Innehållsförteckning för September 2020 från Wildfowl

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…

THE TOPIC OF gastric torsion—or twisted stomach—kept coming up in my interviews with trainers, breeders and veterinarians. The stories were almost always carbon copies of one another, with a retriever acting perfectly normal in training or hunting, to suddenly acting very different and very sick. The common belief surrounding gastric torsion is that it occurs when a dog has eaten a meal large enough (or slurped up a lot of water) to weigh the stomach down to the point where post-meal exercise can cause it to flip. This pinches off the ends of the stomach and won’t allow the food to pass through to the digestive tract, or be vomited up. But there is a reason this ailment goes by different names, including Gastric Dilation-Volvulus (GDV) and bloat—because it isn’t…

I WONDER IF this guy is posing with his A. H. Fox Touring car. An sley H. Fox is best known for his shotgun manufacturing company that produced the legendary HE-Grade Super Fox, perhaps the first waterfowl-exclusive shotgun made in America. Ansley left in 1921 and new leadership carried the Fox shot gun name into 1931, when they were bought by Savage in near bankrupt cy. Savage continued making the Sterlingworth and other model Foxes from existing parts until WW II. An sley Fox’s better idea car had an air-cooled 6-cyinder engine, and Ansley boasted the advantages of air-cooled engines, all the while the American public indicated their preference for water-cooled horsepower. In total somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 Fox automob les were made before they wen under. The hadows…

THE MORNING DAWNED clear and calm. With the air temperature in the mid-30s to low 40s, it was just a typical January morning on Maryland’s Chester River. Philip Peacock and his hunting buddy, Kenny Carpenter, were set up near a shore blind that Peacock had built. “I wanted to hunt out of my new boat blind instead of from the shore blind,” Peacock said. “The boat blind is easier to hunt out of and much more comfortable. We put out about eight dozen Greenhead Gear canvasback and bluebill decoys. About 40 minutes later, a nice group of birds showed up.” The ducks turned out to be canvasbacks. When the shooting was over, Peacock had downed two hens and Carpenter, a handsome drake. “They were the first canvasbacks either of us…

A SLIGHT NORTHERN breeze came and went in the early light. There were a few gusts at times mixed with lulls when the air returned to still and sticky. The hunters hurriedly deployed the final decoys with shooting light bearing down on them. Sloshing back to the blind, a simple affair built two days before from t-posts and hog wire, the hunters found their guns and gear and readied for action. There was a smell lingering between them, drowning out the aroma of rice and mud. It smelled like turpentine mixed with sweat, out of place in the humidity and heat of September. Wait, this is a duck hunt? Welcome to early teal season! It’s the kickoff, the beginning of it all, ushering in another waterfowl season around the United…

■ BROWNING CHOKE TUBE SPEED WRENCH Brilliant idea, this one If Browning shotguns grace your waterfowl blind or are used on the trap or skeet range, the Brown ing Choke Tube Speed Wrench should be in your ammunition bag. The Speed Wrench is reliable and fast and fits all Browning 12-gauge choke tube systems—Standard Invector, Invector-Plus, and Invector-DS. There are several different types of choke tube wrenches to use with Browning Choke tubes, but the Speed Wrench will replace them all. Many extended tubes are easy to remove with fingers, but most have the wrench slots hidden on each side that accept the correct gauge wrench. Using the Speed Wrench will prevent damage to the slot end of any Browning choke tube when removing or inserting. MSRP $45 | browning.com…

I GUESS IT hit me the other day when Ashden, one of my mentored high school juniors here locally, asked me as he looked at the decoys hanging from the rafters of the garage. “Is that all you use for ducks, M.D.,” he inquired, pointing up. I looked at the 10 mixed mallards, sprig, wigeon, and gadwall—plus one drake shoveler—suspended from the ceiling, turned, and nodded to the boy. “Yes, sir,” I told him. “Most of the places I hunt, I don’t need any more than that. Why pack 40 when I can hump 10, and do just as well?” “Huh,” he mumbled, not fully convinced. “I just figured you needed more to do any good.” It’s a common thought when it comes to decoys and decoy spreads, this more-equals-better…

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…

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…

THE BAND REPORTS we receive typically involve waterfowl banded and harvested in the U.S. and Canada, and occasionally Mexico. Every once in a while we get a report and a story from well off the regular flyways, like geese banded in Denmark and killed in the U.S., or like this one. Whether it’s luck, his avidity for waterfowling or some combination of both, Ken Schopp seems to have a propensity for collecting bands. Last year he submitted five to us, including one perfectly suited for Band Tales involving a trip to Iceland. It was a guided hunt he’d booked with his son, Charlie, that turned out to be quite an adventure. “We hunted three mornings for geese and one afternoon for seabirds: puffins, murres, guillemots and gulls,” Schopp noted. And…

WINCHESTER’S SX4 20-GAUGE is sleek and svelte as a figure skater, but don’t be fooled, she’s ready to punch ducks and geese in the mouth. With today’s excellent 20-gauge shells this little shotgun is more than a match for ducks and even Canadas over decoys. The “4” in SX4 indicates the fourth generation of the Winchester Super-X Model 1. Back in 1973 Winchester’s shotgun designers decided to make a semi-auto that replicated the handling and lines of their iconic Model 12 pump. Discontinued in 1963 the Model 12 was nicknamed “The Perfect Repeater.” Launched in 1912 (coincidentally in 20 gauge) the Model 12 went on to sell over two million in 12, 16, 20 and 28 gauges before its demise. The Super-X 1 was and still is one of the…

PELLETS OF WHITE danced in the beams of our headlamps. Our spirits were high. Several hundred large-bodied honkers had been on the corn for a week. We’d done our due diligence; morning and evening scouting missions had been performed. The wait was painful, but the forecasted northerner looked to be a good one. Deep honks and moans told of their arrival. My heart thundered in my throat. From under the brim of my cap, I tried to obtain a visual. It wasn’t possible. The fog was soup. Then, like an apparition, a line of black appeared. They were on the deck. Their long necks turning left and right as they inspected the fakes and looked for a landing spot. “First pass, boys,” my buddy Cord whispered as the group of…