Still some ducks today

As season closes, survey shows mixed results

Photo provided by RUSSELL BENTONBuck for the agesLaura Garrison Arruda proved deer hunting is a sport for all ages when she took this 120-pound, 5-pount buck from the swamps near French Settlement earlier this month. The 83-year-old grandmother usually uses a Remington bolt-action 30-30, the rifle she used to hunt axis deer and Russian hogs in Hawaii, where she resided for 28 years before moving back to south Louisiana four years ago. On the Saturday hunt, one of her sons gave his mom a .270 Ruger to hunt with that day and she took the deer with an 80-yard shot from a covered stand her sons built for her on family land.

The final minute of the East Zone duck season comes at sundown Sunday, and any 11th-hour success is directly related to the numbers of ducks available to East Zone hunters and any new ducks that most certainly arrived in the zone when a cold front arrived Thursday.

From last weekend’s reports, when the state’s West Zone hunters closed out their 60-day run, there were enough ducks in the western and coastal parishes to have hunters smiling.

Yet, when state biologist Larry Reynolds and his State Waterfowl Study crew compiled the numbers, there were fewer ducks in Louisiana than this time last year but more ducks than the month leading into the Christmas holidays.

Here’s what Reynolds noted in the state’s estimated January 2012 duck survey:

• January’s 2.79 million ducks is 15 percent lower than January 2011’s estimate of 3.28 million and is slightly higher than the average of the five previous Januarys, but lower than the long-term January average of 3.1 million.
• The biggest increases since December came in shovelers (spoonbills) in the southwest parishes, a jump from 183,000 to 329,000, and ringnecked ducks in southeastern parishes, from 144,000 to 370,000.
• All diving duck species were above long-term January averages.
• The estimate of 140,000 canvasbacks is the second highest on record.
• With the exception of gadwalls (gray ducks) and spoonies, dabbling ducks species were below long-term averages. The estimate of 104,000 mallards is the second lowest on record.
• The estimate for coots has been extremely high since November.
• Nearly 30 percent more ducks were counted in the southeastern parishes than in the southwest.

This shows a continuing shift that showed up between the November and December surveys.

In November, the southwest held nearly two-thirds of the estimated total. By December, duck numbers were almost equally distributed between the two areas. The southeast estimate of 1.5 million ducks is about 75 percent higher than the average (872,000) of the past five years.

• Although Catahoula Lake water levels were above the management target, the 95,000 total ducks on the lake is higher than the average (91,400) of the past five years.
• Some 16,500 ducks were counted in the northwestern parishes (locks, lakes, oxbows and fields along the Red River and upper Toledo Bend), and the count is nearly three times more than the November survey.
• The January scaup (dos gris) survey on lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain and Borgne showed an estimate of 314,300 scaup (300,000 on Lake Pontchartrain). That’s an 80 percent increase from December, more than the 304,000 estimated in January 2011 and double the average (155,000) of the past 10 years.
• The goose count in north Louisiana was 245,000, 239,000 blues/snows and 6,000 specklebellies. Concentrations of geese were found between Marksville and Catahoula Lake.