The DU Podcast finally connects with our friends in the West, as Dr. Mike Brasher speaks with Dr. Fritz Reid, Dr. Dan Smith, Kelly Warren, and Kyle Spragens to hear about waterfowl migration, habitat conditions, and hunting stories from the Pacific Flyway. From California to Washington, reports suggest an overall “hit or miss” season, with sporadic success influenced by weather systems that altered habitat conditions and redistributed birds. Our guests also share stories of memorable hunts that included stormy weather, hybrid ducks, scattered ashes, family memories, and a university hunt camp with an Alma Matter. Lastly, fingers are crossed for a shift in the weather to improve hunting prospects as the season draws to a close.
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What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?
Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Mike Brasher: Hey, everyone. Welcome into the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I am Dr. Mike Brasher. I'm going to be your host on this episode, and we are going out West finally this season. We've been trying to get in touch with a few folks and line something up to give some updates and reports from that part of the country. We did some coverage earlier in the year, but had not had much of a chance to connect with folks. But today, We were able to connect in a big way. We actually have four guests that are going to be joining this discussion. But first, we're going to be talking about California and the other portions of the West Coast. And so we would be remiss if we did not first acknowledge the tragedies that are occurring with the wildfires there in Los Angeles. And for a few words on that, I want to bring in Fritz Reid here, longtime Ducks Unlimited employee out there in California. And Fritz, you've certainly seen Many of these type of events through the years, that landscape is prone to wildfires for a number of reasons and sort of naturally adapted in those wilder areas to those types of things. But when it gets into some of these urban areas, it certainly takes a toll. And so Fritz, I want to toss it to you for a few words and perspective on that.
Fritz Reid: Well, certainly, Mike, and as this is being recorded, note that the two big fires, Palisades and Eaton, are still ongoing. So it's a tragedy happening even as we speak. The big tragedy, of course, are for the folks that are in the area, both those that have been directly impacted with loss of some of their family or loss of their homes, but also it's impacting folks in terms of the economy, jobs, and their ability to function in that system. So, you know, the Ducks Unlimited family certainly sends their regards, their hopes to those people. We also want to acknowledge the firefighters, all the people that are trying to help out in this particular case, and know that it's going to be a long time, many, many years in reconstruction and redevelopment and replanning for those systems. You know, just right now, it's estimated that over 12,000 buildings have been burned to the ground, and that's just probably the two biggest fires that have impacted North America in an urban situation. So the Ducks Unlimited family wants to acknowledge those folks. We have a a long-standing group of volunteers in that area, and we hope all of them are safe.
Mike Brasher: Thank you so much for that, Fritz. And you mentioned one of the things there you said reminded me that I want to provide a timestamp. We are recording this episode on January 16th, so we're on a Thursday here. This episode will not come out for a few days when folks are listening to it, but we just want to make sure we kind of capture that. And thank you, Fritz, for those words and that perspective. We do have four people joining us remotely, and we're going to move now to sort of talk about some of the other things that a lot of our audience has been interested in over the course of the fall and winter, and that is, of course, how waterfowl migration has developed and transpired and some of the hunting stories and successes or maybe failures and disappointments that some folks may have had throughout that area. So, what I want to do is just call on each of you to introduce yourself real briefly. Fritz, I'm going to go right back to you.
Fritz Reid: Okay. Fritz Reid, former director of conservation in the boreal and the Arctic for Ducks Unlimited. I'm here in California.
Mike Brasher: Thanks, Fritz. We're going to stay in California and go with Dr. Dan Smith.
Dan Smith: Thanks, Mike. Dan Smith. I'm a waterfowl scientist here in our Sacramento office.
Mike Brasher: All right, we're going to move up the coastline a little bit, and we're going to go to Kelly Warren in Oregon.
Kelly Warren: Hey, good morning. I'm Kelly Warren. I am the Western Oregon Regional Biologist, and I'm out of Philomath, Oregon.
Mike Brasher: And up to the Pacific Northwest, where we're going to be joined by another guest that's been with us previously. So, Kyle.
