Winter weather leads to waterfowl migration

Santa brought me my wish for Christ­mas, finally some win­ter weather!

As soon as Christ­mas break started, win­ter seemed to arrive, freez­ing up the local ponds and lakes while adding some snow. It was just what we needed to get a much delayed water­fowl migra­tion moving.

The strong cold winds and frozen water brought us a new batch of birds and the Par­rott Boys did well on geese, mal­lards, gad­walls, and wid­geons on sev­eral hunts. It brought much needed relief to an oth­er­wise hor­ri­ble Decem­ber of waterfowling.

We hadn’t been doing well since the hur­ri­cane winds brought us birds at Hal­loween. It had just been too nice of weather in Decem­ber around here. Hunt­ing this time of year can be hard work and hard on the equip­ment, but your efforts are usu­ally rewarded as most of the fair weather hunters have given up for the year.

Yes, duck hunters are about the only peo­ple in the world that wish for nasty win­ter weather. Once Jan­u­ary arrives, and the sea­son goes out, it can warm up and stay warm until June for all I care, but for now, bring on the nasty weather.

• The ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife would like to invite any adult, group, or con­ser­va­tion club who has a sin­cere inter­est in tak­ing kids fish­ing to become a cer­ti­fied Pass­port to Fish­ing Instruc­tor. A free work­shop is avail­able on Wednes­day Jan. 9, 2013 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will take place at Wildlife Dis­trict One, 1500 Dublin Road, Colum­bus Ohio.

Pass­port to Fish­ing is a one-day instruc­tor train­ing pro­gram that qual­i­fies indi­vid­u­als to become Divi­sion of Wildlife cer­ti­fied fish­ing instruc­tors, sim­i­lar to a hunter edu­ca­tion instructor.

Pass­port to Fish­ing was devel­oped by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice and adopted by the Recre­ational Boat­ing and Fish­ing Foun­da­tion. Work­shops teach vol­un­teers the basics of fish­ing and how to run a four-station fish­ing pro­gram with a fish­ing event. These instruc­tors then go back to their com­mu­ni­ties, with a writ­ten cur­ricu­lum and train­ing aids, to teach young­sters and begin­ning anglers the basics of fishing.

By becom­ing a cer­ti­fied instruc­tor, you will not only be able to help in recon­nect­ing stu­dents with the out­doors, but you will also have the skills and resources to help you do it in a more suc­cess­ful way. Resources avail­able include grants, equip­ment, brochures, and training.

To reg­is­ter for a work­shop, please call (614) 644‑3925. For addi­tional class infor­ma­tion, visit www.wildohio.com.

• Hunters have donated 1,400 deer to local food banks to ben­e­fit Ohioans in need so far this year, accord­ing to Farm­ers and Hunters Feed­ing the Hungry.

“In the spirit of the hol­i­days, Ohio’s deer hunters have shown they are will­ing to donate veni­son to those in need,” said Divi­sion of Wildlife chief Scott Zody. “We encour­age all hunters to enjoy the rest of the hunt­ing sea­son and to con­sider donat­ing more deer to this wor­thy cause.”

The dona­tions deliv­ered approx­i­mately 70,250 pounds of veni­son and 281,000 meals to needy Ohioans. The DOW coop­er­ates with FHFH to assist with pro­cess­ing costs asso­ci­ated with donat­ing meat to a food bank.

• Just how safe is hunt­ing with a shot­gun for deer with many thou­sands of other gun-toting hunters? Accord­ing to the Divi­sion of Wildlife, it’s pretty safe because for the third sea­son in a row, Ohio saw no fatal­i­ties dur­ing the gun week. In fact, only four injury acci­dents were reported dur­ing the week of gun hunting.

• Out­door recre­ation of var­i­ous kinds is on the increase rather than decreas­ing in the U.S. accord­ing to the 2011 National Sur­vey of Fish­ing, Hunt­ing, and Wildlife Asso­ci­ated Recre­ation released recently by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice, out­door recre­ation increased dra­mat­i­cally from 2006 to 2011.

High­lights of the report included: more than 90 mil­lion U.S. res­i­dents 16 years old and older par­tic­i­pated in some form of wildlife-related recre­ation in 2011, up three per­cent from five years earlier.

The increase was pri­mar­ily among those who fished and hunted. Wildlife recre­ation­ists spent $144.7 bil­lion in 2011 on their activ­i­ties. Of the total amount spent, $49.5 bil­lion was trip-related, $70.4 bil­lion was spent on equip­ment, and $24.8 bil­lion was spent on other items such as licenses and land leasing.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing!

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jan 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.