Brian Huber – Birdyologist

Brian Huber is a Waterfowl Biologist for California Waterfowl Association (CWA). He’s also the Wood Duck Program Coordinator for CWA. You may know him on instagram as birdyologist. Brian has been working for California Waterfowl for 11 years now and he is the man in the field. He’s the guy setting off the rocket nets and running the banding programs. A lot of the work he and his crew do is in partnership with USGS or CDFW, with CWA operating at the local level assisting with Federal and State Research programs. I was lucky to meet Brian about six years ago when I was living in California, and had the opportunity to go out with him and the CWA crew on a pintail banding effort in some Northern California rice country. The guy is just hands down good shit, a great conversationalist and a wealth of knowledge to a waterfowl enthusiast. I had a great discussion with Brian and thank him for his generosity in taking his time to make it happen.

-Corey @Splitreed

[all photos property of Brian Huber unless otherwise noted]

SR: Your work as a waterfowl biologist, and your program goals?

Brian: We partner with other agencies a lot to make sure they meet their banding needs. A lot of those programs look at populations and how the birds are doing, age ratios and all those kinds of things. We basically are more or less contracted to catch birds and band them, and that helps with the state and the feds to throw in their huge statistical evaluations of how the birds are doing. Survival rates, population- we’re helping them get the data they need to assess the populations.

SR: A year for the banding program looks like what?

Brian: We band a bunch of birds right before the season (targeting pintail) and then we can collect data to see how many of them survive the season, and we also band a bunch of birds right after the season and see how many of those survive to the next hunting season. It gives us data to run statistics.

Spring brings post-season banding as well as the wood duck program and the egg salvage program.

CWA’s egg salvage program will be featured in a later post. The gist of it is that landowners who participate allow the CWA egg salvage program crew to collect eggs from nests before a field is mowed for hay, or planted or flooded. The eggs are incubated, hatched, banded and released just before they are old enough to fly. Wood ducks nested in wood duck boxes are monitored and banded as well.

Summer banding runs June-September and we target molting mallards and young mallards so we set up bait traps and catch them. September means we have water and pintail so we can target pintail with the rocket nets. We’ll also go after Canada geese and white-front geese on the refuges until they [the refuge managers] kick us off before the hunting season starts.

During duck season we hunt and get paperwork handled for new grants and catch up on any work we need to. We have a hunt program where we help guide hunts for juniors, women and veterans. We also have the college camps where we take college students in certain programs to experience a hunt. We help out where we can.

Post duck season we are banding more birds, again targeting pintail until they move North, and that leads back into spring.

SR: Whats going on with the declining number of collared geese seen around these days?

Brian: The collars are still useful but with how much the collared birds are targeted and shot and killed, the science/data can be misconstrued. If we collar geese and establish a collared to not-collared ratio of geese we can estimate populations. When the collared geese get targeted, our ratios are inaccurate and the population estimates are incorrect. Too many hunters specifically targeting collared geese leads to poor information for the biologists and researchers.

We do neck collars for geese that have the GPS transmitter on the collar [GSM collar], and we put GPS backpacks on some Ross geese and the backpacks that go on the ducks. A traditional collar without a transmitter- you can re-sight them without having to shoot them. Aleutian geese are a really good population that we can still use the collar for good information because theres a smaller population and they use really predictable habitat, so if we go and collar a whole bunch of them then we can go back to either that location or up the North Coast and re-sight those birds and get a ratio of birds that a collared to birds that are not collared and come up with population estimates.

SR: Shooting hens? Whats your take?

Brian: It’s touchy. Theres kinda two camps on it. Theres obviously hen restrictions already (2 hen mallards) so they obviously put some thought to it you know, but in the scheme of things, I don’t think it makes that much of a difference, personally. Even with Pintail, shooting two hens being legal isn’t doing a whole lot to affect the population. Statistically it doesn’t make a difference, but we still have hen restrictions. The saying I like that I hear quite a bit is that ‘dead hens don’t lay eggs’. But hens- they’re gonna get picked off on the nest, they’re susceptible to dying already you know. In the wild, avian botulism or avian cholera outbreaks occur and that kills thousands of birds. A significant number of birds.

