Andrew Bishop – The Coastal Lagoon
High hopes for were set for the next shoot following the mallard massacre on “The Willow Pond.” However with limited (next to zero knowledge of the area, we needed all the help we could get.
The local cocky apparently did a bit of pig hunting, so off to the wholesaler to get a bartering tool it was! A case of Speights later we were invited to shoot a private pond which comprised a man made “U” shape waterway fenced in the farm with a natural coastal lagoon dividing the farm from the sea.
On some vague instructions, the barry crump red Hilux loaded with decoys and layout blinds somehow stumbled upon the piece of water described to us over a few beers. On approach to the waterway we could hear ducks quaking, however it was coming from the coastal lagoon, not the massive man made pond.
Following the cocky’s advise that it shot better at night than morning, the call was made to jump shoot the coastal lagoon and wait for the night shoot, however this would be not be any old jump shoot!
Semis loaded and camera rolling, the three wise men snuck to the edge of the lagoon with hearts in our mouths to how many ducks would be sitting in the lagoon to which we had no idea even how big the lagoon was.
The first few ducks were spooked by our arrival and flew, bang, bang, bang…a serious of rounds were fired and birds were dropping quicker than one punch from Mike Tyson. However this first wave of fifty ducks was only the start!
Once you start you cant stop, birds were getting off in waves of fifty to one hundred! Semis were all unloaded at the mallards as they continued to fall out of sky. Five hundred ducks must have got off the coastal lagoon!
All the boys were speechless as we watched the sky turn black with birds heading out to sea. It looked light a swarm of bees! Luckily we were able to get a quick shot of the swarm….
Yes they are all ducks!
Yes they are all ducks!
After coming back down to earth from agreeing that was the most ducks we have ever seen let alone shot at, the mission was to find all the birds that were bombed to the ground. We accounted for 12 mallards for all the empty shells lying on the ground.
As the dark set in, along with a frosty due, ducks began to trickle back to the lagoon. With the wise men re-loaded, no duck stood a chance! We took our tally past 20 and called it a night, back to the fire.
Still buzzing from the site of so many ducks, we could only think what might have been if we were perched up in our layout blinds the morning those birds chose the coastal lagoon as their home for the day!
That night we decided to leave the lagoon for another day and try our luck on the river….
Andrew Bishop – The Willow Pond
At the close of duck shooting in the Waikato, 2 mates and myself headed for South Canterbury where their game bird season continues until the end of July. We were targeting mallards due to their limit of 50 per person per day, opposed to Waikato’s 6!
Armed with Benelli, Beretta and Baikal Semi Automatic 12 gauge shotguns, 35 gram Falcon 3’s and enough warm clothes make a polar beer sweat, all we needed was a place to shoot!
Day 1 dawned as a frosty -3 degrees. Gloves, balaclavas, XTR Pacstealth Pants and XTR Jacket were essential. Tried and tested in wet weather I was interested to see how effective the outer-shells would be in winds cold enough to freeze the proverbial off a brass monkey!
Arriving to the shadows of The Willow Pond, I was pleased I wore my Hunters Element jacket, not just for the warmth but the generous pockets for ammo and hand warmers! A great feature yet to see rivaled in other jackets would have to be the two lanyards connected to the inside of the chest pockets for my duck callers!
A bottle of beam as payment for the shooting on the pond ensured ducks were a plenty as we blazed away keeping the barrels hot and the ducks shot. Armed with enough duck callers, decoys and ammo to sink the titanic the tally soon passed 60.
As the sun broke through the cloud, the mallards had stopped decoying into our spread of flock head mallards to go and sit on the paddocks to fight the cows for the barley straw feed out by the dairy farmers.
So back to the farm house for lunch and a few beers to celebrate the 1st day shooting it was! After hanging the ducks and adrenaline still flowing a reconnaissance mission to determine the next days shooting was called. As the dark set in, thoughts changed to the prospect of tomorrows hunt -The Coastal Lagoon…
Stay tuned for the next hunt and video highlights from the whole trip!
Alex Broad – Ducks and Roosters
You will have read last week that Rob and I were heading up the line for a bit of an assault on the local game bird population with our mate Dave.
