The Minnesota early Canada goose season opened this past Saturday and I was lucky enough to get my first banded bird of my life. Needless to say I was extremely excited. I have been hunting ducks and geese since I was 12 so it has taken me 11 years to get my first band. I get out in the field several times a year and shoot a lot of waterfowl. I was just interested to see how other AR members have faired when it comes to shooting waterfowl with bands? and how many you have on your lanyards?

I've been hunting fowl HARD for 5 years.....first goose I shot was banded...have 4 goose bands.......but no duck bands yet despite having killed a shit pile of 'em.

The strangest "band" I ever saw was a black, short, wire like thing on the duck's back that turned out to be the antenna for a little radio transmitter under the skin. Only one I've seen. At first we figured it for some type of parasite (we do find those too...and I'll skip the details).

I've seen hunters with literally a couple feet worth of bands on their duck call lanyards. And yes, I've got mine too. Hard not to if you've done this about forty years..

I've got an even ten bands, I think; 6 duck (2 black, 3 mallard and one eider) and 4 goose (canada). In the last few years I have been blanked on bands, however. I know guys who obsess about them, which I think is ridiculous, but they're fun trinkets and nice momentos to the hunts I've taken them on, and learning the age and how far they've come once the certificate comes in the mail is good fun.

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:
I've been hunting fowl HARD for 5 years.....first goose I shot was banded...have 4 goose bands.......but no duck bands yet despite having killed a shit pile of 'em.

Updated count for Norton as of this morning: *5* goose bands. Pho is on you next time, Norty!

quote:

Originally posted by Kamo Gari:

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:
I've been hunting fowl HARD for 5 years.....first goose I shot was banded...have 4 goose bands.......but no duck bands yet despite having killed a shit pile of 'em.

Updated count for Norton as of this morning: *5* goose bands. Pho is on you next time, Norty!

What do you mean....it was my boat, and my gas, and my river, and my......

The pattern on that BBB is lousy, I'm sure one of my BB snuck in there for the kill.....

Roger, on the pho.....

Norton:

Judging from the last few posts -as between you - do you guys actually carry loaded firearms in close company between you?

quote:

Originally posted by Gerrypeters375:
Norton:

Judging from the last few posts -as between you - do you guys actually carry loaded firearms in close company between you?

Gerry, KG and myself are of similarly twisted mindsets......I suppose our credo is "kill a lot, laugh a lot, and don't suffer fools gladly".(wow, I just made that up).

Look forward to meeting up when we come down to the island this year(and getting some good NY food).

6 large goose bands, 1 small canada band and two mallard bands. Two years ago i put 5 bands on the lanyard. Last year only one and it was the first bird of the year, bad omen i guess.

Nary a one for a bunch of years and ducks. Not so many geese. I've yet to be on a hunt where one with a band was even killed. Maybe the areas I hunt?

quote:

Originally posted by daniel77:
Nary a one for a bunch of years and ducks. Not so many geese. I've yet to be on a hunt where one with a band was even killed. Maybe the areas I hunt?

I've talked to guys who have hunted 40 years and never seen a band.

The first goose I ever killed was banded. Having been self-taught and ignorant of the ways of the waterfowler, at first I thought I was going to be in trouble for shooting a escaped tame goose with a ID tag...

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:

quote:

Originally posted by Kamo Gari:

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:
I've been hunting fowl HARD for 5 years.....first goose I shot was banded...have 4 goose bands.......but no duck bands yet despite having killed a shit pile of 'em.

Updated count for Norton as of this morning: *5* goose bands. Pho is on you next time, Norty!

What do you mean....it was my boat, and my gas, and my river, and my......

The pattern on that BBB is lousy, I'm sure one of my BB snuck in there for the kill.....

Roger, on the pho.....

Ha! Let's remember who took the time to scout those wily and wild critters for us. And let's see, you're on the left of the boat, I'm on the right. We shoot at birds left and right, respectively. Dead goose on right is banded, but you shot it? Umm, OK...Where can I get some of those magic shells you were shooting?

As stated previously, I think bands are neat, but aren't something I'm going to go nuts over. Since ole Norty looked like he was going to weep if I didn't buck up for it, did so and lost. No biggie. The waterfowling Gods will smile on me for my benevolent sacrifice!

BTW, I'll be sure to get fuel next time. 5 bucks oughta' cover it, I figure, with plenty to spare. We are friends, after all, as evidenced by me allowing myself to even be seen with you in that leaky, broken down crate you call a boat, as well as the $1000 for the downpayment on my future hearing aids. I couldn't hear myself scream with that 2 banger bansheeing away with its missing cover.

Oh, and correction: it's MY river, sonny.



