Black Duck Research in Delaware

[NickHallph-1]

I dont know if any of you guys saw this or not but in the paper the other day they had an article about blacks ducks in the news journal. A few biologists and some DU commitee people captured 4 hen blacks and attached gps tracking systems on their wing/body. they caught them and released them at prime hook nationla wildlife refgue. in the article they talked about how the black ducks are rebounding in popultion but not like they should be. they gave a fw reason i forget this one but it was like there are to many hens and not enough drakes or there are to many drakes and not enough hens. also another reason they gave was that because that blacks can very easily breed with the mallard that in a lot of cases the blacks mate with the mallards and make ta cross breed duck this is apparently hurting the black duck population. the cool thing is that because DU was involved you can get on their website and actually track the four hens for yourself. i have not done it yet but i thought that it was a col article and i thought i would share it with you guys.

[Charlie Sawdey]

Thanks!,
It would be too few hens...they are not monogamous, so one drake will breed with several hens!

[Paul MacKinnon]

Thanks for the post. Did they say anything about milder winters and the blacks not migrating as far south anymore!

I am from Prince edward Island and that is all we shoot here. At one 3 week stretch this year we shot over 200 blackducks and only one hen.....all drakes!

We see this happen the last half of our season with a big push of ducks, large flocks of drake black ducks>

Interesting!

[nthatlhonk]

That is interesting Paul. What % juveniles occurred in that harvest of 200 drakes? If high 50-80% then there are sufficient #'s of hens in the population for adequate production. If thats the case the hens may migrate earlier or later than the drakes, spent a relatively shorter time on the island of bypass PEI altogether on their southward route. If the % juvies was low either there are not enough hens for aduquate production (not likely), the juveniles move with the hens or the mortality rate on juvenilies has increased significantly. I live and hunt north of you in Newfoundland and production and sex ratios appeared fine this year but overall the numbers of black ducks appeared low.

[BM90]

I read that on the dnrec site earlier this morning. Ive seen a bunch more black this year than I have years past. There decoying easier than ever for some reason.

[Paul MacKinnon]

Hey Honk,

In speaking with our head biologist here he said drakes to tend to show up later then hens and it quite big flocks.

Hunting we found different areas with big bunches of blacks. I never really did an in depth survey but there definitely was lot of young drakes in what we shot.

I also agree with the statement about numbers of birds. We seen big numbers of blacks here all year........especially after we had some big northern winds and the temps droped the first of November.

There is still a ton of blacks around now!

[NickHallph-1]

yes i agree with the how they are decoying more easily this year i actually had a group of about 20 pitch to my goose spread we picked out a drake and a hen but i have never had blacks pitch to a goose spread before which was pretty amazing in its self

[duckin82]

i think nick is talkin about resident black ducks which for the most part are far and few in MD and DE as far as ive ever seen, that makes sense that there arent enough hens, gotta track em down i guess...

[Hunter Lewis]

Any of you guys shoot banded black ducks offen?

[Storm Ockels]

not really too many bands. a few people i hunt with have shot 1 or 2 all together. i hunt all over the peninsula and on every hunt i have had an opportunity to shoot black ducks. in my opinion they are coming back up to population pretty quickly. like the other guys said, they are decoying to anything. we hunted a small salt water bay near long-neck DE (atlantic ocean) and i saw flocks of 100-150 black ducks. i think the limit could at least be 2 or 3... the numbers are here. i hunted on the chesepeake bay down in fishing bay near elliots island, MD and saw twice as many black ducks,,, i live here in southern delaware which is almost directly in between the two bays and we have a ton of black ducks here on the nanticoke... now after season has gone the pintail, goldeneyes, and ring-necks, get up to this part of the river....:(:(

-Storm Ockels

[duckin82]

not really too many bands. a few people i hunt with have shot 1 or 2 all together. i hunt all over the peninsula and on every hunt i have had an opportunity to shoot black ducks. in my opinion they are coming back up to population pretty quickly. like the other guys said, they are decoying to anything. we hunted a small salt water bay near long-neck DE (atlantic ocean) and i saw flocks of 100-150 black ducks. i think the limit could at least be 2 or 3... the numbers are here. i hunted on the chesepeake bay down in fishing bay near elliots island, MD and saw twice as many black ducks,,, i live here in southern delaware which is almost directly in between the two bays and we have a ton of black ducks here on the nanticoke... now after season has gone the pintail, goldeneyes, and ring-necks, get up to this part of the river....:(:(

-Storm Ockels

right and i agree we are seeing more and more black ducks each year but how many are resident blacks, couldnt say, im perty sure thats why we only have a 1 bird limit on em so we dont go shootin every resident black there is, not sayin every black ya shoot is a resident cus that would be a foolish statment. i wouldnt mind havin a 2 or 3 bird limit on blacks cus IMO i am definitely seein more and more but as to the resident population i could not say from personal knowledge as to whether its getting better or worse... migrators, i def. think they are doin better