SR: Molt Migrations? Canada geese are stubborn and hardy birds that often will stick around so long as there is open water and feed- regardless of the temperature- but some birds actually leave their Spring grounds around breeding season?

Brian: You know, we were up in June banding honkers in the NE part of the state, and on opening day (late October) at [a North Valley CA refuge] me and my buddy doubled up on geese and they were both banded from banding them earlier that Spring. So those birds from NE California came all the way down to [the refuge] about 250 miles away. It’s almost like they go up there to molt, to find those big, big reservoirs that have enough resources for them to molt in and they go up there to molt and then come back down into the cities, golf courses, marshes.

Theres a huge molt migration for mallards too in California. They do their nesting down in the valley and then a ton of them move up to NE California to Tule Lake, Klamath, Modoc that whole area and go up and molt. Even birds from the Bay Area will go up to the Sac Valley to molt.

North-eastern California- when they have good water years it tends to be better permanent water. When the birds are molting they’ll be flightless for about a month so they gotta find a spot thats gonna have resources for that whole month when they can’t fly. Over time they seem to have selected to go NE where there are bigger reservoirs. Tule Lake and Lower Klamath haven’t done well recently but traditionally thats been good summer water. If they have good water they’re safer and have better food for the most part.

Both sexes molt. Males (ducks) tend to mold earlier just because they don’t stick around to help raise the young. They definitely stick around and harass the hens though.

Birds molt twice a year, their flight feathers first, Then they regrow them and also molt into their basic plumage (brown ducks). When Fall rolls around they molt into what they call ‘alternate plumage’. This is when they grow their fancy pretty plumage to attract a female. All to attract a female.

SR: Whats the deal with ‘Red-Legged’ Mallards?

Brian: I’m more of a field biologist, but I know a little about some of these kinds of questions. I’m out there catching birds I’m not reading literature everyday like some biologists do- but my understanding is that the red legs on mallards are part of some hormonal changes that the birds undergo as part of their biological effort to find a mate. So basically there are older drake mallards in better physical condition that are getting better food sources, and they’re gonna have better nutrient intake which gives them brighter bills and brighter feet. Thats a lot of what the females are selecting for when they choose a mate. So it all boils down to sexual selection. With hatch year birds you’ll have a drake who might have a crappy diet and he’s not gonna know how to really perform and how to get the resources to be that stud drake mallard. That’s basically my understanding about the red feet. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ‘Northern birds’, although it might correspond. If you have birds that are farther North and they are older birds, they often have better diets and aren’t moving as much. The more you travel the more likely you’re gonna get shot, so the less they have to travel the longer they’ll live. If they get pushed down later in the season they just so happen to have better body condition.

SR: California’s pintail situation? One pintail per day limit in an area where sometimes all you see are giant flocks of pintails over the decoys on a hunt. Any effect from people shooting 10 pintail a day or whatever number they shoot in Central America?

Brian: We’re back to shooting one per day this fall. As a biologist, it’s the right call with the current model that we have. We have a model, and thats what the model is predicting and thats what we have to go with. The problem is that the model is outdated and it doesn’t account for all of the banding that we’ve done over the past few years so the data the model uses is currently incomplete. So that’s why we have such an initiative for CWA and for California Fish and Wildlife- everybody in California. California winters about 75% of the pintail in the pacific flyway, so sometimes all you see are pintail. The fact that a very small number of people shoot handfuls of pintail in Mexico or wherever is negligible. The birds winter in CA and South of the state but breed up North in the prairie potholes, some go into Alaska. California has a 7 bird limit and 107 day season, so the Feds think we want ‘more more more’, but if the model using new data suggest that we can shoot more sprig (bring the limit back to 2 or even higher) then why wouldn’t we want it- why shouldn’t we get to do that?

Habitat conditions drive populations for most all ducks, starting at the breeding grounds. Not shooting/hunting pressure. The prairie pothole regions and the habitat loss occurring there are likely the source of duck [pintail] population changes.

California has four major species which actually breed in the state: mallards, cinnamon teal, wood ducks and gadwall.

SR: How did you end up doing what you do as a Waterfowl Biologist?

