If you have ever hunted King Eider (male or female) please join this exclusive club.

Here are the instructions:

- Go to Facebook
- In the search box enter "King Eider Club"
- Look for the King Eider Club icon, you will see a button "Request to join"

If one of the existing club members can vouch for you then you will get in.
Or, you can also send a picture of you holding a King and that will get you in as well.

This is THE most exclusive club of waterfowlers....hunting a King Eider carries the same prestige in the waterfowling world as hunting a Marco Polo sheep does in the big game world.  

Club is not just a North American club, anyone is welcome (Europe, Asia) as long as they have hunted a King Eider. (Please be prepared to submit pics for qualification).

Photos have been streaming in that you absolutely will not believe.




If you have not hunted the King Eider and would like to go on the hunt of a life time please get in touch with me.

Love your pics and your input here, but I must confess that I'm not a 'prestige' seeker or 'exclusive club' kind of guy. I'm just a duck hunter. Only a few folks I know have shot or seen shot a king locally and that's a very lucky thing. Paying a boatload of money to go to island X to shoot kings (that are everywhere) is hardly a badge of honor to me. It just means you're wiling to spend a lot of money to shoot a specific bird. And I'm 100% OK with that, but to me, brings no particular kind of status along with it. Everyone I've seen that has done a specific KE trip has paid a lot of money to get to the birds, and alot more to those that know how and where to hunt them. The sports shoot their kings, and go home. Again, more power to them, and I very possibly will go some day (if I don't get lucky and shoot one along the New England coast) but no great shakes or feat of hunting, IMO.

@Kamo Gari,

I absolutely hear you. King Eider hunting is a sore subject with many people due to the costs involved.

We all hunt for various reasons.....some people hunt to spend quality time with their family and some hunt so they can hunt different kinds of species, experience different parts of the world, experience different cultures and make new friendships.

King Eider hunting will appeal to the people who fall in the second category.

Since we are on a Big Game forum let me give an example so that the Big Game guys will relate to right away. There are some hunters who are perfectly happy hunting White-tail Deer, they have no desire to go to say South Africa and experience the long journey, different culture, different kind of food, different species of animals....on the other hand there are those who dream about going on the pilgrimage to the dark continent and experience all those things....or lets take it up a notch go to the end of the world, spend a lot of money and hunt Marco Polo sheep.

There are only a few individuals in the States that have accomplished the feat of hunting a King Eider and the club is just a place for them to hang out together, exchange ideas, share memories and network with each other.

Yes, most of these guys are quite well off financially, anyone willing to drop 10K in pursuit of a bird is most probably financially stable. But, we also have guys in the club who got lucky in Maine, one even got lucky in Vermont, they barely spent any money at all for their Kings.

Criteria for entry in the club is not their potential to spend money....it is achieving pinnacle of waterfowling....and yes that is hunting a King Eider either on West Coast, or East Coast, or Northern Europe....and we've got members who have hunted them all over the Northern Hemisphere.

Point taken, and well said, and am glad you understood what I meant. There's an excellent chance that some day I'll have a king in my collection, but I won't be paying the big money to get one unless I have to.

Any information on Atlantic KE hunts would be appreciated. I know they kill them in the Maritimes on occasion, and think that they hunt them in Greenland, but just don't know enough about it. Anyway, thanks, bud. PM please.

@Kamo Gari

King on Eastcoast can be done if one is willing to put in the hours on a seaworthy vessel. I will PM you some details maybe they will help you in your quest.

GREENLAND
We do the Greenland hunt for King Eider as well as the European Eider but that is for hardcore collectors. The way logistics work is that you have to fly to Denmark first, then fly back to Greenland.


Here is picture of a lone King Eider drake not 20 yards from my camera lens.

quote:

Originally posted by collector:

This is THE most exclusive club of waterfowlers....hunting a King Eider carries the same prestige in the waterfowling world as hunting a Marco Polo sheep does in the big game world.  

.

Exclusive by virtue of the effort and dollars involved to get there only. And I'd love to do both if for nothing else the challenge of getting to where they live.

I think my bull sprig on the wall is more meaningful to me ONLY because I shot it a few miles from my house.....had I gone to TX and picked one out of 10,000 flying by maybe not as much.

Just an observation, collector......goes without saying I'm envious of your collection, but even moreso of the trips you've been on to bag them.

Include me in that PM on KE intel for the east coast if you would.....thanks, and awesome pics per usual.

