Duck Baiting Season

[KipCarson]

Duck season has closed and for me that means that the work has begun. I am unashamed to admit that I am a duck baiter. While that is a high crime most of the time, for me it’s just another day on the job. The day after season ends I load up the ATV with as much corn and hen scratch as can be carried and head out with a plan to feed and capture as many of the wintering waterfowl as I can get my hands on! I don’t have any intention of harming them though, I just give them some jewelry and let them go while creating many happy hunters in the process. As part of my job we have a federal banding permit and we band anywhere from a few hundred to thousands every season. The main target we band is green winged teal, but we catch and band a mix of mallard, pintail, ringneck, wood ducks, gadwall etc. If you shoot a banded duck from north west Louisiana there is a high chance that it was me or one of our guys who are responsible. Last time I looked at the numbers we band more green wings on average than any other single place in the U.S. This season it’s shaping up to be pretty slim pickings and the landowner/employer has chosen to drain a large portion of where we usually band early this year for agricultural purposes but I’m sure I’ll be getting my hands on quite a few regardless! Everyone always asks about the rocket net but we don’t hardly ever use one anymore. We made some large swim in cage traps with one-way funnels that are easier to deal with. They’re harder to set up in the beginning but easier to use repeatedly and in the long run catch more from one spot. They’re also easier on the ducks. I’ll try to post a few pics here as I go through the season baiting, catching, and banding. Currently the bait is put out and I’ll spend the next week monitoring the sites and when the bait starts getting hit hard I’ll deploy a trap. Here is one of a trap full of ducks from a few seasons ago to get it started. I tried to upload a few more but it’s was saying the files were to large.

 

[Sask hunter]

Cool picture!! I have shot a lot of waterfowl but still No band yet

 

[WildWill]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing and your hard work. SE Oklahoma isn't far away maybe I'll catch up to one of your banded birds one day.

 

[geetar]

Duck season has closed and for me that means that the work has begun. I am unashamed to admit that I am a duck baiter. While that is a high crime most of the time, for me it’s just another day on the job. The day after season ends I load up the ATV with as much corn and hen scratch as can be carried and head out with a plan to feed and capture as many of the wintering waterfowl as I can get my hands on! I don’t have any intention of harming them though, I just give them some jewelry and let them go while creating many happy hunters in the process. As part of my job we have a federal banding permit and we band anywhere from a few hundred to thousands every season. The main target we band is green winged teal, but we catch and band a mix of mallard, pintail, ringneck, wood ducks, gadwall etc. If you shoot a banded duck from north west Louisiana there is a high chance that it was me or one of our guys who are responsible. Last time I looked at the numbers we band more green wings on average than any other single place in the U.S. This season it’s shaping up to be pretty slim pickings and the landowner/employer has chosen to drain a large portion of where we usually band early this year for agricultural purposes but I’m sure I’ll be getting my hands on quite a few regardless! Everyone always asks about the rocket net but we don’t hardly ever use one anymore. We made some large swim in cage traps with one-way funnels that are easier to deal with. They’re harder to set up in the beginning but easier to use repeatedly and in the long run catch more from one spot. They’re also easier on the ducks. I’ll try to post a few pics here as I go through the season baiting, catching, and banding. Currently the bait is put out and I’ll spend the next week monitoring the sites and when the bait starts getting hit hard I’ll deploy a trap. Here is one of a trap full of ducks from a few seasons ago to get it started. I tried to upload a few more but it’s was saying the files were to large.View attachment 126774

10 + years of waterfowl hunting and not a band yet. Maybe I need to come to Louisiana. Thanks for your work!

 

[JTHOMP]

Man I miss wildlife work. Getting to do the fun stuff that would otherwise be illegal. Never seen one of those swim traps, but looks like a much better alternative to rocket netting.

 

[KipCarson]

@WildWill @geetar @Sask hunter it’ll happen just keep at it! From what I can tell though shooting banded birds has a lot to do with where you are hunting. I’ve killed 4 bands and the funny thing is I barely duck hunt. I’m a deer but and only duck hunt 1-2 times a season. 2 of the bands I don’t consider trophies because they were Teal banded by me on the same property I shot them at. As a kid I shot a banded wood duck that was hatched that same year from Puxico Missouri, the coolest band was on a drake pintail I got a couple of years ago, it was banded as an adult 6 years prior to me shooting it on the peace river in Alberta! These ducks, especially the Teal, move in a pattern much less random than people realize. Once they leave the boreal forest in Canada they may skip entire states and might make the migration in a few hops. We do get random returns that pop up all over the place but the majority are concentrated in our area where we band them on the winter habitat. They are not evenly scattered across the flyway that is for sure.