Brian: Graduated high school and didn’t know what I wanted to do. Growing up we fished a lot but weren’t a hunting family- besides a few deer hunts. I went to school in Santa Barbara and really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. You can have a little too much fun down in Santa Barbara. A good friend got me into salmon fishing when I moved back home so me and him would drive down to the Chico area almost every weekend and go salmon fishing. Had a friend going to Chico State and he convinced me to finish school down there. Same buddy who got me into salmon fishing all the time he was like, “dude you gotta try duck hunting”.

I was like, “dude go shoot ducks that so stupid! why would you want to go do that”?”. I was 22-23 at this time and he took me out once and man I was like, “this is the coolest thing ever”. It hit hard. Being at Chico State I was interested in biology because I could learn more about fish. I’m gonna be a fish biologist, learn about fish and learn how to catch ‘em better. I was walking through a hallway and noticed a Waterfowl Ecology class. “WHAT?!” I went and talked to the professor who is a good friend now, but at the time he was like, “oh this is a serious class, just because you’re a duck hunter doesn’t mean you can come in and take this class”, I told him I would see him in three years when I had my undergrad.

Continued at Chico State and got a general Biology degree, then me and friend helped start the Chico State CWA chapter. The second college chapter, behind Humboldt state. We’d help with wood duck projects for people and would meet the people/staff at CWA, got a job with them and have been working for them for about 11 years.

SR: Favorite type of duck hunt?

Brian: If I had a choice it’d be a tule pond with smartweed in it chasing mallards. Or, on an undisclosed river in a different state hunting public land shooting greenheads. Now-a-days the refuges are so crowded its real convenient to have a rice blind so I do most of my hunting in the rice now.

SR: Favorite way to prepare duck?

Brian: My wife loves eating duck- she would probably eat it every single day of the week if I would cook it for her! But we usually keep it simple. Breast it out, I leave skin on for me but not for my wife she doesn’t enjoy it, soak em in soy-sauce and season them. Throw em on the camp chef smoker and let ‘em rip. Thats how we eat, I’d say 80% of our birds. if it’s just me I’ll just breast em with skin on and heat em to a rare to medium-rare on a skillet.

If I get a nice speck that’s not shot up I’ll pluck whole and remove skin on breast and leg/thigh and have two halves cooked on the camp chef.

SR: Do you pass on birds when hunting?

Brian: Yeah well, I try not to shoot shovelers. I’m not a fan of their taste I just don’t like eating em. I know everybody says, “oh but they’re eating rice!”- well even if they’re in a rice field it doesn’t mean they’re eating rice. So I’m not a fan of shovelers. The club I hunt at and help manage we have a friendly fine for shooting them- $10 a bird and it goes into a pot for an end of the season bbq.

SR: Have you ever shot one of your bands? The geese you mentioned earlier were those your bands?

Brian: I was part of the banding project for those geese but I wouldn’t say they were my bands. I haven’t shot any birds that I’ve banded before. The geese were as close as I’ve come. If it’s a pintail when I do shoot one of my bands I might have to mount it. I’ve got a good idea for a unique and special mount but am waiting for the right bird. I’m waiting for a badass bull sprig banded to do this cool mount with. If it were one of my banded birds it would top it off.

SR: Rocket netting!

Brian: The rocket netting is like my favorite thing to do man, it is so- we make it look easy dude but it is so hard it is such a pain in the ass but when it’s successful it’s so rewarding. You don’t see it, I don’t post the shots where we shoot it and the net didn’t fire. Theres so many things that go wrong dude.

We talked for a second about the time I went out to band with Brian and he brought up how we were all set to fire the rocket and his buddy pulled up to the site and ended up spooking all the birds out of the capture zone before the net was fired.

It happens all the time dude. I’ve had a beaver knock a branch down in the pond and scare all the birds out. You’re like, “WHAT!?”. And we’ve had times working with the state and had state employees drive up to the net and blow the birds out of the area. The mosquito abatement guys have driven over nets- oh god dude its such a cluster sometimes haha.

SR: Tule geese vs White Fronts (specklebelly geese) what’s the difference?

