South for the Winter : Hunting: Generous limits, warm weather and privacy make Northern Mexico a haven for American duck hunters.

The wake-up call comes at 4 a.m., and by 6:40, after more than 30 miles of dirt roads and a few more miles by air boat, the duck hunters are in their blind on Lobos Bay.

Fred Missildine, who has a shooting school at Sea Island, Ga., says, “Good wind.”

“Perfect,” says Jack Jansma, a charter fishing-boat operator from Grand Rapids, Mich.

The wind is from the west, behind the hunters, so the ducks, which land into the wind, will hear the calls, see the decoys and fly straight into the guns, out of the rising sun.

And here they come.

As they circle for their approach, Jansma notes that several are mergansers, “less of a quality duck,” he says. “Teals are much better table fare.”

Missildine jokes that he is not so particular: “If it flies, it dies.”

But he, too, is selective. In Mexico, one can afford to be. There are no other hunters on the bay. They have thousands of ducks to themselves. They start shooting at 6:46. At 8, outfitter-guide Frank Ruiz comes back in the air boat to see how they’re doing and collects 21 dead ducks drifting across the bay.

“You can shoot 30 (altogether),” Ruiz says. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

Missildine settles back into the blind.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone mention a limit in Mexico,” he says.

BETTER ALL AROUND

More ducks. That is the primary reason some American duck hunters have preferred to hunt in Mexico over the past decade. The limit is 15 a day, 45 in possession. Compared to the ever-shrinking limits of four along the Pacific Flyway and three on the continent’s other three flyways, the Mexican limit is quite liberal--and, in some cases, loosely observed.

The season is about two months longer, until March 10. The last California season closed Jan. 7.

The weather is better. In Mexico it’s not necessary to be cold, wet and miserable to be a duck hunter.

Finally, hunters can use lead shot anywhere, whereas in most areas of the United States they are restricted to less-effective steel shot.

“But the Number 1 reason is, I get to shoot a lot,” Missildine said. “I’d be happy at home with 10 ducks, but I’m not going to pay $400 to go to Arkansas to shoot three ducks.

“Also, you don’t have the pressure here we have in the States. Back home, every creek I go in, there’s somebody hunting. You don’t have any privacy anymore.”

In California, according to the Department of Fish and Game, the sale of duck stamps decreased from 123,376 in 1979 to 79,381 in ’88. Most of the duck hunting is at private clubs, about one-fourth on state-controlled refuges limited to three days a week and an insignificant amount on what few public wetlands have been spared by drought and development. Some hunters don’t like to be regimented, so they go to Mexico.

In Michigan, Jansma said, “We figure duck hunting has gone down by almost 50%. The dedicated guys are still coming out, but it’s disappointing.”

Missildine is a crusty, lifelong hunter who has gone after ducks and doves all over North, South and Central America, sometimes a step ahead of or behind a revolution. He is a nonstop talker whose corny jokes fill the brief gaps between incoming flights of birds.

El Salvador, he said, is “where two guys got on the bus with machine guns--teen-agers--just before the trouble broke out. That’s why I quit going there.”

Missildine hunted in northern Rhodesia--now Zimbabwe--while a civil war was boiling in southern Rhodesia. In other parts of Africa, he said, “I shot everything,” from lions to cape buffalo.

“What I like to shoot most is what I’m hunting,” he said.

MORE THE MERRIER

Today, it is ducks, and there are more available than can be found on most traditional wetlands north of the border these days. That is why Missildine and Jansma have been organizing groups of hunters from their areas to come to Mexico for the last several years.

“Most of my people are middle class, who work all year and save their money to come down here once a year,” Missildine said. “It’s worth it to them.”

Ruiz is in his second year as an outfitter with his Gabino’s Yaqui Valley Hunting operation. He books duck-hunting packages through Jeri Booth’s The Detail Company in Houston. They range from $880 to $1,365, including room and board but not air fare, and the more expensive trips include dove hunting as well.

