Various Reports

[JABIII]

Prospects brighten for duck hunters
After poor first split, conditions appear favorable for good second.
December 19, 2004

From Staff Reports

The duck hunting season in Louisiana didn't exactly get off to a great start. In fact, local hunter Eli Haydel said it was the worst opening split he's ever seen across the state.

"The count on the coast was the lowest ever," said Haydel, a national duck calling champion and founder of Haydel's Game Calls, Inc. "During the first split it wasn't cold enough up north. The ducks were still in Canada."

But there is hope for state hunters. The second split opened Saturday, and Haydel said things are looking good.

"In the last few days the ducks have been really coming in," said Haydel from his hunting camp near Lake Charles. "On the 16th and 17th (of December) all of north Louisiana was covered. The ducks were just everywhere, and they've worked their way down to the coast.

"On the 17th my son Kelly was in the marsh and he said he's never seen that many ducks in the marsh."

Haydel also said the weather pattern across the U.S. looks favorable.

"I've been watching the national weather map, and we've got some cold fronts yet to come which will push (the ducks) down even more," he said. "The weather conditions remind me of '99-2000 which was a bumper season. I'm really looking forward to the second split. The best is yet to come."

According to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the first split began well but only in a few areas did the success last more than a couple of weeks.

Hunter reports from most of the coastal zone were positive just after the opening, but that appeared related to some ideal weather patterns just prior to and during opening weekend, according to an LDWF release. Similarly, openings for many in the more northern sectors of the state were good early but faded.

The LDWF agreed with Haydel that weather conditions were poor during the first split.

Overall, duck and goose hunting success during the first split was observed as poor and likely similar to that of last year. Hunters consistently reported very few mallards in the bag, but teal, shovelers, wood ducks and ring-necks did provide some good local shooting.

"I think many duck hunters are getting tired of waterfowl managers pointing to the weather patterns as the primary reason for their lack of success," said Robert Helm, LDWF Waterfowl Program manager. "There are many factors that affect migration patterns of ducks, but annually, harsh weather to the north and good habitat conditions here (in Louisiana) are the keys that lead to high hunter success. This has not been a normal fall in any sense."

Some northern states ended their duck hunting seasons several weeks ago still waiting for cold weather to push birds south to them out of prairie Canada.

This has been one of the mildest falls on record in most of the 14 states of the Mississippi Flyway. In addition to the heat in Louisiana, it has been very wet. For November, statewide precipitation averaged more than nine inches, four inches above normal and this was the fifth wettest November in more than 100 years.

This has created an abundance of wetland habitat for waterfowl in flooded agriculture lands as well as backwater flooding, but this can make hunting difficult in some areas.

Those hunters that can adjust to these changing conditions should be more successful as the season progresses. These wet conditions extend throughout Louisiana northward into mid-latitude states.

The low temperatures predicted for the next few days will be the coldest of the year, so far and will move waterfowl into the state.

"This front is not as severe or long lasting as we would like, but it sure is much better than what we have had to date," Helm said.

Results of waterfowl surveys that were conducted by the department earlier this month became available just prior to the second split opener.

Survey results along with U.S. weather maps of the last two months can be viewed on the LDWF web site at www.wlf.louisiana.gov. Once there click on "Hunting Information" then "Waterfowl Population Estimates."

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/...412190315/1044

[JABIII]

Where Were The Fall Flights?

Outdoors with Bill Wehrle, C-T outdoor sports editor

Missouri's 60-day 2004 duck season is winding down and will officially end on December 28, although many area waterfowlers feel it's almost over already.

For a lot of north Missouri duck hunters, it never really got started and many are wondering "Where were the fall flights?"

In a usual duck season hunters around here can expect two or three and possibly more "flight days", days when high flocks of V formation migrating ducks come spiraling down into this area to rest and fill up on duck food before going on south when they are finally frozen out. Normally there's a big flight day around the 1st of November, another one close to Veteran's Day and/or the start of deer season, a third around Thanksgiving, and in some years maybe even another one in early December. Area waterfowlers have come to expect these flights to bring in northern mallards to supplement and/or replace the early migrants that have been here for a couple months and are about to leave, and to provide some days of red hot shooting.

This year none of these flights materialized. There have been a few times when area hunters thought they might have seen some flight ducks, but not in the usual large numbers. Even though we are now near the end of 2004's season and probably also about to freeze-up for this year, there never has been any big influx of mallards, our favorite duck.

