Hawke's Bay Hunting News June 11

The hunting of waterfowl is nearly over with only a handful of days left in the season. With the season drawing to a close it’s a good time to reflect on another season gone and what’s still ahead of us.

This season will most likely be remembered by many as ‘the wet one.’ Huge down pours of rain hit the region especially about the coast the week out from opening. This left significant scarring on the landscape that will take a long time to heal. For many hunters this resulted in access to hunting being impossible due to wet slippery conditions.

In more extreme cases it was due to the washout or blocking of tracks or even the loss of ponds due to dams giving way that prevented hunters getting to their usual hunting grounds. The heavy rains also meant there was water everywhere! So much so that many coastal residence had to abandon their homes. The ducks didn’t mind this one bit as they spread themselves around the flooded pastures, feeding up large on invertebrates and worms. This meant healthy fat ducks for the season ahead, but also meant a lot of birds that were congregating in good numbers on fed ponds were now spread far and wide. The result was a worse than expected opening day for many hunters.

Some fat ducks enjoying some new water.

For a good number of hunters though, opening weekend couldn’t have been better. We received a number of reports from a range of different areas across the region of hunters enjoying one of their ‘best shoots in years’ with ‘mobs of duck like we had 20 years ago.’ This was great to hear, and shows how hunting can be so hit and miss.

Its always fun setting your decoys to try and lure in circling mallards

With birds spread out for opening, meant that not as many ducks would have been harvested than anticipated over the first two days of the season, this meant only more ducks around for the avid hunter who hunts throughout the season. For those who found where ducks were hiding out did well, but with so much water still around and much of the coastal areas still inaccessible meant hard work was still needed to get good numbers of birds. This aside most hunters were still able to get small bags throughout the season.

Hunting early morning in open areas like this riverbed produced birds as they sought safe resting areas.

So all in all it was a reasonable season but was probably down on what was anticipated. The up side to this, is that if we have good conditions for breeding and no drought, there will be good numbers of hens left to nest and boost our population, here’s hoping.

When the season for waterfowl ends at 6:30pm on Sunday July 3rd, it is still not time to put away your shotgun just yet, as the upland game season still continues for another 8 weeks! The wet season seemed to have pushed back pheasant breeding as there were a lot of reports of quite young birds at the start of the season. Some others reported low numbers in areas they usually see birds pre season. It was always going to be a fairly unpredictable season for upland game with the wet conditions and as rivers flooded, no doubt pushing a lot of birds back on to private land especially the many orchards and vineyards that border a lot of our good hunting rivers.

However, the reports we have received from the season so far is that it hasn’t been too bad for pheasants. One hunter that was spoken to has had a far better season on the pheasants than he had expected and had possibly already exceeded his last seasons tally. So, they are out there, and if your not, there’s no chance of bagging one. So don’t put the gun away too soon, get the dog out there and chase some roosters.

Having a good dog makes all the difference when hunting pheasants

Remember if you shot a banded duck this season be sure to let Fish and Game know. We require the band number, location and date it was shot. We do not require the band. Reporting in your band puts you into the draw for a free license for the next season and also helps us monitor harvest rates of the mallard population.

So make the most of the last bit of the waterfowl season and be sure to get out after some pheasants and quail until the season ends on August 28.

Good Luck and Hot Barrels!