TV Hunt

**layoutshooter** · 11-19-2009, 06:24 PM

We did good on the first day of TV hunt today. We took 25 birds, mainly bluebills. I did get a chance to hunt and was able to take my two bluebills. We hunt again tomorrow and MAYBE Saturday, depending on how the filming goes.

**layoutshooter** · 11-20-2009, 06:31 PM

The second day went as good as the first. The weather was perfect, winds just right, just enough overcast. Top that off, a bare minimum of 250,000 ducks on our end of the Lake. It is always an amazing site to see those huge rafts of birds when they get up off the water. It looks like a cloud of smoke on the horizon. The waterfowl biologist who hunts with us was saying that there already more birds down here than were here ALL of last year's migration and that there are still FAR MORE on the way!!!

**OntarioVanMan** · 11-21-2009, 10:49 AM

What are the breed/type makeup of these birds?

Any noticable increase of the lesser types? any making a comeback?

**layoutshooter** · 11-22-2009, 11:29 AM

YES!!! OVM. The duck we were most worried about was the "bluebills". There are two sub-species, the lessor and greater scaup are the proper name. Their numbers have been falling fast for unknown reasons. Back in 1970 there were more than 8 million breeding pairs and 3 years ago there were only 3.5 million breeding pairs. Still the second most populated duck species in the world but troubling numbers non the less.

The breeding season before this one saw a 9% increase in the number of breeding pairs and chick survival was much higher than prior years. This years breeders were up by 12% over last year and chick survival was even better. We are getting close to 5 million breeding pair again.

What is even a bigger plus is that MUCH of the increase was in the Greater Scaup population. They have a much smaller population than the lessors and more prone to getting in trouble. The Greater, commonly known as "broadbills" around here are larger than the lessor and our most common duck on Lake Erie. WE are covered in broadbills this season.

While it is unlikely that we will ever return to the numbers of the 70's since that 8 million breeding pairs was abnormally high, there is a VERY good chance that if these trends continue we WILL get back to the normal long term average of 6 million breeding pair.