[JABIII]

'Ducks are here' for second split

Coco says waterfowlmoving in

By JOE MACALUSO

Most Louisiana duck hunters know Warren Coco.
He's the Go-Devil man, the guy who put small horsepower engines on a straight shaft with a propeller to make it easier to get into and around the low-water swamps and marshes in the state, the country and around the world.

And, it's all done in Baton Rouge.

Just not this weekend.

Like tens of thousands of Louisiana duck hunters, Coco is trying to figure out where he's going to hunt for Saturday's second-split opening of the 60-day duck season.

He admits it wasn't hard finding a spot in the first split.

That's because, he said, there weren't any ducks: "I went hunting on the final weekend (Dec. 4-5) and sat in a blind from 8 (a.m.) until 9:30 and didn't see a duck on the horizon," Coco said. His choices were easy.

Now, after the coldest December cold front Louisiana hunters have seen in two years, Coco said his choice for hunts will be tougher.

"The ducks are here. I'm getting reports from all over the state, and the ducks are here," Coco said Wednesday afternoon from his shop.

For him, the cold weather is a vindication of sorts. He knows about all the bad reports during the last two seasons. He knows about hunters laying the blame for the poor seasons and low duck numbers on Ducks Unlimited projects and one or more federal and state programs.

"All that talk, all those folks putting the blame on DU is coming to a head right now. We had bad weather, warm weather the last two years, and the whole thing is nothing but weather," Coco said.

A succession of Pacific fronts brought cool, rainy conditions into the state during the first split, which ran 23 days in the West Zone and 16 days in the East Zone. Both zones' first split ended Dec. 5.

Saturday, the two zones will open for their second splits: West Zone hunters' season will run through Jan. 23, while East Zone hunters can go through Jan. 30, the latest duck season date in 50 years for Louisiana's wild waterfowlers.

"We didn't get the northern fronts we needed during the first split, really during the last two years," Coco said. "Western (Pacific) fronts don't bring in ducks. A few ducks move, but when the next western fronts come in the ducks leave on the front.

"A northern front, the kind that came in this week, brings ducks and north winds. That's what brings ducks to Louisiana."

Coco added that duck hunters should pray for a succession of fronts -- "We need two (northern) fronts a week to keep the ducks coming and keep the ducks here," he said -- because that means the winds continue to blow. Wind, he said, are what keep ducks flying between resting places and feeding areas.

Early-week reports from Arkansas indicated mallards had invaded that state and were pushing down ahead of the front, a massive shot of Arctic air that shoved high temperatures into the single digits in the Dakotas. A second cold blast is hitting the Midwest today.

"The ducks are rolling in in north Louisiana," Coco said. "The reports I got from Angelina (in the east-central parishes) is that they can't get another duck on the place. And, in the Black River area where I hunt, there are 20,000 ducks there now in a place where there were no ducks during the first split.

"So all that stuff about blaming this and that for no ducks is going to end now. All the eyes are getting ready to be opened this weekend," Coco said.

The biologists' report

State Waterfowl Study leader Robert Helm said the cold weather is just what the doctor ordered for the wild waterfowl hunters, but that recent rains have given ducks a lot of places to spent their winter.

And, Helm said this week's cold front brought strong north winds, which lowered water levels across the coastal marshes.

"The cold front is what we needed -- there was even a frost on the coast -- but it's going to make tidal areas difficult to hunt," Helm said. "It's good that another front is coming in because lots of hunters like a lot of wind to hunt. They believe the wind makes the birds move more."

From early indications of the study's second fall survey, Helm said there are more mallards in the state than during the first split.

"It's not the ideal hunting conditions yet," Helm continued. "The ideal is for the ground to be frozen from Little Rock (Arkansas) north for an extended period of time.

"But, each front will push more ducks down, and people have seen flight birds coming into wetland areas in central parts of the state, and that's good."

Hunters have more

Specklebelly goose season reopens Saturday, as does the woodcock season and the third split of the mourning dove season.

Goose hunters will be able to take specklebelly, blue, snow and Ross' geese through Feb. 7 statewide.

