Conservation Efforts

[BigBrother]

MattB, NC gets the shit shot out of it too.

The difference is that NC feeds the shit out of the ducks. Ever heard of bait stations?

**edit**

More factors to consider in NC:

Blinds are owned...minimum distance from hunting a blind...tons of privately held places that manage for ducks...and, they are in between us and the migration.

The duck hunting is far from superb there...it is a different ball game entirely.

[sprigdog]

You can over-pressure an area like Santee Coastal Reserve in a heartbeat.
.

i agree 100%. Apparently hunting once a week is what "the pro's" deem proper.

I just happen to disagree with the "pro's", i feel it could handle 2 day a week shoots. Most duck hunters wont have to wait 2-3 years to hunt it.

JAB asked about killing ducks on Public Land, thats my answer.

Rest days could be good in some areas, but not others. Lets look at Winyah/Delta...about the only birds that use public water on a regular basis is divers. I run those waters year round and have a clue. Hunting pressure doesnt keep those birds out the bay, but boat pressure. Fisherman and commercial crabbers spend alot of time running up birds everyday of the year the birds are here. I call crabbers my "bird dogs".

[Rubberhead*]

Remember guys, anytime you talk about reducing pressure or disturbance then somewhere, sometime, someone won't be allowed to go duck hunting when they want to and that someone may be you. This is always the hang-up.

It becomes easy to put a political wedge between folks by convincing one group they will be left out and that the other group will reap the benefits. Nothing will get accomplished if there is any possibility of such a political wedge.

Statewide afternoon closures are about the only thing I can think of that reduces the political wedge risk to almost nothing although folks that work shift may get riled.

I like the solitude and quiet of hunting afternoon waterfowl, but would be willing to give this up, especially in the later part of the season.

[duckman88]

Rest days will not make more ducks stay/come to SC.

We need more food and habitat.

There is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to wildlife issues. I think it will take years of intesive management if we want to have a consistantly good wintering duck population.

[Sportin' Woodies]

grow a shitload of food.

[DMP]

Rest days will not make more ducks stay/come to SC.

We need more food and habitat.

There is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to wildlife issues. I think it will take years of intesive management if we want to have a consistantly good wintering duck population.

Right on Duckman. Think about it, everywhere you can think of that has ducks has two things going and thats food and habitat. I have always heard about the glory days of SC duck hunting and correct me if im wrong but during those days there was a whole lot more food for ducks around and more habitat.
You talk about pressure but I saw more pressure in Arkansas than anywhere ive ever been but they have food everywhere so the ducks stay.

[willyworm]

No more tamies.

Planting oaks in the swamp would be great too, our kids would get to enjoy them.

If one could turn a profit growing rice around here, that would be awesome.The age of machinery made it to where you could grow rice just about anywhere, deeming our rice patties useless with machines. Damn pluff mud! I always said if I hit the lottery I'm gonna grow rice and hunt ducks the rest of my life.

Hunting on refuges would be a nice start. There are so many private and/or public lands that birds can find to access food and rest that we can't, so why not let us hunt the very land designed for sportsmen to enjoy. It may be a lost cause but that's how I feel.

[duckman88]

Yea willy out here it is river, river, private corn pond, lake, river, river, private corn pond. When you look at some place like Arkansas all of the habitat is the same. It is timber and fields both private and public. Some of the best hunting places in Arkansas are public areas. If the public land could match what the private land is currently doing we might have a chance.

[NO FLY ZONE]

Without food your wasting your time. In my back yard (lake Marion) we will never compete with the private duck ponds. Sure they provide food for the waterfowl , but it will never benefit the public hunter. You can watch birds leave the refuge and head straight for the private impoundments and back every day. With the aquatic nuisance program Lake Marion is and will always remain a dead lake.The fishing is gone to shit and the hunting. I can't speak for other parts of the state.

[Rubberhead*]

Re-establish hydrilla.