One misconception about duck hunting in Mexico is that the Mexicans are slaughtering so many ducks, there are few left to migrate north to breed in the spring--hence the severe decline in duck hunting in the United States.

Ed Collins, a regional field biologist for the Western Regional office of Ducks Unlimited in Sacramento, said: “That’s not true. I’ve heard that for years and years. You won’t even find any Mexicans hunting.

“If there’s any violation of the law, it’s Americans that are going down there and maybe over-bagging. But the Mexican take is really insignificant for North America. About 75% of the harvested birds are U.S. birds. Canada gets like 12%, and the remainder is Mexico.

“I’ve never heard from anyone that they thought over-bagging--taking too many birds in Mexico--was (a factor) . . . although there are some poor sportsmen that go down there and give a poor name to it.”

Jansma said: “Some people may have the idea to come down here and shoot the hell out of the resource . . . do everything you can’t do up north. But no sportsman that I know is that way.”

The U.S. decline, according to Collins, is the result of a loss of nesting water and good nesting cover in Canada.

“The Pacific Flyway always has a comfortable, healthy number of birds, although we are affected by the continuing drought in Canada,” Collins said. “It’s been going on for nine years.

“Where Mexico does need assistance . . . it’s such a poor nation that they’ve got wetlands areas they could do so much with but they don’t have the money to do it.”

FINALLY, COOPERATION

A cooperative program among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ducks Unlimited Mexico (DUMAC) and SEDUE--Mexico’s government wildlife service--might help.

The North American Waterfowl Management Plan is a 15-year, $1.5-billion agreement designed to restore the continent’s waterfowl populations through conservation of 6 million acres of key breeding, migration and wintering habitat, which now is being destroyed at the rate of 450,000 acres a year. The money may be spent in the United States, Canada or Mexico--a major breakthrough since previous law prohibited spending federal money on habitat projects in other nations.

Gary Kramer of the USFWS, manager of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, is the technical adviser to the plan for his organization.

Kramer said: “The fallacy is that the Mexicans are killing all our ducks. The reality is that it’s very difficult to own a firearm in Mexico because of very stringent gun-control laws. It’s much easier for us to get a hunting permit in Mexico than it is for a citizen.

“You have to belong to a hunting club (and) it’s very expensive.”

Thus, nearly all of the ducks shot in Mexico are shot by Americans, who hunt in the marshes of the northern states of Baja California, Sonora--where Ciudad Obregon is located--and Sinaloa, along the Gulf of California. Kramer, who has been studying Mexican waterfowl for 15 years, estimates that 40% of the ducks are taken in Sinaloa.

“In all cases, we found that 93% to 99% of the hunters were from the U.S., with the majority from California, Texas and Arizona,” he said.

Americans are permitted to bring back up to 45 ducks each, but there is no telling how many more are given to residents.

Kramer has persuaded 14 club operators in Sinaloa to provide accurate information for the study.

“What we’re trying to do is find out how many ducks are killed and how many hunters there are,” he said. “Nobody knows.

“As soon as duck populations started to decline, as they have in the last five years--primarily due to drought conditions in Canada--the easiest thing for anybody to do was to point the finger somewhere else. I’ve heard it a thousand times: ‘The reason our ducks are in such bad shape is they’re going to Mexico and getting slaughtered.’

“My gut reaction--prior to data but after years of experience--from a biological perspective (is that) the total number harvested is relatively low. I’ll bet in the whole country of Mexico in a four-month season there are fewer ducks killed than in the U.S. in the first few days of the season. But I don’t want to prejudge the study.”

Also, Ruiz and others indicate that although the limit is high, with enforcement low, only a minority of hunters abuse it. Most are willing to stop at 15--or aren’t good enough shots to get there.

Ducks do well in Mexico, Kramer said, because “the habitat loss along the West Coast of Mexico has been very minimal.”

“There have been some areas created and enhanced by the development of agricultural areas. When things become irrigated, there is always runoff to the coast, and along the way they overflow a ditch and create a marsh.

