Table of contents for December/January 2020-21 in Wildfowl

THEY SAY THERE are no atheists in foxholes, and 2020 put us all in a foxhole. Major dream hunt plans imploded like children’s sandcastles on a stormy beach, but any of us who managed to hold their health and lifeline of income together in these times of paranoia and empty store shelves were grateful. It was a year in which small things could make us remember what was still real in a surreal time straight out of a Vonnegut novel. Stark and raw, a handwritten letter showed up in the WF mail, and gave me pause. Who still does that? Handwritten submissions mean a WF staffer has to type it in manually, an annoyance, but something about just seeing human handwriting again was comforting in this era in which we’re…

DUSKY GOOSE CONFUSION In Conservation Corner in the October issue (The Good News is Geese), WF quoted an official who said the dusky subspecies had improved in areas to the point they would be back on the huntable list this fall in areas That didn't happen and to avoid any confusion, we urge hunters to be absolutely positive to check all state regulations and current updates before going afield in Alaska, Washington and Oregon in pursuit of Canada geese. ACE ACT LOOKS TO GO THROUGH  With reportedly a third of all wildlife species at risk of extinction, the support in the U.S. Senate for America’s Conservation Enhancement (ACE) Act is a true victory and provides serious hope for America’s Wildlife. Supported heavily by Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Tom Carper (D-Del.)…

AN HOUR EAST of Fargo and half that distance from the North Dakota border, Cormorant Lake is just one of Minnesota’s legendary 10,000 lakes. Covering 3,657 acres and at its deepest point, 75 feet down, it’s a prime fishing lake and these guys sure got into the ducks there back in November of 1910. Just west of the lake named for the cormorants that populate the Mississippi Flyway is Bois de Sioux (Sioux Woods). This was named by the early French explorers and Catholic priests who traveled this land in the 1700s. The cormorant is a common all-black fish-eating bird that's like a mix between a loon and a goose. Used in Japan by fishermen who put a collar on their cormorants so they cannot swallow their prey, I saw…

IN A BLITHE little backwater off the Willamette River, a flock of mallards drifted in, cupping their wings to a small decoy spread. Two hunters sprung their trap and jumped from their seats, completing their limits of greenheads, each with .410s. “I was shooting a Winchester Model 42 and my friend had a double barrel,” Kurt Rose said. “It happened about 12 years ago and was one of so many great hunts from my boat blind. We had taken all but two apiece of our seven-mallard limits with our 12-gauge shotguns and were going to hunt snipe with the small-bore shotguns later in the morning. It was warm and the river was calm, a bluebird day in October. I scouted the place the day before and found a place with…

RESIDENT CANADA goose seasons are intended to help control nuisance populations. Biologists band a lot of these birds in order to document their relatively localized movements so band recoveries are somewhat commonplace and not particularly noteworthy, most of the time. Every so often something peculiar happens. As a seasoned waterfowler, Dennis Day has developed certain habits. “The first thing I do when picking up a downed bird or taking one from my Labrador is look at the legs,” he says. The bands are always a pleasant surprise and sometimes the band reports make them even more valuable. Over a 16-month period he and his son, Matthew, collected five geese banded on the same day, three of which were harvested on the same day. The following season the dynamic duo collected…

SOCK ‘EM IN With no assembly required, Dive Bomb’s S5 (Tall) Snow Goose Socks add quick and immediate realism to your spread. Not your run of-the mill pure-white sock, these attractors feature an ultra-realistic paint scheme with a snap-locking Stake/Backbone System and a zero-memory spring open mouth to ensure longevity and bulletproof in-the-field performance. Stakes measure 36 inches, which gets the decoys off the ground to create optimum visibility. Hand sewn from Tyvek material, these 20-inch long snow-goose-getters spring to life and take wind like a champ Pre-punched holes in the bottom panel of each body eliminate frustrating sag divebombindustries.com MSRP: $65 dozen/$300 five dozen/$550 10 dozen THE GRADIENT IS A GO-TO A staple for serious waterfowlers, Sitka’s famed Gradient Hoody is now being offered in white to better help you…

