Wildfowl September 2020

MOST OF US HAVE ONE, an old shotgun we don’t shoot much anymore for whatever reason. Yet just looking at it fires up memories and elicits powerful emotions of bygone days afield. A silver patina gleams where the blueing is worn and your sweat oils are soaked deep into the wooden grips. Gouges and scars on the stock hold stories of a younger hunter. Teal season is the perfect time to bust out an old friend like that. The stakes aren’t high, the hunting not hard core, and you can use light loads, compared to late season goose ammo. You can shoot a 20 gauge, even an autoloader bumping up on a century old. THE REMINGTON MODEL 11: My first real shotgun came in “over the transom,” a family gift…

She turned into a great retriever bringing back anything I shot; doves, pheasants, ducks, geese, squirrels and rabbits. Dear Skip Knowles, I really enjoy your publication. The story The Gift in the last last issue really struck home. I had a dog named Babe, and the story ran almost parallel to Phil Gay’s story bringing back many good and some not-so-good memories. We got Babe from the pound in 2008, a former house dog, part lab and Chessie, 4-5 years old. She settled in our home like she'd lived there all her life. I love to waterfowl hunt and decided to try to train her. There were a few glitches but she was a natural, and when she figured something out she never forgot it. She turned into a great…

WHETHER YOU’RE PLANNING a few blacktop-burning waterfowl sojourns or scheduling close-to-home hunts, your eyes will likely scan multiple waterfowl outlook, migration, population and hunter harvest reports over the next several months. Good. Data is important and can be a contributing factor in helping you decipher when and where to strike. With that noted, it’s important to remember that much of the intel you’re digesting is of the “estimate” or “general” sort. Let’s first dive into a duck hunter favorite: waterfowl migration maps and updates. There are multiple migration trackers out there. Numerous states have their own, and, of course, DU and Delta update theirs regularly. How is the data obtained? According to DU’s Chris Jennings, the Ducks Unlimited Migration Map receives roughly 20,000 publicly submitted reports from Sept. 1 through…

BLUE-WINGED TEAL NUMBERS UP The North Dakota Game and Fish Department (NDGF) has completed its spring breeding duck survey, and the results are positive. Blue-winged teal breeding duck numbers were up 60 percent. The survey also showed a boost in multiple other species while some remained stable. DUCKS UNLIMITED & SHELL OIL? YES. In the past half-century, the U.S. has lost more than 17-million acres of wetlands. Alarming! The loss of wetlands equals stress on waterfowl. Migration and breeding are directly impacted, which effects hunter success. Could closer collaboration between public and private sectors be the answer? Possibly. For the past 30 years, DU has been working with Shell Oil to conserve wetlands. Most recently, the duo completed a project in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, to restore and enhance 450 acres…

50 ...eggs laid by multiple hen wood ducks that have been found in a single nesting box. 1.1 billion ...the amount of money that has been raised by the Federal Duck Stamp over the past 80 years. 3,000 miles ...is the distance blank brant migrate each year from costal Alaska to their wintering grounds in Baja California. 1/2 mile ...the distance the sound of common and Barrow’s goldeneye wings can be heard on a calm day. 17 States ...make up the Atlantic Flyway, which runs from Maine to Florida.…

FROM THE DAY you break ground on your duck impoundment you see it as an investment. And, in the most literal sense, that’s exactly what it is. You’ve either hired someone with heavy equipment to excavate your swampy slice of heaven or you’ve done the work yourself, but at the very least you have invested some time and diesel and many mosquito bites into the project. And as any good investment strategist will tell you (or pimple-faced college freshmen in economics 101, for that matter) you must work to see a return on your investment. Prep work for autumn on your duck impoundment begins in the late spring and early summer. As we inch into fall you’ll want to have the heavy lifting complete, and that means making a checklist…