duck opener

birdhunter · 10-12-2002, 02:10 PM

Westside opened today anyways. Hunted this morning with a good buddy of mine doing some jump shooting on a few ponds. Great great way to start the season. I got my limit and he was only one short. All mallards save for one hen ringneck that got in the mix. Saw probably 200 ducks today and 30 geese and you can bet I'll be back out there tomorrow. Anyone else have any reports? Hope it's going well.

bigshark · 10-12-2002, 02:33 PM

birdhunter

We had more birds on SI than any opener I can remember. We had a problem however. Let me just call it the "cheap-watch" problem. I will not say that these guys are shooting too early and don't care. Legal time was 6:57 AM but the cheap watch guys started at 6:45 or so. I guess one guy really could have a watch set ahead or something and could have made an honest mistake. Once it started it just kept increasing, oh well, it isn't going to ruin the season. We were happy to see flock after flock zooming around and looking at the decoys but the war zone on the
public land( east side chech station) kept them moving. We did well but we think tomarrow will be better for the private lands. We will see. I heard that the Robo decoys will be ok this season but are outlawed after this season. Reason given was "unfair pursuit". This was just chatter in the blinds this morning but my wife said she saw it in the paper today. I wish everyone on the board a
SAFE and successful season.

Bob

[ 10-12-2002, 04:38 PM: Message edited by: bigshark ]

Flathead · 10-12-2002, 05:32 PM

Hunted the slough behind the house this am and this evening. Usually good for a wood duck or two, but no luck this opener. Very little water and no birds seen in any of our usual places. Need some weather soon!!! May go over and hunt the Upper Deschutes and Wickiup tommorrow. Birdhunter, were you hunting the Corvallis area or up North?

RipDatLip · 10-12-2002, 07:33 PM

Maybe you OR boys should have sent some over this way. Fishing in my neck of the woods sucked compared to last weekend...

Matt

birdhunter · 10-13-2002, 02:03 PM

...and we're back to the regular early season hunting.

Went out again today and there were far fewer birds. Funny how those local birds only need to get shot up once before they figure it out. At any rate, between my buddy and I we got 3 mallards and we were really lucky to do that. Bluebird weather and a lot of high fliers. Oh well, better than sitting at home.

Flathead - I was hunting up near Portland.

Lured In · 10-13-2002, 06:48 PM

Hunted L&C and had a great time (minus the part where we swamped the boat). Shot 7 between the two of us and sailed another 4 into the really big water. That was enough to call it a day.

bigshark · 10-13-2002, 08:01 PM

Lured In

Where you seeing singles and pairs or where there bigger groups of birds working? On the island we were surprised to see so many pintails. What types of ducks were you seeing?

Jellyhead · 10-13-2002, 08:10 PM

Bigshark,

I hunted L&C this morning. I coulda shot a truck load of pintails. My first bird was a pinnie hen, so I had to watch alot of them just light into the spread. Not near as many teal as I remembered last year on opening weekend. I only saw a handful of mallards. I ended up with a pinnie, a pair of ringnecks, and two teal. Then it just died. Oh yeah, a lot of singles and pairs for me today. No big flocks

Aaron

bigshark · 10-13-2002, 08:45 PM

Jellyhead

Thanks for the info. Here on SI we had maybe a dozen flocks of both pennies and mallards. When I say flocks I mean 8 or more birds. It was a little different than usual and I wondered if we have some early
flights from the north. The geese are going over our house at night and have been doing this for more than a week. Hope the guys in the southern part of the state get into them but I sure would like them to hang around for a while this year. Lots of birds came through and just kept going last year. Buddies in Calif said Chico area did well last year. Our club here on the island had a low harvest number compared to other years.

Lured In · 10-13-2002, 09:29 PM

We saw flocks of mallards and pins ranging from a half dozen to a couple dozen. A few good size flocks of teal, a few flocks of bluebills plus some other unidentifiable flocks.

Yes we saw a ton of pins and they were among the first to show. Saw lots of greenheads vs hen mallards.

They started flying just before shooting time and stopped around 1100am on Saturday. Had we not had the boat issue we could have limited in 30-60 minutes easy.

We could not see any other spreads and the only shooting we heard was well away from us. This was my first time down there and I must say I am impressed. Opening days can be awesome, time will tell whether or not the birds are here for real though.

Jellyhead · 10-14-2002, 09:42 AM

Bigshark,

I don't know if you belive this, but....

A couple of my buddies that hunt the Island hate the geese. They say that the geese always arrive before the northern ducks, and eat all the feed out of they're lease. Then the ducks just pass on through.

Do you think this happens?

Aaron

bigshark · 10-14-2002, 11:17 PM

Jellyhead

Aaron I don't like the geese either. I don't think the geese and ducks feed on the same food stuffs most of the time. Given the choice the geese are grass eaters and will go to feed in a field of barley sprouts or winter wheat sprouts and clover. Pintails and wedgies are grass eaters as well but will eat whats available. Mallards are seed eaters as first choice and millett and sweetcorn are preferred over field corn. Other grains work as well. This is nothing more than what I think so don't hold it as for sure info. I watch to see who eats what first and I think the above are general rule of thumb habits.
When I said I hoped they would hang around I was referring to the ducks. I do think the geese raise heck with the ducks. Drive out to the refuge on a closed day and drive down the road from the eastside check station to the dike turnaround. Stop and watch the birds on those little pieces of water. Geese move ducks away for whatever reason. Some say that the more geese in the area the fewer ducks will hang around. I don't know if its true or not but down deep I'm always looking for a reason and I can't find anyway to disprove that theory. During the 1950s we had as many as 250 to 300 thousand ducks on the island at the peak of the counts. Today its much less. My guess is the additional refuges have a lot to do with this as well a some change in flyway habits. The grain and grass fields of the east side(Tri-cities) in the Columbia basin has had an influence I suspect. All in all I don't really know what a true science guy would attribute the changes to, I'm just a hunter and
wish it were a little more like it once was. When there were so many ducks there were very few geese. It was a rare occurence when
the average guy shot a goose on the island.
Anyway you have to go about it, or whatever
changes you have to make, waterfowling if still
my first choice for hunting. As much as I may not like the geese, I have to ask myself why am I out there shooting at them when duck season closes. I think I just like to call ducks more and I think they eat better. :smile:

mallard0311 · 10-15-2002, 11:40 PM

Hunted West side yesterday and had an opportunity for a limit but missed lot's of shots, ended up with 1 mallard. Noticed that best success was coming from blind 2 or the old 3 on mud lake. They had robo duck, were in the shade and shot more than anyone and should of got limit. There was lot's of blasting for the first 1 1/2 hours then really died off. Nice warm sunny bluebird day. Did not see many flocks of birds either, just lot's of geese. I will wear my glasses next time out. I feel that it is going to be slow out there till mid Nov.

[ 10-15-2002, 12:42 PM: Message edited by: mallard0311 ]

Labsforme · 10-18-2002, 04:50 AM

Hunted on private property near Oak Island
and was done by 8:15 am with a greenhead,hen, and 5 widgeon.It seems like this is the earliest I've seen this many widgeon.Lots of birds moving from the private lands to the refuge at first light.Looking forward to goose season.I was builing blinds
last Saturday and had at least 3,000 geese :smile:
about a hundred yards from my white F-150 in the field.Made the dog go crazy(she did stay).
PS Tilla and Fishalot didn't hear much from your area.

[ 10-18-2002, 05:51 AM: Message edited by: Labsforme ]

Tilla · 10-18-2002, 07:46 AM

Labsforme, been in Cleveland for a week. Now that I am back, that'll change.