SK and ducks

[Nershi]

I returned from sk yesterday. We were about 200 miles north of the boarder. The ducks and dark geese were just showing up during our trip. When we got there Saturday we put on a couple hundred miles and only found one decent feed. The bird numbers were pretty dismal. By Sunday we were seeing massive feeds and the bird numbers just continued to rise throughout the trip. We talked with a farmer Monday and he said he hadn't seen any good groups of ducks or darks until the last couple of days and said all the hunters he has talked to have been complaining about bird numbers. He said the migration is about a month behind what they typically see.

A couple farmers told us a lot of area up there was hit with hail which resulted in large amounts of waste feed. The barley fields we hunted were loaded with food.

My guess is the main push of mallards and darks will not happen until there is a hard freeze in sk or there is a large enough snow fall to make the food unaccessable. Neither of those are going to happen anytime soon if the long range forecast holds true. The ducks have tons of food and there is zero hunting pressure up there as most guys go to sk sept-oct.

Today I talked with a guy who just returned from nd and with another who is out there now. Both reported finding huntable numbers with diligent scouting but bird numbers overall are low.

[Fish Felon]

I never was in denial of it.
I have repeatedly mentioned that many of the younger guys just do not realize the opportunities that we all have now compared to say 40 years when we had a 40 day season and at times a 4 ducks a day limit. ( and the 100+ day goose hunting season which never was back then).
How many consecutive years is it now that we've had a liberal season?
And I used to strongly question the Adaptive VS Compensatory way of gauging the what is available to shoot that the USFWS was using. I said this earlier this year, it just is apparent that the new formula does indeed work based upon the sustained high waterfowl counts. 'nuff said.

I have to tip my cap to you h2ofwlr for being open-minded, objective and realizing the USFWS has the science right and saying as much even though you once were a skeptic. You've got to be about the only guy who runs in the MWA--Wood Duck Society--Symposium Attendee circle that is capable of independent thought like that.

Randy, I've never seen h2ofwlr deny the current high continental duck populations. When he talks about the good old days being behind us he's talking about MN duck hunting...two different things. That's the problem with the crowd of MN hunters who hates the USFWS and thinks their liberal regs are ridiculous and causing a decline in ducks. They remember MN duck hunting 30, 40, 50 years ago and think about how many more ducks were present and what the limits were and think there's a correlation between higher limits with longer seasons and fewer ducks.

They don't understand that record high duck populations can exist without making that big of an impact in MN. It actually might have the opposite effect. The Dakotas were the driest they've possibly ever been in the late 80's, and I'm talking 'ever' as in the 10,000 years since the last ice age and the glaciers receded. With the prairies totally devoid of water the ducks used MN as a heavy migration path. For anyone who has hunted the Eastern Dakotas imagine them almost totally devoid of water, grass and cattails. It was fencerow to fencerow wheat and small grains, no grass or cover besides what was in the ditch and around farm sites, no wetlands, wet spots, cattails, sloughs...nothing. Just fencerow to fencerow wheat fields. Glacial lakes, what glacial lakes? Devil's Lake? It shrank to 40,000 acres and was so alkaline at that point that the G&F worried how much longer fish could survive in it. The little dams that dot the landscape were all there was for water and why most were designated as refuges. It's all migrating waterfowl had to use. It's also why the hunters there field hunted, it was the only way to hunt ducks and geese since there was no water besides the little there as the result of man made dams that were off limits to hunting.

Do you think that landscape produced much for ducks? Hell no! But most of that smaller continental population came through MN so the guys here at the time saw lots of ducks when it was 30/3. It took an unprecedented wet cycle in both it's magnitude of water volume and length of time to get the prairies as drenched as they currently are to breed record populations of ducks. Those guys who were in their duck hunting prime during the late 80's couldn't wait for fall flights projecting three times the amount of ducks...hell, they'd done pretty well and seen lots of ducks at the population bottom, it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel now!

The problem was those ducks never appeared, at least not like how MN hunters thought they would. When the Dakotas first got wet there were millions and millions of new wetlands that were as fertile as wetlands can get dotting the landscape everywhere and virtually no one was hunting them. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to make an educated guess as to what corridor most of the record setting numbers of ducks opted to migrate down. MN hunters got their hopes up every year once the May surveys were released until those hopes were dashed every fall. It got to the point where hunters in MN and other states that also weren't getting the ducks they anticipated started blaming the USFWS for counting 'paper ducks' in their surveys.

