Clever ducks a match for sharp shooters

By ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE

Are ducks more savvy than they used to be?

Fish and Game Southland field officer Zane Moss thinks so, after finding most hunters departed from their maimais well short of the seven-bird bag limit on Saturday.

There were plenty of ducks around for opening day, but they are getting smarter, cottoning on quickly to plastic decoys and fake duck calls, he says

"If you are not smart you get shot or killed by a hawk.

"[Ducks] do evolve and their behaviour changes over time."

But Fish and Game's eastern region manager Steve Smith of Rotorua says smaller tallies are more likely to reflect a poor breeding season, caused by dry weather.

"Ducks are only ever shot in proportion to their numbers. If the numbers dwindle because of environmental conditions, there will be a drop in bags."

He says most ducks shot are naive juveniles.

Adult birds who have experienced a shooting season before are more wily.

Auckland-based wetlands ecologist Grant Dumbell agrees.

"Saying ducks are getting smarter gives the connotation of IQ levels, whereas birds modify their lives according to their experiences," he says.

"It is a contest between hunter and quarry. Ducks are going to remember the association of people in the wetlands and the trauma of being shot at.

"If you are flying around and there are lots of boom-boom noises and you are scared out of your wits, you will find somewhere else to go where that is not happening.

"City parks right around the country start to fill up [with ducks] at this time of the year."

Hunters have been using decoys and calling techniques with varied success for 100 years, Mr Dumbell says.

Now some take the "high-tech approach, paying an arm and a leg for a decoy which sits out on a pond and jiggles around."

He says a cheaper way is to attach a string to the decoy and jerk it from the cover of a maimai.

Camouflage clothing was unheard of a few decades ago.

"You put on your gumboots and raincoat. Now you can buy the whole nine yards."

Mr Dumbell and Mr Smith say ducks are not colour-blind, and a "big white moon" of a human face peering up at them will make the birds shy off.

"But what really spooks all birds is legs. The thing to do is hide your legs," Mr Dumbell says.

Mr Smith, says more hunters are taking shooting seriously these days and the sport is more competitive.

"In the past, duck shooting was a social event for a lot of people, who were poorly prepared.

"They went out and had a good time.

Those who knew how to put it all together beforehand were more successful."

In places like Southland, duck shooting is still very much a rural-based activity, he says. But further north, people "pour out of Auckland" to Waikato and the Bay of Plenty and spend lots of money and time building a habitat for the duck shooting season.

The reward comes where hunters have built ponds, planted vegetation and enhanced wetlands to attract birds.

"You get the return that your preparation deserves."

Fish and Game New Zealand says gamebird hunters should get good bags in June and July, when conditions reach their peak with wetter, cloudier weather.