[Sparkleberry Runner]

Just drop the lake 15 foot from October thru Febuary. That will fix alot of problems

[BOGSTER]

grow a shitload of food.

ding ding fuckin ding.


when we had food, we had pressure, we had fishing boats, people riding all day, but we had a pile of ringnecks and widgeon.

back in the late 90s, when the hatchery at potato creek starting really getting pressured.....it still had ducks. a couple thousand ringnecks EVERYDAY.
they were shot, nearly,.....EVERYDAY.
They came back.....EVERYDAY.

I know the hydrilla train has lost its wheels, but put something out there they like to eat, and I bet they'll stop and hang for awhile before heading to florida.

[Swamp Rat]

Which all brings me back to my comment...

Forget hydrilla - as it has been declared a noxious weed by the Federal government, it has thus been mandated as weeda nongrata and must, by Federal regulation, be destroyed where possible. As JABIII said at the beginning of this... waste of bandwidth.

But, when we DID have it.... what did you shoot over it? Ringers, widgeon, gadwall, and a few other divers. Few mallards. Mallards really don't like it much. The DOMINANT bird you shot was the ringer. One of my personal favorites for fun shooting. Ringers migrate here, and stay when they have food and reduced pressure. Or they move on south (Florida, mostly).

I am by no means an expert, but I think it would be easier to manage for what we DO get passing through with some degree of regularity than what we hope to get to come here if conditions north and west of us are "right".

I think that it would be extremely nice to have a wider array of managed public impoundments set up for ducks... buy or lease farm land, make fields that are appropriate and make them into flooded grain impoundments. Then, you won't have to limit yourself to getting a draw at "premium" WMA hunts like the Cape or such every 2-3 years...

Make enough of them, and you spread the pressure out. The key would be to establish them, NOT hunt them for a few years, and THEN let folks shoot them once a week.

I've seen ringers pile into a SMALL impoundment with flooded millet... by the hundreds. I would get up in the morning for that.

And NONE of this would be cheap. The price tag would stagger the mind.

[Mergie Master]

our governor hunts (tamies) and that hasnt seemed to help the DNR or anyone else, for that matter....

Yeah but he was hunting in Argentina mostly. He bagged one too.

[BOGSTER]

good post Rat.

Florida gets ducks......lots.

I believe we can stop some with native vegetation.

We have no ducks.

we do have roughly 74k acres of prime habitat centrally located that is essentially void of anything for waterfowl to eat.

wouldn't it be awesome if S-C would only spray in areas near the south end of moultrie as needed, instead of spraying all the way up to lowfalls?

[DUCKS136]

yea that would be nice to have areas designated for hydrilla and spray in areas that have heavy boat traffic

[Swamp Rat]

You will never see SC DNR allow any hydrilla on any public impoundment.

The End.

[Mergie Master]

I have always heard about the glory days of SC duck hunting and correct me if im wrong but during those days there was a whole lot more food for duck

Yep. And take my word for it, a goodly portion of that 'food' wasn't natural, it was poured out of a bag. I'd wager probably several tons of corn was dispensed each season. And there were probably as many sly tricks to dumping corn unnoticed as there were people who dumped it. I've seen and heard of some really ingenious ways to bait without getting caught.

Back in those days the GW's didn't put as much effort into catching the baiters as they do now. From conversations I had with friends that were DNR law enforcement the general consensus in the dept was that since DNR wasn't getting any funding for enforcing federal migratory bird laws they didn't put as much time and effort into the pursuit of cheaters. I think that changed some years back and fed money was introduced.

The age of machinery made it to where you could grow rice just about anywhere, deeming our rice patties useless with machines. Damn pluff mud!

That's the Catch 22 of South Carolina rice growing. It's that very pluff mud that made SC rice so good. Once considered the best rice in the world. Without the pluff mud rice grown here is just so much more rice. With it the rice became Carolina Gold. Actually some of our seed rice was carried to Arkansas and that's what started the rice industry out there. But the only place it can be grown that gives it the edge over any other rice is in the South Carolina pluff mud. Or so I've read.

[DMP]

Just a thought but every summer when the lakes are down why not implement some kind of plan to spread millet on the banks and coves of the lakes across the state. Im not talking about in front of someones house but everywhere else. I realize millet will want last to long but its a start towards getting more food across the state for ducks.

[millero]

tie weights to their feet so they cant fly as high.