Will The Ducks Show Up?

[JABIII]

Will The Ducks Show Up?


Friday, October 28, 2005 9:27 AM CDT


Outdoors, with Bill Wehrle, C-T outdoor sports editor

This Saturday (Oct. 29) is the magic date that thousands of Missouri waterfowlers have been anxiously waiting for, the first opener (North Zone) of the 2005-06 duck and goose hunting season.

All over the area hunters have been covering blinds, cleaning and setting out decoys and double-checking their non-toxic shotshell supply. After last year's bummer of a duck season, the big question is "Will the ducks show up?"

In recent years we've been spoiled by some great duck seasons, with 2000 being fondly remembered as perhaps the best year ever in Missouri duck hunting history. However, even though water conditions last year may have been among the best we've ever had, the migrating ducks for some reason never really came to our area.

According to MDC waterfowl biologist Dave Graber it was the first fall season they'd ever recorded in which there really never was a migration day. Ducks and geese who did go south just trickled through, many actually waiting up north until the last minute and overflying much of the Midwest on their way to wintering grounds.

Missouri waterfowlers can only hope that this doesn't happen again.


This year we don't have nearly the good water conditions of last year, with many wetlands dry or nearly so and Fountain Grove, the area's big duck attractor, not holding any water due to construction going on there. Our grain harvest got started early and many farmers have already plowed under the harvested fields, since the unusually dry fall allowed this to be done.

But there's still plenty of ducks on the northern nesting grounds poised to migrate when the weather causes them to.

Missouri's North Zone duck season begins Oct. 29 and will end Dec. 27, with a split Canada goose season of Oct. 29-Nov. 27 and Dec. 23-Jan. 29 and a two-goose (2) daily limit.

Let's get out there and "warm up" on those early birds because I'm confident (sort of) that the mallards are coming this year. We can't have two bummer years in a row, can we?

[KRT]

I like the last paragraph.