 

[KipCarson]

Man I miss wildlife work. Getting to do the fun stuff that would otherwise be illegal. Never seen one of those swim traps, but looks like a much better alternative to rocket netting.

You have never seen traps like that because we designed and made them ourselves. There are a lot of bander‘s who use traps but I have only seen them using small Cloverleaf wire traps. The traps I mainly use are 800 ft.², almost as big as my first apartment! Most of the time it is overkill, but occasionally we have had giant catches of 500+ ducks at a time and need the space.

 

[mtmiller]

Nice swim-in trap. It has been a few years, but GuNR brought me some jewelry a couple weeks ago. I believe I have nine duck bands now....all mallard drakes. Always a treat. No LA birds yet.

 

[Nick87]

Man I wish I had your job! I should of listened when they said stay in school. Along with about a hundred other things I didnt listen to either! I guess I'm lucky on the band's though I've been waterfowl hunting for four years two banded geese and one banded mallard.

 

[JTHOMP]

You have never seen traps like that because we designed and made them ourselves. There are a lot of bander‘s who use traps but I have only seen them using small Cloverleaf wire traps. The traps I mainly use are 800 ft.², almost as big as my first apartment! Most of the time it is overkill, but occasionally we have had giant catches of 500+ ducks at a time and need the space.

How common is it for private lands and those working there to get permits for banding? The one banded duck I got was a hen of the year. Killed on Sabine River WMA, and had been banded in Gueydan, LA. Really no public land around there. Further south is White Lake, but I wouldn't suspect too many woodies there. I have always been curious of exactly where and how she was banded.

 

[KipCarson]

How common is it for private lands and those working there to get permits for banding?

I can’t completely answer this because I do not know. I do know that it is not entirely unheard of for private entities to have band permits, but they are not easy to get. Most people banding that I know of outside of state wildlife departments are university sponsored. We used to work as sub-permittees in conjunction with an LSU professor but have since pulled our own permit. Also most banding that I know of all takes place on private land. LDWF does some banding on the WMA system but I don’t know the extent of it.

 

[Rzrbck918]

Cool picture. Thanks for your work. I always look forward to finding out where the bands Ive harvested started out or are coming from.

 

[geetar]

Nice swim-in trap. It has been a few years, but GuNR brought me some jewelry a couple weeks ago. I believe I have nine duck bands now....all mallard drakes. Always a treat. No LA birds yet.

Louisiana is the only LA hunters like

 

[kansasdad]

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the documentation of the whole season.

If a trapped bird is already banded, (has that happened to you, I wonder?) does that bird get a second band, or simply noted and released with his newly banded friends?

 

[thusby]

10 + years of waterfowl hunting and not a band yet. Maybe I need to come to Louisiana. Thanks for your work!

25+ years here, probably kill 30/year on average, never seen a band. I think it has to do with where we sit in the flyway.

 

[Sawtooth]

How many of your birds have been harvested along the Pacific Flyway? Only banded mallard I have shot was banded in Northern Minnesota. He had a serious issue with pulling right on his flight south.

 

[KipCarson]

How many of your birds have been harvested along the Pacific Flyway? Only banded mallard I have shot was banded in Northern Minnesota. He had a serious issue with pulling right on his flight south.

I can’t say how many but I bet I could count them on one hand. There have been a couple I can think of that got mixed up with the wrong crowd and ended up in California though...

 

[KipCarson]

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the documentation of the whole season.

If a trapped bird is already banded, (has that happened to you, I wonder?) does that bird get a second band, or simply noted and released with his newly banded friends?

I catch a lot that are previously banded. Those bands are added to the record which is turned into the bird banding lab if they were foreign encounters, meaning banded from somewhere else besides here. If it’s one we banded that just shows back up here, which is a lot, we make a note of it for our records. Double banding as far as I know only happens by accident, not common practice.

 

[geetar]

25+ years here, probably kill 30/year on average, never seen a band. I think it has to do with where we sit in the flyway.

Yep I am in the Atlantic Flyway myself.

 

[geetar]

I catch a lot that are previously banded. Those bands are added to the record which is turned into the bird banding lab if they were foreign encounters, meaning banded from somewhere else besides here. If it’s one we banded that just shows back up here, which is a lot, we make a note of it for our records. Double banding as far as I know only happens by accident, not common practice.

Can’t have them all blinged out like a gangsta!