Going mobile to avoid fowling up
The first Saturday in May has always been a special day for many New Zealanders. Known as duck hunting’s Holy Grail, Opening Day is an annual event eagerly awaited by waterfowlers throughout the land.
This year we stayed close to home, with bigger and better duck hunting expeditions to come over the next three months. At short notice, we scouted locations the day before Opening Day and dragged the decoys out of retirement in the back shed.
Hurriedly dressing our new mobile duck blind with dry grass, we threw everything in the truck for the long manual haul out across the mud early on the morrow.
As the morning glow intensified, we searched the estuarine skies for wild ducks on the wing. Actually, it was a bit underwhelming, but there were wide open spaces, seabirds overhead, and plenty to talk about while the hours flew by.
Over the years I’ve shot a lot of ducks from the Wairarapa to Southland, so for me the best part was sharing the experience with my oldest son, Jake, 17. We even had our licences checked by Fish & Game rangers and the police arms officer, all attired in high-vis orange vests.
We saw ducks but they weren’t really interested in our offerings, despite the well-camouflaged blind, our swan, paradise, shoveller and mallard duck decoys, and our pleading calls. Jake got a couple of shots away, but after a few hours the ducks had won.
There aren’t big numbers of ducks on the Waimea Estuary these days, and most serious hunters travel extensive distances to hunt outside the district on Opening Weekend. We also hadn’t done our homework well, and got punished by the ducks for setting up in a place they really didn’t want to go, despite it being a good historical spot where we’d shot plenty of ducks in decades past.
At a kids’ football match later that morning, someone asked me if I was disappointed about our lack of success, but I couldn’t care less. I’d had a great time out on the mud with Jake, enjoyed seeing flighting ducks, and knew that temporary failure was actually corrective feedback from the ducks that showed our hunting techniques could use a tune-up.
Jake was keen to go again the next morning, so we went to another spot where we’d seen ducks congregating the day before – and our fortunes changed for the better. Hiding in two layout blinds that look for all the world like cloth coffins with a metallic frame inside, the ducks swooped low over our decoys in the half-light as Jake fired his 16-gauge pump-action shotgun.
We were in the right spot, and opportunities came our way. As it grew lighter, the ducks became more suspicious, with fine skies, no wind and bright sun, but it was magic calling to mallards circling high above while ignoring grey teal pitching into our decoys, and enjoying highly coloured shoveller ducks rocketing overhead.
Modern duck hunters generally need to be more mobile to enjoy consistent success. Duck and waterfowl have changed their habits, there’s a need to explore new areas, and building large, conspicuous maimai or hides is no longer allowed or encouraged on public waterways.
Personally, I’ve always enjoyed hunting the big public waters, whether it be lagoons, estuaries, lakes or riverbeds, where you are hunting wild birds that are not prefed like on many farm ponds. Big water involves good camouflage, cover, decoys and calling, and often long, challenging shots. The benefits are more diverse experiences and more variety of gamebird species, but the downside is more hard work to get there.
Hunters need to be mobile and able to carry or boat equipment into position, usually well before daylight.
For this new style of hunting, we’ve had layout blinds for many years which we have used to good effect, particularly for Canada geese and paradise ducks. But it is a challenging skill to shoot sitting up, so this year we invested in a new-style blind from American company Avian X. Our new A-frame blind is highly portable at 12kg, allows up to four hunters to hunt from the same position, and can be assembled within minutes.
I already know that this will be a real game changer for our duck hunting forays, and it will be excellent for grandad and the grandkids to hunt together for many years to come.
Alas, duck hunting opportunities are declining in many areas around the country, with urban development, new farming methods, agricultural chemicals, and loss of habitat and feeding areas all taking their toll.
Many times, hunters are in competition with others, and are forced out by other user groups that formerly never existed. Cyclists are one group in a modern time-starved and instant gratification world who have grown in numbers and have demanded new tracks and trails.
In most cases, the resource externalities can be complementary or supplementary – as in the case of the management of the Waimea Estuary, where generations of duck hunters, flounder fishers and whitebaiters have willingly shared the resource with more modern groups such as walkers, runners and cyclists.
Sometimes relationships can go pear-shaped into full-blown competitive relationships, as in the case of the Southland cycleway opposed by Fish & Game due to the potential catastrophic effects of large numbers of cyclists on the remote Oreti walkway, which is highly valued by anglers around the world. Huge emotion and cash was thrown at this conflict by both F&G and Southland District Council, but for the record, Fish & Game won.
Fortunately, there is no such issue on the Waimea Estuary, with collaborative groups all attempting to love the estuary together.
Jake and I found the runners and cyclists we encountered on our way back to the vehicle pleasant and interested – and that made our continued right to hunt the estuary a real success.