Well said Gerenemo. If we take our balls and go home in the long run the waterfowl we all love so much are the ones that suffer.
Here's my 2 cents. I hunted with a good friend in his speck blind Saturday and Sunday in Klondike. Saturday morning we saw a constant stream of groups of extremely high ducks coming from the north ahead of the front. Probably 75% of what we saw were mallards with the rest being pintails and a few gadwalls and teal. This was non stop all morning until we left the field around 10. I asked my friend if this flight was normal and he said it was the 2nd time he had seen this flight this season. There was also only 1 day during the duck season that I saw a major movement of ducks this year. I'm not saying it didn't happen but it didn't happen while I was in the blind.
Sunday the water north of us was full of green winged teal that had not been there Saturday. We saw some high ducks but we mostly saw ducks in the low to mid ranges but we saw a lot of ducks.
My point is that the ducks we saw were clearly migrating, aka flight, ducks moving ahead of the cold front. I know that some of the ducks people are seeing are ducks coming from refuges and unhunted areas after season closed. However, I don't believe this is true especially of the mallards everybody has been seeing.
If you believe the aerial survey numbers, and I do with a +/- factor, the numbers especially mallard numbers do not back up the thesis that these "new" ducks have been here all the time. That thesis also doesn't coincide with the "late spring = late migration" theory. Late migrators are just really starting to migrate to Louisiana in my opinion. These late migrators include mallards and lesser Canada geese both of which have shown up in good numbers since the close of the Coastal Zone on January 17.
Again just my 2 cents.
Robbie aka Big Hutch
|