008.... Hunting
Ducks this year has been for the birds, literally. The season
started off with a
bang as the local birds did a great job of raising young birds for us to
shoot. However, once the local birds had been killed off, the waterfowl
hunting got real tough.
The local refuges were lucky to have a
half bird per hunter after the season opener and some of them did far
worse than that after the first 3 shoot days.
On the west side during the first half of
the season we managed just 66 ducks for the blind and 40 of these birds
were killed on the waterfowl weekend opener. That means that for the
rest of the trips the blind was lucky if they killed a couple birds each
outing.
Now up in Oregon and Washington the
hunters were hammering them with easy limits of ducks and most of the
good hunters bagged limits of mallards. The 7 bird duck limit which
included two hen mallards up there helped some hunters limit out on
mallard ducks in 15 minutes on the good weather days and in just a few
hours on most others.
Stories of 25 to 50 mallards in a flock
decoying in to your set of blocks were common. To add insult to injury
they said all you had to do was give them a highball call and they would
set their wings and fall in.
 I
assume that you had to be in the right area also. I know in our area the
ducks might lock up, but by the time they got down after hearing all the
duck calls and seeing all the many variety of decoy spreads and getting
shot at, it was pretty hard to get any of them into your spread with
there feet down.
In the central valley to say that the
hunting here sucked would be an understatement. The large ducks,
mallards, sprig and widgeon have not showed up yet.
On December 3rd the first wave of
migrating ducks hit the central valley following the
San Joaquin River waterway up into the grasslands where the
waterfowl hunting has finally started to pay off once again.
The first flocks seem to have been mostly
teal, spoonies, divers and mallards in the mix in just about that order
as the number found in the sportsmen bag at the check-in stations.
With the upcoming storms hopefully the
large flocks of sprig and the mallards from Oregon and Washington will
finally come down and join us in time to be the main course for our
Christmas dinners.
The local Honkers have gotten even
smarter and are rafting up in the foothill ponds and closed zones and
staying away from the hunters.
A sample of 9 geese from our blind on the
west side include 5 specks, 1 emperor, 1 blue goose, 1 cackler, and 1
Ross goose. One heck of a mix, should of been a half dozen honkers in
the mix but someone got greedy.
I took some time to do a little dove and
pheasant hunting on the East Side of the valley on private
property with a friend Ken Moore of Ripon. Pheasant hunting was tough
but we managed 3 birds on an all day hunt. The doves were in flocks of
50 or so birds and we could not get within gun range of them.
I am busy stringing and painting more
decoys getting ready for the last month and a half of the waterfowl
season. Lets hope the weather and the waterfowl cooperate for all of us. |
