Odd Season!

[303Brit]

Matt's thread kind of got me thinking, seeing some pretty awesome birds in it so far. I'm not sure how many of you keep track of your seasons, via a logbook, journal or just through social media. But for the ones that do weigh in with your findings, now I'm not asking for kill counts or anything petty like that. If you wish to share you numbers by all means go ahead, if not that's fine. All I'm looking for is was your season, average, above or below, by a little or a lot. Also if you want to include the calibre of the birds taken this year by all means.

Now since I was able to drive into potato fields on the 21 Dec this was not a normal season, the weather was odd the bird holding patterns were odd. Some human factors played into this but not enough to be a huge driving force for the overall weirdness of it all.

All that being said, The team SP3 (Mrs.SKS, Lorne, me) miss our mark on the low side by 75 birds, however the quality of the birds taken this year was very very high. Aside from the Waterfowl Slam contest, it wasn't until we starting getting the more exotic birds (to our area) that I took it as anything other than a thread to see birds not often shot or targeted in these parts. Hitting a snow, and a speckle in the first month of the season is a big deal in my parts, then the Euro. So despite the numbers being a touch on the low side, the quality was higher than normal.

What say you???

303

[shotgunjohn]

Hey 303,

I think we had fewer birds wintering in our area than most years. We had a lot of ducks around before the season even opened but they were mostly gone by the time it did. Maybe they sensed that it was going to be dry and cold for most of the season? We also seem to have a renewed interest in duck hunting in the Cowichan area and there were more people out on a regular basis, so maybe a little more pressure. For us the numbers were definately down and even fewer were those nice to eat corn fed mallards. Oh well lots of geese in the freezer and every year is different.

[Fella]

One field we had bigger flocks but they seemed a lot spookier so I think out of 6 guys we got a total of three birds. This was also our first serious year of fowling so we're still learning. Hopefully next year we hone our skills more. The second field was barely hunted and it was 90% wood ducks. Had a really fun shoot there, total of 8 taken in the 15 minutes we were there. Third field had one really fat mallard taken. Again, newbies so we were pretty happy with production. The biggest problem was getting birds in range otherwise the total would have been a lot higher.

[Crazy_Farmer]

Down about a 1/4 maybe. No ducks in oct, nov 1st they were in like donkey kong. A funny year. Wide spread changing of farming practices don't help much either. But a good enough year. Very band lucky this year compared to others. Still about 1 in 540 mallards which isn't that good.

[Sako 75]

This season was bit slower than normal for us. Did quite well (limit out all the time)once the heavy rain came in Nov. but died again when we had deep freeze. Dec. was okay. Usually, in Jan. I do not hunted that much for ducks but spend more time steelheading. However, being a very slow year steelhead fishing I decided to spend more time shooting instead.

Last day of season went out for couple hours and got lucky. Shot drake pintail with band. Banded in Alaska 2012. First banded duck in 5 years since last one.

[lorneparker1]

Lets see some picks sako!

While our season had a few less birds then previous years, it was more due to hunter effort, then lack of birds. I would actually venture to say we had more birds around then in previous years. Oct was really good, November was ok. Dec and January were crazy for birds but I think I hunted 4 times in Dec. and once in Jan. I got burnt out this year for the first time in recent memory. I wasn't really motivated. We killed 108 birds in those 5 hunts. We were covered in birds both those months, so the damage could have been done.

Lorne

[hunterjeff719]

slow season for me as well for ducks. only hunted 2 fields and the numbers just weren't there. I found the fields just too dry. we did limit out a couple times but the rest of the time it just seemed like the birds weren't coming in. did shoot a nice euro widgeon though. most of the mallards were absolute honkers and a buddy got a banded drake mallard from Fairbanks Alaska. im still waiting for my first banded bird.

have never really hunted snow geese until this year, ive always just popped one here n there if they flew over.
however we hammered them for 5 days straight this season. they just wouldn't leave the fields. youd shoot them and they fly to the next field. next day you shoot that field and they flew back to the field from the day before. and so on so on. I think the final total of snowies between us was like 120 or something.

[edgy]

It was definatly a slow year for us in Chilliwack, we are field hunters and we just didn't get the rain we usually get. My brother has a standing pond that has held water for the last 5 years straight, this year it was bone dry. We were always able to take a couple of birds when we went out, but overall a lot slower than previous years. This was also the first year that we didn't get Canada's in our field, just would not land dammit,lol. On a brighter note, this was the first year we ever saw Pintails in our field, and my brother took our first Specklebelly this year . We also experienced one day in December that was absolutely the busiest day ever in the field, total insanity for 3 hours of the season! Looking forward to better conditions next season.

[Dutch Ppoacher]

it was an interesting yr for us in port as well, i believe the lack of storms never pushed birds over the Beaufort range. when we got that 300mm rain and 130mph wind off the coast for the better part of two days we had awesome hunting for about a week, getting 8-15 birds a day. then, puff...... they gone!
not for the lack of trying, we got permission to new fields, built new blinds and did regular scouting. almost felt like a job!?!
i did note the early morning flights, sticking to shooting light to the second to catch a couple of the tail end.
and the only thing that was kinda reliable was the salt water, playing the tides

i personally never shot a full limit to my self this yr, close, but not quite. but that is the fun part right!

i will also say that we ran into more fellow hunters this yr then ever before. never any problems but definitely made for early mornings to get your spot!

Dutch

[Sako 75]

Sorry Lorne, I do not take (hardly) any more picture of ducks I shot anymore. It is no big thing for me. I did add the last duck (pintail) band to my lanyard. I might take picture of that and post it on HBC.