Manager's Updates - State of Michigan

Fennville Farm Unit Manager’s Update
2013 Season - Week of 11/17
Weather
Fair weather over the past week has shut down the goose movement but the ducks have still been
flying some. The big front that came through may helped more if it came through a bit earlier in the
day rather than after the hunt was closed for the afternoon. Then again, we wouldn’t have wanted all
the hunters out in that type of storm so probably for the better – I talked to a couple duck hunters who
were out in the first part of the storm and it was nasty. The cloudy/rainy/snowy weather coming up
the end of this week into the weekend should help get things moving some more.
Waterfowl Abundance
Goose numbers remain nearly static. We’ve not observed mass movements into or out of the GMU.
With the nice weather it is actually harder to get a good estimate because the geese don’t tend to get
up into the air in one big uprising – they sit on the water, sometimes in the refuge and are difficult to
see.
Ducks may be continuing to move into the area. We have a lot of orange feet indicating that new
birds continue to hold in the area.
Hunting Conditions
With the big blow we had some of the corn has been knocked over or shortened. 8H is probably
about the worst for blown over corn but there’s still enough cover there to hide. There are plenty of
trails through the corn strips already so don’t make new ones – we are going to need as much corn
standing as possibly to make it through the end of January with good cover. The fields and drives are
wet so be aware as you go out to your zone. Otherwise, conditions are good at all the posts. Do not
drive down to 7D – very wet – one hunter buried his truck down there on Sunday and had to get a tow
truck.
Hunter Numbers
Hunter numbers have been low over the past week, possibly due to firearm deer season and slow
harvests. We are averaging between 10 and 15 parties (20 – 40 hunters) so there’s been plenty of
posts to go around.
Waterfowl Harvest
Goose harvest has probably hovered around average on the days with good goose hunting weather
– to date we’ve harvested 190 or so. Duck harvest has been very good compared to our averages
through the managed hunt. I suspect that the ducks have been moving more and hunters have been
targeting them rather than geese (by using spinners) which may account for fewer geese taken but
higher than average duck harvests. That said, I hunted for a bit yesterday over spinners and the
geese were flaring off us and going into an adjacent post so it doesn’t appear that the spinners are
affecting neighboring parties to a high degree.