Golden autumn weather favours Otago ducks

Around 4000 Otago hunters prayers went unanswered as the opening morning dawned generally fine and calm on Saturday with the odd patch of fog. Weather has a large influence over hunter success and without the wind or occasional shower to keep birds lower, round one has gone to the ducks. But the ducks are warned, it’s a three month season in Otago and the weather - and the odds - will change at some stage.

Fish & Game Otago Operations Manager Ian Hadland said that as a result of the kind weather conditions, numbers of birds shot thoughout the region were mixed.

He said that rangers had noted that those who had done better had prepared their ponds well by feeding grain out, had plenty of decoys and the hunters were good callers.

“Bags were below average in the traditional strongholds of south and west Otago but most hunters had a few birds each. The exception this year was central Otago and the Maniototo where hunters had a great start to the season and were chuffed to have seen so many birds. Some ponds were close to limit bags before lunch”

Mr Hadland said opening weekend bags were not always indicative of the numbers of birds about.

“Some unshot ponds in the Maniototo are still holding mobs of mallards and these will reward more observant and adaptive hunters throughout the season ” Mr Hadland said

Fish & Game Otago coordinated a large compliance effort in the wider Balclutha area this year and was very pleased with the behaviour of hunters this opening day.

“We are still getting information in from volunteer rangers further afield, but it looks as if there was full compliance with licencing requirements and bag limits and over 95% compliance overall which is great”

4 shotguns were seized and 6 offence notices written for possession of banned lead shot which had disappointed Fish & Game Otago. Mr Hadland said lead shot began its phase out a decade ago and it appeared some hunters on remote private ponds were prepared to take the risk.

“With such good aerial imagery online these days, those chaps around the Hillend area where most of the offences were detected shouldn’t have been so surprised to see us It’s very frustrating to have to seize firearms for easily avoidable offences” Mr Hadland said.

Fish & Game believe the issue was not helped by some ammunition retailers who were prepared to sell lead ammunition to duck hunters without warnings about the regulations that make possession of lead shot cartridges within 200m of water an offence.

“We have heard that some rural retailers sold a lot of lead ammo before opening day. Some of that same ammo is now locked up with us and their client faces court action. It’s unhelpful for us trying to enforce the law and it’s not a great result for their customer either. We will be talking to retailers this week to see how we can help them better communicate the risks of lead shot possession to their clients in future” Mr Hadland said.

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