The reports leading up to opening day were positive, plenty of ducks on the pond. As usual they all disappear a week or so out from opening day. Opening day came around, rain and little wind, the decoy spread looked great and the hide was well dressed. The only thing lacking was the ducks. We managed 4 for the morning, thats right just 4. After a feed and a regroup at the local we ventured out for the evening shot, it was even quieter, just 2 birds down. We put it down to everything being so wet, which disperses the ducks out into puddles in paddocks etc. We put the Genaration 4 XTR Jackets and Trousers to the test in the rain, they performed flawlessly as part of our layering system. For a whole days shooting we remained dry and comfortable, quite important when theres nothing coming in.
Sunday dawned fine, but windy, surely the pond would shoot better today? Nope, a handful of ducks came in and were dispatched for the morning. Another feed and regroup at the local and it was decided we were going head up to The Hunters Paradise to give the owner Shane a hand with the pukekos.
We pushed them into a pond choked up with Raupo and sent the dogs in. The pukes came out in 1′s over about 1/2 an hour or so, which provided some great shooting. In the middle of all this a pheasant came a long to check out the commotion, Rob and I flushed him out of the fence line and I had my first pheasant.
Shane offered us a shot on a few more pheasants, so we went for a wee wander through the crops, we put up plenty of birds, leaving the hens and only downing another 2 cocks.
We also put up 3 big red hinds, an awesome sight, they had been getting into the crops, and it showed!
This style of shooting was perfect for our prime summer range of clothing. We hunted all afternoon in the prime summer, XTR gaiters and Razorback boots. The prime summer wicked the sweat, and blocked most of the wind, leaving us dry and warm, but not too hot when we had to slog up the hills.
The Hunters Paradise is a registered pheasant preserve, and offers a different shooting experience to most of the other preserves. It is purely walked up hunting, you can bring your own dog and Shane runs several different pricing structures to make it affordable for everyone. Thanks again Shane, it was a great experience. Have a look at Shane’s website here:
From here Rob and I traveled further up the line to meet up with another mate, Kerry, for some pheasant shooting on public land. This was a totally different experience from the preserve.
We had to really work for the birds, but it was extremely rewarding. The first day we put up 2 cocks, and knocked them both over. Kerry’s dogs worked really well all day, and were so stuffed they had to be lifted in and out of the truck at the end of it. The next day we hunted a different public area, only putting up 1 cock, which we just couldn’t hit…………..He’s a touch wiser now. Cheers Kerry for sharing your spots with us, we will definitely be back next year!
So that was our opening mission, ducks weren’t there but the roosters were fantastic. We’d love to hear how everyone else got on, just post a comment below and let us know.
Cheers
Alex.
Alex Broad – Opening Day!
Thats right, opening day is tomorrow and I know we are all getting excited for another season of cold, wet, windy, early mornings.
This year I’m tagging along with Rob on his annual opening day tradition. This will be my first proper opening day shoot, and I’m really looking froward to it. The pond has been well fed and the duck numbers, I’m told, are pretty good.
We’ll be on the road and stuck in mai mai’s for the next few days, but will keep the blog updated when we can.
Good luck to all our followers, don’t drink too much, keep your powder dry and may your barrels be hot!
Cheers,
Alex.
Zane Mirfin – Waves of feathered paradise
www.strikeadventure.com
THE Mirfin family was in Blenheim recently to watch the musical The Sound of Music. The production was awesome and the whole family had a great theatre experience, complete with icecreams at halftime.
The Marlborough Civic Theatre is a wonderful community facility and I found myself chuckling during the musical, thinking about the curmudgeonly naysayers we read about in The Nelson Mail most weeks and their vehement opposition to a performing arts and conference centre. The thought did cross my mind that I do actually like having to travel two hours to Blenheim to watch performances and stay with the in-laws for the weekend – at least that way I’ve managed to squeeze in a lot of duck shooting over the years as well.
My Blenheim-based mate, Clayton Nicholl, is a great bloke, a real outdoor enthusiast with a heart of gold, and what better thing to do than go bird hunting with Clayton on a wet Sunday while the rest of the family was off to church.