Due to Minnesota's ecology (the entire southern third was essentially one continuous wetland pre-settlement) it differed from the Dakotas in that it took a massive amount of engineering to construct a large scale ditch system to drain the giant-interconnected wetlands to enable farming and settlement. This wasn't necessary and never took place in the more arid Dakotas. The massive amount of precipitation that did wonders for the dry prairies in the 1990's wasn't nearly as beneficial for MN. During the dry 80's Minnesota's wetlands that are comprised of permanent waters not drained for different reasons, had water but were at low levels. This allowed them to freeze out killing fish that caused turbidity. There wasn't much precipitation so there weren't many spikes in water levels. Low levels that were stable made for clear water and ample submerged vegetation and freshwater shrimp. Once the wet 90's hit a lot of hunters failed to notice that they're favorite slough that was 1-2' deep was now 3-5' and muddy. Their favorite duck lakes that were 3-5' were now 6-8' and rising. Carp moved freely through the flowing ditches. Only a handful of hunters realized that many of our wetlands were essentially Ag holding ponds that existed because they stored large amounts of runoff. Most hunters just kept going about their business hunting their same spots. They had always been successful there and those places were where traditions had been forged...so what if it's a few feet higher and the water that used to resemble gin now resembles hot chocolate/ With the increasingly wet landscape farmers dealt with getting their land back into production by laying more tile. Wetland losses aren't just something that happened in the distant past. Over half the wetlands that were in the SW part of the state in the 80's are now gone. As the conditions got worse in MN and hunters watched for the flights they remembered not even a decade before things kept getting better to the West.

Then came Trent Lott. The senate majority leader from Mississippi did what he did best and played politics in order to get a later duck season for southern hunters, mainly at the urging of guides which justified the move as a benefit to 'business.' Northern hunters threw a fit and many who had been skeptical of the duck counts already were now convinced it was all a ruse and the USFWS had become Lott's whipping boy and had been compromised into reporting inflated duck counts so Southern hunters and duck guides could shoot ducks until February. For many MN hunters that was the tipping point and the harsh and misguided opinions they forged then about the USFWS they hold to this very day....15 wet years later.

There is a direct correlation between ice cream sales and the murder rate. As ice cream sales rise so does the number of murders. So why don't we ban ice cream? That'd be silly. We're all smart enough to realize that ice cream doesn't make people murder people. Ice cream sales go up when it's hot and murder rates go up when it's hot. They're not related to one another.

Higher duck limits with longer seasons and a perceived decrease in duck numbers in MN by some. Many in our state believe these two things are also a direct correlation to each other. They think that by banning more days afield and reducing limits it will cause an increase in ducks. The problem is they're not smart enough to realize these two events are also not related, They've even gone as far as to invent a concept of managing local ducks. Everywhere else on the continent manages migratory waterfowl from a continental standpoint...except for here. Here in Retardsville our ducks are different. They stay within our borders. When they're forced to migrate out they all return here. They never decide to go anywhere else unlike all the other ducks on the continent. They never die of natural causes either. If we can prevent hunters from shooting them then they'll all come back. Every duck seen within our borders almost certainly was born and raised here too. Instead of wanting to have an additional season to hunt an overabundant duck that migrates heavily through our state we opted not to because we didn't want to disturb our local ducks. They're ours guys! Those ducks are our special ones! They act differently than all other migratory ducks in the world, that means they're extra special and we gotta take extra special care of them!! They are our local ducks yippee! Isn't it more fun to take care of our local ducks and not disturb them than going duck hunting!? Yay it's so fun caring for our magical local ducks!


And there you have it. That's the history behind how the insane becomes the sane in a special duck loving place called Minnesota.

[Duckman23]

Just got back from SD and hunted for 3 days, finding birds wasn't a problem but birds didn't feed consistently. Lots of hunters and stale birds. We had 1 great day and 2 very slow days. Supposed to go back later this week. I sure am glad I still have a 2 week license for ND. With the forcast upcoming it shouldn't be a problem to hunt up there until the close of the season.

[Nershi]

Nice write up FF.

[tornadochaser]

FF that was a great read. I started duck hunting as a 10 year old, the last year of 30/3 I believe. When I i was 12, west central MN had a wet fall. There was a fair amount of tile and plenty of ditches, but we had flooded corn field after flooded cornfield to hunt out of for most of the season. We flat hammered on the mallards & other dabblers. The next spring those areas were farmed around, and the following fall, we had classic shallow water sloughs dotting grain fields all over the county. Again, great hunting all season long. None of those spots that we hunted will EVER hold water like that again. They have all been pattern tiled. One of the first places I ever killed ducks just got pattern tiled after harvest this fall. Before the tile, this was a common sight every fall. Now it's gone.

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[Nershi]

It looks like the mallards are going to finally get pushed out of Canada later this week. If I had my way I'd be heading to the Dakotas on Wednesday but I don't think I could pull it off with work.

Hopefully it gets cold enough around home to concentrate my favorite green heads, the Golden Eyes, before the season closes. Should be a good finale for the season!