End of season report

The blur that has been the duck season has come and gone. I'd thought that I would feel a bit ripped off about having a 1 month season, but far from it actually, its been great. Life's what you make it they say, so grabbing every chance to get out has meant that we've packed more in over the shorter time allotment.

On Friday afternoon I had a chat with Craig to see if he wanted to come for a hunt, but with Mitch, Mick and a guest due for a pheasant hunt he was tied up.

Being a long weekend, I'd expected traffic horror when I left Auckland at 18.30 so was really surprised to run the motorway at 100kph the entire way. Over the Bombays I joined at the tail of a queue of traffic and was slightly unamused to be the fifth in a line of cars to get pinged by a speed camera in the 90 kph zone. I arrived at the landing just before Andy, packed his boat, we launched and were in the hut just after 8.30. Larry and dad were ensconced and had the place nice and warm. We had dinner, a few beers and then hit the hay. Larry snored like a chainsaw. We cursed him loudly to no avail whatsoever. When 5am rolled around, Andy said that even with an 8 week old baby, that was his worst sleep in months.

Weetbix, coffee and off to the maimai. Dad didn't bring his gun as he'd decided that he'd had a good season and shot enough birds. We were set in the predawn darkness and it was quiet. the sun rose in a glorious display of colour, as it only can in the swamp with orange light against a willow back drop.

A brace of grey ducks came in in the early light and landed. As they rose I picked the right hand bird in a gap in the trees and dropped it; the other bird hit the burners and rose above the treeline 40m out where my second shot intercepted it. The feeling of being pleased with a good start was diminished a bit when despite several sweeps, the hounds couldn't find the second bird. We kicked back and waited for more birds to fly... waited, waited. It wasn't until about 7.45 that a pair of mallards cruised by and responded to the call. The swung over the dekes and we dropped them both. Later a triple met the same fate, and after that every half hour or so we had ducks coming by. We were pleased to not drop a shot on a bird. The bag of 10 birds was a fair reflection and the birds were of high quality.

One of my birds was a blue-billed drake - we used to see a number of these in the past and I'm not sure of the reason for the shade of their beak.

After lunch dad dropped Larry off at the landing while Andy and I went on a walk through the low lying swamp area to see if we could find any birds tucked up in the trees - the answer was yes but I just couldn't connect despite multiple shots. As water rises in the swamps the ducks use telepathy or some other communication method to transmit the location of food and water... put it this way, the water had only risen over the past few days but the ducks were well into it. We wandered around for an hour or so and then returned to the maimai before getting ready for our evening hunt in a favourite hole in the willows. We were set up in plenty of time to observe the passage of swan and ducks overhead. I had the first chance at a grey that simply dived in from great height. My shots rocked him but at the speed he was going he cupped up and flew at least 2oom before hitting the deck. Darkness fell and 2 mallards came in with a sound like a jet liner before coming around and over. Andy let fly and they departed jinking like crazy. Soon a single zoomed in and got away unscathed. The shooting is challenging in this spot! We quit soon after as darkness dropped.

Back at the hut the day was retold, a few beers downed and we turned in early to catch up on our sleep with no Larry around.... it worked.

Sunday morning, the last morning of the season. I dad would be shooting today. The first brace of mallards didn't show up until sun up, and we dropped them well overhead. My bird was wearing a band and I felt a bit for her; none the less the data from her bling may help with the overall picture.

We had a pretty good shoot, ending with 8 birds, including another blue-bill that Andy downed.

Andy needed to be out of the swamp to catch up with a mate on a pheasant hunt, so having dropped him off dad and I resumed hunting until 11. Then we pulled the dekes, cleaned the hut, packed our gear and got ready to depart.

A pretty good season all in all, with 287 birds to hand. Probably a reflection of the effort expended. As mentioned earlier, we certainly compressed more hunting into the shorter period. I haven't done any per day effort expended calculations but if we look at ducks per day of allowable season it works out to 9.56 ducks per day. Pretty solid returns.

A damn good season.