TN-birders,
Dollyann & I were out with a couple of friends today doing a bit of birding
from Louisville Point Park to the Ish Creek embayment in Blount Co., around 10
am. We spotted a Ross’s Goose at Hitch pond along Lowe’s Ferry Rd. (35.81621,
–84.11617). It was hanging around with some domestic ducks behind the house
there.
We got to the Ish Creek embayment and at first only found nearly 90 Pied-billed
Grebes at the small finger of the embayment near Lowe’s Ferry Rd., and
virtually nothing else was around except a few gulls. We drove a bit further
until we came to Marcia Davis’s new home (it’s gorgeous!). We saw Marcia
outside her place and drove into her driveway to say hello. She was kind enough
to take us on a quick tour around her lovely grounds. While we were walking
around we heard some shotgun blasts and Marcia said some local hunters were
hunting ducks on the embayment. Today was the last day of duck hunting season
in Tennessee.
We saw that the hunters were two guys, one on the shore and one in a john boat.
Eventually they both got together into the boat and were boating around the
embayment looking for ducks with binoculars and shooting at them. We didn’t see
any ducks to shoot at until we finally saw two birds flying away from the
hunters. It turns out they were both White-winged Scoters. We eventually saw
one other bird and it turned out to also be a White-winged Scoter but it didn’t
flush when the other 2 birds did. We thought the hunters had wounded it and
every time the hunters got close to it, the scoter dove under the water instead
of flying. We finished our visit with Marcia and decided to check the Ish Creek
boat launch for gulls or anything else there.
When we got to the Ish Creek boat ramp, we didn’t see anything else in the way
of birds, but did see the 2 hunters, who had pulled their boat out onto a
trailer and were getting ready to leave. As we drove past them, I saw 2
White-winged Scoter carcasses they were putting into their truck.
Strictly my opinion: by and large I am not against hunting, as long as the
population of what you are hunting can withstand it. But how “sporting” is it
when you have a fairly confined area and you run around the area with a fast
boat and track down the only waterfowl in the area until you slaughter them?
Shooting ducks in a barrel hardly seems “sporting” to me.
Ron Hoff
Clinton, TN