Brian: Tule geese are a subspecies of white-fronts, they’re not their own species. They are bigger, typically darker, they’re hard to identify on the wing. On the water a trained eye can tell the difference but still not 100%. They hang out in bigger groups- they’re clan-ish. They tend to hangout apart from other species. They like tule emergent ponds and thats where they spend most of their time. Tule geese show up in Oregon pretty early and are rocket-netted and collared. The birds are then located with GPS or radio collars or spotted and kept track of. They use the collars because biologists can see a collar, and be like, “ok so theres a collared goose and he’s associated with 30 other tule geese” and we can establish a ratio of collared geese to un-collared geese and use that ratio to estimate populations. So thats basically the point of collaring geese.

The closed zone in the Northern Sacramento valley (closed to white-front or specklebelly goose hunting, to protect the 10,000 tule geese that looks virtually the same as the specks and use that as a refuge) actually started as an Aleutian closed zone. It’s changed a little but more or less it’s the same area. When doing the radio collar studies nearly all the birds (tule geese) stay in that general area.

The Tule geese arrive early and prefer a certain habitat (no, Brian won’t tell you what habitat that is). The population hovers right around 10,000 and a range given could be anywhere from 9-12,000 of them. As long as the population doesn’t take a big dip below 10,000 the regulations and closed zone will stay the same to keep the birds protected. It’s a subspecies so it’s kinda weird to regulate them but it’s biologically very interesting. The biologist side of me and the hunter side of me are conflicted, so it’s a strange thing for me. If you want to shoot specks, don’t hunt in the closed zone. You can shoot 10 specks a day in CA outside of that zone. As a biologist you want diversity so you don’t want people shooting a bunch of them. Let’s study them a little more and see whats going on, but as a hunter if that closure got bigger, well I don’t want that. it’s a tough one.

Tule goose populations remain the about the same year to year thanks to the regulations, but regular specklebelly/white-front geese are 2 to 3 times their population management goal- they’re going through the roof.

SR: What does hunting mean to you?

Brian: I don’t even know how to answer that. It’s just like the lifestyle of it like everything man. Getting up, putting in the work, the scouting, where you’re gonna go how you’re gonna set up.. The whole process. It changes every single hunt. Even in a rice blind, like, which one will you hunt, which way is the wind blowing. It’s a puzzle!

SR: You’ve got a youngster, real young kid- you gonna lose your shit when he kills his first duck?

Brian: Eh I don’t think so, he’s been out with us before and will continue to be so I think when that time comes it will be cool but he’s gonna be around it so much before that happens that it’ll be a small moment when he shoots his first one. It probably will be a big deal actually, because for me it’s so easy to shoot a bird but for a kid it’ll be a process. Man it’s probably gonna take a hundred shells before he pops his first one. He’ll probably start with a .410ga.

SR: What might someone do on a hunt to never get invited back?

Brian: Man I’m a really picky dude when it comes to who I hunt with. I really don’t like super-aggressive callers. If I’ve got someone out there and they’re just screaming at every damn duck in the sky, it just drives me nuts. I would say though that the #1 thing is safety. It’s crazy man, how much for granted duck hunters take the safety of a firearm. This last season one of my best friends and my blind partner was getting out of the blind and the gun went off in his hand and blew part of his hand off. So that really changed my perspective on safety and stuff. You’re handling the gun all the time and I bet most people don’t realize how many times body parts are crossing the barrel of the gun. After that happened it was such an eye opener. If someones not safe in a blind or their gun is falling over or the safety isn’t on thats just.. I don’t want to be around that. I’ve got a wife and kid I want to go home to. After that happened to my buddy every time I hunted I was so concentrated on where the guns are and where everyone else is in relation to the guns. My buddy has had six surgeries and he’s got one more. He’ll likely have 50-60% of his hand function back.

SR: Podcast? Gonna get it going?

Brian: Man I want to dude! I really see the value in it. I think it would be cool and I think people would really be into it but the timing is hard to figure out. I wanna do it, I think it’ll eventually happen. I don’t know if it will be with California Waterfowl or just myself and guests. Maybe Split Reed can sponsor it! I think it’s neat because it’s a generational thing. My instagram gets a lot of messages from younger people who think they might want to get into this type of career it’s freakin cool. I’m so lucky to be in the position I’m in, it’s just so neat to have it and be able to share it with people.