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Waterfowl Outfitters Unlimited
More ducks,
geese flock to area wetlands
Cold front will factor in second
half of season
By SHANNON TOMPKINS Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 5, 2009, 7:53PM
The cold front that shoved across Texas late this past week
brought with it more than just a rare snowfall for the Houston area. The
front's north wind carried fresh waves of waterfowl — ducks and geese — to
wetlands along the Texas coast and put a smile on the faces of many area waterfowlers.
Few things are more welcomed by Texas duck and goose hunters
than serious cold fronts during December. If they are frigid enough, those
pulses of north wind can shake loose concentrations of ducks and geese that
have stubbornly tarried along the Central Flyway, pushing those recalcitrant
birds south as open water freezes and snow covers their food sources.
This latest cold front appears to have done just that, and
with opportune timing.
Duck season in the state's north and south zones has been on
hiatus since Nov. 29 and will reopen Saturday. Any
ducks shoved across the Red River by this latest surge of north wind will have
a week or so to settle in and get comfortable — maybe even a little unwary —
before Saturday's opener.
Also, the front prodded new waves of geese to the Texas
coastal prairie, supplementing the fair concentrations of waterfowl already on
the wintering grounds and boosting prospects for goose hunters.
The front gives waterfowlers
reasons for optimism after the first month or so of duck and goose seasons
turned out to be a mixed bag.
Snow goose shortage
Goose hunting on coastal prairies has been about as
expected. Goose hunters have had good success taking white-fronted geese
(speckled-bellies) but limited luck with snow geese.
Preseason reports of a below-average number of young birds
in snow goose flocks have proven correct.
Most observers are reporting 5-15 percent of snow geese on
the prairie are gray-feathered young-of-the-year birds. And the lack of juvenile
snows, which are considerably more gullible to decoy spreads than are adult
snows, has made for tough hunting on calm, clear days — something goose hunters
saw quite often over the first month of the season.
The influx of “new” geese brought by the latest front should
help, as should the potential of more windy, cloudy and even foggy days.
First split hits and misses
Duck hunting during the first “split” was, with a few
exceptions, pretty darned good — at least it was better than most expected back
in early October, when the state was gripped in a drought that broke in a big
way just ahead of the Oct. 31 opening of waterfowl seasons.
“All things considered, it went pretty well,” Jim Sutherlin,
area manager of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's J.D. Murphree
Wildlife Management Area near Port Arthur, said of duck hunting in the coastal
marshes in the southeast corner of the state.
Despite unusually high water levels along the coast — thanks
to heavy rains and high tides for the past month — hunters in most coastal
marshes saw fair success during the first part of the season.
Hunters on the Murphree WMA's Big
Hill Unit averaged 2.36 ducks per hunter over the first split. They did better
on the Salt Bayou Unit, averaging 2.87 birds apiece.
Gadwall and teal (bluewings and greenwings) were the most commonly taken ducks, Sutherlin
said.
Gadwall were the top bird on Mad Island WMA near Bay City, said Matt
Nelson, who oversees TPWD wetlands projects along the central coast. Gadwall
accounted for 28 percent of the ducks taken on Mad Island during the first part
of the season, with bluewing (22 percent) and greenwing teal (17 percent) coming in second and third.
Overall, Mad Island produced an average of 2.6 ducks per
hunter.
That's almost twice the success seen on the Justin Hurst WMA
near Freeport. The hugely popular Hurst WMA produced an average of only 1.4
ducks per hunter over the first split, with shovelers
being the most commonly taken ducks, followed by gadwall and bluewing teal.
Flooding helps, hinders
Coastal prairie saw probably the most consistently good duck
hunting during the first part of the two-part duck season. Shallow reservoirs,
flooded flats and managed wetlands on the prairie were charged by all the rain
and held good concentrations of ducks during November.
And some waterfowlers on the
prairies saw something many haven't seen in years: good flights of pintails.
The observation supports earlier reports that pintails,
which have fallen on hard times over the past two decades, enjoyed a good
nesting season on the northern prairies. And the abundance of water on the
prairies has given those ducks plenty of places to settle.
All that water has been a mixed blessing, though. It has
scattered ducks in many areas and crippled hunting prospects in others. TPWD's
Guadalupe Delta WMA near Tivoli held good numbers of ducks and produced
excellent hunting success early in the season. But flooding of the adjacent
Guadalupe River forced closure of the area. And high-water conditions are being
blamed for what has been a very slow duck season on most reservoirs and river
bottoms in eastern Texas.