If you want to get good at something, talk to the experts" -- Lefty Kreh

Thanks for visiting 52 Week Season!

52 Week Season is a project to explore a hunting or fishing opportunity each week of the year in the mid-Atlantic. When I started, my intention was to interview various hunting and fishing guides on their approaches throughout the seasons, but I increasingly became more interested in the seasonal patterns of the species themselves and the yearly rituals we build around them. 

Some of these traditions are based on seasonal cues such as migrations or reproduction, while others are purely institutionalized by the DNR. 

For example, we don’t know exactly when the conditions will be perfect for the green drake hatch, whitetail rut, or canvasback migrations, but we have a pretty good idea from years of trial and error and perhaps some data (Memorial Day, mid-November, and “Canuary,” respectively). We itch for a warming trend for yellow perch in the spring and a northwest cold front for Canada geese at the fall but are at the mercy of mother nature. 

Yet we do know that the best opportunity for dove is high noon on September 1, that White Marlin Open is the first full week of August, and that schools are closed the Monday after Thanksgiving for whitetail opener in Pennsylvania. 

Many of these yearly traditions revolve around food -- springtime means shad plankings and fall means oyster roasts -- while others are strictly for sport. Some rituals aren’t based on science or calendar at all but just feel right. Mid-summer is the not the best time for largemouth bass, but there’s something about throwing poppers on a glassy lake before a July thunderstorm.

 Could you possibly hit each of these experiences in 52 weeks? Of course not. It’s absurd to you think you would have the time, but it’s also crazy to assume that a shark fisherman cares to throw flies at brook trout or that a duck hunter has any interest in coyotes. Plus, a jack of all trades is usually a master of none. 

But if you’re lucky, you can start to make connections. A hunter of diving ducks will know to return to the “hard bottom” during rockfish season, and a pheasant hunter can always use those tail feathers for a steelhead fly. And what is more satisfying than a cast-and-blast day targeting speckled trout and blue-wing teal in a September marsh? 

Some of the critters on this list are native and some are non-native, and many times it’s not clear. Largemouth bass are a familiar non-native species while snakehead are a non-native monster in many people’s eyes. Brown trout are non-native but long-established; sika deer are imported but at the same time unique to Maryland; and elk are native but reestablished. Tarpon and coyotes seem way out of place but are adapting to changing environments. 

So what is the "Mid-Atlantic"?  

One of my favorite descriptions is the boundaries of the Chesapeake Bay watershed featured in William Warner's Beautiful Swimmers: 

"The Bay’s entire watershed extends north through Pennsylvania to the Finger Lakes and Mohawk Valley country of New York, by virtue of the Susquehanna, the mother river that created the Bay. To the west it traces far back into the furrowed heartland of Appalachia, but one mountain ridge short of the Ohio-Mississippi drainage, by agency of the Potomac. To the east the flatland rivers of the Eastern Shore rise from gum and oak thickets almost within hearing distance of the pounding surf of the Atlantic barrier islands. To the south, Bay waters seep through wooded swamps to the North Carolina sounds, where palmettos, alligators and great stands of bald cypress first appear." 

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-- Patrick Ottenhoff, Washington, DC

 

Week 17. Delta Waterfowl: the Duck Hunter's Organization

Week 17. Delta Waterfowl: the Duck Hunter's Organization

Patrick Ottenhoff
Hunting, Wingshooting

One of the most exciting events leading up to waterfowl season is the first big northwest cold front that slams in overnight and sends temps plummeting. Duck hunters across the region turn into armchair Jim Cantores and can tell you the snowfall totals from Fargo to the Finger Lakes. 

““What’s great about the mid-Atlantic is that you have a real diversity of species, that all converge from a bunch of different places.””

To be a successful hunter, it's important to know these migration patterns and to know where your ducks come from, but perhaps even more important is ensuring that those populations are returning stronger year over year. 

That's where Delta Waterfowl comes in. Delta has focused on boosting the duck population for almost a century, mainly through predator control and also by providing hen houses to landowners, and in recent year by protecting critical breeding habitat, conducting waterfowl research, and defending hunting rights.

John Davney is at the center of the operation as Delta’s Vice President of U.S. Policy.  He not only has a great read on the waterfowl science and the latest migration reports, but being based in North Dakota, also gets to literally hunt in the thick of one of the most prolific flyways. 

I caught up with John on a January afternoon recently to hear the latest on the North American duck populations and to generally learn a little more about our favorite ducks in the mid-Atlantic. 

Below are my questions in bold, followed by his answers. 

What is Delta Waterfowl’s mission and background? 

Delta Waterfowl protects the tradition of waterfowling in numerous ways, including facilitating duck production through hen houses, predator management, conserving wetlands, research, and hunter advocacy. 

If you go back, Delta was founded in 1911 in the Prairie Pothole region as a conservation and research organization, and we really hit our stride in the 1930s by adding the world’s leading game management expert and waterfowl biologist, Aldo Leopold and Hans Albert Hochmann. They pioneered the study of breeding duck ecology and laid the foundation for a lot of the habitat research still used today.

