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As we enter the last two weeks of the Missouri 2009 North Zone duck season, area waterfowlers are wondering, "What's with the ducks?"
Despite reports of a near-record fall flight, based on last May's U.S. Fish & Wildlife nesting ground census, duck hunting in north central Missouri's wetlands could best be termed "spotty."
Perhaps we duck hunters had too great an expectation, what with the reported huge numbers of waterfowl poised to come down, and coming off a darn good season last year, even though duck numbers weren't as high.
A good start on the Oct. 31 season opener was stymied by an unusual fall flood, keeping many hunters from even reaching their blinds for two or three days and covering much of the duck habitat in this area with several feet of mucky water. This was compounded by an even-bigger flood just a week or so later.
These floods undoubtedly destroyed much of the area's moist-soil duck food and left the ducks wondering where their usual food sources went.
Ducks were flushed out of their usual haunts and scattered throughout the area. Waterfowl counts at the area's public wetlands were considerably less than expected, and large numbers of ducks were "holed up" several miles from Fountain Grove, Grand Pass and other area hunting areas.
The last posting on MDC's website on Nov. 30 shows only 20,000 ducks at Fountain Grove, 85,000 at Grand Pass, 29,700 at Bob Brown, 16,400 at Nodaway Valley and only 52,500 at the 14,000 acre Four Rivers Conservation Area. All of these are considerably below population counts in past years, causing area hunters to wonder, "Just where are all those ducks?"
It's rumored that a huge number of mallards are still resting peacefully in South Dakota (where the season is about to close), but there are not many at all in Iowa just north of us. The latest cold front with sub-freezing temperatures should have driven the ducks down to us, but as it gets later in the year it's possible that late migrating ducks may just fly on by in search of warmer places than Missouri before they touch down.
My son Brett, a National Wildlife Refuge manager in southern Louisiana, told me last week (ahead of the big cold front that came through Thursday and following) that he'd really been picking up ducks on Lake Ophelia Refuge early in the week, with about 17,000 showing up almost overnight. Their duck season is just beginning, so the timing for them was pretty good. I have to wonder; did some of "our" ducks move on out, or are these ducks that just overflew Missouri on their way south?
As we enter the last two weeks of the Missouri 2009 North Zone duck season, area waterfowlers are wondering, "What's with the ducks?"
Despite reports of a near-record fall flight, based on last May's U.S. Fish & Wildlife nesting ground census, duck hunting in north central Missouri's wetlands could best be termed "spotty."
Perhaps we duck hunters had too great an expectation, what with the reported huge numbers of waterfowl poised to come down, and coming off a darn good season last year, even though duck numbers weren't as high.
A good start on the Oct. 31 season opener was stymied by an unusual fall flood, keeping many hunters from even reaching their blinds for two or three days and covering much of the duck habitat in this area with several feet of mucky water. This was compounded by an even-bigger flood just a week or so later.
These floods undoubtedly destroyed much of the area's moist-soil duck food and left the ducks wondering where their usual food sources went.
Ducks were flushed out of their usual haunts and scattered throughout the area. Waterfowl counts at the area's public wetlands were considerably less than expected, and large numbers of ducks were "holed up" several miles from Fountain Grove, Grand Pass and other area hunting areas.
The last posting on MDC's website on Nov. 30 shows only 20,000 ducks at Fountain Grove, 85,000 at Grand Pass, 29,700 at Bob Brown, 16,400 at Nodaway Valley and only 52,500 at the 14,000 acre Four Rivers Conservation Area. All of these are considerably below population counts in past years, causing area hunters to wonder, "Just where are all those ducks?"
It's rumored that a huge number of mallards are still resting peacefully in South Dakota (where the season is about to close), but there are not many at all in Iowa just north of us. The latest cold front with sub-freezing temperatures should have driven the ducks down to us, but as it gets later in the year it's possible that late migrating ducks may just fly on by in search of warmer places than Missouri before they touch down.
My son Brett, a National Wildlife Refuge manager in southern Louisiana, told me last week (ahead of the big cold front that came through Thursday and following) that he'd really been picking up ducks on Lake Ophelia Refuge early in the week, with about 17,000 showing up almost overnight. Their duck season is just beginning, so the timing for them was pretty good. I have to wonder; did some of "our" ducks move on out, or are these ducks that just overflew Missouri on their way south?
