Early birds a sign
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Prospects
mixed but better than during last year's drought
Finally,
a breath of north wind has reached the
Riding
that autumn breeze was a trickle of white-fronted geese.
Wednesday
brought a handful of reports from the coastal prairies east and southwest of
More
are on the way.
"I
talked with a friend of mine in
Specks
are the first geese to make it to
And
that arrival — the trickle will turn to a stream, then a flood over the coming
weeks — announces that autumn waterfowl hunting seasons are getting close.
In
eastern
Goose
hunters looking forward to this season might catch a break, at least where whitefronts are concerned. And there's even a bit of
encouraging news on the snow goose front.
Kraai, who is assistant waterfowl program leader for the Texas
Parks and Wildlife Department, spent the last week of September and first of
October in Canada, participating in the annual population survey of
mid-continent population of white-fronted geese.
Monitoring
migration
The
autumn whitefront survey, which has been conducted
each autumn since 1992, focuses on an area of western
Over
eight days, using two planes, a team of biologists from
"We
saw a lot of whitefronts — the counts were higher than we
expected," Kraai said.
The
data collected from the survey has yet to be crunched and tallied. But, Kraai said, it appears whitefronts
pulled off a decent hatch in at least a portion of their range.
While
weather conditions early in the nesting season in central and eastern parts of whitefront range suggested those birds would have
below-average production, things proved brighter in western areas.
The
final autumn count could be close to the 2006 estimate of 751,000 whitefronts, and that would be excellent. Whitefront numbers struggled a bit earlier this decade,
with the autumn survey count ranging from 644,000 to 522,000 from 2002-05.
As
long as those autumn estimates remain above the half-million mark, eastern
Texas goose hunters are likely to see the moderate bag limit package they've
enjoyed — a two-whitefront daily limit over a 72-day
season.
And
that two-speck bag limit is important to
That's
a good thing, because, often, snow geese don't arrive on the
Usually,
a few small flocks of snows arrive in late October. But the main push of snow
geese into
Early
reports from snow goose colonies were not greatly encouraging for
Overall,
the mid-continent population of snow geese remains very high. The 2006
mid-winter survey pegged the mid-continent population of "light geese
(snow, blue, Ross)" at 2.9 million, 31 percent higher than 2005 and the
second highest since the midwinter surveys were started in 1969.
But
because of shrinking habitat on the traditional wintering grounds of the upper
and middle
Duck
numbers up
The coast's wintering population of snow geese, which was as high as a
million birds a decade ago, has dropped to half that in recent years. Still, a
half-million or so snows are headed this way.
Kraai said he talked with folks in
"Some
bunches of snows had 20-25 percent young birds," he said.
Prospects
for
The
duck population is strong — this spring's population index of the 10 most
common ducks was 32.6 million, up 14 percent from a year ago and 24 percent
above the 1955-2006 average.
But
great habitat conditions in
An
extremely wet year in most of
The
same applies to the Rolling Plains and
With
all that available habitat, ducks very well could
spread out over the state instead of concentrating in traditional wintering
areas such as the coastal prairie and marshes.
The
Texas Panhandle is the only region of the state where duck prospects look less
that outstanding, Kraai said. While the region was
wet early in the year, it has dried considerably the past couple of months.
"We've
lost a lot of water in the Panhandle," Kraai
said. "A lot of the playas (natural wetlands) that were holding water in
the spring have dried out, and that's going to hurt hunting in that area."
Overall,