Have corn pond complexes affected your 2018 duck season?

[singleshot12]

That's life.sorry.get used to it?  I do suppose though if I ran a corn complex or member of one I would also share a similar shortsightedness.


I hate to see all hunting become a pay and play or rich man's sport.

So who is going to step up and run the waterfowl Bernie campaign for governor? Redistribution of ducks evenly and fairly for everyone.

You guys keep referencing the "fairness" of the birds being concentrated. That's life. Sorry. Like I said before, there is nothing stopping you from paying to hunt one of these spots, or building your own, but money. Again, get used to it. There is always going to be someone with more money and cooler toys than you. I know for a fact that all these ranches in the basin are trying to compete with each other. At least eagle lakes will let you hunt theirs. Most of the ranches are purely private and only hunted by people with the same last name.

[Sandberm]

So who is going to step up and run the waterfowl Bernie campaign for governor? Redistribution of ducks evenly and fairly for everyone.

You guys keep referencing the "fairness" of the birds being concentrated. That's life. Sorry. Like I said before, there is nothing stopping you from paying to hunt one of these spots, or building your own, but money. Again, get used to it. There is always going to be someone with more money and cooler toys than you. I know for a fact that all these ranches in the basin are trying to compete with each other. At least eagle lakes will let you hunt theirs. Most of the ranches are purely private and only hunted by people with the same last name.

Sounds like what you are saying is,....Everything is for sale and can be bought, including ethics.

[hunterednate]

To me, it comes down to a simple question:

1. Are flooded corn complexes equivalent to baiting waterfowl?

Not "are" baiting by the law as it currently stands - but equivalent in terms of effect on the public resource.

If yes, then they should be banned for exactly the same reasons that other forms of waterfowl baiting are already banned.

[JBG]

To me, it comes down to a simple question:

1. Are flooded corn complexes equivalent to baiting waterfowl?

Not "are" baiting by the law as it currently stands - but equivalent in terms of effect on the public resource.

If yes, then they should be banned for exactly the same reasons that other forms of waterfowl baiting are already banned.

"effect on public resource" you would have to show that and if you look at the harvest statistics from federal refuges south of Eagle Lakes their numbers have remained consistent since 2010 in the case of one refuge and in the case of another the harvest rates have increased 2.5x and birds per hunter has gone from 2.3 in 2010 to 3.0 in 17-18 a 30% increase!  National average on fed refuges is like 2.5. 
EWU yes it is a small sample size but it does prove a point that hunting at these public areas has not been on the decline in the last 7 or 8 years.  If you were to go to WDFW or your local politician and ask for a rule change they would ask "where is the detrimental effect to the public or to the resource?"  Im not saying that the corn complexes house a bunch of birds, they do but you cant say hunting in the public refuges where data is available that hunters are worse off than before 2010.  If anyting hunter success has remained consistent or increase by 30%.  All of this data can be found using google Im not going to do your homework for you 

[EWUeagles]

"effect on public resource" you would have to show that and if you look at the harvest statistics from federal refuges south of Eagle Lakes their numbers have remained consistent since 2010 in the case of one refuge and in the case of another the harvest rates have increased 2.5x and birds per hunter has gone from 2.3 in 2010 to 3.0 in 17-18 a 30% increase!  National average on fed refuges is like 2.5. 
EWU yes it is a small sample size but it does prove a point that hunting at these public areas has not been on the decline in the last 7 or 8 years.  If you were to go to WDFW or your local politician and ask for a rule change they would ask "where is the detrimental effect to the public or to the resource?"  Im not saying that the corn complexes house a bunch of birds, they do but you cant say hunting in the public refuges where data is available that hunters are worse off than before 2010.  If anyting hunter success has remained consistent or increase by 30%.  All of this data can be found using google Im not going to do your homework for you 

I have no problem doing the home work since you clearly didn't see the whole picture. First lets take apart the data. The data for the refuges you brought up only go to 2010 and doesn't give an accurate time frame of what pre-corn complexes show. Was the hunter averages in the early 2000's closer to 4 or 5 birds? Who knows the data doesn't exist so your argument about corn complexes holding birds is moot. Second, bird harvest data doesn't care what type of bird it is. Puddle ducks are normally found in corn but not divers. If a group goes out and shoots 28 buffleheads and mark down 28 ducks it changes the data we really want to look at since we are worrying about corn complexes.