KG

10 shy of our early season limit, but we'll take it. Good times.

quote:

Originally posted by Shack:
The strangest "band" I ever saw was a black, short, wire like thing on the duck's back that turned out to be the antenna for a little radio transmitter under the skin. Only one I've seen. At first we figured it for some type of parasite (we do find those too...and I'll skip the details).

I've seen hunters with literally a couple feet worth of bands on their duck call lanyards. And yes, I've got mine too. Hard not to if you've done this about forty years..

That is too cool. Did the state/feds get it back from you? Any interesting info about it?

I read what's probably an internet myth, but involved a guy poaching geese. In short, feds showed up at his house and asked where the goose was. After much argument and denial, he leads them into the barn, where they find their transmitter, still attached to goose. Scenes we'd like to see.

I caught a tagged bluefin tuna last year off the coast of Cape Cod. It had been tagged 3300 miles away, in the Golfo de Viscaya, off the N coast of *Spain*, three years prior. It had almost doubled in w & l in that time. Speaking of tags, 5 great whites have been tagged in the past couple days off of Chatham. Some 15 footers 75 yards off the beach. Needless to say, the beaches are temporarily closed.

quote:

Originally posted by Gerrypeters375:
Norton:

Judging from the last few posts -as between you - do you guys actually carry loaded firearms in close company between you?

We do, and have been close to having a shotty duel in the field a couple of times, but after deciding that neither one of us would walk away from that bit of sport, decided to laugh it off and get back to trying to entice birds into range over coffee instead.

Wish I could make an interesting story out of that but afraid there wasn't much to it. It truthfully wasn't mine but was shot by a fellow club member. I was hunting with him and helped examine it. It was in the upper part of the middle of the back on a greenhead and 3 or 4 inches showed.

We kinda poked at it at first thinking it might move or something. I also thought it might be something a fisherman was using.

Of course, if it'd been a transceiver instead...and then we hear Rod Stiger's voice, "Twilight Zone calling and testing...yes, you hunters at Stuttgart Arkansas, we mean you", then it'd be harder to say what reaction..

Anyway, it's been a long, long time so my memory may be faulty, but I think the guy phoned it in to the feds and was given the usual basic info and was told they would send that written form they use for this, and that they weren't interested in the thing being returned. So that internet tale sounds technically possible.

Here's my goose with band!

Fairly lucky. Percentage wise I've killed a lot more ducks and geese with bands in Saskatchewan and Montana than down South in La, Tx, and Ark. Probably makes sense since the Northern areas are much closer to where most of them are banded. I don't have a count, I've just thrown them in boxes over the years, somewhere between 10 and 20, I'd say. I hunted with a guy on the Platte River in Nebraka once who waited and waited until he'd call "take 'em". Finally I asked him what he was doing taking so long and he said, "Looking for bands". Considering how good a shot he was (worldclass), I believed him. Myself, I've never seen a band on a flying bird.

Only two instances I really remember are killing a left and right on Greater Cans in Sask. that were both banded and a Mallard Drake on an Indian Reservation in Montana but I've killed at least 2 Mallard Drakes on my ranch with bands.

ed:

Nice sized goose. Congrats on your first band.

[QUOTE]ed:

Nice sized goose. Congrats on your first band.
[QUOTE]

Thanks! Im going looking for more tonight!

One band here.

I figured once, going by the # of guys I hunt with and how often we hunt, it takes about 90-100 days of hunting in the Mississippi delta to get one band.

YMMV

Having given it a bit of thought, that number probably translates pretty well here as well, duckear.

I myself have never got a band, but been along a couple of times when others got one. We did, however, whack 58 canadians this past weekend for the early season opener.

Murftj,

58 is a helluva bag. Where were you in SoDak? I had some other buddies kill 40 near Bridgewater.

Pretty darned unlucky. I call the shot and sometimes two banded birds are shot but not by me. Hunting and seeing lots of mallards killed since 1962 I have only killed about 8 mallards and one wood duck that were banded. One day we were out in public land flooded timber and approached a dead drake mallard. One of my buds says "Go get that one; it's probably banded". And to my and everyone else's amazement it was! That one made up for some that were shot out from under me.

Some guides in Ark and other places I'm sure hoard the things. I know one guy who likes to take lots of folks hunting and after the shooting is over on a group of ducks, he closely follows his lab out to check the ducks for bands and jerks them off and keeps them for himself.

I only hunted with him once and he chased every duck down along with the lab. I looked at one of the guys and said "What's the lab for?"

He seems quite proud of his big string of bands.