Kyle Spraggins: Hey, good morning, Mike. Kyle Spriggans with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. I'm the Waterfowl Section Manager and serve on the Pacific Flyway Study Committee.
Mike Brasher: So thanks to each of you guys for joining us here. I sent an email yesterday. I think the subject line was Hail Mary. Any of y'all available for an update, uh, for a podcast update out West or something to that effect. And little did I know that all four of you were going to respond and say, yep, I can make that work tomorrow morning. So here we are. Um, anytime we have a number of folks on like this, you know, there's a few audio challenges that we might encounter. So bear with us. We're going to get through those. And I know our producer over here, wonderful producer is going to do the absolute best job of anybody that ever could be to make this sound wonderful. So, I want to start, let's see, I'm going to go to Dan first, because you and I spoke last fall about a few things, but we don't have to cover a whole lot of that if you don't want to. You know, thinking about sort of the Klamath situation as it unfolded, we gave it some coverage, and that's not necessarily what we wanted to talk about. We wanted to speak now about how you saw migration unfold. And some of what you heard from people that are hunting there in the part of California that you're most familiar with, and then I think we'll tag Fritz to provide perspective from his part of California. So, Dan?
Dan Smith: Yeah, so we, I think we were all pretty optimistic about this duck season when it started. We had a lot of kind of late spring rain rice was planted throughout the valley so things were looking pretty good and we got word pretty early or yes in late. Summer that water allocations to a lot of the public areas is going to be what we would consider average so you're kind of entering a. An optimistic time if you will, but it was really warm when duck season started and pretty dry so it started off relatively slow. Things changed pretty quickly in mid November we got hit by a pretty significant atmospheric river that we got a whole lot of rain, a lot of areas in Sacramento Valley. got flooded out actually and so that likely opened up a lot of habitat for birds to kind of redistribute in the area move around and kind of. Maybe even leave some of those traditional kind of core waterfowl areas that we're used to seeing a lot of birds in early and that changed pretty quickly, you know as as we continue going through the season, we had a very wet period and now. Where we're at now in early January, it's been hot and dry. So we've kind of, you know, had a couple of weather swings, which really dictated how hunting was going. But, uh, I can say kind of in the middle of the season, uh, we started to see a lot more ducks show up and waterfowl season tended to be more of what we'd call an average year. Um, but that slow start certainly impacted us. Um, we've been getting a lot of greenwing teal, um, that has been really kind of the bird to carry us through the season, even up here in the Sacramento Valley. Um, so that's kind of where we've been at so far. I'm curious to see how the rest of the season kind of pans out. We still have a couple couple of weeks left, but I think on on the face of it, we're probably gonna be a little bit lower than kind of an average season.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, and so Dan, you do most of your hunting in the Sac Valley, Sacramento Valley, northern part of the California Central Valley, right?
Dan Smith: Yeah, I get down to the grasslands, which is Fritz's backyard, a couple of times a year, but most of my time is right around kind of like the Sacramento Valley region, around the Butte Sink area, kind of on the west side where the public access areas are, and down here at our Yolo Wildlife Area as well.
Mike Brasher: Uh, Fritz, I'm going to jump down to you now in the San Joaquin Valley, the grasslands district, whatever name you, you prefer to refer to it as, uh, but sort of the Southern or, or a little bit South there of the Sacramento Valley. And if you want to provide some sort of geographic orientation to that, as I kind of struggled to do so, I can kind of picture it in my brain, in my mind. But, uh, for folks that may not be as familiar with that, take that, uh, take a stab at that as well, but give us an overview from San Joaquin Valley. Maybe cut your, you're breaking up on us, so turn your video off there. Fritz, did we lose him? Bugger. Well, all right, folks, we tried. We ran into some signal difficulties there with our good buddy Fritz down in the Grasslands District. And so what we're going to do is call an audible and toss this back to Dan Smith. We did hear that he spent one day in the blind with Fritz. And so we're going to extrapolate from one day to point, no, actually, I'm just kidding. He does have some more intel on kind of how that season unfolded. So Dan, I'm going to kick it back to you. Start with sort of that geographic orientation that I was asking Fritz to give.
