Let's hear about your most interesting or oldest banded birds.
I shot 2 banded geese from northern Quebec in the 2011 season and they were both over 12 years old. The bands were almost worn through. I was surprised they were that old.
When I was doing a bunch of hunting in AR in the late 90's, we kept up with all of the bands shot in our group. We went a full year without one (avg3-4/yr). The next year we killed 14 with 4 in one day.
I shot a female goose in our early season that was 13 years old. We killed 8 federal banded geese that year. Most of all the others were under 3 years of age.
In 2007, 2008 and 2009 I killed one banded goose each year that were all banded on the same day in the same location. They were killed within a mile of where they were banded, but they were all banded in 2002, which made them all at least 5 years old.
We killed a pair of blackducks in Long Island that were both banded, one with a $100 reward band. They came in as a pair, but were banded very far apart and on different years.
I grew up near Linesville, PA and they band a lot of ducks there on the refuge. I've shot 3 banded mallards from there. Interesting part is I only shot 1 of those birds while I was living at home. 1 of them I shot here in Maryland hundreds of miles from Linesville, and 1 I shot just north of me in PA, but still hundreds of miles from Linesville.