Early season quarry

My Gazette-Mail column for this week gives hunters hints on how to succeed at early season duck hunting here in good ol’ Wild, Wonderful West Virginia:

When most people think of duck hunting, they envision camouflaged blinds, large spreads of decoys, chill autumn mornings and eager retriever dogs.

It certainly can be like that, but during the October segment of West Virginia’s waterfowl season, it’s usually different – quite a bit different, in fact.

“A lot of early season hunting is done by floating small rivers, or by walking the banks of those rivers and shooting any ducks that are flushed,” said Steve Wilson, waterfowl project leader for the state Division of Natural Resources.

Given the quarry, those tactics make perfect sense. Most of the ducks killed during the October season are resident wood ducks and mallards, and most of those birds live in the state’s extensive network of small- to medium-sized streams.

“At bends in these streams, or in small sloughs or backwaters, wood ducks and resident mallards tend to congregate,” Wilson explained. “By floating down the stream in a canoe or a small boat, hunters can often get within easy shooting range. Same goes for hunters who walk the riverbanks. If you know where the best spots are, you can walk from spot to spot and easily get a few ducks during a morning’s worth of hunting.”

Waterfowl hunters call the practice “jump shooting.” Wilson said one of jump shooting’s prime benefits is that it provides blessed relief from the early morning regimen waterfowl hunters must ordinarily endure.

“At any given time of the day, ducks will be loafing along streams, either in the water, on the banks or sitting on logs. As far as flying is concerned, ducks are more active at dawn and at dusk, but during they day they’ll be found somewhere along those streams. If you get a few people out stirring them around, you might be able to get them as they move back and forth.”

Slower-moving streams – Wilson specifically mentioned the Hughes and Little Kanawha rivers as examples – tend to harbor more ducks more consistently than smaller, swifter streams. Based on Wilson’s recommendations, prospective hunters might also want to check out the upper Meadow River, the Mud River, the Tug-Big Sandy complex, the lower Buckhannon River and Middle Island Creek.

“Really, though, you can find small pockets of wood ducks and mallards just about anywhere,” Wilson said. “You could even find them on a little brook-trout stream if the stream had beaver ponds along it.”

DNR officials have scheduled the early segment of this year’s waterfowl season to begin Oct. 1. That first segment won’t last long; in fact, it closes Oct. 9.

The short season makes sense because the wood ducks that nest and rear their young in West Virginia begin to migrate south as the month of October wears along. Wilson expects hunters to find “pretty darned decent” numbers of ducks.

“We had good rainfall through most of the year, and the water levels were good during the nesting season,” he said. “I don’t expect a monster increase over last year, but we should have a few more birds to hunt.”

Competition from other hunters shouldn’t be a problem.

“We don’t have a lot of waterfowl hunters,” Wilson said. “We sell about 1,100 federal duck stamps each year. The guys and gals who enjoy waterfowl hunting are really into it, though. They definitely look forward to the opening of the season, and they go after the ducks pretty enthusiastically.

“One of the things they probably enjoy most about the season is that they can head for their favorite spots without having to worry whether someone has gotten there first.”

In West Virginia hunting circles, that’s a rarity. And it’s yet another factor that makes the state’s October duck season just a little bit different from other seasons.