Save the Hens, please!

With the reduction in Mallards in the Eastern fly way I'm making every effort to "Save the Hens". Duck hunting requires a ton of effort so it's hard to pass up any legal shot, but opening day I did pass up a Mallard Hen to be rewarded with two nice Drakes (a NJ limit of Mallards). I'm sure before the end of the season I will end up with a Hen in the bag, but it felt good to see this Hen fly away to hopefully provide more opportunities for bagging a Drake in the future.
Both Drakes had triple curl tail feathers, something I don't see to often. Good hunting and God Bless.

View attachment Dude and ducks.jpg View attachment triple curl.jpg
 
I try hard to do as you did. I had a good year and shot many ducks. I made a mistake on one and did bring home a hen mallard one day. Only one of the season. Try to do the same on Woodies but it is a bit harder to do so.

Mark
 
Nice job! I guess I can say I did the same. I've had very few mallards work my setups since the beginning of our season Sept 25, finally this weekend had a small flock of 4 come in and we dropped 2 drakes LOL!

I'm in Southern Ontario and the mallards are very scarce this year. There are a lot of mallards here but they seemed to have changed locations, don't seem to be using the bigger lakes like they used to. So I am
definitely not putting a hurt on the population LOL!
 
Dan Serlenga said:
With the reduction in Mallards in the Eastern fly way I'm making every effort to "Save the Hens". Duck hunting requires a ton of effort so it's hard to pass up any legal shot, but opening day I did pass up a Mallard Hen to be rewarded with two nice Drakes (a NJ limit of Mallards). I'm sure before the end of the season I will end up with a Hen in the bag, but it felt good to see this Hen fly away to hopefully provide more opportunities for bagging a Drake in the future.
Both Drakes had triple curl tail feathers, something I don't see to often. Good hunting and God Bless.

I read recently in a report about Mallard population being down like 50 percent on the Eastern Seaboard. Sad times. We will probably find the population down everywhere at some point. I've had the opportunity to shoot one duck so far this year. Unfortunately it was a Mallard hen. I sure hope before the season ends I have a couple of drake in the freezer as well.

Good luck with your season.
 

$10.00 hen penalty, that's a club who is thinking about the future of duck hunting. I'm sure there is lots of ribbing when it's time to ante up. Thanks for sharing.
 
Yessir! The penalties collected are used to offset the cost of our annual dinner. Large contributors are "recognized" for buying dinner.
 
Since 2000 our duck numbers have been low, probably because of weather and our location in the flyway. But even when we had lots of ducks we did and still do practice "voluntary Restraint". It just feels right.
 
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