cormorant season?

[zach]

i saw on the musky hunter website that in Minnesota they shoot the hell out of these nasty birds by the hundreds. wondering what you guys think about this. in my opinion we should shoot them all. could we even get a season on them?

[salmonboy41]

its a good idea but the anti's wount let us!! its the price we pay for living in a communist state.

[Legacy]

Too bad they are protected. The DEC is going forward with their cormorant study this year rather than waiting till next year. Without a "study" they wont address the problem. The good news is it should put the problem in the spotlight and the state and feds will act on the issue sooner.

[kingslamon22]

vigilantee...over under 12 ga/223. or wait till goose season...oh sorry officer i thought it was a goose!

[larry]

I believe the DEC has been controlling the population by oiling the eggs on their nesting grounds. So drastic action is not needed any longer as it once was but persistence will get the job done. I know they were a major reason for the decline of small mouth bass but recent studies show their diet is now 90% gobies, so they may actually be helping on another front. (unless you're a goby fisherman) I thought a cormorant recipe would be funny but when I googled it, it brought me back to a LOU article:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4167

Here is some other potentially useful information - lead, oil or new dipsey retriever

excerpt from: http://www.ypte.org.uk/animal/cormorant/65

Cormorants and Man

Cormorants have sometimes been persecuted by fishermen because of the belief that they eat huge quantities of fish, especially in rivers where they were supposed to prefer young salmon and trout. However, research has shown that cormorants seem to favour flat fish and eels, taking only small amounts of the more saleable fish.

In the Far East, some fishermen make use of the cormorant's expertise, by training it to catch fish for them. A collar and lead is attached to the bird's neck and the collar is just tight enough to prevent the cormorant from swallowing a captured fish. The fisherman retrieves the fish from the bird's beak, only loosening its collar now and then to allow it to swallow a fish.

As with many sea birds, cormorants are affected by oil pollution, caused by shipwrecks or by ships which discharge their oil at sea illegally. Diving birds such as guillemots, razorbills and puffins have been most seriously affected by oil pollution, but cormorants have also suffered when fishing in the location of an oil slick. Oil clogs their feathers, they are unable to fly and swim and, as a result, they drown. Birds may also die of poisoning if they swallow oil.

[GAMBLER]

The population around the Rochester area (Irondequoit) has exploded in the past 5 years. I caught one reeling in a perch off the Charlotte pier 2 years ago. It killed me to release it unharmed. Something needs to be done.

[on the lam]

I always thought they were protected in NJ, but after I read the regulations again I found, in very small print , that somehow shooting cormorants on the lake I hunt is legal. Go figure??

[W.W.IV.]

If they don't start doing something about them on I Bay soon there won't be any fishing there much longer. I watched a flock drive the east shore last fall, they were lined up about 10yds. apart from the shore out to maybe 200yds. It looked like a military maneuver. .

[skipper19]

Let's see...hmmmm ...soluble capsules.....some avian exterminating agent ....uhhhh maybe avian cholera bio extract..AW CRAP,. too hard to get...let's see, what else..I KNOW ...crushed Alka Seltzer tablets. Load the capsules with the alka seltzer and stuff then into some gobies ...deploy near cormorants and then the birds eat the capsules and can't pass gas....BOOM they blow up. "gee wizz, I don't know...they were flying away and like went pop..kinda like spontaneous explosion er somthin"

[Knotlost]

It should be mandatory for each fisherman who goes out on the lake fishing shoot one of these miserable nasty creatures. I don't know what "study" they found that said they don't eat salable fish, but its wrong. I have dove for years and seen plenty of them catch perch, bass, and others that were not golbys. But seriously, they should open it up to the duck hunters to be able to shoot 2 or three as there daily bag limit, just to help control them and protect the environment. They now have DEC guys that chase them on Oneida lake to harass them to leave and go back to the big O. The government gets very little right, as its run by bureaucrats not real humans.

[W.W.IV.]

I recently read that due to budget cuts they cut the oneida lake control.

[bob 13]

they should have a season and a season on sea gulls!!!!! they let us shoot mergansers, and they dont even taste good!!!

bob13

[jilou1ow]

TO ALL LOU MEMBERS:

Let's all do something about the cormorants around Rochester, I Bay & Lake Ontario. I live on the lake near the river and watch large flocks of cormorants flying west and east toward I Bay. Large numbers of dedicated fishmen making noise to the DEC in Avon might get something started. E-mail your concerns to the regional director, Paul D'Amato at region 8 @ gov.dec.state.ny. If he got 100 e-mails and an invitation to sit down with a group of fishermen to discuss the problem, maybe we could get something started.

[steinea286]

A lot of talk of cormorants in the past, but has anybody been seeing them on Ibay this year?! I have been in that immediate area about 8 times (near snyder island and the Irondequoit Fish and Game Club) about 8 times from the 1st of May through now. I have literally counted only 22 cormorants in those 8 trips. Braddocks last week, and still no cormorants! Sodus in early may held a good amount but thats about the extent of it. Anyone else seeing birds?!

[bluewater]

The cormorants in the Oswego harbor are terrible, opening day of early goose probably 80 percent of the birds in the air were cormorants. They sit on the break walls by the thousands.

[trophyhunter13021]

i agree with u all ..... killem boys!!!!!!

[W.W.IV.]

I've been on Ibay several times in the last two weeks and have seem plenty of them.