You took the words out of my mouth Gunner, when you said, "There are a few guys that want them,they could care less about the regulars who hunt there,and they'll say whatever it takes to get them in place" .Do you guys that are pushing this really think you’re fooling anybody with this guff about “shortening the learning curve” and “will bring out new hunters”?Originally Posted by fowl language
Dale, what is good or bad about hunting, what makes the experience worse or better, is not science. It is how one feels about the experience and the place and the birds. It is the end result of how you fit into all of that. It is what we see around us, the feel of the wind in our face and the mud under our boots, the strain and rythm of push poling across the marsh, the rawness of decoy lines on the hands, the roar of the offshore surf on a stormy day, the rattle of tule and bullrush in the wind, the distant call of geese and the nearer sounds of an incoming juvenile snow goose as it sneaks in from your side or of the whistle of a passing pintail drake. (These latter things we are going to lose, or have significantly degraded, with e-calls blaring across the marsh.) It is all these and a thousand more small elements that come together to determine whether the hunting experience, for newcomer or old timer, is good or bad.
Making the transition from new hunter to experienced hunter isn't science. Science is research with as many variables as possible controlled and accounted for and a meticulous collection and analysis of data. A good hunt can be the coming together of years of experience in the use of the skills one has learned, the knowledge one has gained, and the equipment one has accumulated over many years to shoot 2 birds or 10. Or it can be the first trip into the marsh where no birds are shot and the neophyte goes over his waders in a ditch he didn't see and drops his gun in the mud but realizes, over the course of the day, the things he could have done differently to maybe get him under some birds. What was a good hunt for one won't have been good for another. All kinds of things can spoil a hunt, but there's not much one hunter can do to spoil it for another except by his immediate proximity, by moving around too much, or by making too much noise.The guys who set up too close to an existing set come foremost to mind. When you turn on an e-call the noise will spread across the entire marsh and will be inescapable.
E-calls are not going to shorten the learning curve either, except maybe for some aspects of the calling itself---and actually they will probably add as many things to learn about using that kind of call as they eliminate about using the old kind. They are just going to be an unjustifiable, obnoxious form of noise pollution.
Will an e-call allow a beginner snow goose hunter to shoot more geese ? Maybe sometimes. It is true that the things are effective on the prairies but how effective will a recording of 2000 geese be over 40-50 decoys? I suspect not much. Is that worth polluting the marsh with this noise to find out? No. I’ve only raised this with a couple of the experienced guys around here but we all agreed that calling is one of the lesser skills of the sport and that most snow geese are shot without ever having been called. Calling of any kind is still only going to be effective when you add it to all the other skills and knowledge needed..... what wind to hunt, where to be for any given wind, what tide to hunt, where to be for any given tide, the role of interaction between wind and tide, what times are best, how all these change as the season progresses, how to hide, where to set up in relation to your decoys, how to set decoys, what the birds were doing yesterday, how to travel in the marsh, how to deal with sudden storms, whether to call, how to call, when to call, when to sit up for the shot, etc. It takes a long time to absorb and you will never be able to truncate this process. No snow goose hunting course will turn out accomplished and successful snow goose hunters who can routinely bag out. Neither will using an e-call.
Will the availability of e-calls by itself bring new hunters into the marsh? I doubt that too. And how do you encourage new hunters to get into the sport by adding $5-700.00 to the cost of an already expensive pursuit? In any case I would think what we want in the marsh are people who are attracted to it by what it is, not by playing with an electronic call.
Our marshes are a special gift we’ve got here, that should be treasured, respected, and preserved. It amazes and disillusions me that there are people who care so little about the marsh that they would be in favour of something like this. The only possible valid support, in my view, for using e-calls and putting up with their noise pollution is if the biologists convince us that they have been shown to have the capacity to bring about a significant population reduction that will result in the elimination of the overpopulation problem and in fact are an essential part of the solution. The article I cited from the Journal of Wildlife Management concluded that although e-calls had the effect of increasing the harvest, that increase would not be sufficient to bring about the desired elimination of the overpopulation problem.
I’m done with any more of this here. I guess all I can say in the end is that I’ll never use them here nor will I ever hunt with anyone who does.
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Gunner
