Odd Weather Just Ducky For Hunters

It’s a hard lesson, but one that seasoned outdoors people must learn:

Take the weather as it comes.

With cross-country ski trails bare and muddy at Mount Spokane - a first for this time of year - skiers either must travel to a glacier or forgo hanging up the roller skis and bicycles for another week.

Anglers should keep their ice augers ready, but they’ll be taking their open-water gear to Fourth of July Lake and other area waters for the winter fishing season that begins Friday.

The lesson is particularly difficult for waterfowl hunters, who have never quite figured out whether to pray for nice weather or a storm.

Mike Meseberg of Mar Don Resort says clear skies and a 20 mph wind are the best conditions for duck hunting around Potholes Reservoir.

This was not particularly reassuring as we hunkered in a sand dune blind Tuesday looking out through dense fog at decoys on dead calm water.

But we stuck it out and wound up bagging a few ducks apiece while consoling ourselves that at least we weren’t suffering from frostbite or hypothermia.

If the weather isn’t ducky, you make up for it with good humor and stealing a little of your buddy’s lunch.

Less than 24 hours later, the conditions were fabulous at Potholes. The fog had cleared, the wind had picked up, and the ducks were eager to set their wings on any set of decoys.

The unseasonably mild weather we’ve had in November has melted dreams that a bounty of ducks would be piling into the southern portion of the Columbia Basin.

After hearing word of this year’s boom in duck populations, waterfowlers rightly expected major concentrations of waterfowl in the Snake and Columbia river areas by mid-November.

Smart hunters probably secured leases, booked guided hunts or scouted individual hunting spots in those regions.

But the weather’s weird. The waterfowl haven’t concentrated in the normal spots.

Hunters have had their best November in more than a decade in northeastern Washington, where you could barely buy a duck last year at this time. Ducks and geese are scattered throughout Lincoln and Douglas counties.

“Lakes and ponds that have been dry or frozen in November for the past 10 years are full and ice-free,” said Matt Monda, Washington Fish and Wildlife Department waterfowl specialist.

In a recent aerial survey of designated waters in the Columbia Basin, Monda counted 256,000 ducks. That compares to 250,000 ducks on the same specified waters at the same time last year.

Hunters who haven’t been paying attention to the weather might wonder what happened to the forecast duck bonanza. Why did the feds allow the states to raise the duck limit from four to six this year?

The answer is simple. The duck bonanza is out there. But it’s not concentrated in one spot.

“The ducks are all over the place,” Monda said, noting that a cold snap last November froze most of the smaller waters and sent the waterfowl packing for the Snake and Columbia Rivers.

For example, Monda counted 50,000 mallards on Stratford Lake on Nov. 21. “We’ve never seen that many ducks there in the November survey,” he said.

On the same day, he counted 51,000 mallards on North Potholes Reserve, 47,000 on the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge and 31,800 on Moses Lake.

When a normal winter weather pattern envelopes the region, the big open waters of the southern Columbia Basin should be black with waterfowl, Monda said.

“The hunting is good there right now and it should get better as other waters freeze,” he said. “But the Columbia Basin doesn’t have the food resources it once had for waterfowl. Harvesting is more efficient, and there’s less wheat and corn stubble as more land is producing other crops like mint, orchards and grapes that are not used by waterfowl. The Basin just doesn’t have the food for a huge population of ducks and geese anymore.”

In other words, a little bad weather could be great for Basin duck hunters for a period. “But if the weather got really harsh all at once, the ducks could just blow right on through and outa here,” Monda said.

In that case, some waterfowlers would whine. But the savvy ones who have learned their lesson would simply put their shotguns, roller skis and bicycles away, and pull out the skis and ice fishing gear.

You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.

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