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DENTRY: Zone system might explain duck hunt success

Published July 31, 2007 at midnight

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It's anyone's guess why Colorado waterfowlers bagged more ducks last hunting season. But it's tempting to suspect that the state's new Central Flyway hunting format might have been a winner.

Starting last autumn, state wildlife managers divided eastern Colorado into two zones - eastern plains and mountains/foothills - for duck hunting.

Each zone was assigned two hunting splits, with dates tailored to maximize waterfowl availability while still adhering to federal frameworks. The same zone system will apply this fall.

Fowlers bagged almost 9 percent more ducks in Colorado last season than in 2005-06, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The data come from the Harvest Information Program, or HIP, the numbers-crunching program with which small-game hunters register every year. They also reveal a relatively stable goose hunting harvest.

The statewide rise in ducks bagged comes despite poorer duck hunting success on the Western Slope, where hunting formulas stayed the same. Persistent drought across western Colorado also might be to blame.

Colorado's harvest rose to 107,800 ducks in 2006-07, from 99,300 ducks in 2005-06.

The overall bag across Colorado's portion of the Central Flyway jumped to 90,500 ducks in 2006-07, from 74,800 ducks in 2005-06. Meanwhile, Colorado's Pacific Flyway harvest slipped to 17,300 ducks in 2006-07, from 24,500 ducks in 2005-06.

The top duck species were mallards (55,111), green-winged teal (11,619), gadwall (9,844), blue-winged and cinnamon teal (8,311) and wigeon (7,988).

While hunters bagged about the usual numbers of teal, far fewer of the normally early migrators fell to the guns during the special September teal season. September graced hunters with only 3,470 bluewings and greenwings, a mighty drop from the 5,271 teal the special season produced in 2005.

Goose hunters bagged 87,800 geese, barely more than 87,100 geese in 2005-06. No surprise, eastern Colorado accounted for the lion's share of 82,900 geese, while hunters bagged 4,900 geese in western Colorado.

To see how you fared compared with others, consider that Colorado duck hunters killed 8.7 ducks each last season (up from 8.1 ducks in 2005-06). Goose hunters bagged 6.8 geese (up from 6 geese in 2005-06).

DOVES AND OTHERS: The HIP report also details results of other migratory bird seasons, including the ever-popular mourning dove. There, too, harvest numbers were slightly heartier.

Colorado dove hunters scored 270,300 mourning doves last fall, up from 263,400 mourning doves in 2005. Some 19,800 active dove hunters spent 45,700 days afield, according to HIP. They bagged an average of 13.6 doves apiece.

The minutiae show that white-winged doves, which are relatively rare but increasingly seen in Colorado, accounted for 900 birds in the statewide bag.

Also, Colorado hunters last year bagged something like 600 band-tailed pigeons. But the band-tailed hunter following is so tiny that the margin of error, 76 percent, is immense.

Subject to even greater doubt is HIP's snipe data. With a 194 percent margin of error, the harvest might be 900 snipe or 300 snipe.