The woodcock season runs through Jan. 31 and the last days of the 70-day dove season runs through Jan. 10.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/...ducks001.shtml

[JABIII]

By TIM MOWRY

, Staff Writer
A dark-eyed junco is still frequenting the bird feeder at the Alaska Bird Observatory at Wedgewood Resort. There was a sharp-shinned hawk reported at a feeder off Steele Creek Road three weeks ago. As usual, there has been the occasional robin spotted around town.

As always, there are a handful of mallard ducks hanging out in the Chena River near the downtown power plant.

So what in the name of migration is going on?

Whether it's mallards lounging in a section of the Chena River that never freezes or robins feeding on chokecherry trees in Hamilton Acres, there are always a few birds that remain in the Far North each winter instead of heading south.

"We've still got a junco coming to the feeder here," said bird biologist Susan Sharbaugh at the Alaska Bird Observatory in Wedgewood Resort. "It's kind of cool."

No pun intended, of course, since most of the birds that stay behind end up freezing or starving to death.

Sharbaugh said more migrant birds may be hanging around Fairbanks in the winters because temperatures have been warmer than normal.

"Birds migrate to change their environmental conditions and go some place more favorable," she said. "If they're in a place where the environment is changing in a way so they can meet their nutritional demands, why leave?

"Why go someplace else if they've got everything they need right at hand?" she said. "Forty below is not a problem if they've got enough to eat."

That's precisely what the sharp-shinned hawk that Chris Harwood saw at his feeder three weeks ago was doing. It was camped out next to the feeder waiting for a redpoll or black-capped chickadee to come along.

"My wife spotted it," said Harwood. "She said, 'What's that big bird there?' I was looking all over for it and couldn't find it and it was right next to the feeder."

Sharp-shinned hawks normally leave the state for warmer climes by October.

While there are only about two dozen resident bird species in the Interior, 50 species of birds have been recorded in Fairbanks over the past 44 years in the Christmas Bird Count, "which is pretty amazing," said count coordinator Gail Mayo.

This year's Christmas count is scheduled for Jan. 2 and Mayo expects a few oddballs to be recorded.

"We always have a few birds in that category," she said of migrants that don't migrate.

Last year it was a brown creeper. In 1994 it was a rustic bunting. The year before that it was a rosie finch. There was an American coot on the cooling ponds at Fort Wainwright more than a decade ago. The 1976 count included a Savanah sparrow.

"Oh my gosh, we had starlings in 1978," Mayo said perusing the count records.

Hawk owls, and golden- and white-crowned sparrows are also reported in the Christmas count on an occasional basis. Robins show up in the Christmas count almost every year and have been seen late into February, leading experts to wonder whether they can actually make it through the winter.

"How they survive the cold, I don't know," said Nancy DeWitt, executive director at the Alaska Bird Observatory.

Whether birds simply choose not to migrate or don't leave because they can't is unknown. There are several theories as to why a bird would remain in a place like Fairbanks rather than fly south. It could be that they were injured and couldn't leave when they were supposed to and now it's too late.

"It's all speculation," said biologist John Wright at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game who specializes in waterfowl. "I think a lot of the unusual birds we see in October or November and think, 'That guy should have migrated,' there is a physical reason why they're not leaving."

Another possibility is that the birds that stay don't put on enough fat to make the trip south, said Sharbaugh, who recalled a varied thrush hanging out by the air ducts at the Rasmussen Building on the University of Alaska Fairbanks several years ago.

"Part of being able to leave is getting into a physiological condition," she said. "There may be a threshold of fat they need to migrate that they haven't hit yet."

There may also be a specific window that birds migrate in. If they miss that window for some reason, the urge to migrate may disappear, said Sharbaugh.

Birds migrate out of necessity, not by choice, noted Wright, who had a robin eating out of a crab apple tree in his yard a month ago.

"It's costly to migrate," he said. "It's a tradeoff between getting picked off by a raptor or a fox to trying to keep warm in a cold, dark place, which is what a lot of us do."

In the case of the mallards that remain in the Chena River, that's an annual occurrence. Mallards have been spending the winter in Fairbanks and other places in the Interior for decades, according to Wright. As long as there is a source of open water, a few mallards will stick around, he said.

There have also been several reports of pintails and scaup seen during the winter at the Fort Wainwright cooling ponds.

Birds also sometimes show up in the winter in Fairbanks that don't belong here even in the summer, like the brown creeper in town last year.

"They don't even breed anywhere near Alaska," said DeWitt.