Dan Smith: Yeah, sure. So when we're looking at the Central Valley of California and how we typically expect birds to move across that landscape, you know, where the Bay Area kind of exists just south of Sacramento and that Delta area, that kind of is where we have our split. North of the delta we you know that's a sacramento valley and south of that delta area is where we typically think of that grasslands area and so that's you know kind of stocked in south you have merced and a couple other big areas down there near los panos. And so when we typically think about my birds moving through that region they oftentimes go to Sacramento first before making their way it feels like down to the grasslands but this year was pretty interesting in the grasslands had a lot of birds early- and they held a lot of birds for most of the season- most of which being greenling to which is very traditional you I think you mentioned in the past but- I think Merced county probably- has the highest harvest of green winged teal anywhere in North America. And so this year was no different. They had a lot of greenwing teal down there, but they also had a lot of widget, um, and a decent number of pin tail as well. So they have been. You know, experiencing a pretty successful season. Um, sometime I would say it's a little, it started a little bit earlier than normal. We often don't see the grasslands really pick up, um, until, you know, December one, but, uh, they had some pretty good hunt days down there, even in late November. And it seems like they've been continuing. So it's good news for those folks down in the grasslands.
Mike Brasher: Any idea what might have been different this year to lead to some of that early success that you talked about?
Dan Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think that really big storm in November, it may have flooded a lot of those core waterfowl areas in Sacramento a bit too deep for dabblers. And so they might have just moved their way down to the grasslands that, you know, they had a lot of habitat open and it looked really good, I think. It might have been one of the reasons that redistributed those birds.
Mike Brasher: Do we have any research going on out there with any sort of transmitted birds that's documenting trying to study some of those movements and how they respond to those sort of within season changes in habitat availability?
Dan Smith: Yeah, so some of our collaborators at the USGS, the United States Geological Survey, have been putting GPS backpacks on ducks, both in the Sacramento Valley and a few in the grasslands in the southern San Joaquin, and they're starting to better understand those dynamics. I don't have those results in front of me, but from some of the work we've seen, we do see movements between those basins. But interestingly enough, it seems like a lot of those birds spend most of their time in kind of one basin. So I think as we get more transmitters out and give those birds more time to collect data, we'll start to better understand those dynamics. But that's been a big thing that we've really tried to focus on out here in the West, is how do birds move between these different kind of core areas.
Mike Brasher: Dan, one of the things that I want to do as I go through each of our guests here is I want you to share a story about your best hunt, if you had a best hunt this year. And so does anyone in particular stand out for you, whether it be a result of who you hunted with or the success you had, or maybe some funny stories and follies along the way?
Dan Smith: Yeah, I mean, we've, we, I've had a lot of great opportunities this year. So, I mean, there's a lot of good hunts to pick from. Um, I think maybe one of the more memorable ones was, uh, I was actually hunting by myself on one of the public areas. I got onto the refuge, uh, kind of surprisingly, it was a huge storm day. We had huge winds. I mean, it was probably 25 plus mile an hour winds and, and it probably rained over an inch and a half on me just, you know, sitting out in a toolie stool in a patch of toolies. And, uh, It was, birds were going everywhere, but nothing was flying straight. And it was, uh, it was a challenging hunt and it was either I was doubling on birds or I was missing. And so when, when I got to six birds, uh, it was really challenging to try to just get one. Yeah. Yeah. It was a fun day.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, for those that may not be aware, the daily bag limit out there in the Pacific Flyway is seven. That is in contrast to some of what the other flyways have on the books right now. So, yeah, well, that's good. I appreciate you sharing that, and we'll come back to you here a little bit later on. I think I have a few other weather-related questions, but I want to move up the coastline now to our good friend Kelly Warren. And Kelly, I'm gonna, I want you to start out with your favorite hunt of the season. Cause I know you've had several and I'm, if I were a betting person, I might place a wager on one particular hunt that I know you had.
