The Snow Goose Spec season would in effect eliminate all hunting for them except late season guided private land hunts. Not a single Snow goose or Spec I have killed in Oregon has been taken after around the 10th of November. If the populations are in that bad of condition there should no Hunting at all for them.

 

More opportunity!!!!

Bag Limits
Bag limits for 2021/22 are unchanged with the following exception:

1. Increase the bag limit for white geese to 20 per day, statewide, for the entire season. Previously, the bag limit was 6 per day, except it increased to 20 per day during February and March hunt days in Klamath, Lake, Harney, and Malheur counties.

 

20 per day for private land guided hunts is what that means in most of zone 2.

 

Instead of stealing the public land hunters, hunt days. ODFW should have a Spring season with a very limited number of days that are not fixed. But are set when the birds are actually on the private land doing damage. How is it fair to take the early season days, to give the spring hunt days, when many of the days have no birds to hunt. If you look at this years season dates. Every private land Goose day is taken from the Public land hunt days.

 

Instead of stealing the public land hunters, hunt days. ODFW should have a Spring season with a very limited number of days that are not fixed. But are set when the birds are actually on the private land doing damage. How is it fair to take the early season days, to give the spring hunt days, when many of the days have no birds to hunt. If you look at this years season dates. Every private land Goose day is taken from the Public land hunt days.

Will that be the testimony you will be sending to the commission for the April meeting when the game bird regs will be adopted? [emoji848]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The change in dove seasons seems strange to me. I feel like a few years back we were hearing that Eurasians were limiting mourning dove habitat but now we have upped the limit and will have a "late season" hunt? I definitely see a lot of them later and would participate in the later hunt but am curious about the science and logic behind it. How many people would go out for a dove shoot in December?

 

The season is never closed on them. You can hunt them today if you want. No limit either. This has been the case for many years.

 

ODFW has to operate within the Federal framework of so many allowable hunting days for waterfowl.
In Zone 1, upping the white goose from 6 to 20 definitely increases the opportunity for public and private land hunters.

 

If there are no birds in the zone, when the 20 bird limit days are open to public land hunting, how will that increase hunter opportunity? Other than pushing hunters into the late season private land pay to play hunt days. One thing it will definitely do, is reduce hunter days in the field . No birds, No motive to go hunt. No cash No ability to go hunt. Fewer licenses sold, Fewer bird validations, fewer Federal Waterfowl stamps sold. We get a lot of "Less" for a bunch of empty opportunity on paper.

 

I will be sending a written statement.

 

In addition to the goose topic, the recommendation for next year is a 1 pintail limit. Which seems insane when you hunt the West pacific flyway.

Ducks Unlimited podcast on YT covered this today. Had fed (I think USFWS) biologist talking about pintail management in particular.

He said when they do population counts, they don't do sex ratios. Just overall numbers. Then, he said that their data did not suggest that there were a lot more male pintails than females. I think this data comes from banding info. Not positive of the data source. So take that fwiw.

He refused to comment on what's on the table for next year.

They also said that due to covid restrictions, they didn't know if they would be able to fly over breeding grounds this year (2020 was canceled as well) for population survey.

Given the tendency of govt to CYA first and foremost, and their lack of data from recent surveys, I have little faith we will see any more liberal harvest reg changes in near future.
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From my experiences, and the experiences of other very experienced hunters that I trust are VERY good at ID'ing a bird in flight, there's a lot more bull sprig than females. 3/1 ratio. Maybe more.

From my experience a single hen pintail is one of the easiest ducks to get into range. Even when hens are in a flock of several pins, they are the most likely to peel off and try to land first.....which could explain why their data from banding indicates a lower male/female ratio. It aint hard to kill a dumb duck.

I'll be sure to send in a comment. But have little hope, as this is the same brain trust that has brought us the pull string decoy, the gillnet debacle and our present mule deer population.

 

As always, please feel free to comment on any aspect of the migratory game bird hunting seasons and regulations and thanks for your interest!
Regards
Brandon S. Reishus
Migratory Game Bird Coordinator
Oregon Dept of Fish & Wildlife
4034 Fairview Industrial Dr SE
Salem, OR 97402
Office: (503) 947 6324
Cell: (503) 580 8725
Fax: (503) 947 6330
Email: Brandon.S.Reishus@state.or.us

I will add that Mr. Reishus has been a strong advocate for waterfowlers. It was Brandon who drove the process to eliminate the goose check stations in the NW Goose Zone without compromising the goose hunting opportunity and it's long season.

