Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2020 i Wildfowl

IT WAS SOMETHING a dog trainer said to me while I was interviewing her for my podcast that stuck with me for days. She had mentioned that she believes stress layers itself in dogs, and when it builds up to certain levels, it can affect training for days. It wasn’t much of a leap to believe that stress, then, could also influence hunting performance. Her statement led me down an internet rabbit hole to suss out a canine researcher who could really speak to an expert level on canine stress. After some research, it seemed like I could do far worse than reaching out to Jessica Hekman DVM, PhD, who has spent years of her life digging into the effects of stress on dogs. Her early research focused on stress…

ON A SUMMER morning in West Point, Mississippi, a blue and yellow crop-dusting plane sits on the tarmac in the rising heat while its tanks are being filled. It isn’t herbicide that’s being loaded in the tanks, though, but millet. Or, more accurately, Mossy Oak BioLogic Guide’s Choice, a special blend of millet that Toxey Haas and the rest of the GameKeepers at Mossy Oak have developed specifically for waterfowl managers. When the plane is heavy with seed the propeller cranks and hot air blows in all directions. The crop-duster taxis to position, nose pointed down the runway. The RPMs increase as the plane starts forward, rushing headlong over the tarmac before rising on the warm air currents then banking to the right. The goal of this run isn’t to…

IT WAS A bluebird day, yet Marco Costiglio was determined to hunt ducks. A friend invited him to hunt an area where he had seen a few green-winged teal. It was Nov. 28, 2019 and he was anxious to test his sneak boat. While launching a converted sailboat directly into the Atlantic would seem a fool’s mission, accompanied by his pal in a kayak, he sliced safely along the shoreline and ducked into an inlet. The inlet gave way to a small creek with trees closing in so tightly he saw a deer. “We set some decoys and teal started ripping in,” Costiglio said. “The water was only 18 inches deep, so no one else was around.” When the shooting was over, they had bagged three teal. It was a…

THE PATTERN REPEATS itself every fall. A cold front brings in a fresh wave of ducks and a rekindled passion among waterfowlers. Some of them fill their duck straps. Others don’t, but the mood is the same. It’s show time. The ducks finally arrived. A week later, the skies are empty, save for a few random birds that pass well out of range of every decoy spread in the marsh. It’s as if the ducks have packed up and moved on to safer grounds. But have they? Or are they hunkered down on a refuge or some secret swamp that no hunter knows about? It’s one of waterfowl hunting’s greatest mysteries. New research sheds light on those disappearing ducks. As it turns out, when food and open water is available,…

1 HUNTER: Nicholas Farris, Minot, ME BAND #: 1927-83749 SPECIES: Mallard (D) BANDED: 08/13/2015 LOCATION: Pierreville, QC RECOVERED: 09/23/2019 LOCATION: Minot, ME COMMENTS: My first banded bird ever and first male mallard couldn’t have been any better for a season opener. 2 HUNTER: Pat Arntson, Minot, ND BAND #: 1208-25126 SPECIES: Large Canada Goose (F) BANDED: 06/19/2018 LOCATION: near Galesburg, IL RECOVERED: 09/16/2019 LOCATION: Near Karlsruhe, ND 3 HUNTER: James Shaver, North Saanich, BC BAND #: 1138-70899 SPECIES: Canada Goose (M) BANDED: 06/22/2012 LOCATION: near Chatham, ON RECOVERED: 09/12/2019 LOCATION: 8.7 miles NE from Plumas, MB 4 HUNTER: Irvan Mclean, Lovell, WY BAND #: 0914-90672 SPECIES: Green-winged Teal (H) BANDED: 08/02/2018 LOCATION: near Huslia, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, AK RECOVERED: 10/05/2019 LOCATION: Big Horn County, WY 5 HUNTER: Joe DelSoldato, Pittsfield,…

