Thread: Game bird diary for all

This will explain why no eels had a go at the duck last night.Breast meat in perfect condition.

Good start to the evening, hopefully a few more.

spoke to cousin who shot on coast opening day .in past years theyve had no probs with getting bag limits in morning session on opening day.him&his brother shot a pond on a private farm -very frustrating -6 7/8 SFA mallards and even the parries played hard to get! obviously something is altering the parries habitual instincts but im buggered if i know why . westcoast F&G pre season estimates predicted good populations of gamebirds altho down on previous years -hence the daily limit reduction but still this niggling trend shows up
any bright ideas.

Ended up with 5 for the night pretty happy with that and got a banded bird.

The old man also said Southland was down on numbers aswell.

only got 1 tonight but the dog had fun and saw about 30 quail

Two greys and one mallard tonight, good rain this afternoon but the only one shooting for miles.

None for me tonight as didn't get back from work till late but my young fella went over to the big pond and saw the big eel under the bridge and has taken the remaining duck meat from his earlier shoot over to feed the big sod.

Originally Posted by kotuku

spoke to cousin who shot on coast opening day .in past years theyve had no probs with getting bag limits in morning session on opening day.him&his brother shot a pond on a private farm -very frustrating -6 7/8 SFA mallards and even the parries played hard to get! obviously something is altering the parries habitual instincts but im buggered if i know why . westcoast F&G pre season estimates predicted good populations of gamebirds altho down on previous years -hence the daily limit reduction but still this niggling trend shows up
any bright ideas.

The group I was shooting with has shot there for 7-8 years. Back in the day they were happy with 40 parries for the whole weekend sothe last couple of years has been way better.
Where we were is part of their flight path with lots of decoys, spinning flapping etc. Not targeting proper ducks so cant grizzle about not getting any but by the same token didn't see many flying around either. Not a lot of shooters out either.

sorry its a bit blurry. Cell ph took a dunking. 5 canadas last night. Ducks were high and flying nth.

Quite opening on the Waikato river, 2 ducks and 5 Black swans between 5 of us............but still a great day out!!!!!

out to ellesmere again yesterday arvo with c404-few shooters about -a couple over from us had callers going hard out without pause!bugger all response.few ducks about on dusk -10,000' jobs obviously from the "ellesmere avian Im missing my arse feathers group". coupla decent mobs of geese but likewise ,lotsa honking from on high.had one?two mallards land in the mallard deeks just after dark but too blurry to get a clean safe shot away as they beat da feet!
lake is draining well just small patches of water about.swans galore in deeper water but well out of range.
wellIm off bnack to coast tomorrow,may get a couple of farm shoots in this week.
to C404 GSPF-thanks for the outing and keep on keeping on.

@kotuku good stuff. I wondered where you were shooting over here.
got my parries in your old stomping grounds I reckon.

Originally Posted by Scouser

Quite opening on the Waikato river, 2 ducks and 5 Black swans between 5 of us............but still a great day out!!!!!

A few photos......

Ya don't want to fall off the bridge on the way to big pond!
https://youtu.be/9C9KLoZTBdc