You are here: Home 
Hunting News Latest Hunting News The elusive gadwall hen
Hunting News Latest Hunting News The elusive gadwall hen 
| The elusive gadwall hen |
|
|
|
| Written by Kyle Carter | |
| Saturday, 08 March 2008 | |
 Biologists hope tracking devices will help them understand the migratory patterns of gadwall hens. But they have to catch them first. Photo by DU. When Jacob Gray decided to move from his hometown in Ohio to pursue his master’s in wildlife at Louisiana State University, it probably never occurred to him that it might include a few nights sleeping on the hood of his 1997 gold F-250, searching for gadwall hens in Texas in the middle of winter. And had the thought occurred to him, he would have surely thought there would have been some kind of payoff for his time spent. Gray, who is in the first year of the two-year program, is working with LSU and Ducks Unlimited in a gadwall satellite tagging and tracking research project designed to give a better idea of the migratory habits of the bird. A pilot study to assist in preparing for the full-scale study revealed interesting data in the birds’ spring migration. While most gadwall hens made temporary stops along the way, one hen made her 1,300-mile journey from Vermilion Parish, La. to Devils Lake, N. D. in fewer than 72 hours. With more than 15 years of duck-hunting experience under his 23-year-old belt, Gray’s job was to capture the gadwall and deliver them to the veterinarian onsite so the tracking device could be surgically inserted into the backs of the ducks. The goal was to tag 14 gadwall hens, captured from the Texas’ coastal marsh and send them back into the wild. Gray hunted three to four days a week from the first of November through Jan. 8 and came out with exactly zero ducks tagged. “When you’re working on a project like this with animals like these, you can count on something going wrong,” Gray said. “They just outguessed us. We just never caught a break, and they didn’t show a lot of repeat behavior.” Gray said they saw a few gadwall hens in the early stages of the project, but like a typical duck hunter, they were waiting for the larger flock to come in. Gray was using a remote detonated 60-foot-by-40-foot net propelled by rockets to try and capture the birds. The idea was that as soon as the birds hit the water, Gray would detonate the rockets to shoot the net across the water about 2-feet high and cover the birds. “We saw a few here and there, but it makes so much noise when you shoot rockets that you need to get more than one at a time,” Gray said. “But as it got later in the year, we saw fewer gadwall.” It was a three- to four-hour drive from his home in Baton Rouge to the hunting grounds, so sometimes Gray would spend the night in his truck — and sometimes on top of his truck. “There were times when I would go alone and that was nice because I could just lie across the seat in the cab,” Gray said. “But when there were two of us, one would sleep on the hood of the car. It wasn’t too bad except that we would be eaten to death by mosquitoes. “One time, I actually ended up sleeping in the marsh, and I got killed by the mosquitoes.” Day after day passed with no success, so Gray thought maybe they were coming in and resting on his spots at night, but he said after three long nights waiting for that elusive flock of gadwall hens, he decided that night trapping wasn’t the way to go. “It was frustrating but it made me work harder,” Gray said. “I knew that if I could just get the right flock, I would be done. It just never came.” Eventually they moved the operation to the Rockefeller Refuge in southern Louisiana where they caught 36 ducks and marked 13 gadwall hens. “I know a lot of people are going to wonder why we couldn’t catch any in Texas,” Gray said. “I feel bad. They were there, we just couldn’t find them. I’m pretty optimistic that we’ll have better luck there next year.” |
|
| Last Updated ( Sunday, 09 March 2008 ) |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
