Migration Alert: November Doldrums Strike California, Hunters Await Weather

The November doldrums are here. Whether the poor hunting can be blamed on a warming climate that allows ducks to hold in more northerly areas such as southern British Columbia, Alberta, and eastern Washington or simply on closed zones in the Golden State, no one knows for sure.

What is abundantly clear, though, are the plummeting bird-per-hunter averages up and down the Central Valley. With a “beaver moon” lighting up the night sky, it appears the ducks are moving onto seasonal wetlands to feed by night and returning to safe zones to loaf and snooze by day.

Field scout Yancey Forest-Knowles reports that the Suisun Marsh is a classic example that attracts and holds birds but is currently providing terribly slow shooting. “When we hunted in a very strong north wind on Nov. 6, wigeon and mallards flew, and we enjoyed an epic shoot,” he says. “Since then, the closed zone at Joice Island, part of the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area, is loaded with birds, but they do not move into the marsh. Occasionally, they lift up in numbers that blacken the sky and then settle back down.”

Effects of the big north wind produced three-bird or better averages at public areas such as Delevan, Sacramento, San Luis, and Kesterson National Wildlife Refuges. Mallards, universally, were the number one bird in the bag, an indicator of a good local hatch. However, following days yielded much less success, with some areas reporting as low as one-third of a duck per hunter.

Sean Allen at the Los Banos Wildlife Area Complex in the Grasslands of western Merced County—the top duck harvesting county in the entire nation—says that the average harvest on public areas was about one bird per gun, sometimes, even less.

“The positive news is that mallards are much more prominent in the bag this season because of ample rain that allowed for good nesting and summer irrigating of our habitat,” Allen says. “The mallards responded well, but the numbers of northern pintails, green-winged teal, and shovelers are down.”

There were solid flocks of pintails in August and September, but some early rain in the playas in southwestern states and Mexico lured the birds away from the Grasslands and they have not returned. Allen said telemetry studies proved the early southern migration of pintails that disappointed California hunters on opening day.

Ducks are rafting heavily on closed zones at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex, including at the Bean Field in the Butte Sink. The birds simply are not moving during daylight hours. Refuge hunting is slow and so is the action at the large clubs in the Butte Sink.

The rice harvest is continuing, with some fields around Yuba City and Davis just now accepting water to decompose the stubble. Rice ground north of the Butte Sink is still dry.

“We just put our decoys out this week and set up blinds near Dingville,” reports Bob Scruggs, a field scout in the area. “They say there are lots of ducks in the area, so we are looking forward to start hunting.”

White-fronted geese, which previously were kegged on NWR sanctuary zones, are slowly dispersing to newly flooded rice checks, but the take has been less than average.

On a positive note, the largest renovated wetland in South San Francisco Bay—totaling some 15,100 acres—will open to public shooting on Thursdays beginning November 21, free of charge, at the shoreline near Hayward’s Eden Landing. Shovelers, wigeon, and green-winged teal have been seen in the wetlands.

Another productive public location, on the North San Francisco Bay, is the Napa Marsh, where boat-in hunters have scored mixed bags of pintails, shovelers, gadwalls, wigeon, and greenwings. The marsh is open daily with no fees.

Aleutian Canada geese top the fare in the Delta islands west of Stockton, where shrinking habitat due to changes in cropping have reduced the number of ducks wintering there. Early season was punctuated by above-average local mallard and wood duck production, but the hunting has slowed since. The Aleutians are thick, moving around the central Delta and roosting at the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge west of Modesto.