Just two months ago the Alaska Bird Observatory received a call from someone at Pet Stuff, a local pet store, who reported that someone had brought in a "golden-headed sparrow," said Dewitt. It turned out to be a golden-crowned kinglet, a rare bird even in the summer in Fairbanks.

Not all the reports of migrant birds that remain in Fairbanks pan out, though.

"Someone just reported a golden eagle but it turned out to be a ruffed grouse," Wright said with a laugh.

Staff writer Tim Mowry can be reached at tmowry@newsminer.com or 459-7587

http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,...608793,00.html

[JABIII]

Warning lights on my dashboard were flashing like Christmas decorations Wednesday afternoon during the drive home.
My clothes were still soaking wet, as they had been since 7 a.m. when icy water rushed over my chest waders as I struggled to rescue my dog.

The gun was wet and rusting in its case. Those chest waders had somehow developed new holes to be patched. My head was throbbing. Ashes burned a hole in my shirt. Our governor was still a liar.

None of that wiped the grin off my face.

Some days, life's trivial woes just don't matter. Some days you light a victory cigar even though you've ripped holes in your new neoprene waders and your pickup is headed for a meltdown.

Wednesday was one of those days. After a duck season filled with grumbling and moaning, we finally enjoyed a hunt worth savoring.

And this hunt was good from the moment we ducked into the blind. Before anybody else had a chance to load their guns, lucky old McLuckie downed two gadwall with one shot.

By day's end, McLuckie, the Farmer and I had 16 more ducks to go with those gaddies, a three-man limit in a year when any limit is worth noting - particularly at duck-deprived Banner Marsh.

All those gadwall, mallards, ringnecks and redheads made up for all the ice we had to break. They made up for previous days of staring at empty skies.

Those ducks even made up for a scary sequence when my Labrador Buck got stranded. After rushing across an ice floe to retrieve a duck, the dog was unable to scramble back onto the ice or to break a path to shore.

For 10 minutes he swam along the edge of the ice before we finally got to him. He never let go of the duck until I grabbed his neoprene vest and yanked him into the boat.

Subsequent efforts to rest Buck were in vain, though. After McLuckie shot yet another duck, he ran out to get his mouth on another bird.

The dog knew what we knew. In a hard year where ducks were few and far between, braving a little ice was a small price.

"That's one of the best hunts I've had," Farmer said.

Just in time, too. Ice is already a problem and frigid temperatures forecast for Saturday and Sunday will probably bring an early end to the Central Zone duck season, which is scheduled to last until Dec. 28.

Here's hoping you have, or will find, a similarly warm memory to get you through another long offseason.

DUCK COUNT: Aerial surveys conducted by the Illinois Natural History Survey offer little explanation for our excellent hunt.

Tuesday's latest count showed just 38,285 ducks along the entire Illinois River and a mere 31,625 mallards. That's way below the 10-year average of 197,103 ducks and 170,465 mallards.

Some of those missing birds may be difficult to spot. Flooding on the Illinois River opened vast areas to waterfowl, including expanses of flooded timber. Successful hunters have been targeting that timber recently, with notable success at Rice Lake's Big Lake walk-in.

Banner Marsh can also produce some good hunting when other areas freeze, since deeper strip-mine lakes at the site remain open longer.


GOOSE CHASE: Goose hunting is slowly improving around the Duck Creek reservoir near Canton and in deeper strip-mine lakes that are slow to freeze.

Geese have been moved off shallow ponds and are starting to congregate in those ice-free waters.

Birds aren't migrating to southern Illinois, though. Tuesday's count showed 9,360 geese in southern Illinois and western Kentucky, well behind last year's 30,500.

Snow goose numbers are also down, with just 3,000 in the area and none at Rend Lake. Union County has the highest duck concentraion, with 11,500 of the 55,400 birds surveyed in the south.

ET CETERA: Illinois waterfowl biologist Ray Marshalla said discussions with other biologists across the Midwest indicate only Missouri is enjoying what could be called a "good" duck season. ... Powerton Lake will reopen to bank fishing on Dec. 27, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and to boat fishing on Feb. 15. ... Chicago Sun-Times scribe Dale Bowman reports medium and smaller lakes in northern Wisconsin have 5-8 inches of good ice and expects ice in the Hayward area to be safe by this weekend. ... Surveys in Louisiana show 1.7 million ducks - well below the long-term average of 2.7 million.


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