By Michael R. Shea

With low water and seemingly high resident duck numbers, October can’t come fast enough for northeastern hunters. Reports from Maine and New York down through southern New England confirm dry conditions are concentrating ducks around open water. In upstate New York, many hunters are betting early season success on the St. Lawrence River as ponds and swamps in the region have all but completely dried up, said Albany-based Avery Prostaffer Arliss Reed.
 
“Out scouting for deer in the woods I stumbled on a little pond and jumped 20 mallards,” he said. “There are hardly any ducks in the field, but driving around every visible pond has 20, 30 ducks. We’re seeing flocks of blue-wings of 40 to 50 birds, wood ducks everywhere. I just watched 100 brant in the Hudson Valley and they were rolling! They were on their way to Long Island!” [ Read Full Post ]

By Duane Dungannon

My friend David Wei of Vancouver put himself in the right place at the right time last week, but he was toting a camera when he should have been packing his shotgun. Goose decoys spread over the field, he distracted himself by picking blackberries from his natural blind while he waited for honkers to arrive. When the farmer’s wife dove up, he left his shotgun in the blind and walked over to talk with her. After 15 minutes of chatting, they were interrupted by honking--not from another vehicle, but from these eight geese that came flying quickly downwind out of the east.

“As soon as they saw my set of oversize goose shells, they slowed, went the end of the field, and turned into the wind,” he said. “The birds came lumbering toward my set, wanting to land. Twice more they circled the field before slooooowly flying right over us at about 40 yards. Easy triple ... if I had my shotgun.”
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By Michael R. Shea

Early migrators are starting to show with sporadic reports of Canada geese in Maine, Connecticut and Pennsylvania and blue-winged teal reports trickling in south of the Delaware River.  

Weather has certainly played a factor as temperatures dropped this week and heavy thunder and windstorms lashed the east. Still, with an exceptionally dry summer by all reports water levels remain low.  

“Typical swamps aren’t holding water,” said Kenny Gray, an Avery Pro Staffer out of Chestertown, Maryland. “But with the heavy rain we should have some new pockets of water – flooded grasslands and fields.”  

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By Michael R. Shea

Despite a brief cold snap, hot weather continues to plague Atlantic flyway Canada goose hunters. By all reports birds are flying at irregular hours, some feeding in fields well after dark, others spending the day on the water, feeding at pond’s edge. The weather has delayed corn harvests in many states, though most areas are seeing at least silage being cut now.
 
“We’re seeing birds primarily in hay fields,” said Bill Crenshaw, wildlife biologist with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. “This dry weather has really pushed back the [corn] harvest.” [ Read Full Post ]

By David Draper

In the West, the old saying goes that whiskey is for drinking and water for fighting, and that’s true more than ever during a drought. From some of the initial reports I’ve gotten regarding last weekend’s teal openers, there were more than a few pre-dawn confrontations as hunters crowded onto whatever water they could find in hopes of bagging some birds.

I even heard rumors of one guy who staked out his spot at 1:30 a.m. just to have late-arriving hunters move right to the edge of his spread just before shooting time. Luckily, they worked out their differences without going to blows, but I’m sure this isn’t the last time we’ll be hearing about “water wars” among duck hunters forced onto dwindling public-land puddles this year. It bears reminding folks to play nice and respect other hunters when scouting and staking out your hunting spots this season.

Not all that surprisingly, reports of success from last weekend’s teal openers were somewhat mixed. Sean Sutherland hosts an annual hunt for Nebraska’s teal opener and he said success was decent where he hunts in the western part of the state with a fairly even mix of both green- and blue-winged teal bagged among his groups of hunters.
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