@Norton,

Getting there is half the adventure....although I love the planning phase of the hunt...the anticipation, the logisitcs, the excitement....breathing air in different part of the world....it is fantastic.

We take for granted that Alaska is just another part of the United States...it is a whole another country if you ask me

I will keep adding more King pics that I have taken over the years to this thread as time permits.

eiders are very interesting birds.
they make very interesting sounds when they mate.

never seen a king eider yet.




like you pics!!

Hey now, that's a very nice piece of art! Story about it? Is that 1923 for a year I see? If so, even cooler!

@Goldeneye

Thank you...glad you are enjoying the pics. I will be posting more. The painting of the Common Eiders flying low is gorgeous. Looks like an early morning flight from roosting area to the feeding area.

quote:

Originally posted by collector:
@Goldeneye

Thank you...glad you are enjoying the pics. I will be posting more. The painting of the Common Eiders flying low is gorgeous. Looks like an early morning flight from roosting area to the feeding area.

Wait a sec, I think one of those hens might be a borealis. Collector, you should have caught that!

Ha ha ha Kamo....my term "Common Eiders" cover the Borealis as well as the "American" Eider. And yes if the light is good I can tell a Borealis drake from an American drake....AHEM (that is me clearing my throat)...on the wing....(Northern from an Atlantic) would also mean the same. So condition being "in good light". Are you with me so far ???

Hens on the other hand are a bitch and I will bow to whoever can call a hen on the wing between a Borealis and an American.

Now given the low light in the painting and the extreme slope of the heads...for all I know...these could be European Eiders (still Common Eiders though) so I am still safe under my original statement.

All I know is, I'd be dropping the third bird from the front with my first shot...

Ofcourse....you had to shoot the banded bird and be the big dog.

Right ?

Four King Eider drakes coming low over freezing cold water.

The painter is Bruno Liljefors.
He is very famous and very pricy. ($22´-70´)
yes the picture is from 1923.

here you can see some paintings sold in december
in sweden
http://www.auktionsverket.se/d...0&in=1&tx=1&tl=bruno

(sorry for OT Collector)

Goldeneye...perfectly ok.

P.S. European artist....sharp sloping head (as I mentioned in my post earlier)...definitely European Eiders. They are about 10%-15% bigger than our American Eiders found on the East Coast of United States.

quote:

Originally posted by collector:
Ofcourse....you had to shoot the banded bird and be the big dog.

Right ?

Yep! lol

quote:

Originally posted by collector:
Four King Eider drakes coming low over freezing cold water.

Beautiful shot!

One of my facebook friends just returned from a successful King hunt in AK. The pics he posted were absolutely outstanding! Myself, I had to settle for Arkansas all last week but it was great duck hunting.
LDK

This has been a great thread, thanx again Collector for more of your fantastic pics ... I've always been under the impression, apparently mistakenly, that King Eiders were huntable in the NE in fair numbers up and down the Maine/Mass coast; that is, one could shoot one if one wanted to ... they are beautiful, but I don't imagine they eat real well

Great stuff,

Best Regards,
Craig Nolan

@LDK
Did your friend get "stuck" in the Pribilofs for a "few" extra days ??? I heard hunting was good in late January but the weather gods did not want shiny cigars to fly through the air.

@Craig Nolan
Thanks, glad you are enjoying the thread. King Eiders have a circum-polar distribution, they do sometimes come down as far south as Long Island on the East Coast but the numbers are very very low. Getting one on the East coast is like winning a lotto for an average duck hunter. They can be targetted specifically, but you need a lot of time and patience to get them.

String of Kings at 15 yards

I live on the south shore of Nova Scotia and have been hunting seaducks all my life and I have seen exactly one male king eider.In local lore only one person i know of has shot a male.However I hava shot 5 female specimens over the years and many people i know have also killed females mixed in with flocks of common eiders.

collector, yes, he was stuck a few days. He's on my facebook page. You can find me under my name; same as here.
Cheers,
David
PS: one of my friends shot a female King in either Maine or Delaware, I can't recall exactly.

quote:

Originally posted by bearhunter762:
I live on the south shore of Nova Scotia and have been hunting seaducks all my life and I have seen exactly one male king eider.In local lore only one person i know of has shot a male.However I hava shot 5 female specimens over the years and many people i know have also killed females mixed in with flocks of common eiders.

Hmm. Another piece to the puzzle. Thanks for the input, BH762.