Kelly Warren: Yeah, there was, there was, there's been a couple, uh, but definitely the, the hybrid day was, it was Christmas morning. We'd opened up gifts and went out. Um, I went out with my dad, uh, on hunt, and it was dreary, dark, and we had four birds fly over, and one of them, I was like, something's off. And it looked like kind of a mature henpin tail, but sprig looked far too long. And So two of those birds kind of went off and two others came back for a second look. And I told my dad, I said, hey, if you get an opportunity, go ahead and shoot that bird. It looks like a pintail. We hadn't been in the blind more than five minutes when those birds came through either. And they're I, it ended up that those birds came over on my side and I ended up shooting the Mallard Drake first and then pulled on the hybrid and didn't know, I had an idea of what it was, but I didn't really know until I saw it on water and it was facing directly away from me and it did one little flap where I could see it move and give me a side profile. And I shot a very nice, mature pintail mallard hybrid, which has been a bird that has been a long time coming for me. Ever since I laid eyes on one of those birds when I was 11, I've always wanted one. So that looked pretty special, especially because it was with my dad on a Christmas morning.
Mike Brasher: And I believe you also still had a duck DNA kit with you, right? Or did we send you one?
Kelly Warren: I've got one, and that bird will be in the mix.
Mike Brasher: Alright, that's cool. Alright, so you said you have a couple. I think another one might involve a family member if I had to guess, but I could be wrong. You do a fair bit of hunting out there, so what would be number two for you?
Kelly Warren: Number two for me was we have had a very warm and very, very wet year. I don't think we have flooded as much as we have this consistently over a time period as much as we have this year. And like kind of Dan said, I like hunting the extremes. So, it was a windy, wet day. Floodwaters were high and those are usually really good conditions for us. And so, I took my four-year-old daughter out and we had a ball. And at the end of the hunt, we also got the opportunity… And we didn't kill a ton of birds. We just killed some really nice koale birds. We killed a couple mallards and a really nice Drake Fintail. But at the end of the hunt, I always leave a little baggie of ashes from my dog, Bad Cope, years ago for those memorable hunts. So in the floodwaters, we were able to go out there as the birds were coming in after dart and spread some of those ashes in the floodwater, which was pretty cool.
Mike Brasher: That's really cool. You're going to make me get a little teary eyed here. That's, that's pretty cool.
Kelly Warren: Yeah.
Mike Brasher: And so which, uh, which, which dog was that for you?
Kelly Warren: Um, my dog, my old dog Moxie. So I had her for nine seasons. Um, and then this year the next generation is starting. So this is my new dog Skye's first year waterfowling. So those floodwaters were definitely a good learning curve for her. Yeah.
Mike Brasher: That's cool. Appreciate you sharing that, Kelly. Well, you've, you had some experiences out in the, out in the field, out in the blind. And so kind of go back and, and let us sort of live through what you saw and what you heard in terms of what was the migration late? Was it, how did it, how did it unfold for you? And what did you hear from other folks?
Kelly Warren: Yeah, so similar to what Dan said, we had a really dry October. So the people that frequented areas that had good water were typically fairly successful. There was decent local production in Oregon. I did look at the statistics from the different hunt areas, and for example, Summer Lake, for example, is about average over the past five years for the 24-25 season. Sauvie Island though definitely is a bit lower and I think that's pretty consistent with what a lot of hunters in this region saw this season. October, definitely dry, definitely warm. I didn't feel like migration was nearly as much there wasn't nearly as much migration activity present in October as the previous two seasons. Opening weekend, usually you see the last two seasons anyway, we saw large numbers of teal, pintail, and wigeon, and I don't think we really saw those until about the first week in November this year. However, lower Columbia and the coast definitely did well early. Once we started getting that really wet weather and what was called the bomb cyclone, that definitely got the birds a little more off the coast and inland, seeking refuge and finding areas like the Willamette Valley to chuck in fine food sources and Then, especially once the floodwater spread out, the table was set for all the ducks and all those wildlife areas and other areas were full. I don't think the bird numbers present, though, have been as much as previous years.
Mike Brasher: Okay. Kelly, when did you say that bomb cyclone was? I remember talking about it, maybe when we had one of our Waterfowl Weather Live events. Was that late November?
Kelly Warren: It was it was late November right before Thanksgiving. And then the weather kind of let up for a little bit. And then right around Christmas, we had another big weather front move in warm and wet.
