April/May 10

Waterfowling North America
Movin’ On
…gonna find a home on wheels, gonna see how it feels, goin’ mobile. —The Who
by Doug Larsen

ell folks, we have finally closed the books on the 2009/’10 waterfowl season, an event that, the way it started, reminded me of a fraternity beer party. It was advertised to be a wild ride with fun for all. Duck numbers were up, conditions were good – all you had to do was show up, and it was guaranteed to be a good time. But once the dust settled on the season, it ended exactly like a college party: Everything is either wet or smelly, our clothes are ripped and dirty, we don’t have much to show for our efforts, and our heads hurt.

I already disagree with the Internet naysayers who are screaming for changes to season dates and calling for the heads of biologists who, according to them, must have inflated the duck numbers. Sure, they could have counted wrong and could have told us there were more ducks than there actually were, but I have to say, in my personal experience, and via my enthusiastic but non-scientific intelligence gathering, there were plenty of ducks. But they were not-very-easy-to-hunt ducks. Plus, they were on the move. Mallards especially, were highly nocturnal and “stale” in many parts of the country. This, coupled with windless, weak, El Nino-generated early weather patterns, followed by several Midwestern blizzards that would have made Jack London dig for his chopper mittens, moved a lot of ducks from the Dakotas in a hurry and left traditional hotspots like Missouri wondering where the season had gone. Throughout the season, experienced hunters in Arkansas had to use flashcards to remind them what a mallard looked like, and Arkansas had the wettest fall season on record, so ducks that arrived were spread hither and yon.

Also, some of the temperatures in the South were very low. It freezes in Arkansas each season at some point, but there are not a lot of years where you see five-degree temperatures in parts of the state. Farther south into Mississippi and Louisiana, shooting was spotty but somewhat better; however, those who were shooting ducks traveled frequently to kill them. Meanwhile, reports from Texas and Oklahoma were generally good – clearly the big ducks arrived in those states toward the tail end of the season, as the cold snaps and bitter temperatures pushed them down the flyway. Washington and California were good as well, with hunters shooting their ducks late in the season.

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