That many would get in the way of calling to me. I keep two special bands on one call and none on the other so I can tell which call is which w/o looking down. They are both identical Olt's but they are set up to blow differently. MERG

Note the money band.

How much is the money band worth??

$100

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:
$100

Generally $100, as Norton states, but as I understand it, some out there are worth up to $250.

BTW, I couldn't get them all in the pic, but that day there were 4 banded birds in the creek just outside my home. Lotsa' jewelry for such a small place!

I have 13 bands. 1) Canada Goose, 4) Bluewing Teal, 7) Mallards 1) Mottled Duck.

I am an avid bird hunter and have hunted all types of water foul for over 20 years in MT and the Dakota's and have NEVER taken a banded bird of any kind. Others I have hunted with have taken quite a few bands on hunts with me. It's embarrassing. I am quite sure that I'm cursed. I swear that the first bird that I kill with a band will be mounted even if it's a coot.

How much are money (reward) bands worth?

When I was helping with banding ducks in the Stuttgart area in about 1985, we had bands ranging from $20 (many) to $400 (only a few).

Many times banded mallards and geese would swim back into the pen to eat the easy corn. I once pulled one out that had one of the $400 reward bands on it. It was hard to let that one fly away. I told the other guys "This bird really looks sick to me; maybe we should just konk its head on the step and eat it."

It is a wierd feeling to let $400 just fly out of your hands. Merg

quote:

Originally posted by wetdog2084:
I am an avid bird hunter and have hunted all types of water foul for over 20 years

Water FOUL? C'mon man, it's not THAT bad!

In the barley fields in Canada and the corn fields in southern Illinois there used to be conditions where the geese would nearly land on you.

I found that if I took just one second to scan their legs those silver bands on those black legs really shows up. The odds of getting bands go up dramatically if you just take one second to look them all over.

In those days I shot a bolt action 10 ga. with lead shot and was not concerned about the consequences of letting them get a little further out by my taking one more second to look.



I agree with the posters above about duck guides - especially those in Stuttgart - getting your bands. Interesting that whether they retreive or their dogs retreive, the birds always come back to the bench where they stand about 25 feet away from the shooters.

quote:

Originally posted by Kamo Gari:

quote:

Originally posted by wetdog2084:
I am an avid bird hunter and have hunted all types of water foul for over 20 years

Water FOUL? C'mon man, it's not THAT bad!

No it's not that bad I get a lot happiness in the duck blind every year. It's cheaper than therapy. I do get quite jealous when I see a lanyard full of rings it must be the bratty kid coming out in me.

quote:

Originally posted by edholum:
The Minnesota early Canada goose season opened this past Saturday and I was lucky enough to get my first banded bird of my life. Needless to say I was extremely excited. I have been hunting ducks and geese since I was 12 so it has taken me 11 years to get my first band. I get out in the field several times a year and shoot a lot of waterfowl. I was just interested to see how other AR members have faired when it comes to shooting waterfowl with bands? and how many you have on your lanyards?

Congrads on your first band!!!

I've hunted 25 years and am still looking for one!

I keep telling myself - It's just luck!!!

My son who started hunting with me about 6 years ago got one on his first hunt and now has 6 - 5 ducks and a snow goose band.

Received my info in the mail on my band today. It was banded as a chick in 2008 at the Summit Lake State Recreation Area near Tekamah, Nebraska, which is just north of Omaha. I shot her about 370 miles straight north of where she was born. Just thought I would share.

My son, who is now 21, has been shooting ducks with me since he was 9 (started taking him to my blind when he was 3!). Anyway, he went about 7 or 8 sesasons without killing a single banded bird. Then, one morning a few seasons ago, he shot a drake wood duck out of a flock and it was banded. He was thrilled. Imagine our astonishment, when 45 mintues later he killed another drake woodie that was flying along solo, and it was not only banded, but the band had a consecutive number to the bird he's shot earlier that morning! The numbers were like 1234 & 1235, something like that.

I wonder what the odds are of that happening, out of different flocks nearly an hour apart???

quote:

Originally posted by CAelknuts:
I wonder what the odds are of that happening, out of different flocks nearly an hour apart???

Astronomical, to say the least.......absolutely amazing!

Ironically, I can't remember him killing another banded bird since.

How about the bird banded the farthest away from where you hunt? We hunt in the Butte Sink in northern California, and while the most distant banded bird I've ever shot was banded in the Yukon, one of our former partners shot a snow goose that was banded on Wrangell Island, in Siberia. He framed the certificate in our clubhouse, and the writing alternates between English and Cyrillic languages. It's very neat!

I started waterfowl hunting eight years ago and got one on the very first goose I ever shot. Also got one on a duck later that season and nothing for the last seven years.