Mike Brasher: And so the same as it is over here, like when we get these big weather systems that come through, whether they're bringing a lot of rain or whether they're bringing a lot of wind or cold weather, you out west, it's the same type deal. You get excited. Well, you you pay attention and say you get excited, maybe you, maybe it depends on where you are and what you're wanting to hunt as to whether it's an exciting scenario, but it's sort of the same thing out there, right? Where you get these new systems and that either brings in new birds or it mixes things up to cause birds to do different things and check out new areas. And it's the same type of sort of interaction with those weather systems in waterfowl out West, right?
Kelly Warren: Absolutely. Um, and it seemed like, you know, there was kind of, especially the storm front in December, it was like, One storm system, two days later, another. So you would have to kind of hit it, hit it pretty like during the storm or maybe just ahead of it. Because if those birds could be there one day and gone the next, as the next run pushes through. So there was definitely a lot of hit and miss hunting. If I was to sum up this season in one, in a couple words, it would be hit and miss.
Mike Brasher: Hit and miss. That's kind of like a lot of people shooting, you know, that's, uh, that's the way the way the hunting season goes overall sometimes.
Kelly Warren: Absolutely.
Mike Brasher: Kelly, I appreciate that. We are going to take a break right now. We're going to, on the backside of this break, we are going to connect with our, our friend and colleague up in the Pacific Northwest, like the real Northwest up there, uh, up in Washington. So Kyle, get ready. We're going to come back and we're going to have you lead off with your favorite hunting story of the season. So stay with us folks. We will be right back. Welcome back, everyone. We are going to Washington State and Kyle Spragans. Kyle, take it away. What was your favorite outing, hunting experience, however you want to describe it? Tell us about it.
Kyle Spraggins: Yeah, thanks, Mike. And thanks for acknowledging the real Pacific Northwest. Look forward to representing that. My favorite hunt is actually yet to come, Mike. This is the final weekend of the season. I'm an alum of Humboldt State University in Northern California, and the final weekend of the season, the California Waterfowl Association is finally holding a university hunt camp for what is now referred to as Cal Poly Humboldt. So I get to meet up with some old alums and meet some of the new generation and do one of the mentor hunts finally for Humboldt. And so I'm really looking forward to that and getting ready for that here in just two weekends. So we'll see how that hunt actually goes.
Mike Brasher: That is exciting. What kind of hunting are you going to do there? Where would you go? Is that like a coastal hunt, bay hunt, or what? I'm not, I mean, I know where that area is, but I have no idea like what some of the dominant waterfowl habitats and hunting areas would be.
Kyle Spraggins: Yeah, the hunt camp is actually held in the California Central Valley, and so it will be more dabbling duck hunting and sort of natural marsh rice field settings but you're correct Humboldt sits on the coast of Humboldt Bay, a big sort of Brant Bay is what a lot of folks might recognize Humboldt Bay for but there's a whole smattering of, yeah, wigeon and sea ducks and a whole variety up there so. certainly an exciting spot from a waterfowl perspective.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, now is this a first hunt type thing? I know Delta Waterfowl has a university hunt program type work that they do, and you said this is Cal Waterfowl, and is it, are these brand new hunters, or is it youth hunters, maybe with some experience? Tell us a little bit about this.
Kyle Spraggins: Yeah, that's correct. It's modeled after a very successful version that UC Davis and Professor Edie, in collaboration with California Waterfowl Association, have run for a long time. And it's very similar to the university hunt program that Delta runs. In this case, it's more targeted towards sort of a broader stretch of the sort of undergraduate experience, trying to get some of those, you know, young university students that are still exploring sort of the different professions that exist in the natural resources and so it's run as an actual hunter ed course and at the end of it you can choose whether you want to go on the hunt or not but having gone through uh the all the steps required to get your hunter ed uh to get your license um is great it's a it's a wonderful sort of approach of how to get exposure to folks that might not be familiar with With that world. So, um, anyways, uh, Davis has run that version for many years, probably several decades at this point. And, uh, this is just the first run of finally getting humbled.
