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Duck season heats up as temperatures cool

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Strong winter storms in the Midwest this past week pushed large numbers of redhead ducks toward the shallow bays of Texas' mid and lower coast.
Strong winter storms in the Midwest this past week pushed large numbers of redhead ducks toward the shallow bays of Texas' mid and lower coast.Picasa

Texas' 100,000 or so waterfowlers can thank a series of strong cold fronts, including a much-earlier-than-usual major winter storm that locked much of the Midwest in freezing temperatures this past week, for providing a helping hand in what has been a very productive start to duck and goose seasons on much of the coastal prairies, marshes and bays and setting the stage with excellent prospects for those heading afield next week.

"It's been a really good season around here so far," wildlife biologist Mike Rezsutek said of duck hunting on marshes and prairies along the upper coast, where he works as part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's waterfowl program. "There are a lot of birds down already. Hunter success has been excellent. Those cold fronts have really helped, I think."

Todd Steele agrees, and he credits the strong fronts with helping rescue what otherwise could have been an underwhelming, if not outright disappointing, first couple of weeks of the duck and goose seasons.

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"It was like a graveyard just prior to the season opening," Steele, a principal in the Thunderbird Hunting Club, said of the lack of ducks and geese he saw on thousands of acres of prairie and coastal marsh in Wharton and Matagorda counties ahead of the Nov. 1 season opener. "The birds just hadn't got here."

That changed a couple of days ahead of opening weekend when autumn's first substantial cold front swept south, bringing freezing temperatures to much of the Midwest and sending waves of waterfowl riding the accompanying north wind down the Central Flyway to wintering grounds in Texas.

Flipping the switch

That initial surge of migrating ducks, which included swarms of green-winged teal, found generally good and sometimes excellent habitat conditions in much of Texas, especially on coastal marshes and managed freshwater wetlands on the coastal prairies. Hunting during opening weekend was, overall, good on those marshes and prairies, although mostly slow on coastal bays where hunters depended heavily on redheads and pintails.

That initial push of waterfowl was followed over the past week by more ducks and an unusually large influx of snow geese.

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"There were almost no geese on the prairie one day, and then the next, they just were pouring down," Steele said. "It was like someone threw a light switch."

The light switch was winter storms that brought snow and multiple days of below-freezing temperatures as far south as Oklahoma. The storms froze open water and covered fields with snow, forcing hungry waterfowl to move south.

"That freezing weather really pushed a lot of birds out of the Midwest," said Matt Kaminski, regional biologist with Ducks Unlimited's Texas conservation field office in Richmond. "They probably wouldn't have left otherwise - or at least not this early."

A wet summer had left good habitat conditions in much of the Midwest, and without cold weather to push them south, ducks and geese could have lingered up the flyway.

"With the good conditions in places like Kansas and Nebraska, if those storms hadn't hit, the birds might have stayed up there all season," Steele said.

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They didn't. And a lot of those waterfowl pushed all the way to wintering grounds along the Gulf Coast.

This past week, Louisiana wildlife officials conducted an annual aerial survey of waterfowl populations on wintering grounds. They pegged duck numbers in the survey area at 3.1 million birds, three times the 1 million ducks counted during a survey of the same areas a year ago and the first time since 1996 the November survey counted more than 3 million ducks.

Healthy numbers

Texas doesn't conduct aerial duck surveys in November, but anecdotal evidence suggests the state also is holding an unusually high number of ducks and geese, including birds not normally arriving here until much later in the season, if at all.

"There are some really good concentrations of birds, especially in places where you have relatively large blocks holding good habitat," Kaminski said, noting most of the heaviest concentrations are in healthy marshes holding lots of submerged aquatic vegetation and on prairies where wetlands are associated with rice fields.

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"They're localized concentrations," Kaminski said. "If you're hunting around one of those concentrations, you're probably having really good success."

That's been the case for Thunderbird Hunting Club members, who have been averaging around 51/2 birds per hunter.

Hunter success on public hunting areas has also been outstanding.

Hunters on the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area in Jefferson County have averaged about three birds per hunter, Rezsutek said.

Waterfowlers taking advantage of the public hunting opportunities on TPWD's mid-coast wildlife management areas also have enjoyed good success.

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Teal (bluewing and greenwing) gadwall and shovelers have been the most common species on duck hunters' straps, but surprising numbers of redheads, scaup and ringnecks also have been taken on the public areas, Nelson said.

Also, waterfowlers on Texas coastal prairies and marshes have seen fair numbers of mallards, another strong indication of the early-season winter storm's effects on waterfowl migration. While mallards are the most populous wild duck in North America, they do not winter on Texas' coastal prairies or marshes in large numbers. The big, hardy ducks typically migrate only as far south as it takes for them to find open water and food sources and are rarely seen along the coast until mid-December or later.

"People are seeing mallards," Nelson said. "That's pretty unusual along the coast, especially this early."

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Shannon Tompkins covers outdoor recreation and natural resource issues for the Chronicle. He is a seventh-generation Texan.