doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Any reports from the Great White North?

I noticed in Arkansas around Stuttgart that every couple of miles or so there was another "minnow farm". That area must be the tuffy minnow capital of the world. I wouldn't be surprised if the ringnecks out there had been seduced into the easy life of raiding commercial minnow ponds...Geo

It wouldn't be easy for me to rank diver duck when it comes to table fare, but I always like the way Scaup can swing past decoys at warp speed. I haven't shot a Ringneck for quite a while, but I can clearly recall it was quite a bit tougher to get the breasts out of them than regular.

Ringnecks may feed on different things in different regions, but around here they hang around in fishponds where they dive in the deep water for a few seconds feeding. There is no vegetation on the bottom in 10-12 feet of black water, where the sunlight cannot reach anywhere near the bottom. When you retrieve them they smell of fish. Their flesh smells of fish.

They may indeed feed on a high percentage of vegetation in some areas, but I've observed and shot them for over 40 years here, and if you want to eat a duck that smells strongly like fish, you're welcome to do so. Some do not mind it, or I wouldn't have eager takers, but I do.

I be a long ways away from any shrimp they could feed on.

SRH

I can easily smell the shrimp when they are eating them. Many are sometimes found live in the feathers, and they come in on the decoy anchors that snag underwater plants. Never any shrimp taste to the skin or flesh after baking out the fat. I'd guess the ducks are grubbing the bottom for invertebrates. You should shoot a few and check. Like scaup, canvasbacks, and redheads, they just don't have the bill structure for grasping fish.

I grabbed my double 12 and scouted for four hours in the rain this PM. Only the wheat has been harvested; the remaining 90% is corn and beans, with hundreds of acres in snow and in standing water. Many roads closed. Water everywhere and rising. Saw very few ducks, but that is understandable as the bird stay undisturbed in flooded beans all day. Felt sorry for my GWP Gus,who wants to hunt so bad!

My experience with ringnecks on the table was that that they were fine. This was mostly ducks killed on a 110 acre reservoir in middle Georgia and on small ponds here in coastal Georgia. Freshwater Wigeon, Gadwall, Blacks and Mallards were fine dining as well, but the same couldn't be said about ones found in saltwater. The aroma of cleaning saltwater puddlers smelled like an overripe landfill. A friend who lived in Miami decades ago told me that the Everglades woodies he killed were full of snails which adversely affected their taste. You are what you eat. Gil

Amarillo Mike was tossing insults I was just along for the ride.

Again you weren't paying close attention George....read my signature line below real slOw if you need to.

I know they are divers, but didn't think they would go down 10-12 ft. to get to the bottom. Next opportunity I have to shoot some, that smell fishy, I will check to see what they're eating.

Returning from ducks in the South to the Great White North: Woodcock are still hanging around. Examination of yesterday's bag showed very little fat on the birds. They don't appear to be flight birds. Look like locals that haven't yet started to fuel up for the migration. Rain and wind today; more rain tomorrow. One day with wind out of the north. Will be interesting to see if that gets them moving. Hoping that it won't . . . or that it will bring birds from up North down this way. Once Tuesday's rain is out of the picture, looks like several days' worth of good hunting weather.

One tell we have on doodle flight birds is the breast bone is more noticeable in the hand due to muscle shrinkage. They've flow further than flight birds found in the north where it might not be more pronounced. Gil

Old Squaws can dive well over 400 ft., but the other deep divers like ring-necks and lesser scaup (bluebills) only dive to about 40 ft because they don't use their wings underwater like the Squaws do.