Mike Brasher: Well, that's exciting. I know you're going to enjoy that. I think back to, uh, to a hunt that I participated in a few years ago with LSU. They had something similar, and that is the hunt that I had with the first time ever hunter. She was a PhD student, had sort of grown up, or at that time was more of a vegetarian. I might be getting that a little bit wrong, but certainly was not a hunter and didn't have any objections to it, but sharing the blind with her, Patty was her name. And that was one of the more rewarding hunts, just sort of all around, that I've been a part of and I hope you have that same experience. That's sharing something that you love and are passionate about with other people and having them ask questions and experience that alongside you. Really, really cool. So, I look forward to hearing the story of how all that turned out next time we get together. So, let's move to talk about how the season was for Washington hunters. What can you tell us?
Kyle Spraggins: Yeah, well, sort of similar to what Kelly said, I was going to portray it more as the roller coaster. We did have weather early, actually just as we were getting into the season, which has been unusual for the past five plus years. in Washington to actually have some weather systems hit just as the season's starting up and so it started hot there was definitely a good you know first pulse of birds both on the western side which is fed largely by Alaska originating birds, and then in the Columbia Basin, the east side of the state, that is more fed from birds originating from sort of the Peace River Valley portions of Alberta and central kind of plateau of BC. And so there was certainly an early pulse, and then as Kelly also mentioned, the roller coaster kind of coincidentally followed a lot of the big sort of holiday periods and so that you know the big bomb cyclone that was mentioned hitting right around Thanksgiving time and then another big storm system right around Christmas time and so there were more folks actually able to take advantage of those coincidental alignings right and we get hints of that because we do quite a bit of local mallard banding and Canada goose banding western Canada geese and so we saw that in the recoveries you see a bit we see a big spike kind of during those time periods And in between that, it was really sort of stalled out dead weather periods. Washington kind of was sort of smack dab in between where a lot of these atmospheric rivers or sort of those big precipitation storm systems were hitting. They were either vying further to the north and hitting kind of central British Columbia. where they were kind of veering a little bit further south and hitting more in the sort of Willamette Valley south to North California. So we did, while we had some water early, we definitely had these sort of dry stall out periods where birds weren't really being pressed to go find food. It was not cold. It was where there was some water standing on the landscape. but there was not enough to actually you know force birds to to go in into the foraging fields every day. And then on the Columbia Basin side the other sort of description just from a weather standpoint has been you know the Columbia Basin kind of is this big bowl and it's surrounded much by much higher elevation kind of plateau and forested areas and until those areas freeze birds are not as concentrated into the bottom of the bowl, which is sort of the heart of waterfowl hunting in the Columbia Basin. And so, even now, it's barely freezing in some of those extreme portions of eastern Washington. And so, yeah, so it's been sort of that roller coaster of periods of exceptional hunting and other periods of sort of probably really putting in your time to eke out a couple shots.
Mike Brasher: As I said at the beginning, we're here on recording this on January 16th. And so Kyle, as we're going to go back down kind of the Pacific flyway here, and I'll start with you. What do the next two weeks look like for hunters in Washington from a weather forecast standpoint? Do you see anything on the horizon? I mean, I know in the central Mississippi and Atlantic flyways, we certainly do. The coldest air of the season is forecast to come in next week. What does it look like out there in the Pacific Flyway over these next two weeks?
Kyle Spraggins: Yeah, I think there's some optimism, particularly in the last weekend, because the cold spell that you're talking about in the central part of the continent, it certainly starts pushing some colder temperatures in that eastern extreme of the Columbia Basin. So I think there's also some hopes that if there are any birds hanging out still in portions of Alberta or elsewhere, that that might push one last slug of birds but but at a minimum kind of stirring the pot of birds that are around the area- particularly on the east side on the west side we're actually you know this last two weeks Brent. Starts brought broadening some the opportunities so there's a few counties that actually get an opportunity of brand hunting in these last couple weekends and then- and then. A lot of the big open water opportunities whether that Scott bluebill hunting and in portions of the Columbia River that's very popular- got people are taking advantage of all that and then of course. You know the cold temperatures that people some of the hunters are really looking forward towards are with regards to some of the geese- we have a lot of different goose opportunities scattered across the state and so. That sort of last cold snap potential- there there's some hope and one last effort towards that opportunity.
