Drunk_Dynasty wrote:Lol they haven’t been feeding them for two years now in Monti.
Good to know, and good news!
Hopefully a whole bunch of the fukcers starved to death in the last couple years. No wonder I've seen so many roadkill ones off 94 by "da Cello" (for some reason I don't care for the "Monti" nickname, nothing personal, just thought I'd create my own)....
....all those wintering swans had to fly out to actually find corn in a field. Every time I've seen them roadkill out past the ditch is corn stubble.
I agree with Quack, to a certain degree. Trumpeters & cranes have been closed in MN forever.....I'm guessing since 1918 or 1919, whenever the NA migratory bird treaty went into effect, market hunting ended, and waterfowl seasons and limits began. So it's not like Swans & Cranes were hunted almost to extinction up until five years ago and the population exploded in a short amount of time since then after they protected them. It took decades of raising them in captivity and transplanting them. The Trumpeter Swan program dates back to the early 60's.
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/eco/nongame ... index.html
It took a really, really long time for Trumpeters to get to where there population is now. So saying that the population increased because hunting wasn't allowed on them isn't accurate. If the fukcers took off and exploded in less than a decade? Then I'd agree they serve as a good piece of supporting evidence for how much hunting effects waterfowl populations.
Swans are really fukcing stupid and only lay a couple eggs. A successful swan breeder is a 4-pack = Pen & Cob (adult male & female swans) and two cygnets (juvies, gray in color).
If you Google it....it'll tell you that swans lay 3-5, 6-9, or more eggs.
Fukc that noise
I've shot probably 15 to 17 swans, mostly tundras out in ND. One year I hunted them for neck collars back when they still used them. I messed up a spot and stalk on a black collared one, which sucks because those ones always had a black tarsus band in addition to the collar and metal band. But I did end up shooting a gray collar on the last morning before driving home. There was one decent sized slough in the area I'd learned in prior years froze over last and always had some swans on it until it did freeze over. It's actually on a WPA. The slough is shaped like a horse shoe and it wax awesome because the middle of it, the inside point of the horseshoe was elevated and had a 4' to 5' bank that was almost straight down. The ends of it and other side would always freeze up just like the rest of the potholes and sloughs in the area but the water on the side below this bank out to about 30yds out was some of the last water to not freeze over in the county. So it was absolutely fukcing perfect for jumping. You could walk out to it standing up the whole way, gun in hand, ready to roll. My buddies stayed in the car that day since they didn't have a tag and it was cold out. This wax 2001, 02, or 03...so they stayed back hot boxing the car since they were both huge stoners. Not wanting to be a dick I of course took a few rips before walking out. I got to the edge and when the fowl all flushed I tripled on a hen mallard, a canada goose, and then roasted the biggest swan out of the bunch I picked out. I can't remember if I reloaded because one of the felled fowl was upright doing the circle swim head bob and I was thinking I might have to water swat it or I might have came to the realization that plugs were gay about that time....it was around that era I said "fuggit" to using plugs I'm pretty sure. Regardless, as I'm picking up my birds there's still swans getting up behind the point that are out of eye site. Well, sure as fukc a pair comes out from behind the point right in front of me and ones collared....so my fourth shot was used to dump that mofo. I then shoved the first swan under the ice which wasn't real hard despite the thing behind a behemoth to go and pick up the collared one, which was by far the smallest swan I've ever shot. I remember weighing it and it was 12lbs. It was banded on it's wintering grounds of coastal NC....pretty much all the tundras winter in and around Chesapeake Bay from my understanding.
Anyways, my point.....
I've looked at and glassed a fukcton of swans and I can't remember ever seeing more than a family group of four for Trumpeters, and more than four, so two young, is pretty damn rare amongst Tundras as well. Cranes have two young as well.
Meaning they're all giant birds and easy to hunt....they're easy to see since they're huge and easy to hit. Any duck at 40 yards booking it or a swan at 40....which do you think the average dipshit has a better chance of dropping? On top of that, decoying ducks will often come in fast and hit the brakes, but accelerate fast AF once shot at or knowing the jig is up. A swan can't do that. They make a loon look fast when it comes to getting off the water and being air born and if they make the mistake of coming into take a look at a spread even an average rube could probably unload and miss and then reload to drop one.
So being a protected species certainly plays a role in their numbers being high, but it took forever for them to get to this number, which is good since it means we could drop their numbers fast. Hen ducks are smarter and we've all seen a lot of successful broods that are almost double digits....so they can reproduce and replenish their populations given adequate nesting conditions and habitat for them to do so.
So it's a little bit column A and a little bit column B on this one imo.
