DUCK
SEASON WITH MOSSBERG’S DENNIS KENDALL
Chesapeake Bay vs. Argentina
EDITOR’S NOTE: The mourning begins on the last
day of duck season, which is usually the end of January.
Many months will pass before we once again don waders,
gather up our decoys, load up our retrievers and head
for our blinds. However, duck season doesn’t have
to end. How would you like to be able to hunt ducks
from March through August and take 40 ducks or more
per day without drastically affecting the North American
duck population? If this sounds like an unrealistic
dream, it’s not, if you travel to Argentina. Argentina
is the Valhalla for the duck hunter where you see thousands,
possibly millions of ducks. This duck-hunting paradise
is so good that you’ll have a difficult time believing
what you’re about to read. Dennis Kendall, director
of marketing for Mossberg of New Haven, Connecticut,
invited me and two other outdoor writers, Wayne Van
Zwoll and Lamar Underwood, to Argentina to test the
newest of the Mossberg shotguns, the 930 model. A three-shot
autoloader that cost less than $300, the guns were to
be given the acid test. We drug them through the muddy
rice fields and marshes and shot three to four boxes
of shells every morning and every evening to test the
durability of the 930 Mossberg Autoloader.
Question: Dennis, you’ve guided duck hunters
on the eastern shore of Maryland where the duck-hunting
tradition is as rich as the history of America. How
does eastern shore duck hunting compare to Argentina
duck hunting?
Kendall:
The bag limits are more liberal in Argentina than on
the eastern shore where we can take five to six ducks
in Maryland for a day of hunting. In Argentina, we can
take 20 to 30 ducks in the morning and 20 to 30 ducks
in the afternoon. The sheer volume of shooting that
a duck hunter gets in one day is almost unbelievable
for a duck hunter from the eastern shore of Maryland.
The Chesapeake Bay is considered one of the bastions
of North American duck hunting. The tradition of duck
hunting in Maryland is rich as it is anywhere else in
the world. Comparing it to duck hunting in Argentina
is not even a fair comparison. The sheer number of ducks
that we saw in Argentina was overwhelming.
Question: Are the ducks you see in Argentina the same
as the ducks you see in North America?
Kendall: No, they’re not, and this difference
in ducks is what makes duck hunting in Argentina difficult
for American waterfowlers to understand. We’re
shooting different ducks in a different hemisphere that
don’t receive anywhere near the hunting pressure
that ducks have in North America. The limits are much-more
liberal because the hunters are so few, and the ducks
are so many. We do some see some green wing and some
cinnamon teal that are like the ones we see in North
America. We also see whistling ducks, rose-billed ducks
and many other species that a North American will never
see unless he comes to Argentina. Most of the waterfowl
hunting in the areas we hunt is done by visitors from
other countries. There’s very little waterfowl
hunting by locals.
Question:
Compare a day of waterfowl hunting on Chesapeake Bay
with a day of waterfowl hunting in Argentina.
Kendall: When you hunt the Chesapeake Bay, you have
a six-bird bag limit. Many mornings your hunt is over
within 1 hour or less. In Argentina, you can take 40
to 60 birds per hunter, per day. As far as the total
bag limit’s concerned, there’s no comparison.
A morning hunt will usually last from before daylight
until 9:00 a.m. An afternoon hunt will last from 5:00
p.m. until black dark. Of course, having grown up on
the Chesapeake Bay, there’s a certain tradition
of duck hunting that I never want to trade, given the
option between hunting the Chesapeake Bay and hunting
in Argentina. They are two completely-different styles
of waterfowl hunting.
Question: On the Chesapeake Bay, you may put out anywhere
from 50 to 300 decoys. In Argentina, the guides put
out not more than a dozen decoys. Were you surprised
at how few decoys the Argentine duck guides used?
Kendall: Absolutely. The guides in Argentina will put
12 decoys in a tight cluster with one or two MOJO ducks
and use mouth calls made from the brass of .20-gauge
shotgun shells. This hunt was very-unique hunt and a
great opportunity for us to see just how well the 930s
and the Silver Reserves would perform in the rice fields
and marshes under extreme shooting conditions. The guns
met and
exceeded our expectations because in a day of shooting,
we often put more rounds through these guns than most
waterfowlers would shoot in an entire season.
For more information about Mossberg's products, you
can visit the company’s website at www.mossberg.com.
To learn more about duck hunting in Argentina, please
visit www.pacoriestra.com.
Tomorrow: The Three-Day Test
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