 

20 white geese is a joke. This ain't Kansas and it ain't South Dakota. We have a fraction of the birds that they have. All this does, is help out the private clubs that will bait the birds. The dove change is not a bad idea because their is more doves around in the later season than you think. I believe raising the limit to 10 would be more than adequate. Evidently the ODFW is having a fantasy about bird numbers. As far as Pintail limit is concerned, forget it. We are lucky they give us one. It ain't going to change. Enjoy it friends, because it's going to get worse, and good luck finding ammo for next fall, shotgun ammo is going up 15% in price in April.

 

How many dekes do you need to effectively snows? Hundreds? Snow goose hunting has always seemed like a guide's game to me anyway, given the equipment investment and land access investment/network required. Different snow goose regs wont matter much, I think. On the other hand with ever warmer summers in the arctic and expansion of snow goose nesting grounds, maybe we'll see more and more snows in Oregon (not sure that's a good thing). I remember only six years ago, hunting dark geese with a guide in the Columbia basin, and the guide shot a lone snow goose out of a flock of honkers that he had called in. He was amused and interested in the 'novelty' of shooting snow goose in eastern Washington in December. Not so novel anymore.

Regarding pintails, DU magazine had a good article on the issue a month or two ago. Given falling North America population numbers of pintail, and the way bag limits are set, I suspect we wont see that limit increase for a while, if ever. Of course, other waterfowl populations have rebounded since the early 20th century, a pintail rebound could happen, but assume that's process that would take years and big changes in summer habitats.

Regarding dove . . . will that mean Sauvie will be open for dove in November/December? I've seen a lot of mourning dove in the roam units in December. Probably not a good idea - stick with ducks on the SIWA.

 

How many dekes do you need to effectively snows? Hundreds? Snow goose hunting has always seemed like a guide's game to me anyway, given the equipment investment and land access investment/network required. Different snow goose regs wont matter much, I think. On the other hand with ever warmer summers in the arctic and expansion of snow goose nesting grounds, maybe we'll see more and more snows in Oregon (not sure that's a good thing). I remember only six years ago, hunting dark geese with a guide in the Columbia basin, and the guide shot a lone snow goose out of a flock of honkers that he had called in. He was amused and interested in the 'novelty' of shooting snow goose in eastern Washington in December. Not so novel anymore.

Regarding pintails, DU magazine had a good article on the issue a month or two ago. Given falling North America population numbers of pintail, and the way bag limits are set, I suspect we wont see that limit increase for a while, if ever. Of course, other waterfowl populations have rebounded since the early 20th century, a pintail rebound could happen, but assume that's process that would take years and big changes in summer habitats.

Regarding dove . . . will that mean Sauvie will be open for dove in November/December? I've seen a lot of mourning dove in the roam units in December. Probably not a good idea - stick with ducks on the SIWA.

Good question. I don't know that much about hunting snow geese but have made week long trips to Southern Oregon the last 4 springs. I can tell you that the 400-500 decoys we used last year didn't seem to be enough! They are also smart and clearly get decoy shy. I have had success decoying in specks and snows but usually it's singles or small groups. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong! Now here's the crazy part......twice this year on Sauvie I chuckled (laughed) at the guys with a dozen sillouettes/socks. That is until I saw a few snows actually work that small of spread. Go figure! One time the guy killed 2 and the other a snow stayed low and cruised over my corn and I took the juvenile bird home. So, to answer your question, I think big is better, but anything might grab the attention of a few birds. Especially early season juveniles. By spring they seem to have seen it all.

 

I have killed hundreds of snow geese. Never have I owned a snow goose decoy, I have killed Snows over Canada shells while trying to kill Canada geese. One time a buddy set out 6 snow goose shells and we killed Canada geese over them. hunting ag field would be a different game. Though even in the California rice fields we never use decoys. Just lay'ed up next to a **** and killed them as the flew by.

 

Is there a logical point to it?