Mallard duck releasing

[Gkeeper111 22]

Hello all

 

I took a different approach on my ducks this year and fed them 2-3 days worth of food about 30-50 yards away from the ponds to try keep them abit more wild. They certainly now at 16 weeks old don't like me one bit and flush whenever I wave a bag at them- although to get this reaction I've had to chase them off with the help of a friend over the past week or so.

 

My query is though has anyone had any problems with their reared mallard leaving the pond for good due to disturbance from people? The birds that flush from one pond fly off and fly to another of my mallard ponds- instead of circling around the same pond like they did last year from hand feeding 3 times a day.

 

Just worried im going to upset them if I visit them too often to a such a degree they bugger off.

 

Many thanks

 

Gk

[Lab 10,979]

Doubt it. I'd change that and feed them what you think they will eat in a day and go everyday. Dont over feed them....they'll just get fat and lazy and you wont get them off the water. You want to drag them as far away as possible from the pond. You can do that by increasing the distance where you feed them each day. If you get your times right you should be able to have them there at feed time well away from the pond. Get someone to put your guns in as you put out the feeding, then you can chase them back..... Its not everyones cup of tea but if you can mix in some pheasant with the drive there usually a good little bag filler....

[Born Hunter 17,910]

We shoot a few duck. We had the first day on Saturday and for early in the season they flew like Spitfires! They have been fed using those automatic feeder things and have grown very cautious of humans. I've never seen ducks as high as some of these were flying. They usually produce decent shots but some of them were f*****g ridiculously high birds. We've never fed them away from the ponds and now we use these automatic spinner feeder things there wouldn't be an advantage for us.

 

[Dave C 63]

We feed our pond every day and they fly most days and come straight back.

We have started flighting another pond and have taken 26 wild mallard over 2 flights.

We will leave our reared Duck until later in the season before we start on them and even then we only take a few for the first 2 times we shoot them.