Mike Brasher: I'm glad you mentioned geese, because that was on my mind. I was going to pose a quick question to you. What's been the goose hunting report this year? Good? Bad? Average?
Kyle Spraggins: Yeah. Well, it kind of depends on the goose. We have white goose, no goose hunting. They're geese that are originating from the Wrangell Island population, the tiny island off of Siberia. There was very poor productivity in that in that snow goose population compared to some of the others, so it's been real slow on white geese because there's just no naive young birds in the flocks. Otherwise, yeah, the Western Canada goose harvest, again, we see band recoveries and so that's seemingly have been pretty steady and people getting into them in those areas of particularly the Columbia Basin that has a lot of that. And then the other sort of big group that feeds in is that mixture of white cheek geese, the Canada, and cackling geese that are coming down from Alaska. And that's been hit or miss. It kind of depends on where you are. There are folks that had very successful seasons towards those geese, but they've been much more spread out this year than than normal, so I think it's been a little bit more spotty in terms of who's experienced that success. But overall, yeah, strong goose year other than the white geese, I'd say.
Mike Brasher: I was not aware of that about snow geese or light geese on Wrangel Island. Did you say what we think might have caused that? Was it bad timing, or late storm, or I guess maybe early fall storm? What happened there?
Kyle Spraggins: The little bit of information that escaped off of Wrangel Island from the longtime researcher up there, Vasili Baranya, it was a late spring, which is always sort of a tough one for Wrangel Island. Just poor productivity. And so they, if the age ratios are much above 5% this year, it would be a bit of a surprise. Okay.
Mike Brasher: Well, thanks for sharing that nugget of info. Kelly, I'm going to go to you. What did the next couple of weeks look like for you and any other Oregonians that are going to be getting out and doing some waterfowl hunting?
Kelly Warren: Yes, similar to what Kyle said, I think there is a little bit of hope with the upcoming weather. Right now we are in an inversion, which like Kyle said, there's been either extreme rains or completely stale weather. And right now we're in one of those completely stale weather periods. But however, I love hunting fog, so I'm not too concerned about where we're at. Um, we are also getting our first 20 degree temperatures of the year. Usually we pretty consistently have some freezes that will be over a time period. And this year we have not had that. It has been incredibly warm. So those changing temperatures and especially those temperatures that are changing in states above us and locking up, I think there is a little bit of hope that we might see some new birds, especially mallards. Mallards have definitely been the most talked about birds that haven't shown up this year. in certain parts of the state. So I think a lot of folks are hoping that a lot of those mallards are going to push out of Montana, maybe into the Columbia Basin, and then down into western Oregon. So I think everybody is positive. However, how the season's gone thus far, there's a lot of people that are pessimistic.
Mike Brasher: That's odd. I mean, duck hunters are usually the eternal optimist. They're getting sour on you out there. It's like, no, we're gonna get it these last two weeks. It's gonna save the entire season. You're not hearing that, though, it doesn't sound like.
Kelly Warren: I think they're gonna go out regardless, just because you have to get out there those last two weeks.
Mike Brasher: That's right. You can't kill them on the couch. That's one of the sayings, isn't it?
Kelly Warren: That's right. And your dog's not going to be too happy if you stay on the couch.
Mike Brasher: That's right. Well, Kelly, good luck to you the rest of the season. Look forward to seeing you sometime in the future, maybe at a Ducks Unlimited meeting somewhere or who knows? Our paths cross occasionally and always enjoy that. Thanks for your time. the intel that you're giving us here. I'm going to go south now to California. We're going to finish where we started. Dan, I got a couple of questions for you first before we do sort of a two-week outlook here. And I don't know if you got an answer to this question, but whenever I hunted on the Great Salt Lake here a few weeks ago, about 95% of the birds that we shot were drake green-winged teal. And so we're all thinking, where are the hen green-winged teal? Do you have enough experience and insight on some of the green-winged teal harvest there in California to tell me what that kind of balance of drake to hen is in that area, either in the harvest or at least in what you see?
