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Covid and ducks


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Due to the Covid Lockdown we are left with about 600 ducks on our various ponds.

I would guess that under current regulations we are not under any circumstances permitted to shoot the.

Does anybody know that if I continued to feed them throughout, would they stay for the next season  on the ponds or would they disappear when they started mating and hatching. Due to next seasons uncertainty my local hatchers  are not interested in them.

According to the latest NGO guidance they can be harvested for game dealers if the demand and supply to the food chain exists. What methods can be used to harvest??

Any pointers in the best direction much appreciated

 

Thanks

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On 08/01/2021 at 07:11, Rough Shoot Tom said:

Thanks for that. Looks like clarification from BASC and NGO that rough shooting under specific rules can be carried out. So I now have the option of both reducing numbers and feeding throughout the breeding season. 

We had similar situation on our small shoot. We have decided to take mostly cocks only now. Also going to start a catch up pen and rear a few hopefully. 

 

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2 hours ago, redleg in kale said:

ducks are very easy to catch up, cull the drakes , fill your freezers with there  breasts , drakes are a pain in the ar**** if left in numbers come breeding time.

 

If left to breed this season and bring on young, will the hatched ducks next season will they be just like wild ducks

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2 hours ago, redleg in kale said:

ducks are very easy to catch up, cull the drakes , fill your freezers with there  breasts , drakes are a pain in the ar**** if left in numbers come breeding time.

How do you go about catching them up?

5 minutes ago, Lloyd90 said:

 

If left to breed this season and bring on young, will the hatched ducks next season will they be just like wild ducks

I'd guess they'd be just like reared ducks but I'm no expert on the old quackers....

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1 minute ago, Jim Neal said:

How do you go about catching them up?

I'd guess they'd be just like reared ducks but I'm no expert on the old quackers....

 

I saw some reared ones on a shoot day this season. Flying fairly slowly and not that high up around and around a flight pond whilst people took shots at them :/ 

Just thought to myself I couldn't see much point in it.

 

Shooting wild ducks however I have had some great sport in the past :) 

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12 minutes ago, Lloyd90 said:

 

I saw some reared ones on a shoot day this season. Flying fairly slowly and not that high up around and around a flight pond whilst people took shots at them :/ 

Just thought to myself I couldn't see much point in it.

 

Shooting wild ducks however I have had some great sport in the past :) 

Agreed, it doesn't float my boat that sort of thing.  But I know there are some shoots/keepers who have become very good at releasing reared duck and presenting them to the guns in a challenging, sporting manner.  I'm fairly sure a lot of it relies on having the right ground with ponds in the right places, plus obviously the skill of the keeper to knit it all together.

I've never had many opportunities to shoot wild duck.  We have just a couple of little splashes on our syndicate and one place where the water's a bit more substantial and does seem to have a resident duck population.  Trouble with that place is they rarely go the right way and we can't shoot the ponds from the other end due to a road.

The little pond on the bit I look after will hopefully provide a little bit of sport if I can get it working, both on driven days adding a few ducks for a bit of spice to the pheasant shooting and maybe a few times a season flighting them in.  I put a couple of nesting tubes in there last year so I'm keeping everything crossed for a wild brood this coming spring.  Been feeding it regularly since August and now usually 8-12 mallard on there.  Only trouble is the water level is right up at the moment and one of the tubes has gone wonky on its post so I need to get out there in chest waders again to fix it before breeding season!  Oh and the other trouble is it's not very big or deep so it freezes over very easily 😕

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On 12/01/2021 at 22:40, Jim Neal said:

Agreed, it doesn't float my boat that sort of thing.  But I know there are some shoots/keepers who have become very good at releasing reared duck and presenting them to the guns in a challenging, sporting manner.  I'm fairly sure a lot of it relies on having the right ground with ponds in the right places, plus obviously the skill of the keeper to knit it all together.

I've never had many opportunities to shoot wild duck.  We have just a couple of little splashes on our syndicate and one place where the water's a bit more substantial and does seem to have a resident duck population.  Trouble with that place is they rarely go the right way and we can't shoot the ponds from the other end due to a road.

The little pond on the bit I look after will hopefully provide a little bit of sport if I can get it working, both on driven days adding a few ducks for a bit of spice to the pheasant shooting and maybe a few times a season flighting them in.  I put a couple of nesting tubes in there last year so I'm keeping everything crossed for a wild brood this coming spring.  Been feeding it regularly since August and now usually 8-12 mallard on there.  Only trouble is the water level is right up at the moment and one of the tubes has gone wonky on its post so I need to get out there in chest waders again to fix it before breeding season!  Oh and the other trouble is it's not very big or deep so it freezes over very easily 😕

Why don't they go the right way ?   Beat it from a different direction ?  Prevailing Wind ? 

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With the usual SW wind they'd be flying perpendicular to it, in a SE direction, I don't think it's wind as it's quite sheltered.  It's only a theory I have, but the nearest "safe place" they probably have programmed in their minds is a lake about a mile away which they aim for if disturbed.  That takes them back over the beaters' starting position which is a road.  We just can't put guns there.  Further to that, the pheasants will go in the opposite direction, so really we have to stand the guns according to that.  Also I think despite constantly reminding everyone to stay silent when lining out, they walk along having a good old W.I. meeting, nattering away and it makes the ducks swim away from them so they're already at the "wrong" end of the water.  Sometimes we get lucky and will get a couple of decent flushes of duck over the guns, normally only 2 or 3 of the pegs ever get a shot at them.  It's not one of our "main" drives so we kind of tend to just do it now and again and take what comes as a bonus.  Better to flight it in January!

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