Hunting in the Northland Region has commenced well and truly as the 2007 opening morning dawned clear and bright.

The usual barrage from the guns with the change of light could be heard for many miles as the hunters got underway.

To say it was a great morning for Northland hunters would be correct if they were out in the boat fishing or lying back for a spot of sunbathing.

All the ingredients for a fantastic season were present with excellent bird numbers, abundant food supplies and good amounts of water available over which one could shoot. The downside was obviously the very fine weather and the lack of wind.

The 2007 Opening Weekend was not a great time to be relying on air-activated motion decoys. Hardly a breath of wind all weekend and plenty of fog besides. Obviously that didn't bode well for everyone but those near refuges, for instance, were able to use the confusion caused by the fog to call ducks into their decoys when they were looking for the larger flocks already in the refuge.

The game bird season got off to a mixed start on Saturday with fine, calm weather contributing to a quiet opening for many shooters, particularly in the Bay of Plenty. Hawke’s Bay and East Coast hunters fared a little better but it was still very hit and miss with some doing very well while those in adjoining areas had little success.

Fish& Game New Zealand regional manager Steve Smith said that the weekend result was not unexpected given the conditions. “The waterfowl breeding season had been very good and we had anticipated the extra duck numbers to have increased hunter opportunities. As it turned out the weather had a huge influence with ducks able to fly high out of range of hunters and take refuge on the larger lakes or out at sea. In many cases the abundance of paradise shelduck saved the day for hunters as they made up a large part of the harvest in some areas.”

Geese and Paradise Shellduck numbers boost hunter opportunities

Fish & Game New Zealand Game are encouraging game bird hunters to target black swan and canada geese when the new waterfowl season gets underway on 5 May. Senior Fish & Game Officer Matthew McDougall reported that aerial trend counts carried out earlier this year by Fish and Game showed that the populations in good shape throughout the region.

Opening day dawned fine and clear throughout the Taranaki region and while large flights of birds were seen moving early, the shooting slowed in many areas as the morning wore on. While there were some good bags of Paradise shelduck, Mallards were not so easily fooled in the clear conditions and opening day can best be described as “below average” and pretty similar to last year. Hunting conditions were better on Sunday, particularly in the evening, but by then many hunters were on their way home. Some of the large coastal dune lakes shot well and hunters targeting Paradise in maize stubble also took some good bags.

Waterfowl hunters can look forward to a very solid season, particularly in the Horowhenua, Manawatu and Wairarapa lowlands where spring rainfall in 2005 ranged from 25-50 percent above normal, and provided an abundance of shallow wetland habitat in which mallards could rear their broods. Over much of the Wellington Fish & Game Region, half-grown brood of mallards were a conspicuous feature of sodden areas of farmland last spring and the excellent breeding season should help mallard numbers to bounce back after a consistent downward trend in autumn counts over the past 3 years.

As always, the weather played the most significant influence on hunter bag limits on opening weekend. In general the conditions were not conducive to good hunting with fine clear conditions and not much wind. There were isolated pockets of success however, with one hunter getting his bag limit by 7:30am on Saturday morning due to thick fog in the area he was hunting. A few other areas received wind on Sunday and good shooting was reported where this occurred. The hunters whom put the work in with pre-feeding also did well, as did the top maimai spots in areas such as the Wairau Lagoons. The general consensus in Marlborough was that bird numbers were up on last season, due to a better breeding season.

The first telephone survey of gamebird hunters this week will tell the full story but early indications are that hunters were generally satisfied with their opening weekend success.

Hunters in the central and southern parts of the Region would have been encouraged to see the drizzle roll in on Friday evening, and a brisk north easterly down the river valleys by mid-morning on Saturday tipped the odds slightly against the ducks.

While good bags were the order of the day in more popular areas where hunting pressure helps to keep birds on the move, less populated parts of the region generally suffered from a lack of hunter effort.

After a promising wet week with the best rainfall for at least two months, duck hunters were hoping for a continuation for the 5^th but it was not to be. Scattered high cloud and mild still conditions prevailed. By mid morning the sun was shining and while there were some wonderful photograph opportunities, autumn colours reflected on glassy ponds and lakes, conditions for duck hunting were far from ideal. In the still conditions the ducks were not fooled by stationary plastic replicas set to lure them in range.

Hunters’ tallies were less then half for those who had shot in the same locations the previous year. All hunters spoken to talked of the large numbers of birds seen prior to opening day and were patiently waiting for at least a few more of these to show.

Balmy, summer like conditions didn’t help hunters over opening weekend with ducks flying well above the range of shotguns.

Fish & Game Officer Ian Hadland said that bags looked to be down to about a third of usual which didn’t really line up with relatively normal abundance of birds observed preseason. Mr Hadland said the duck’s are there but the conditions were not the best to harvest them over the weekend. Hunters preferred a little wind or rain to keep ducks lower.

“The golden weather will break at some stage and ducks will move around more leading to great mid season opportunities for those willing to brave the conditions”. Mr Hadland said.

Once again the weather for the opening weekend of Southland’s duck hunting would have been much better suited to the opening of the fishing season, with fine, sunny and calm conditions over most of the province, despite a forecast of winds in excess of 80km per hour!

While most hunters accept the influence the weather has on our duck hunting success, most don’t realize that another natural phenomenon can be as significant, the full moon. A moon that is full, or close to, provides enough light that ducks are able to fly during the night. This can change a number of their behaviors, including where they feed, where they choose to loaf, and how far they are prepared to fly when disturbed.