Howdy from NW Oregon. Local clubs are doing rotten where I am, we have had an ongoing phenomena with birds that we cannot figure out. Public hunting areas have places that limit daily, yet birds don't come around our private areas during shooting hours at all, unless the water is really really low all around (=dry year) OR if its freezing cold......we always have open water.
I think this year its too much water, too many places for the birds to go. They use our 5 acre pond which has 3 acres in corn during the night. Just got back a bit ago after having stood there until well after dark just watching. WOW. Mallards, dozens at a crack pouring in. Yet in the AM, they bail out just prior to shooting and thats it. Nothing comes back around.
Funny, we started hunting this place in 97, it was a top flight expensive club from the 40s and 50s to about 76 or 78 until it closed because of poaching and other issues. Owners kid and I started hunting it after going out there one night just to see for ourselves if ducks were around.......
unbelievable. Unreal. Marshy areas were full of mallards. Flooded timber just off our property was beyond full of birds. During daylight mallards would pour into the timber out of range and off our property.....but we'd get some coming into the lake now and then. They dwindled to ZERO beginning in 99 into about 2001. They just quit showing up during the day. Hell they don't even go near the flooded timber anymore. We can't figure it. Only major change was a paper company planted cottonwoods to the east of us.........and maybe now that those trees are so tall they obscure the ducks view from the major flyway just to the east. Plausible???
Anyway, 6 hunts at the private lake, 10-15 birds this year. Pretty bad. Beyond bad. I WILL, be out there tomorrow.........
RR
