Posted By:
John Cunningham
Field Editor
Death of the Forum 09-19-2012 16:06
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It’s dead! Just one poster, 3 of the supposed 4 VFEs have been nonexistent the past 2-3 yrs. It’s over! Too bad, there was alot of banter and good info back in the day.
Posted By:
John Cunningham
Field Editor
Regs are out 08-10-2012 14:27
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Same as last year
Posted By:
John Cunningham
Field Editor
Dove Season 08-06-2012 11:14
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Less than a month away. Please be so kind as to share your hot spots and volunteer to take a Senior hunting. Email me to register your name and location.
Posted By:
John Cunningham
Field Editor
Rice 06-25-2012 15:20
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Been planted and it’s beginning to grow.
Posted By:
sprigkiller55
Web Member
02-03-2012 23:54
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hey no offense birdk9–but most of us here in the west call it the mideast!! heck with what the easterners say!! and hey jc–i may be wrong–but from i gather–most refuges on the average shoot better than the clubs!! i mean no biggie–i like being in a club eh!!
Posted By:
John Cunningham
Field Editor
02-03-2012 11:54
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Very intertesting read! Agree wholehearetedly about going to the ducks when they won’t come to you but not all that possible in the NorCal ricelands. The birds are sitting on private lands where the landowners don’t allow hunting. Fewer and fewer landowners are allowing hunting due to the record profits they’re making off the rice crop. Duck hunting money is becoming of little consequence to many of these farmers. We’ve become an unnecessary distraction and for some they see us as an irritation. Rice prices are projected to remain at record highs for a long time to come w/ the ever increasing world demand for rice.
The refuge hunters are quickly becoming far more successful than the club hunters. The sizable closed zones in our refuges can funnel birds to the adjacent hunting zones and to further compound the problem the Feds and State keep buying more and more land to convert to non-hunting refuges. We don’t need anymore refuges when we have so much flooded acreage on private lands.
Posted By:
birdk9
Web Member
JC’s Final NorCal report – Welcome to the midwest 02-02-2012 13:55
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I grew up in NorCal hunting the grasslands. I have been in the midwest, IA and IL for over 15 years. I was planning a trip west this winter but it fell through. I normally keep an eye on the CA page after Christmas to see how things are out west. Your CA waterfowl season sounds a lot like every year in the midwest.
Waiting on a migration and big wind days. There is too much inacessable water on the Missouri and Mississippi flyways that the birds see very little pressure except on the public lands. The birds get educated very quickly and do one of three things, go out to feed, sit and sleep or fly from point A to point B with little to no variations.
I am not sure how succesful you will be, but you might want to start drumming up support for shooting everyday at clubs and on state land. Shooting Wednesday and weekends is great for the birds but it is really bad for the hunters. Waterfowling is the only hunting sport that regulates or self regulates like that. We hear the guys in Iowa crying about shooting evenings and seven days a week. When the birds have too many places to rest and feed you have to be able to get after them on any given day. If the weather man says it’s gonna blow everybody calls in sick and the boat ramp is jambed up.
The second thing you might want to think about is getting mobile. Hunting at a club is great but if the birds are somewhere else you gotta move and find a way to get on the X. We burn a few extra tanks of gas scouting for ducks in corn fields out here. The birds wised up and sit in large rafts in the middle of lakes and big water where it is safe. When it gets cool and better yet cold, they feed twice a day. Get on the food X. It is frustrating chasing the birds but when the won’t fly into the pond where the blind is you can sit and look at the sky and drink coffee or chase em down.
I would come up with a plan for next year and hopefully it won’t be too late. I get out once in while to hunt in CA and the patterns today are very different from fifteen years ago. The new birds of today have inprinted completely different from the five generations of birds long ago. NorCal stole all the birds from the grasslands when they stopped burning rice. The birds didn’t need to keep going south they stop for water and rice all winter up north. Presentence, today with all the open rice is safe areas, you guys are headed for the next generation of waterfowl that inprint onto not going to traditional locations such as clubs and huntable state land. In the midwest we get a little bit of a break because the crops rotate every year so the birds work different areas depending on what year the fields have corn or beans. It takes four to six years to inprint on the same spot. NorCal has the same open safe areas year after year. The birds will inprint on that really quick. Find a way to get out and move some of the birds around.
If you can’t find differnt ways to get to the ducks you will be waiting on a big cold front and a big wind to move your birds.
I hunted the refuges of CA long enough to see some very creative and innovative ways to hunt ducks and geese. Think of all the stuff today compared to twenty years ago. I not talking just Mojo’s. Guys are treking miles with a mountain bike, a gun and a sack of decoys. Check out the Mo Marsh boats, Four Rivera boats and a six horse mud motor. Talk about getting mobile. I bet you guys can figure out how to get out there, it will have to be different though.
I will keep coming back no mater what. CA is still home and I love duck hunting in January on a 50 degree day.
Here’s to another banner hatch is 2012. Good luck to all.
Posted By:
BUTTE CITY MIKE
Web Member
02-01-2012 13:12
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I AGREE WITH YOU 100% JOHN. COULD NOT HAVE SAID IT BETTER!!!!!
LET ‘EM WORK!
Posted By:
John Cunningham
Field Editor
North Sacto Valley 02-01-2012 10:51
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The 2011-12 waterfowl season……I guess disappointing would be an understatement. Record high temps, only one storm to speak of, little to no fog, such dry and tranquil weather AND…..so many birds, the best breeding season in 20 years. Here’s my take on it:
….sure the weather was about as bad for hunting as it gets….climate change? Maybe!
….rice straw burning is now close to non-existent so flooding fields season long to decompose the stubble is the norm and will be forever until some new methodology comes along if indeed it does, in our lifetime anyways. With so much rice acreage underwater, plus all the refuges, the birds have an enormous safety zone. I estimate that 10% or less of the flooded acreage is hunted.
….the end result is that the future of good hunting in the north valley will be entirely weather dependent. Without routine storms, strong winds, mile high fog, the hunting will be marginal at best. This past season was the perfect example of this theory.
So be it! All we can hope for is another good breeding year and that Mother Nature lends us a helping hand in 2012-13.
Posted By:
BUTTE CITY MIKE
Web Member
NORTH SACRAMENTO VALLEY 01-21-2012 18:20
Sunny & Clear, Winds Calm – 45-50 Degrees
FINALLY SOMETHING POSITIVE TO REPORT. A SLOW START THAT QUICKLY MATERIALIZED INTO A GREAT DUCK SHOOT. LOTS OF BIRDS HIGH AND ULTIMATELY ENOUGH CAME DOWN TO PRODUCE TWO LIMITS OF WIDGEON AND SPRIG FOR MY SON AND I. LOTS OF BIRDS, MOSTLY ALL SPRIG AND WIDGEON; FEW OF ANYTHING ELSE THAT I SAW. LOTS OF GEESE BUT ALL TOO HIGH AND GOING TO AND FROM GRIND TO GRIND! ALSO LOTS OF WATER IN THE STREAMS FROM THE RAIN FALL BUT THERE DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE ANY FLOODING. GREAT SHOOT!
LET ‘EM WORK!
