Innehållsförteckning för December - January 2018 från Wildfowl

1 HUNTER: Joel Meeteer, Arlington, WA BAND #: 1987-11186 SPECIES: Black Brant (F) BANDED: 07/15/2012 LOCATION: Fox Kill Lake, AK RECOVERED: 02/19/2016 LOCATION: 2 mi SW of San Quintin, Baja California 2 HUNTER: Joel Meeteer, Arlington, WA BAND #: 2007-29140 SPECIES: Black Brant (F) BANDED: 08/01/2015 LOCATION: near Nuqsut, AK RECOVERED: 02/20/2016 LOCATION: 3 mi SW of San Quintin, Baja California 3 HUNTER: Tony Baumann, Redfield, SD BAND #: 1078-33330 SPECIES: Canada Goose (F) BANDED: 07/17/13 LOCATION: Near Coleharbor, ND RECOVERED: 01/28/17 LOCATION: 4 miles NW of Fort Pierre, SD COMMENTS: My second band from a Canada Goose. 4 HUNTER: Ashley Bakley, Dorchester, NJ BAND #: 1927-72899 SPECIES: American Black Duck (D) BANDED: 08/19/2012 LOCATION: Albert, NB RECOVERED: 01/04/2017 LOCATION: 5 mi SSW Dennisville, NJ 5 HUNTER: Bill Brandt, New…

WHAT A MORNING out on the prairie for these turn-of-the-century hunters! The shotguns show a course of development and progression toward what we shoot today. Military rifles of that era had a stacking swivel, but these sports used a piece of binder twine. The side-by-sides are all hammer guns, but lurking in the back left is either a Winchester 1893 or 1897. Designed by John M. Browning, the 1893 is identical in appearance to the 1897, save for its open-top receiver: And that speaks to the major transition that affected firearms during this time. The exposed-hammer doubles harken back to black powder, a propellant that when ignited exploded to hurl the shot down the barrel, but at much lower pressures than the new “white” or smokeless powder. Hunting on any…

SOMEBODY SAY TAKE’EM? One of the most iconic auto-loaders to ever come out of Italy has been lightened, sleekened up and decked out. The ComforTech stock has more cushion, the magazine loading port is easier to stoke and the SB3 has noticeably less recoil—all good things for snow goose hunters. Check out the large bolt handle, fumble-proof safety—even with gloves—and bolt release, which is outward angled to make slamming the first round home slicker. $1,999 | benelliusa.com THE CHASE IS ON You need one of these if you want to go where the snows go. The Wolverine X4 cuts through muddy spring fields behind the power of a 847cc DOHC, eight-valve, parallel twin motor. On-Command four-wheel drive, allows you to switch from 2WD to limited-slip 4WD and fully-locked…

DESI EDMUNDS WAS GETTING the royal Randy Hill treatment as the rest of us sat in a sunken shipping container, waiting on a funnel cloud of snow geese to twist their way into the southern Illinois corn. Hill had been “initiating” the only woman in our group—a champion clay bird shooter—for two days straight. “This isn’t like shooting dinner-plate sized orange discs. You can’t say pull out here and expect one of us to throw a snow goose in front of your gun,” Hill joked, already loading up the next insult in case Edmunds had a retort. Desi travels the world busting clays for Beretta, but I doubt she had ever encountered anyone like Hill. If you’re a wrestling fan, think Jimmy Hart (“The Mouth of the South”), but more…

PUBLIC HUNTERS REJOICE Nurture crops or nurture ducks? Its a long-standing battle between farmers and ‘fowlers. California is a hot-button state for this argument, because water can be so scarce. But a $52.45 million grant from the California Natural Resources Agency aims to deliver full water allocations to Gray Lodge Wildlife Area while meeting the needs of agricultural operations. Gray Lodge is one of the most important stopovers in the Pacific Flyway, providing winter habitat for 1 million ducks and 100,000 geese. Its about time West Coast public hunters caught a break. GOOSE WHISPERER Adam Gettel of Hillsboro, North Dakota, made an interesting choice of pets. In August, he rescued an orphaned gosling from a gas station parking lot, and named him Wilbur. Since then, he has taken in a…

WE ALL DREAM of shooting a bird bearing a subtle silver band. Scarcer still are specimens with a reward band or a neck collar. Then there are birds like the specklebelly Nathan Verret shot in Louisiana. Verret knew he encountered something special when he shot a speck bearing both leg band and red neck collar. However, closer inspection revealed it was no ordinary collar. “It also had some kind of tracking device attached to it,” he said. Naturally curious, he called the USGS to report the band and collar. “The person could not give me any information on the bird or the tracking collar until they researched it.” he said. So he did a little investigating, starting with an e-mail to Joel Schmutz, a research wildlife biologist with the USGS…

