Delta Waterfowl

[Quack]

I’m not really serious about stocking pheasants and mallards but I do think fish stocking is stupid. Why should hunters have to be stuck with natural production but anglers get fish stocking?

You look at the money that’s wasted on walk in areas, etc… doesn’t add one pheasant to the population. Could just as well be releasing game farm birds on WMAs

[recker7676]

I agree that we don't think want any kind of duck or pheasant stocking.

I'm not an expert on any of this but I think deer/grouse management is a lot easier than waterfowl management. Maintaining quality wetlands is lot tougher than rotational timber harvests. Not saying they couldn't do better tho.

I've seen lots of private wetlands go to complete sh!t over the years as well. One in specific I'm sure Recker/Bailey has seen out around the Ortonville area that used to hold hundreds of ducks every time I'd drive by it got its water level raised atleast 5 feet and now its just a pea soup bowl of water.

Not sure I know the exact one but I know several in that area that used to be stacked and now have nothing. They did a great job on Marsh but it only lasted a year. The ducks were unreal. You really have to keep the water low every year to expose the duck food. But the wma's are bought and never maintained.

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[recker7676]

Mass hen house sites are a joke. The manpower, time, money invested in them is a waste since they rarely get maintained....become an eye sore a year or two after being put up. Basically it's the same as littering. Delta touts the best of the best for their hatch rates but those almost never happen because the mass hen house sites never are maintained.

Delta's research is a joke. So....you mean to tell me a prey animal population increases when you reduce predator numbers? No shit. It's kindergarten level biology/wildlife management that they study ad nauseum.

They don't apply predator management very widely since everywhere they've done it they've pissed off the landowners in their trapping block and gotten the boot. Talk to any landowner who was enrolled in a trapping block of land and they won't have anything good to say about the organization.

They say they are the hunter organization but they get caught up in politics way too much, and typically look extremely stupid when doing it.

Their youth hunts do nothing to create new hunters, but the kids and kid's friends of the committee members get a bunch of cool free shit so it works out for them.

They have a $10 million annual budget that goes to paying their staff...who from what I've seen are a bunch of drunks who aren't able to find gainful employment elsewhere. For ten million they really don't do shit...like nothing. If Delta was gone tomorrow there'd be nothing they'd leave behind to show they even existed. Where as DU....if the $10 million in fundraising Delta has essentially siphoned off of DU....they didn't gain any new donors, they conned existing DU members into spending their money with them and did so by talking trash about DU....

...and that's Delta in a nutshell, "They're Not DU," and no....no they're not. That's not something they should be pointing out imo let alone be something they brag about.

Honestly the only reason I would join is to find new hunting buddies. One moved away. One is messed up from the riots he was a minneapolis cop. My old man is getting old. I don't mind hunting alone but it gets old mostly cause you have nobody to share it with.

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[Drunk_Dynasty]

I agree that we don't think want any kind of duck or pheasant stocking.

I'm not an expert on any of this but I think deer/grouse management is a lot easier than waterfowl management. Maintaining quality wetlands is lot tougher than rotational timber harvests. Not saying they couldn't do better tho.

I've seen lots of private wetlands go to complete sh!t over the years as well. One in specific I'm sure Recker/Bailey has seen out around the Ortonville area that used to hold hundreds of ducks every time I'd drive by it got its water level raised atleast 5 feet and now its just a pea soup bowl of water.

Not sure I know the exact one but I know several in that area that used to be stacked and now have nothing. They did a great job on Marsh but it only lasted a year. The ducks were unreal. You really have to keep the water low every year to expose the duck food. But the wma's are bought and never maintained.

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The below photo is from 2015, you can see its not a deep pond, and there is some actual vegetation growing in the pond. This is a private wetland, but i would stack up with birds pretty much all year.

The below photo is from I believe 2020, because all the submerged trees are dead and no longer green up at all. It must have went up atleast 5 feet, probably even more. I'm not sure if the surrounding ag land got tiled or what, but its a dead sea now. Not even mergansers use it.

[Nershi]

I’d be willing to bet drain tile is the culprit.

[Quack]

And soon the dnr will use it for a rearing pond or the farmer will stock it

[Bailey]

I agree that we don't think want any kind of duck or pheasant stocking.

I'm not an expert on any of this but I think deer/grouse management is a lot easier than waterfowl management. Maintaining quality wetlands is lot tougher than rotational timber harvests. Not saying they couldn't do better tho.

I've seen lots of private wetlands go to complete sh!t over the years as well. One in specific I'm sure Recker/Bailey has seen out around the Ortonville area that used to hold hundreds of ducks every time I'd drive by it got its water level raised atleast 5 feet and now its just a pea soup bowl of water.

Not sure I know the exact one but I know several in that area that used to be stacked and now have nothing. They did a great job on Marsh but it only lasted a year. The ducks were unreal. You really have to keep the water low every year to expose the duck food. But the wma's are bought and never maintained.

Sent from my SM-A146U using Tapatalk

The below photo is from 2015, you can see its not a deep pond, and there is some actual vegetation growing in the pond. This is a private wetland, but i would stack up with birds pretty much all year.

2015.JPG

The below photo is from I believe 2020, because all the submerged trees are dead and no longer green up at all. It must have went up atleast 5 feet, probably even more. I'm not sure if the surrounding ag land got tiled or what, but its a dead sea now. Not even mergansers use it.

2020.JPG

unreal it looks like the dead sea now.