Innholdsfortegnelse for April - May 2017 i Wildfowl

FLYWAY VETERAN 1 HUNTER: Craig Toney, Chesterfield, VA BAND #: 0948-13917 SPECIES: Canada Goose (F) BANDED: 6/26/2001 LOCATION: Elmwood, ON RECOVERED: 1/20/2014 LOCATION: Chesterfield, VA COMMENTS: Band was very worn. 2 HUNTER: Chris Paclik, Sioux Falls, SD BAND #: 1987-03940 KZ<3 SPECIES: Black Brant (M) BANDED: 7/21/2012 LOCATION: Near Chevak, Wade Hampton Census Area, AK RECOVERED: 2/13/2016 LOCATION: Obregon, Mexico COMMENTS: Second band was yellow with black letters. 3 HUNTER: Stephen Coffman, Elk Grove, CA BAND #: 1707-36767 SPECIES: Lesser Snow Goose (M) BANDED: 07/26/2005 LOCATION: 5 m E Egg River, NT RECOVERED: 01/23/2015 LOCATION: 1.9 m NW Isleton, CA COMMENTS: This is my first goose band. This old boy had a lot of miles on his wings. 4 HUNTER: Travis Golden, Alvin, TX BAND #: 1155-76695 SPECIES: Blue-winged Teal…

SHE HELD THE thick gray sock at arm’s length like a merganser I'd once shot by "mistake." “You wore these all year?” wrinkling her nose, about to dry-heave. "Just one pair?” I was giving my shotgun its postseason strip down while the wife dumped laundry into the wash. “Nope. Two pair. But I wore both at the same time.” I couldn’t see her face, but detected a definite roll of the eyes. She reminded me I have a gazillion pair of big heavy socks and wondered why I would settle on the same two for 60 days in a row. “Haven't I ever explained my footwear theory to you?" “First I put on the inner sock. It’s thin, made from some kind of stuff that wicks perspiration away from my…

And Along Came Luna Thanks to Skip Knowles for his great editorial on bringing a new puppy into the family. Having lost a hunting dog unexpectedly, two years ago, Jack was a surprise to find on a Thanksgiving holiday in Pensacola. He quickly established himself as a part of the family and loves to be out on the water duck hunting. I hope you enjoy the new dog and extension of your young family. Tim Osborn Lafayette, LA Taking the Plunge...Again I enjoyed Skip’s editorial about his new pup luna. My first thought was congratulations, it’s about time you took the plunge again! It is indeed worth the heartache we go through when they leave us too early. I’m currently on my fifth Lab, which means I know what it’s…

SUPERFUND SITE SLAUGHTERS SNOWS Plenty of snow geese died last year and this spring, but a few of our white-winged friends succumbed to a worse fate than a 3” load of No. 2s. In late November, an estimated 10,000 snows landed on Berkley Pit in Butte, Montana. Berkeley is an old mine filled with acidic water. It produced 300 million tons of copper from 1955 to ’82, but left behind a toxic cesspool, which killed thousands from this particular flock after a drone fly over was conducted to assess fatalities. In 1995, 342 snows died here and autopsies were conducted to refute a claim the birds had died from eating tainted grain. But it was determined the geese died from the polluted water, which is acidic enough to liquefy the…

NICOLE BELKE GREW up on a farm outside Joliet, Illinois, fishing with her father and spending every second she could outdoors. Each fall, the honkers and greenheads would feed in her family's fields, but the ducks never sunk their hooks in until she was sitting on the couch (of all places) with her boyfriend/now husband Brian. "I went over there, and he and his dad were watching 'Fallin' Skies' and I just thought it was so cool. I told (Brian) I want to do that." He told Nicole, in her early 20s at the time, she would have to put in the work to become a hunter: learn to call, shoot, haul decoys, clean birds and take hunter's safety. She was driven to become an accomplished duck woman—her south Chicago…

WILL OWEN LIVES on the shoreline of Beaver Dam Lake near Tunica, Mississippi. A fifth-generation farmer, he's a long-time hunter from Virginia, Owen still loves to shoot a 303 Merkel over-under paired with 3" Hevi-Metal 3s or 4s. He also has a Browning Synergy O/U as his backup gun. And just recently, he added a black male Lab pup from Robert Milner at Duckhill Kennels to his arsenal. But his foray into waterfowling was happenstance, though the 49-year-old has plenty of passion after decades of chasing ducks. “I have been duck hunting since my junior year of high school when I fractured my leg in six places playing football. I came home and couldn’t do much and my buddy said ‘let’s go duck hunting,’” he said. His family owns farmland…

