Duck for cover, the hunters are coming
Relevant offers
Get your sights in, duck shooters. This game-bird hunting season promises to be a good one. JILL GALLOWAY reports.
It should be a good duck-shooting season, with plenty of young ducks around, says Wellington region manager of Fish and Game, Phil Teal.
Populations of ducks have built up steadily since the lows of 2000 and 2001.
But a successful opening weekend - 6.30am this Saturday - is still dependent on the weather.
Duck hunters like windy and cloudy conditions. The wind tires the ducks and forces them to land often, and the cloud means they have to fly lower than they otherwise might in a clear sky.
Clear weather allows the ducks to raft up in big numbers on larger waterways, such as lakes, or even the sea.
"Sometimes there is good shooting at those bigger water places if it's fine. But if it turns up rough, the ducks tend to spread out more."
That's what the hunters on smaller dams and rivers like.
The good news for hunters was that there were a lot of ducks around this season, Mr Teal said.
"The base of our duck population has been increasing. We had a wet spring and were one of the few areas to get the usual summer rain. We've had really good duckling survival rates as a result."
About 60-70 per cent of the ducks killed are juveniles. "They're more naive than the adults," Mr Teal said.
Duck shooting reduces the duck population by about 20 per cent.
"The population replaces about 40-50 per cent of itself each year," he said.
The season has been extended from the six weeks of previous years, to eight weeks for 2009. Hunters can bag up to 10 ducks a day - grey, mallard or paradise shelduck as well as two shoveler ducks, and three black swans. They can also take 20 Canada geese as well as five pukeko.
"We have people on lifestyle blocks who say they don't want pukeko shot on their property. Then they ring back after a couple of years, and say they were wrong, they do want them shot. They build up numbers quite quickly and can be very destructive birds," Mr Teal said.
Also on the permit are red-legged partridge and bobwhite quail.
"People breed these and then release them. We don't have sustainable populations in the wild at the moment," Mr Teal said.
Fish and Game said more duck shooters went out with a water dog, such as a labrador, spaniel or pointer, and they collected dead and injured ducks more easily as a result.
"It makes it more enjoyable than trying to get a bird that fell in a blackberry patch. A dog gets it more easily than a person can," he said.
"This season, the cost of a duck-hunting licence, which every water fowl hunter has to have, has increased $2 to $80."
- © Fairfax NZ News