But let's assume your data is iron clad and nobody has a problem with the two points above and we are seeing the increase of duck kills, it has to be the corn complexes holding more ducks right? Nope! When you look at harvest rates vs duck population there is a direct correlation in the data. When there are more ducks, more ducks get killed. The increase in duck harvest is solely due to the fact there are more ducks and has nothing to do with corn complexes holding more ducks in the area. This year the ducks numbers dropped 13%. I'll bet you we will see a drop in harvest numbers because of the population going down.

I don't want to shut down all the corn complexes and I'm not really jealous of any of them. I do think however that how the complexes are run should be re-evaluated.

[vandeman17]

"effect on public resource" you would have to show that and if you look at the harvest statistics from federal refuges south of Eagle Lakes their numbers have remained consistent since 2010 in the case of one refuge and in the case of another the harvest rates have increased 2.5x and birds per hunter has gone from 2.3 in 2010 to 3.0 in 17-18 a 30% increase!  National average on fed refuges is like 2.5. 
EWU yes it is a small sample size but it does prove a point that hunting at these public areas has not been on the decline in the last 7 or 8 years.  If you were to go to WDFW or your local politician and ask for a rule change they would ask "where is the detrimental effect to the public or to the resource?"  Im not saying that the corn complexes house a bunch of birds, they do but you cant say hunting in the public refuges where data is available that hunters are worse off than before 2010.  If anyting hunter success has remained consistent or increase by 30%.  All of this data can be found using google Im not going to do your homework for you 

I have no problem doing the home work since you clearly didn't see the whole picture. First lets take apart the data. The data for the refuges you brought up only go to 2010 and doesn't give an accurate time frame of what pre-corn complexes show. Was the hunter averages in the early 2000's closer to 4 or 5 birds? Who knows the data doesn't exist so your argument about corn complexes holding birds is moot. Second, bird harvest data doesn't care what type of bird it is. Puddle ducks are normally found in corn but not divers. If a group goes out and shoots 28 buffleheads and mark down 28 ducks it changes the data we really want to look at since we are worrying about corn complexes.

But let's assume your data is iron clad and nobody has a problem with the two points above and we are seeing the increase of duck kills, it has to be the corn complexes holding more ducks right? Nope! When you look at harvest rates vs duck population there is a direct correlation in the data. When there are more ducks, more ducks get killed. The increase in duck harvest is solely due to the fact there are more ducks and has nothing to do with corn complexes holding more ducks in the area. This year the ducks numbers dropped 13%. I'll bet you we will see a drop in harvest numbers because of the population going down.

I don't want to shut down all the corn complexes and I'm not really jealous of any of them. I do think however that how the complexes are run should be re-evaluated.

 

[JBG]

Why do they need to be changed if public land success is unchanged or even up by 30% in some areas.  Seems like a good thing tell me what I am missing.
Also is you look at survey data puddle ducks far out number divers.  At one refuge in 2015 there were 7k puddlers and 140 divers. 

https://wdfw.wa.gov/about/regions/region3/waterfowl_surveys.html

[Stein]

Also is you look at survey data puddle ducks far out number divers.  At one refuge in 2015 there were 7k puddlers and 140 divers. 

https://wdfw.wa.gov/about/regions/region3/waterfowl_surveys.html

That's because public hunters shot all the divers. 

[elkspert]

