IN PRAISE OF JUMP SHOOTING

Big spreads of color-correct decoys, high-dollar calls and custom manufactured blinds are an effective way to hunt waterfowl, and another is to grab your shotgun and jump shoot small, out-ofthe-way waterways where ducks gather. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

No decoys, calls or blind, no problem for practitioners of the sneak.

By MD Johnson

Waterfowl season’s here. Cool mornings. Color changes. The sights and smells – ah, yes, the smells – of the marsh. An incredible morning spent jump shooting a series of small creeks and puddles throughout the countryside. The feel of cold metal …

Wait a tick! Did I say jump shooting? Why, yes; yes, I did. But, but, but where’s the blind? The decoys? The flock of mallards following a ladder of notes down to a carefully arranged spread? Oh, it’s all there. Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, a couple of folks huddle in said blind behind two dozen mallard blocks. But not here. Here, we’re going to take a look, both this month and next, at alternatives, we’ll call them, to what has become the standard. The go-to. I’m talking about jump shooting. And pass shooting. A little bit o’ floating, which is very similar to jump shooting, yet involves a boat, water, and the chance of going into the drink. If you’re not careful, that is.

So put aside that poison pen. Stop cursing both me for writing about leaving the decoys at home and our dear editor for printing such obvious drivel. Instead, settle back and take a read about why you just might wanna give jump shooting a go the next time the birds seem fickle and you’re fixing to throw in the proverbial towel.

THE BACK STORY

I shot my first banded duck, a drake mallard, around about 2003. Maybe ’04. It was actually a pair of mallards, drake and a hen, sitting with a drake spoonbill. I slipped over the levee road, quiet as could be. They stared, if ducks can indeed stare, in surprise. I yelled the obligatory, per my father, “Hey, duck!” and then proceeded to shoot both fleeing mallards, leaving the grinner to escape. I then walked back to the rig, got my spinning rod and Bomber Long A, and retrieved both with as many casts.

Why the fish pole? Well, sewage lagoon water can be 1) deep, and 2) relatively ... unhealthy might be the word I’m looking for here. Anyway, once on the bank, I noticed the drake was wearing a band. Oh, happy day!

To review. Yes, I did say sewage lagoon. And yes, I did indicate the birds were taken by way of jump shooting. Ah, and now I’m likely to be looked down upon, not because the mallards have been taken whilst they were minding their own business atop a municipal settling pond, but rather because of the fact they were shot on the jump. No decoys. No blind. No ladder of magical, mystical notes for them to follow down from

the heavens. Just a sneak, a hearty greeting and two shots. Ashamed? Nope. Regrets? Nope. Do it again in a heartbeat? Yep.

My point is this: Jump shooting, like pass shooting, has for the most part fallen out of favor among the modern waterfowling crowd. Jump shooting is, it’s undeniable, a legitimate, albeit quite old-school method by today’s reckoning, tactic for securing a limit or partial limit of ducks and/or geese. Your grandpa did it with his Model 12. Your Pop did it with his Remington 11. If you’re reading this and you were born prior to 1970, there’s an awfully good chance you’ve done a little bit of jump shooting. Or, like me, a lot of jump shooting.

So why then is jump shooting virtually a thing of the past? First, let me preface this by saying I personally don’t care how you hunt

Author MD Johnson praises his pup after retrieving a pair of wood ducks. Jump shooting may not be as popular as it once was, and some modern hunters may eschew it, but it has its own skill requirements that make it a worthy method. (JULIA JOHNSON)

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2021-22 WATERFOWL FORECAST

As most of you reading this might have guessed, I’m a waterfowl hunter. Have been, I reckon, since around about 1974. And as a waterfowl hunter, I’m interested to know what I can expect this season. Honestly, though? While it’s nice to have this prior knowledge, how the 2021-22 waterfowl hunt is going to turn out is largely a guess, dependent on any number of variables over which we humans have little, if any, control. Things like weather, drought and nesting success. We take, then, what we’re given; or more specifically, what Mother Nature gives us. I despise the phrase, but “it is what it is” certainly seems appropriate in this situation, this annual “What can we expect?” query.

So with all that said, do I have any idea of what to expect this season? Informally, I talked with Kyle Spragens, head of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s waterfowl section since 2016. I talked with friends in California. In Nevada. I rattled the cage of Brad Bortner, the former chief of the Migratory Bird Section at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and asked him what he’s hearing. The common denominators? Drought was a big one. Poor production another. Increased hunter numbers, hunter effort and overall harvest during the 2020-21 season still another.

What’s it all mean for Northwest waterfowlers?

PRODUCTION: Spragens had this to say in paraphrase about 2021 production, and how it will influence what hunters could potentially see this fall. Alaska, he said, seemed to have escaped the drought of the Lower 48 to a large extent. This meant water on the landscape, and water means ducks. Theoretically, it does. This is significant as Alaska supplies many of the birds we see in Western Washington down through coastal Oregon and into California.

It’s a double-edged sword in Eastern Washington, though, Spragens suggests. The agency trapped and banded goodly numbers of mallards this summer; however, the majority of the birds trapped weren’t “hatch year birds,” meaning they weren’t the result of 2021 production. Similarly, as written by Caroline Brady, waterfowl program supervisor for the California Waterfowl Association, local production of ducks and Canada geese throughout the state is believed to have been poor, with “many more” adult geese than goslings being banded by field biologists. Starting to see a pattern here? Brady also writes that local production has a profound – note: my word, not hers – impact on harvest, as “60 percent of the mallards and 49 percent of the gadwall” harvest in California, along with a substantial percentage of the wood ducks and cinnamon teal, are home grown.