If you’ve got a new shotgun with some great ammo and you want to turn the barrel red hot, you can't beat heading north. Far north. The Stoeger M 3500 is an inertia-operated shotgun that worked its way through several boxes of Kent’s Fasteel 2.0 and some of their Bismuth loads to boot during my time at Kris Wujcik’s Michitoba Outfitting, located a stone’s throw from the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border near Strathclair, Manitoba. The beauty of inertia-operation is that it is very clean with none of the dirt and carbon left behind by gas-operated guns. Inertia operation ain’t nothin’ new. It was developed by a Danish gunsmith named Christer Sjörgen in 1903, the same year John Moses Browning’s long recoil-operated Automatic 5 hit the market. The updated version by Stoeger uses…

THERE IS A COMMON MISCONCEPTION among waterfowlers, and sporting dog owners in general, that we need to teach our dogs to hunt. While there is a glimmer of truth to that when it comes to developing advanced skills like triple blind retrieves, the reality is if you go out and research pedigrees and pick up a pup with even a mild case of good bloodlines, that dog will know how to hunt. What it won’t know, is how to behave. Or how to learn very well (at least at a young age). Teaching a puppy to learn better is as hard as it sounds, but the foundation for it is exposure to new environments, textures and controlled experiences. This may seem like a long bridge to cross to get to…

THE WIND IS blowing and the temperature is nine degrees Fahrenheit—cold enough, as my uncle Pat used to say, to “freeze the balls off a brass monkey.” And though I never did understand that whole concept, two hours ago in the blind, icicles were hanging from my nose. Because I was hunting mallards on the river, that wasn’t all that unusual, but I’m home now, having just exited a hot shower in an attempt to warm up, and I’m still shivering. I hate it when I can feel ice forming in my beard while I’m still in the house. Many years ago, recently divorced, I was living in a shack at Loon Lake in northern Washington State. In late winter, my hair often froze when I got out of the…

PRAIRIE POTHOLES COME TO THE (REALLY) BIG SCREEN Delta Waterfowl and the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation, among other conservation groups, are collaborating on an IMAX film highlighting the Prairie Pothole Region. Wings Over Water will focus on sandhill cranes, mallards and yellow warblers to show the importance of the region known as the Duck Factory. “The film helps us tell the wetland habitat conservation story to a broader audience who might not yet understand the importance of the prairies not only for waterfowl and wildlife, but also for the health of our ecosystem,” says Delta Waterfowl CEO Dr. Scott Petrie. It is set to be released in 2021 and will appear in theaters throughout the world. Acadamy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Michael Keaton is narrating the film. FIRED…

LIKE THE BIRDS they pursue, it’s not unusual for ardent wildfowlers to travel great distances seeking out new and different hunting experiences. But most have a favorite honey hole back home they return to over and over. For Jack Hole, it’s Cardinal Lake, which lies about 20 miles west of Alberta’s famed Peace River. “We frequently hunt Cardinal Lake for a mixed bag of divers and puddlers,” he explained. “The divers are better in September, and mallards and pintails get better mid October,” he continued. And it was a mid-October day when he and his pals Cap’n Dr. Darryl Smith and Jon Mark Walls from Jackson, Tennessee headed about four miles across the lake where they found hundreds and hundreds of mallards. “We set up the mallard floaters and a…

TO BE HONEST, I never intended to hunt with my chocolate Lab even though I knew both of her parents had been hunters. This knowledge led to just enough guilt to prompt me to start messing around with my retriever by keeping a full sized duck in my freezer, which was supplied by my brother in-law, to provide her with a weekly “hunt” in the field next to my townhouse. This was a far cry from an actual hunt, but my dog loved it. I also started taking her to some hunt classes, where they would let our dogs retrieve a bird from the pond while several dog owners huddle around with their leashed dogs. When it was my Lab’s turn at one of these events, she managed to retrieve…

What your pup is fed before you pick it up, and what you feed it after, matters—a lot. Puppies have very specific nutrition needs not only to foster physical growth, but brain development. Purina’s Karl Gunzer, recommends paying close attention to the type of food you offer your puppy for several reasons. “When searching out a good puppy formula, always make sure it has an AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) statement on the bag showing that the formula is complete and balanced for growing puppies. Then dig in to whether the formula is highly digestible, contains the fat and protein levels necessary to provide energy and endurance, and offers up omega-rich fish oils and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). Gunzer’s last recommendation is an important one, because DHA is a…