“Plus, with the advent of rice, which they started planting after World War II, there are some additional food sources down there for the birds.”

Ruiz, a longtime guide, is one of only three outfitters in Ciudad Obregon. The three share dove-hunting areas but have exclusive rights to their duck-hunting sites.

Ruiz, who spent three years at the St. Catherine’s Military Academy in Anaheim, is working hard to develop American trade.

He recently bought a 15-passenger, air-conditioned van, uses two-way radios with a 50-mile range to keep in touch with his guides and the office from the field, and not only serves as outfitter and guide but also as chauffeur and breakfast, lunch and dinner host.

If there’s a knock on your door at 3 a.m., it’s probably Ruiz, raring to go.

“I get up at 3 a.m. every day during hunting season,” he said. “That’s 145 days a year. If I’m not hunting, I’m scouting.”

Last February, Ruiz hired a plane to scout areas near here and found thousands of ducks in Lobos Bay to the west. The area had never been seriously hunted.

“I had to deal with eight different villages for exclusive rights,” Ruiz said. “We met every Sunday for six months with a different village.”

His agreements include getting a villager’s truck fixed and providing a generator to supply electricity for 10 houses. This year, for the first time, the houses had small displays of Christmas lights.

Ruiz and his hunters also may be helping the local economy by cutting down bird depredation of the grain fields--especially by doves.

“We grow 80% of the grain in Mexico right here in the Yaqui Valley,” Ruiz said.

Whatever sesame seeds the birds don’t get wind up on hamburger buns in the United States.

“The farmers who plant sesame or sorghum, the doves are becoming predators to them,” Ruiz said.

So, in a departure from ducks one day, Ruiz positions Missildine and Jansma between a large, brushy nesting area for mourning doves and a sesame field, where the stalks are stacked in three-foot-high, cone-shaped piles--an irresistible free lunch for the birds.

SAVING THE GRAIN

Then, shortly after dawn, here come the doves. The hunters are about to do the farmers a favor.

Blam!

“These birds are eating the people’s grain,” Jansma said. “They have no redeeming qualities as far as the agriculture people are concerned.”

Blam!

“Two or three thousand birds eating two or three ounces apiece twice a day is a lot of grain,” Missildine said. “I’ve seen signs up in Argentina with a picture of a paloma , saying, ‘This is your enemy . . . kill him.’ People don’t realize how much grain these birds carry off. They were on the point of poisoning them in Argentina.”

Blam!

Ruiz’s bird boys are running nonstop to retrieve the kills. Ruiz opens the crop of one bird to show a handful of sesame seeds.

“This is a mission,” Jansma said jokingly. “I’m trying to get the church to sponsor me.”

Blam!

Ruiz, a crack shot, kills 49 doves in about two hours, Missildine and Jansma “50 or 60” between them, but there are so many that they probably shoot only one out of every few hundred that flew over, to and from the field.

“I shot 2,000 in two days in Argentina once,” Missildine said.

Blam!

When they have finished, the ground is littered with hundreds of green plastic shell casings. Ruiz has gone through “six or eight” 25-shot boxes of ammunition and Jansma five. They keep a few birds for dinner and give the rest to local residents--thus, Missildine notes, nothing is wasted, and they contribute protein to the Mexican diet.

Jansma prefers doves to ducks because there’s more action.

With ducks, Ruiz said, “It’s rare for a hunter to take 45 (back to the U.S.) because there aren’t that many good hunters. It’s not as easy as this.”

And whereas the doves fly without prompting--even through the streets of Obregon--there are so few hunters that sometimes the ducks have to be stirred up by buzzing them with an air boat to get them flying.

That’s illegal in the United States, but a duck on the pond is not fair game. The Mexicans don’t like to discuss the practice but, as one said, “You have to do it or the ducks won’t move.”

And if the ducks don’t move, Missildine and the other Americans might as well go home.

“When I go duck hunting, I like to shoot ducks,” he said.

He has come to the right place.