Micheal Sommer and his hunting dog smile over a mixed bag of scaup, teal, wigeon, mallard and other ducks, taken last January near Ferndale outside Bellingham. He was hunting with buddy

Gary Lundquist. (COAST HUNTING PHOTO CONTEST)

thereof. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is dry. Central California is dry. Nevada is dry. The Klamath Basin is dry. Much of Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon? Yes, sir – dry. Even west of the Cascades, the water situation wasn’t near what it should be. During the six months of young duck growing season, Portland recorded just 3.82 inches of rain – a veritable drop in the bucket for a region known for much more precipitation.

Drought is a challenge on several levels for both waterfowl and fowl hunters. No water, and migrating birds don’t stop. Or if they stop, it’s but briefly. Access becomes an issue. River levels were at all-time lows. California refuge systems didn’t have water. Eastern Washington’s shallow potholes weren’t even damp. On the Westside, sheet water, if it comes, is at a premium. Those huntable acres that have water attract hunters from every corner of the flyway, thus concentrating pressure and, potentially, moving the birds out of the area even more quickly. HUNTING PRESSURE: While we’re on

the subject, Spragens voiced some interesting stats about the 2020-21 season, which saw, he said, a 15 percent increase in hunter numbers, a 28 percent increase in hunter effort, and a 20 percent rise in total duck harvest when compared to 2019-20, which, he continued, “was a very similar ‘duck year’ in terms of breeding conditions, water on the ground, and other factors. There weren’t (necessarily) more birds in ’19/20 – in fact, there may have been fewer birds – but there were more hunters, equating to more total harvest.”

Why the jumps, you ask? No one, including Spragens, really is sure. Could be YouTube. Could be stimulus checks. Could be the availability of time, thanks to the pandemic. Could just be young middle-aged guys looking for something different to do. I don’t know. What’s going to be interesting is to see if this up-pressure trend continues, or if these are simply one-hit wonders who’ve since moved on to something else. Time will tell.

As our conversation wound down, Spragens asked my thoughts on the 2020-21 season, and what might come to pass this fall. Truthfully, I had a betterthan-good season last. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it exceptional, but it was definitely better than many. I did, for whatever reason, kill more mallards in 2020 than I had in the previous three seasons combined, despite not specifically targeting them. Overall, I saw more mallards in ’20 than I had been seeing. More green-wings, too. Wigeon and sprig, at least in my neck of the woods, were noticeably lower in number; conversely, grey ducks were up. Little geese (cacklers and lessers) didn’t appear in the numbers I’m accustomed to seeing – again, for whatever reason – but big geese (westerns) were abundant clear through the close of the late season in early March. –MDJ

your ’fowl, as long as your method of the moment is safe, legal and ethical. Is jump shooting legal? I don’t know of any instance where it isn’t. Safe? As safe as any other form of waterfowling, or for that matter, hunting. Ethical? Yes, sir, though some decoy/calling purists may argue otherwise, and that, as the song goes, is their prerogative.

Which brings us back to the question, Why has jump shooting all but disappeared? There’s really not much current literature being written on the subject; however, a YouTube search for jump shooting ducks did turn up approximately 7.8 million results, compared to a lowly 644,000 returns when I typed in decoying ducks. Obviously, someone’s doing it, and taking the time to video the process and post it on the internet. What’s more, the top three videos – theirs, not mine – registered some 234,000 views collectively; so not only is someone doing it, at least a quarter of a million people have watched all or part of these top three. Flying under the radar, perhaps, and certainly no pun intended? But I digress.

Maybe not much is said about jump shooting waterfowl in 2021 because it’s not, dare I say it, cool? I mean, even with the Internet, I was unable to find and join the Jump Shooting Mafia. Jump shooting doesn’t require one have a $200 neon green single-reed embossed with the skull and crossbones of Company XYZ. Fancy decoys aren’t a necessity; hell, they might even be considered a

A productive day may require hitting multiple spots. Don’t overlook backwoods mill ponds, beaver dams, irrigation and runoff channels, and other small waters that may not look like much to us but offer ducks

habitat. (JULIA JOHNSON)

nuisance by the highly mobile jump shooter. And while said tongue in cheek, there’s no glamour in jump shooting. It’s the spike whitetail on the meat pole of the waterfowl world. The limit of squirrels. The yeah, whatever response. Or maybe it’s because jump shooting is typically a solitary venture, and who are you going to high five and holler “Hell yeah!” at, if you’re all by yourself?

Or maybe it’s because there’s no tradition of jump shooting any longer? The duck hunters I grew up with in the early 1970s, my mentors, are gone, or, being as the living are in their late 70s, don’t do much in the way of jump shooting anymore. Today’s millennials, as poked at in the previous paragraph, aren’t big on jump shooting for any number of reasons, lack of coolness and/ or glamour being but one. Thus, if there are no jump shooters to pass that tradition along to the next generation of spot-and-stalkers, is it any surprise that jump shooters and jump shooting have become rare commodities?

THE CALL OF JUMP SHOOTING

I’ll admit I’m a blind-and-decoy type of guy now, for the most part. However, I’m not one to pass up the opportunity for a good oldfashioned jump shoot. No, I’m not talking about a nine-gun, just-shyof-100-rounds-collectively spring snow goose massacre, which I have almost nothing against, but that’s another story for another time. No, I’m talking here about traditional jump shooting; a mix of observation, stealth, patience, improvisation, timing and wingshooting skill. If you think about it, that indeed is the appeal of jump shooting; it offers a little bit of everything. Still not convinced? Well, if you must, you can hide in the bushes, quack on your fluorescent duck call, and pack a decoy in your waders while you go about the entire process. There. Feel better? NS