SHARPLY PITCHED BARKS resonated through the Texas night, coming from thousands upon thousands of snow and blue geese riding a late October wind. The man stopped what he was doing and threw open the house door to hear their long-awaited calls. Soon, they would be feeding in the fields and the hunters would be waiting, another season chasing light geese dominating their free time. Snow and blue geese have been following this pattern for decades—breeding in the far Canadian north and wintering where rice is plentiful and other crops linger far behind. And with that migration came the hunters, dedicated marsh men willing to face rough conditions to add light geese to the bag. They crawled and sneaked, braving thick mud, mosquitoes and prolific snakes inhabiting Texas coastal habitats. Then…

Editor’s note: This manuscript came in “over the transom” as they say, in the form of a bold letter handwritten on typing paper, a real throwback in this digital age. An interesting tale unfolded from the pen of WF subscriber Dave Irwin—one our readers will enjoy in these strange times. We kept the oddball spirit of it alive with this handwriting style font, and it is full of valuable hunting lessons; foremost, determination! Enjoy, and drop us a letter, handwritten or not! Skip.knowles@outdoorsg.com Mid-March 2020 was the beginning of a new way of life for all Americans, but the snow goose population was not aware of the human pandemic. Their spring migration continued as normal. I was already in Fargo, North Dakota working on a business project away from my…

IF A PERSON VISITED California’s Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the Lower Klamath (a stone’s-throw away) in late summer, they’d expect to find shallow marshes, big open water and rich croplands. They’d expect to see a fall staging area used by 80 percent of the Pacific Flyway’s migrating waterfowl. If they pointed their bi-nos toward the big water, they’d expect to see up to 60,000 molting ducks. Sadly, today, that sight isn’t in the cards. America’s oldest and first Wildlife Refuge, the Lower Klamath was established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. Managed out of Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge’s visitor center, this locale is comprised of six different refuges that stretch across southern Oregon and Northern California. In years past, flood waters mixed with thousands of acres of…

A FEW YEARS ago, I left my desk to grab a cup of coffee. When I returned, I had a missed phone call and two texts from an unknown number that I found out belonged to a good friend’s wife. She was frantic because their golden retriever had suddenly bitten one of their young sons and my buddy was getting ready to march the dog outside and shoot it. It was ugly, all around. While my friend ended up taking the dog in to have it put down, his son was healing from stitches in his face in multiple spots. The best guess was that the dog, a lifelong bird hunter, was sleeping and the boy surprised it or jumped on it. The reaction was primal, and it resulted in…

THE FIRST HUNT will definitely rev the young dog up and most cer tainly reveal shortcomings that were not evident in training. The most prevalent of these is breaking on the shot and/or the fall of game. PROBLEM: Your dog attempts to or breaks on the shot and/or fall of a bird or birds. PROXIMATE CAUSE: Lack of empha sis on steadiness during training ses sions or lack of control during transi tion training. SOLUTION: Assuming that steadiness has been prioritized during training, breaking on the shot or fall is the easiest to deal with. This is simply because, with proper pre cautions at the outset, this problem can be totally controlled, if not pre vented. Equipment needed consists of what is commonly referred to as a “tree lead.” A…

WE WERE STANDING in flooded timber in a hardwood creek bottom in the piney hills area of East Texas anxiously waiting for first light. The ranch foreman had told us that there were probably a thousand mallards feeding there every morning. The only drawback would be if they all came at once. About the time we could see them only as black silhouettes, they came. There were mallards as far as I could see, making it obvious they were all in one group. I told my hunting partner and my cameraman we were not going to shoot, but just watch and film them. My hunting partner sounded somewhat like an over-excited retriever, so I put my hand on his gun to prevent him from shooting and we let them land.…

I KNEW IT was coming as soon as I saw the guy. It’s the question every public hunter dreads. I’d just finished up a two-mile trudge back to my vehicle across mud and sludge and sagebrush only to find another truck next to mine. The driver rolled down his window at my approach. A slight fellow, with coke bottle glasses and a bushy mustache and a voice that reminded me of Ned Ryerson, that insurance salesman from Groundhog’s Day. Then he asked the question. “Hey, how’d ya do?” I heaved my decoy bag onto the tailgate and sighed, considering my response. I knew what I DIDN’T want to tell that guy: the truth. I’d finished my limit in under twenty minutes that morning, all greenheads. The birds were dropping from…