SNOW GEESE ARE wary birds. They fly in large flocks with plenty of eyes to watch, making it imperative that the hunters not only conceal themselves, but also their retrievers. Since snow geese are usually hunted in an open field that has scattered grain leftover from the harvest, the use of a field blind to conceal your retriever is a must. Your dog should readily enter the blind, be steady to shot and fall, and fully trained to the “place,” “sit” and “stay” commands. Because of the extremely large numbers of snow geese coming to the decoys at any given time, the higher than usual number of hunters in the field, wariness of the geese, and the large number of birds shot, two of the most important attributes of a…

FOR MANY YEARS SNOW GEESE were largely ignored by the hunting community. While a handful of hardcores considered them the ultimate hunting challenge, the rest of us saw them as birds that represented little more than an exercise in frustration. The phrase “a wild goose chase” was undoubtedly coined by snow goose hunters at wits end after another fruitless foray pursuing these naturally cautious and hesitant birds. But all that changed in 1968, when Queens University evolutionary biologist Fred Cooke began to study how snow and blue geese selected their mates in a previously unheard of remote shore of Hudson Bay known as La Perouse Bay. At the time, Cooke estimated there to be 2,000 nesting pairs of snow geese in the vicinity; by 1993 that estimate had skyrocketed to…

Recent estimates indicate there may be 10 to 15 million mid-continent snow geese— and that's just adults. IN 1999, HUNTERS in the Central and Mississippi flyways went afield with a single directive: to kill every snow goose they possibly could. Thanks to a conservation order aimed at drastically reducing light goose numbers, those hunters were given unprecedented freedom to kill those birds. Along with an extended season that went deep into the spring, the order allowed hunters to use unplugged shotguns and electronic callers. There were no daily or possession limits and shooting hours extended 30 minutes past sunset. An enterprising hunter could follow the birds south and then back north for nearly seven months, shooting until he ran out of money, season or freezer space. MANY DID For the…

SOMETIMES DOG HEALTH seems simple. Bring a first-aid kit on hunts. Don’t neglect regular vet visits. Perform post-hunt checks for cuts and cockleburs. Want to keep your Lab, and possibly yourself, living longer? It ultimately is on you to follow through. As you and your hunting dog get older—and possibly increasingly out of shape—sometimes it takes more than words to make change happen. It may mean making a promise to your dog, and yourself, that good health is worth the extra effort. STAY FIT Make it a practice to go for a run or walk or hike with your dog. Then keep it going. You might not return to your high school glory days by covering ground on foot, but it’s an activity you and your retriever can do together…

A FLOCK OF 50 mallards floated down through the flooded timber, orange feet reaching for the decoys. Brothers Bobby and Reggie Kilzer jumped up, and picked out a pair of drakes. “That was all we needed to fill our four-duck mallard limits,” Bobby said. “We already had six mallards in the boat and some teal and gadwalls. We were done hunting and cooking breakfast before 7:30 a.m.” The hunt took place in Jan. 2017 on an oxbow off the White River in Arkansas. The previous two days, the hunting had been slow. A cold front whistled in, freezing nearby rice fields and sending the ducks to the flooded timber where the brothers had set their decoys from a 2072 SeaArk with custom aluminum blind. “We had been waiting for the…

IT WAS QUIET. QUIET ENOUGH that the only thing keeping me awake was the occasional blast of the oldies mixed with static from the radio that only worked when my old Ford Ranger hit a pothole just right. The music didn’t seem to have the same effect on my yellow Lab Rudy however, as he lay motionless opposite me on the bench seat. We dropped down the hill into the river bottom and soon slowed to a roll and turned the headlights into the stalk field along the road. Mud. My only option was to pack in on foot. Well, there was one other possibility... the one that made sense: calling it a night and sleeping in the next morning. It was tempting, but if making logical decisions had been…

THE FRONT DOOR slammed and I heard her scream, “If you go duck hunting I won’t be here when you get back, you loser!” The Gunny hopped in my truck anyway with a smile, “She’s a bit testy this morning.” Now this was only the second time the Gunny and I had hunted together. The first time had ended with a duck boat and four-dozen dekes spread across an intersection and a lengthy police report. On second thought, this was actually my first time to hunt with Gunny because we never made it to the lake last time. I had seen first-hand how ducks could make non-hunting spouses crazy. Now I grew up in the South where mommas are sacred, so there is no way you or anyone else will…