NOT LONG AGO, A RETIRED duck hunter friend bought a small parcel of land with a lake. He was going to spend the golden years fishing for monster rock quarry bass, but soon discovered the previous owners had started a piping system to flood adjacent ag fields. Luckily for us, he wasn’t married and started funneling money into a duck impoundment project that still has no end in sight. Just before Thanksgiving we hunted together, and a lone ringneck came into one of his ponds. I didn’t even think about pulling the trigger as he shot the first bird off a piece of property he had worked his butt off some 40-odd years to buy. The drake ringer is now in the hands of taxidermist Sierra Langbell, so he can…

TIME IT RIGHT and the sky over Great Salt Lake might give you an idea of what the earliest American explorers witnessed when they passed over the Wasatch Range and down into the Great Basin. During the peak migration, hundreds of thousands of waterfowl, shorebirds and other water-dependant species descend upon the vast, shallow lake. It’s one of the most ecologically important habitats in North America. It’s also one of the most imperiled. Great Salt Lake is already at half normal pool, due in part to long-term drought, but mostly a result of increased demand from the region’s growing population. A study conducted by researchers at Utah State University found the lake is 11 feet below its historic level, thanks largely to agricultural, industrial and residential water use. The state…

PUPPIES HOLD THE promise of companionship and countless retrieves to come. Just pick a color, make sure the parents have some hunt titles in their bloodline and hope for the best. Right? Well, not quite. If you want a healthy puppy, AKC papers and hunt titles aren’t everything. Sure, they may indicate some natural retrieving skills. However, focusing too much on performance can be heartbreaking when a pup’s genetic defect rears its head at 2 years old. “The AKC part, so what? It’s just a registration,” said Troy Tilleraas of TNT Labs and Kennel in Hastings, Minn. “Just because your car is registered, doesn’t mean it’s road worthy.” Tilleraas has been breeding, training and testing Labrador retrievers for more than two decades, and prides himself on producing hunt-worthy, healthy dogs.…

DO YOU EVER get tired of making great shots in front of your best hunting buddies? Me neither. But think about all the things that have to go right once you pull the trigger for those steel 4s to dust the feathers off a greenhead. Most of us haven't thought about it. A shotgun barrel has five components; the chamber, forcing cone, bore, choke forcing cone and choke. Each is dependent on the other to produce the most efficient pattern. The chamber is built to contain the cartridge for which it is made. Shooting shorter shells is not a problem...now. At one time, when paper cases were universal, most chambers had a step at the end that compensated for the thickness of the hull, and shorter shells often patterned poorly.…

NEARLY ALL RETRIEVER puppies have an inherent desire to pick objects up with their mouth. But only a small percentage have what I call "natural pick up and carry." The pups that do are those rare dogs that are always on the lookout for something to hold between their teeth. These are the puppies that would be just as happy holding on to a soda can as they would a mallard wing. They just want something clenched between their teeth. The same goes for pure retrieving desire. Some dogs, usually those boasting excellent pedigrees, will show a much more natural bend toward bringing a tossed object back. Most pups, however, fall somewhere between no interest at all, and natural pick up and carry. Both ailments have to be coaxed out…

MAKE IT RAIN Black Cloud has been deadly on ducks and geese for the last decade, but hunters had two complaints: it burned dirty and patterned poorly from ported chokes. That’s history with Flitecontrol Flex, made with a cleaner lead-free primer and propellant, leaving less residue in the gun. Packed with 40 percent Flitestopper steel and 60 percent premium steel, the new load is available in 10-, 12- and 20-gauge, and loves all chokes. We tested Flex in Manitoba, NoDak, Colorado and the range; no question, it kills. And hey, the new black brass hulls look super cool. $25-$36 | federalpremium.com NEXT GENERATION Few auto-loaders stand up against the Super Black Eagle, and Benelli’s 3.0 version has all the makings of the greatest Italian duck guns. A touch…

MAYBE IT WAS A SMELLY OLD CHESSY, OR A CUTE- as-hell white Lab pup that once wrestled your kids and looked like a baby polar bear. Or a semi-spastic golden that somehow got the job done with outrageous vigor. It could have been a poorly-performing chocolate that would kill itself trying and was a total sweetheart. Or maybe just your first gun dog, and that’s enough. But somewhere, somehow, a retriever at some point sunk its canines deep in your heart. Maybe it was not a great dog, but just happened to bear witness to a happy era in your own lifetime: Your personal good old days of hunting, a time when year after year you really got into the birds. Sometimes a dog will nail you in the heart…