In the 1990s, the organization started looking at some other issues to strengthen duck populations like hen houses and predator management. We also started to get as interested in duck hunting as we were had been ducks — less emphasis on science and more on applied science —  because no one does more for duck conservation than hunters. 

What kinds of issues are you focused on specifically in the mid Atlantic? 

I think one of the most important issues for duck hunters in the mid Atlantic is, where are folks going to hunt? There’s so much humanity in such a small area, and of course people love living on the water. And on top of that, a lot of the favorite places you can hunt are being regulated out of existence. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to hunt some classic spots in the mid-Atlantic, including for canvasback in Havre de Grace, and also have an incredible appreciation for some of the offshore hunting for sea ducks.  It seems that the opportunities in the region are not necessarily endless, but there are still at lot of great opportunities, and without the great work that a lot of folks do, we wouldn’t have a chance. 

You’re based in North Dakota which may seem like far away from our favorite hunting spots here on the Chesapeake, but any waterfowler here knows how important the conditions in the Prairie Potholes or Great Lakes regions are to our success here. What would you say drives the migrations of various species? 

What’s great about the mid-Atlantic is that you have a real diversity of species, that all converge from a bunch of different places. 

Mallards come from their breeding grounds in the eastern US, canvasbacks come from the prairies, and blue-wing teal are likely coming from the prairies and a few from southern Ontario. You’ll have different tendencies too within certain populations, where the local populations of mallards and black ducks will behave differently than the migrators. 

In terms of when they arrive, many people believe green-wing teal are an early-season duck, but I’ve seen some that are remarkably tough and will stick around till the weather pushes them out. Mallards can be entirely weather-dependent too — some more than others — while pintails tend to be a little bit more calendar-driven. 

Scaup, bufflehead, and goldeneye are going to tend to show up when it gets a bit colder — hunters can sort of gauge the way the season is going by the arrival times of these ducks. In other words, if you’re swatting mosquitos in the marsh, you know you’re not going to see bufflehead for a while!

Canvasbacks are a bit more systematic and are commonly referred to as the “calendar duck,” and redheads are the same way. You can really expect around New Years for some big rafts of canvasbacks to start showing up. It’s very rare to have canvasbacks on the prairie past the 15th of October. 

Are there any duck populations you’re particularly concerned about? 

There’s not as many scaup as we’d like to see, and pintails are also one that are going to start getting a lot of attention [for low numbers]. Hunters have had fun getting used to shooting their two pintail bulls in a day, but that’s going to drop and it’s going to be down to one pintail.  It’s interesting, because most ducks are way above their long-term average — mallards, gadwall, etc… are all above their averages and a lot of credit goes to the incredible wetlands conditions we have seen in recent years. But in some of the same landscapes for some reason, pintails have not done as well, and hunters will start to notice. 

How about black ducks? 

Black ducks have been hanging around the same level for a while. US Fish and Wildlife has authorized a daily bag limit of one and the population increased nominally this year but was mostly flat.  I think there’s a realization though that the harvest rate is deduced by analysis and banding, and that blacks can sustain some more harvesting. I think that may rise, which is going to be very welcome news, especially to those in the mid-Atlantic. I’ve heard stories where guys will be sitting there with their one black while others are trying to pour in and they have to just sit there and watch! 

The hybridization theory has also been around for a long time and is one of the theories about decline, but we’ve seen evidence that it’s not asymmetric. A lot of male black ducks are going after female mallards too.  Mallards are a bit more aggressive though and are pretty pliable, and it’s no secret why they’re the most abundant duck. They can find a way to make a living anywhere! You won’t see a black duck or widgeon nesting in your mother’s flowerpot but you wouldn’t be surprised to see a mallard. 

Anything we can do in the region to help the habitat? 

There are some challenges in the Chesapeake with both water quality and sediment loafing, and it’s an incredibly massive drainage with millions of stakeholders. It’s an incredibly complex ecosystem, but one area where we have real opportunities in the short terms is in improving some of the existing infrastructure and impoundments. We all know the fish and game departments aren’t fat and robust and it’s going to take some private help, but some of these impoundments were incredible investments and its a shame they’re not being managed. That’s going to be a big focus for Delta — to make sure the public resources are being managed well and fully functioning, and providing benefits for both the ducks and duck hunters. 

Any personal highlights from last year? 

We’ve had some disappointing fall mild weather here that have kept a lot of ducks fat and lazy and up north. So I didn’t have great expectations but thought I’d bring my young dog out for a quiet hunt. We went to this inconsequential little place I’ve passed a million times but never hunted, and we head out in the duck boat and set up the decoys, and sure enough I totally screw it up and have to pick up immediately.  So we set up in a new spot, and it turns out to be one of the most wonderful hunts. It was a totally mild day, but I came home with two greenheads, a green-wing drake, and two pintail drakes, and got to hunt my young pup Taig. I’ve had some pretty epic hunts that I’ll remember my whole life — this wasn’t one of those — but it was really one of the most enjoyable days I’ve had out of the water this year. An incredible day!

Week 18. Gary Dubiel: Spec Fever

Week 18. Gary Dubiel: Spec Fever
Week 16. Marc Puckett: Virginia Bobwhite Quail

Week 16. Marc Puckett: Virginia Bobwhite Quail