By Michael R. Shea

Earlier this week I reported on poor puddle duck hunting along the Atlantic flyway. Well, the bad news extends to seaduck hunters. A survey of guides up and down the coast points to low numbers, high pressure, and hard days on the salt water. 

“I hate to say it,” said Clifton Ames of Ten Mile Guide Service. “I don’t want to give you a bad report and have no one come hunt, but we’re seeing fewer ducks.” Ames hunts Maine’s mid-coast, traditionally know for some of the best eider hunting in the country, but over the last three or four years, as winters seem to get warmer and warmer, the flocks are getting thinner and thinner.

“The biggest flocks you’ll see now is 400 and 500 birds,” he said. “Ten years ago it was 10 times that. We’re still getting birds--the guides that are good at it--but the hey day of setting up the decoys and three guys having a limit in the first half hour doesn’t happen any more. The hey day is over.” [ Read Full Post ]

By Duane Dungannon

West Coast duck hunters want not only a white Christmas but also an early one that will deliver all the ducks on their wish lists. But the recent warm weather is saying “Bah humbug!” Ron Lara of Western Wildlife Adventures (www.wildlifeadv.com) in Chico, Calif., managed to beat the odds last week and offered this photo of his lucky seven mallards. “I went out to a honey hole last week and took seven mallards in one hour. But it's been slow otherwise,” Lara said. “It's always about weather. Cooler temps should pick up the hunting.” Curt Wilson of Avery Outdoors (www.averyoutdoors.com) in the Sacramento Valley said the warm weather has cooled off the duck hunting. “All of the water from the latest storms and rains has the birds spread out,” Wilson said. “Warm weather has slowed things down, and we need new birds to migrate into the area. I did kill three mallards on Sunday, but there were very few birds around.”

North of the Oregon state line, it’s been a similar scene on the west side of the Cascades, while the onset of cooler weather in eastern Oregon has duck populations literally on thin ice.

[ Read Full Post ]

By Michael R. Shea

Record highs and wet weather across much of the East Coast has made for poor duck hunting north and south. With little cold weather in sight, it could be a challenging week for Atlantic flyway hunters.

The shooting wasn’t all bad Monday morning near Block Island sound in Southern Connecticut. The weather was ducky: stiff winds blowing in from offshore gales, steady rain, but warm, with temps in the mid-50s. Black ducks in pairs and triples worked the decoys. Mallards in larger groups of fours, fives, and sixes were around but noncommittal, as were smaller numbers of mergansers and buffleheads. On the same water over the weekend, when the temperatures dipped into the 30s and the fog was thick, some hunters reported quick limits, but we didn’t get close to that Monday.

Up the coast in Maine the shooting has been slow, too, said Kelsey Sullivan, migratory and upland game bird biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The northern part of the state is frozen solid, but inland water is still open central and south, dispersing the few ducks sticking around. “Inland, I think the birds overflew us,” Sullivan said. “We expected movement a week and a half ago [when it frozen up north] but it never seemed to happen.”

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By Duane Dungannon

"Moby Duck seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!”

That’s the tale told in southwest Washington, where Karl Shaffer, pro-staffer for Avery Outdoors reported that a white-phase duck was spotted and has become the obsession of some area hunters. Meanwhile, Shaffer noted an uptick in goose numbers—mostly larger varieties of Canada geese with a few whitefronts—and plenty of ducks, too.

“Mallard numbers are very good, as well as pintails and greenwing teal,” he said. “Ducks have responded well to decoys if the spread has movement in it.” [ Read Full Post ]

By M.D. Johnson

Even from a Comfort Inn in northern Utah, which is serving as my base of operations as I hunt the Great Salt Lake and surrounding marshes, I can hear the rather rotund lady either warming up or in full voice in the northern portion of the Mississippi Flyway. For many hunters in the Upper Midwest, it’s time to start putting away the duck gear and begin thinking about geese, or ice fishing.

Wisconsin and Minnesota’s duck seasons will be over by the first of next week. Iowa will soon follow, with a northern closure of December 6 and a south-zone end on the 13th. Reports from the eastern third of The Hawkeye State continue to be mixed; however, most folks I’ve talked with lately agree that the frigid temperatures of this last week brought in a small number of new mallards and Canadas, while putting birds already in the area on the feed. A gent down Iowa City way (who asked to remain nameless for fear of divulging his exact location) tells of excellent numbers of honkers, with slowly increasing numbers of mallards locally.

“The weather isn’t quite right for them to be patterned consistently yet,” he said. “And they’re flying late--right at or just after legal shooting time. We need some nasty weather, and then it should be on.” [ Read Full Post ]

By Michael R. Shea

Atlantic flyway ducks are working south with peak numbers over central New England, while geese seem to be nearly everywhere. A deceiving knot of Canadas in eastern Connecticut gave me fits on Monday; what I thought were a few dozen turned out to be a few hundred.

As you can see in the video, I was hunting out of a new layout boat, fully grassed, with an Avery Power Hunter layout blind in the cockpit. Low to the water and powered by an electric trolling motor, it’s a deadly rig. At around 2 p.m., I was able to setup just 200 yards or so from the birds. An hour later when I popped a shot, all hell broke loose: A huge raft of geese lifted and came over the decoys, 20 yards off the water, before turning down river. [ Read Full Post ]