Clayton had previously sussed out paradise ducks that had been frequenting a farmer friend’s irrigated green feed paddocks, so I’d towed my shuttle trailer over the hill, full of bulky layout blinds, decoys, wet-weather gear, guns and ammo. We spent late morning sitting out the storm at Clayton’s drinking coffee, while the rain poured down and we listened to radio reports of savage flooding to the west in the upper Motueka Catchment. When the sky brightened we were off over Weld Pass to the lower Awatere valley in search of parrie ducks.
Wet days are always difficult days to shoot ducks as the birds tend to spread out all over the countryside, with feeding opportunities – grubs and worms – everywhere due to flooded pasture. Our anticipated large number of parries was nowhere to be seen but about a dozen birds were spread about the green feed area.
Throwing our gear over electric fences, we set up in the middle of the irrigated area in a recently grazed-off pasture. Layout blinds out, full-body and silhouette decoys around the hides and we were ready to go.
The first birds took half an hour to announce their arrival with the loud, shrill ‘‘zee zee’’ call of the white-headed female parrie duck and the quieter ‘‘zonk zonk’’ call of the male. As they swung over the blinds, both Clayton and I threw our blinds open, sat up as the parries flared, fired, and watched both birds plummet from the sky. Clayton did his best Julie Andrews impression calling out from his blind ‘‘the hills are alive with the sound of gunfire’’, and I knew it was going to be a great shoot.
Paradise ducks (Ttadorna variegate), putangitangi, or ‘‘painted ducks’’ as Captain Cook named them in Dusky Sound in 1773, are a common sight around New Zealand these days. They are one of a few species of native birds, like pukeko, that have done very well with the development of agricultural land.
Paradise ducks are actually a Fish & Game conservation success story with special paradise duck hunting seasons sometimes necessary to stop large mobs damaging farm paddocks and crops with their grazing.
So for any local landowners out there, I’m in the phone book, and if you have any parries, pooks or feral pigeons that need a life-changing experience, my mates and I will be only too glad to oblige.
Truly New Zealand’s birds of paradise, parries are a very colourful and beautiful bird with the female having the rare distinction among bird species of being the brighter coloured bird with a white head and chestnut body. The drake is larger with a black head and barred black body, with both male and female having striking white wing patches and bright green speculum on the wings.
Parries are a shelduck or goose-like duck, and although they are claimed as endemic to New Zealand, we’ve shot their very close cousin, the Australian mountain duck, on the West Coast’s Lake Brunner and in South Westland.
The piercing cry of the ducks is one of the great sounds of the New Zealand countryside and they are wonderful birds to hunt with their bright colours and obliging ways. Layout blinds have revolutionised hunting in open fields and birds are able to be lured close to waiting hunters.
Much hunting takes place on pastures well away from water, where lead shot is able to be used, so most birds can be harvested in good condition. Steel shot tends to rip birds apart due to the larger pellet sizes required to reach terminal velocity but must be legally used when shooting over lakes, riverbeds and ponds.
Decoys can be very simple. There are now high-priced full body decoys available but effective silhouette decoys can be fashioned from corflute real estate signs and painted three colours – white, black, and chestnut.
Ducks can be hunted all day and with all methods, but the best tallies are always over decoys set up are in feeding locations such as pasture or crops, or resting areas such as riverbed duck camps well in advance of incoming birds.
Fish & Game has managed paradise duck numbers well. As recently as two decades ago they were not common in waterfowlers’ bags. The current daily bag limit in Nelson-Marlborough is a generous 10 birds per hunter and the ducks are very tasty to eat in casseroles, stir fries, minced in lasagne, or legs and thighs baked in the oven.
Years ago I used to shoot South Westland regularly and I can still picture some of those epic mornings where big numbers of paradise, geese, swans and dabbling ducks would pour into our decoy spreads set up on pre-scouted duckcamps out in the middle of big braided riverbeds.
On those halcyon mornings where everything goes right, packing up decoys and cleaning downed birds with ringing eardrums never seems like work as the highlights are relived again and again.
Zane Mirfin
www.strikeadventure.com
Robert Wilson
Alex Broad
zanemirfin
James Morris
jamespearse
Bish
mickgibbo
Andrew Sturt
