Auckland / Waikato >Hunting News > June 07

The 2007 Season to Date – Auckland/Waikato update

The duck hunting season to date in the Auckland / Waikato region has been very unusual in that the weather has been exceptionally calm and fine – and this has been a principal driver that has affected hunting opportunity. Opening weekend was foggy then fine with very light winds (if any) so it didn’t favour the hunters. Some places had good starts with good numbers bagged but there were large areas in traditional hotspots of the Waikato delta and Whangamarino that had very slow starts.

As per each year we have conducted the game harvest survey for Auckland/Waikato and have telephoned to date about 500 randomly selected hunters. This gives us a good idea of what the ‘average’ hunter got. Overall it has been the equivalent of the 2001 season so it hasn’t been the greatest season ever nor the worst – although some would have had quite slow starts. Many hunters however told us a recurring story of “heaps of birds being at their pond a fortnight to a week prior to the season” – and then opening weekend was “very slow”. The dry weather during April kept the populations in the near vicinity but a good downpour a week or so before the season refreshed wetlands and lakes but also got the birds more mobile. In their quest for food they have moved to paddocks and areas they don’t normally frequent and in quite high concentrations.

A continued period of settled calm weather right through May did little to move the birds off the big waters of the Firth of Thames and West Coast waters. We received several credible reports of literally tens of thousands of birds rafted up – which is to be expected but not in such high numbers nor for such a prolonged period.

Areas that are normally productive in terms of harvest during May have produced good numbers of birds but can be described as average at best. We have found from the banding programme results that the younger birds at the start of the season may have been the principal age group that left their normal haunts and headed off to different areas. Juvenile birds are normally more susceptible to hunting pressure being “naive” to hunting tactics – so with fewer young birds around in the traditional hotspots, total bag numbers suffered.

What we have been waiting for is a period of ‘nasty’ weather and strong winds – to refresh the wetlands for feeding opportunities for birds and to unsettle the birds of bigger water bodies respectively. We only really got these winds and rain in early June ………….

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