Dan Smith: Yeah, I mean, in least of what we see, um, you know, oftentimes what's, what's flying when we're out there in the marsh is, you know, mixed groups where it's predominantly male, as far as harvest goes, you know, I definitely want to look at values. I know continentally. we see a pretty even split in teal. I mean, they're pretty hard to identify on the wing when the drake or the hen is, especially when it's dark in the morning. But yeah, I don't know. That seems more of like the problem that we have with pintail. It's like you often don't see too many hens. You see a lot of drakes, but maybe that's just because they're easier to spot.
Mike Brasher: Yeah, well, I had talked to Josh, Dr. Josh Vest, a colleague of ours and friend from back in Mississippi. He's up in the prairies now, and he did some grad research on the Great Salt Lake, and he and some others kind of hypothesized maybe it has something to do with the males being slightly larger, if there is, and being able to hold out in that area. where it gets a little bit colder, more so than the females do, maybe they go on to some other southerly destination, and the Central Valley of California would obviously be the most logical place to expect those birds to have gone. So that was just the question that I wanted to toss out to you, and as you go forward, if it happens to come up in conversation, you can sort of bounce that off other people, see if we can figure something out. See if we know what's going on, if anybody's ever looked into that, but it was a startlingly skewed ratio of drakes to hens in our harvest there in Great Salt Lake. I'm not complaining. I love to see that from a harvest standpoint. Beautiful, beautiful birds there. Okay, so what do the next two weeks for California hunters look like?
Dan Smith: Yeah. So for, for us looking at the forecast, which is, you know, mostly what we're doing around this time is, uh, it's looking pretty sunny and, uh, like we don't have any storm fronts coming through. So that's not ideal. Um, we'd like to see some kind of big wind and, and really I'd love to see some rain. I'd like to see more snow in the, in the mountains so that we have better snow pack moving forward. But, uh, yeah, it looks pretty. pretty bland I guess you could say as we move forward. It is going to be cold or at least cold for California. We're going to be in like the mid to low 30s in the next couple of days here for our low temps but it warms up a little bit you know our lows are going to be in that the higher 30s so that should be good. I think the only thing that we're hopeful for is a lot of that flooded area that happened with those big rainstorms is probably contracting, drying out and so maybe that we'll concentrate birds in the managed areas that we can get access to. And so hopefully those last couple of weeks will be a lot of birds with courtship displays and a smaller footprint, which means maybe we have a better chance at them.
Mike Brasher: All right. Well, I appreciate that, Dan. Also, Kelly, thank you for joining us. Kyle, thank you. Appreciate all you guys joining us. Also, we have to say a thank you to Fritz, who joined us early on. Technical difficulties won the day on that one. We'll connect with Fritz a little bit later on, but thank you guys for joining us. Glad you had a good hunting season, or at least were able to get out. And Kyle, good luck here in a couple of weeks. So thank you, fellas.
Kelly Warren: Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mike.
Mike Brasher: All right, well, folks, so to the rest, to all you listeners out there, encourage you to get out these last two weeks of the season. As our good friend, Dr. Scott Stevens always says, life is short. You better hunt. So encourage you to do that and make the most of what is left of this season, hopefully you'll get some weather to mix things up and bring some success to you and your hunting partners. Also, we'll take a quick moment to encourage you to check out the local Ducks Unlimited events near you as the hunting season winds down. Ducks Unlimited events are a great place to go connect with some of the folks that may be hunting in and around the areas that are near you and You can share stories, you can commiserate over poor hunts and what some may have experienced as great seasons, some may have experienced as horrible seasons, and you can trade all sorts of stories. The Ducks Unlimited event system is a great place, those banquets is a great place to do that. To find an event near you, go to ducks.org forward slash events. Um, and, and help us help us do the work that we do through that event system and meet a lot of fun people along the way. So with that, I'm going to wrap this up. Thanks to our guests here. Also, thanks to our producer, Chris Isaac, who does a great job here on these episodes. And thank you to all of our listeners for joining us and for spending your time with us and for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation. Enjoy the rest of the season, folks.