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Early Season Mallard!


johnnytheboy
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Shot a well known bay up north two season ago, after a successful goose flight the tide made and the front was then full of wigeon, we shot a moderate bag over a few decoys and could have slayed them if so minded.. Now the interesting thing is out of 16 birds (four guns) all were young birds of the year and to be honest quite naive, my analogy would be it was like decoying feral pigeons as opposed to woodpigeons. This was mid November. It does not have to be early season to get daft birds. 

Edited by scolopax
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6 hours ago, scolopax said:

Shot a well known bay up north two season ago, after a successful goose flight the tide made and the front was then full of wigeon, we shot a moderate bag over a few decoys and could have slayed them if so minded.. Now the interesting thing is out of 16 birds (four guns) all were young birds of the year and to be honest quite naive, my analogy would be it was like decoying feral pigeons as opposed to woodpigeons. This was mid November. It does not have to be early season to get daft birds. 

I quite agree. I have had many foreshore wigeon piling into the decoys in late January.

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9 minutes ago, motty said:

I quite agree. I have had many foreshore wigeon piling into the decoys in late January.

That could be down to your skill at decoying and calling ( if you do any calling ) rather than the tameness of the Widgeon .

Mind you , a large part of our estuary is now 99.9% free from shooting and the wildfowl were very quick to find this to there liking , if you are ever down this way from Christmas onwards , just walk underneath the new bridge along the footpath on the top of a spring tide and watch all sorts of wildfowl at very close quarters , you can now walk in full view of duck well within gun shot range , even with the standard load cartridge , number wise it is a job to count them but on a normal day it must be a few thousand and if there was a good North / Easterly blow it could be near to double figures while sheltering from the rough conditions .

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 02/09/2018 at 19:18, johnnytheboy said:

For some reason I just can bring myself to shoot early season mallard, instagram is full of the pictures of huge bags of immature birds, I know everyone wants to be an internet legend but shooting out all the young ducks just doesn’t seem like fowling that I know! Most of these pictures are full of birds in eclipse! Just doesn’t seem right! 

Is early season not for shooting a few park geese for the table before the migrants and proper fowling weather arrive? 

Or is shooting 20 plus young mallard the done thing these days? 

like many pheasant shoots we don't get going until later in the year subject to weather and migrant birds, we rear a few mallard and feed year round on one lake and shooting immature birds is just not for me .. let alone the syndicate.. i think its an education thing.. 

On the marsh can be different.. for me early season is more about tradition..

atb

Terry

Edited by Terry2016
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