Swans in Deroche on the news

[huntinnewbie]

Anyone watch the news tonight? Apparentley someone who is a local found 9 dead swans in the slew there. They said they thought the area belonged to ther swans but hunters would go there anyway. Obviously the area is open to hunting ducks. They intimated that perhaps the swans were being caught in the crossfire. It was also reported that they may have died from eating lead shot.. Typical no knowledge report!
Necropsies are being done on the swans to determine casue of death which makes me think it wasn't obvious that they were shot.
They said they were trumpeter swans however I thought the majority of swans were mute.

[f350ps]

The swans dying has been going on for years and years. There is a small lake out that way that the swans feed in and ingest lead from years ago. Kind of unusual though that they would find nine dead ones together. I'm sure we'll hear all about it on the news if they were shot. K

[Crazy_Farmer]

The majority is Trumpeters, actually not too many mutes flying around really. They like the city parks.

Judson Lake borders both abbotsford and the states and is one of the lakes in discussion, Laxton is also close by. The swans are roosting there, and years ago they hunted at Judson so theres bound to be some lead buried deep.

But same goes for all the fields in the whole fraser valley. Lead used to be shot, and there's theories that as we farm the land and plow it over each year, old lead gets brought to the surface.

Buts it likes f350 says its been going on for years and no definite answer has come out yet


On the swans in the slough, yesterday my grandpa was just telling me he heard about some farmer who let some people go hunting on their land and they shot some "snow geese" and threw them in a ditch. There isnt any flocks of snow geese to shoot there so I figured they either shot some seagulls or swans. I thought it was in a field but I'm thinking it was 2nd hand knowledge now since the papers are saying they were found in the slough.

[NoLimit99]

It's weird to hear about this as me and my buddy were out hunting ducks last week in that area and we noticed 2 guys in a black truck jumping out of their truck and shooting randomly at things in the slew and then jumping back into the truck driving down a ways and doing it again although we didn't see any swans fly away we saw a crap load of ducks fly away..... it really pissed us off and we were going to confront them but for safety reasons choose not to. We even convinced our self out of calling the c.o. we were convinced that at the spot they were shooting it was legal. We thought no one would be that stupid to just start popping off rounds at random birds. Now that I think more about it, I'm sure it wasn't legal what they were doing because you have to be so far from the road and we were at the only spot in the area that was legal heck we go every other week and it's the only legal spot around that area. God dang it.

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20091229/bc_trumpeter_swans_091229/20091229/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

[MikeH]

Heard about it today sounds like poisoning of some kind hence the test.

[Swamp mule]

Whereabouts did these swans die? East or west of Deroche bridge b/c the only access east of the bridge is walking

[Ddog]

i hunted that area for years and years, always seen trumpeters in there. Its a shame that those ones died, i hope we find out. Anyone have any more info?

[limit time]

Great, sounds like another area closed!

[Crazy_Farmer]

Great, sounds like another area closed!

The area already is partially closed, no more land will close down from this.

[blindman]

It is odd that for that number of swan to die all at once in one place for ingestion of lead. Also it is fairly normal to see evidence of this in the form of green snot at the nostril area and green stain at the anus. If they were shot, wouldn't there be blood or evidence of wounds? They will know for certain when they examine the livers and gizzards.

As for Judson Lake (Border Lake), there has been a hazing program each Winter for the past few years to prevent the birds form roosting there and ingesting lead. They are still finding it somewhere but the death rate has come down. You wouldn't believe the total number of hours people have spent doing 24 hour hazing, collecting soil samples and collecting dead swan for necropsy.

[headhunter57]

2 more have been found that were intentionally shot. There was a further one recovered yesterday however it is likely lead poisoning and one more infront of my farm here that is likely suffering lead poisoning as well. The lead poison deaths are on a steady decline out here in this waterway. However there does seem to be someone out here intentionally shooting the swans and leaving them in seemingly always the same waterway to be recovered. There was never a doubt from the time the story aired on CTV that the then 7 birds, were victims of gunshot. For legal reasons the autopsy needed to confirm it before it could be made public. Since that story aired two more have been found shot in the same waterway. This is extremely frustrating to us hunters out here.

To the individual who commented he was in the only legal spot to hunt on Deroche slough further up this thread.... Check your regulations and restrictions again my friend. You were simply in one area that is legal. I have hunted these waters in Deroche for more then 40 years now. In those years there has been few changes to legal area for us to shoot shot. However.... single projectile has changed considerably. The area that you were set up on in Indian Arm on the Deroche slough East of the bridge is simply a pitence to the legal area in that area. And to the individual that stated that you can only walk to the legal area east of the bridge... The roads to that area have been here since I was a child and my father a child before that. There is ample area for us to hunt out here.

As far as the swan deaths... there is no plan to reduce open area to hunt waterfowl out here however there is a major effort of all of us local hunters to watch for the culprit/s then observe, record and report them to the proper authorities...