Not sure what the duck numbers where back in the 80's but to us it didn't matter. We would jump in the truck and head east. It didn't matter what the weather was doing or really time of year. We were going to shoot ducks on public land. Big groups of birds would leave the fields and head to the refuges where the public land guys would have a chance at getting some awesome shooting in. There where many time we would fill 4 limits by 11 while another group of guys waited in the brush for us to pick up so they could take over. The birds would move back and forth a couple times of day. Sometimes more depending on the weather. The private clubs would still get there guiding in and fill limits in the corn while the public land guys would hunt the water. Let me tell you. THOSE DAYS ARE GONE!  Don't get me wrong, you can still scratch out a limit or two but it is not the norm and it's pretty rare. Sure maybe the bird numbers are up but these bird don't have to leave. That is the kicker here. Check out Pauls ponds. They limit the shells to 2 3/4" so the birds don't leave. They just keep coming back and back and back.  Something needs to be done. Grow the corn, hell hunt it, just eliminate the ice eaters or the flooding. Limit the size or quantity of your corn ponds. Complaining on this forum isn't going to make this go away. I really don't know where to start to even get it headed in the right direction, but if you think the big money operations are not changing the migration keep telling yourself that and enjoy the many duck less days sitting in the blind wondering where all the ducks are. 

[270Shooter]

I have believed that the sheer corn acreage and large guiding operations in the basin has affected the migration patterns of ducks within the last few years. I hunt the Yakima valley 90% of the time and everyone will say that there is fewer birds around on average than there use to be. However, we still seem to get our birds more often than not. This year I have been fortunate enough to have had several really good public land hunts and a few days where 3 or 4 of us would kill limits of greenheads, all on public land. With all of that said I think I would attribute the relatively poor waterfowl hunting year to the warm winter. The ducks simply have not been stressed enough to need to move around much between feed sources.

In the 2016 season we were hammering the birds pretty good on rivers and sloughs until late December and then killed them in the dry corn almost every single day we went, but we had lots of snow and it was unseasonably cold. I think the weather has more to do with it than anything.

[JBG]

Not sure what the duck numbers where back in the 80's but to us it didn't matter. We would jump in the truck and head east. It didn't matter what the weather was doing or really time of year. We were going to shoot ducks on public land. Big groups of birds would leave the fields and head to the refuges where the public land guys would have a chance at getting some awesome shooting in. There where many time we would fill 4 limits by 11 while another group of guys waited in the brush for us to pick up so they could take over. The birds would move back and forth a couple times of day. Sometimes more depending on the weather. The private clubs would still get there guiding in and fill limits in the corn while the public land guys would hunt the water. Let me tell you. THOSE DAYS ARE GONE!  Don't get me wrong, you can still scratch out a limit or two but it is not the norm and it's pretty rare. Sure maybe the bird numbers are up but these bird don't have to leave. That is the kicker here. Check out Pauls ponds. They limit the shells to 2 3/4" so the birds don't leave. They just keep coming back and back and back.  Something needs to be done. Grow the corn, hell hunt it, just eliminate the ice eaters or the flooding. Limit the size or quantity of your corn ponds. Complaining on this forum isn't going to make this go away. I really don't know where to start to even get it headed in the right direction, but if you think the big money operations are not changing the migration keep telling yourself that and enjoy the many duck less days sitting in the blind wondering where all the ducks are.

On a national level there were probably about 1/2 as many ducks around in the 80's as there are now.  Also bag limits in the 80's were what 3 mallards and one other? 
It would be great if as hunters we could get the state to plant more food crops on public land like they do in some places in Oregon. 

[hunterednate]

Honest question, JBG: much of a negative effect do you think banning flooded corn would have on private land hunters? If you planted those same flooded areas with dry cereal crops or kept them filled with water and smartweed, how big would the drop off be?

My guess is that Eagle Lakes and other clubs could still kill plenty of birds to keep members happy and run a profitable business, while public land hunters over water would see their opportunity increase (as more really thirsty ducks would need to find water after filling up with dry corn).

I would hate to ruin hunting opportunity for anyone. I teach hunter ed, so I'm big on hunter recruitment. If flooded corn is banned, my guess is the guys hunting Eagle Lakes and elsewhere would still hunt, and it would be easier to introduce new guys to hunting on public land.

[lokidog]

Can we just ban the big corn hole on the north side of Everett so some birds will fly up the valley?   

[huntnfmly]

Can we just ban the big corn hole on the north side of Everett so some birds will fly up the valley?   

He he
He he you said corn hole😆😆

[Stein]

Can we just ban the big corn hole on the north side of Everett so some birds will fly up the valley?   

It's not a corn hole, we just fill our pockets with dried corn and walk around the Samish unit like the guy did in Shawshank Redemption.