Outdoor Life Article

https://www.outdoorlife.com/story/hunting/hunting-ducks-too-much/

I hunt my farm two days a week. Anymore and seems like hunting declines quick. I hunt public land the other days of the week. I'm starting to think they need to rest public three days a week. At one time I didn't think you could hardly shoot them out.....but nowadays that's changed. With the sky busting fad the ducks are wild acting within a day or two of arriving.

I have a piece of Property we call the Tucker Tract. It has a small pond on it that for some reason or another ducks love. There are always at least a hundred ducks on it. We don't duck hunt and I'd may be a place they seek refuge. They are fascinating to watch as they feed.

We need weather or we won't have ducks to hunt in the south. As we've seen the past 5-6 years. We need ice, snow, the stuff we used to get every December and January and now only get in February. It doesn't matter how many days you spend a field when the ducks never leave the prairie pothole until Feb 1st.

Like I have said many times, season in the south needs to be pushed back 30 days but that will never happen. IMO.

I have a piece of Property we call the Tucker Tract. It has a small pond on it that for some reason or another ducks love. There are always at least a hundred ducks on it. We don't duck hunt and I'd may be a place they seek refuge. They are fascinating to watch as they feed.
If the pond you are talking about is a cattle farm and it has the green slime on the pond, that is why the ducks are there. They love that stuff. I have killed hundreds of ducks off ponds like this.

Damn, I just read the article. He makes a lot of sense, in some ways. I do agree that the media-TV, Youtube, Facebook have made the industry see increased hunters all for the pagentry of doing it. Many people have made millions last 10-20 years off this platform. Hell, I started watching Phil Robertson on a vhs tape. Willie just came along and capitalized on what Phil had going. My Son and I had a conversation last night about this very thing. I asked him how many millions of dollars was lost this year because there were not ducks in the east half of the US. I think a ton was but he disagreed. He said people still npught clothes, accessories, guns etc but boats sales suffered. He guided in OK for a month this year and has a pretty good pulse on market.

We used to hop from farm ponds, swamps, rivers etc to try an not shoot out a place. Does not matter now if the ducks never get here. It is real depressing to not be able to go and enjoy a hunt and actually see birds and kill a few.

We used to have a decent amount of ducks on our farm pond. Now we just see a couple hooded mergansers and woodies once a blue moon. And when my dad was a kid he would see tons of mallards land in the cornfields on the same property. Those days are long gone, never to be seen again. Its the same way with the fisheries I fish everywhere. There are more and more hunters and fishermen every year. And social media is fuel for the fire in so many ways. And regulations do not reflect what is happening. The trend is not good.

I couldn't agree more.

I also agree with the general premise of the article. Control hunting pressure and you have more birds and thus better hunts (although fewer hunts).

I contend that hunting pressure keeps them north. In WI the season ends first full week of November. If there is food and open water why go south? Go south and get a shot up. Fly back north your ok. Head south again and get shot up

Doesn’t take long to condition the birds into staying put.

Look at the beat down they take in Arkansas. Some head further south others head West.
Oklahoma and Kansas is a NEW hot spot for ducks. Imagine that. Banding recoveries have proved this to be the latest trends.

Weather is colder the further west you go. I see more snow and ice in Oklahoma and Kansas than I see in Arkansas.

Another trend I looked at last night was Wheelers Refuge numbers. The trend is very similar over the last 25 years. There is 66000 ducks counted on wheeler’s last count.

Guys at Swan say when the boats head in the ducks go sit at Wheeler. Pressure put them there.
Guys chase ducks all over pickwick. They used to rest in the middle. No more as run and gun duck shooting seems to be gaining in popularity. Layout boats are positioned then the tender boat runs ducks up.

They get zero rest.

The same applies to big game too
QDMA on one of their properties did something similar. They called it pulse hunting. No one was allowed on the property to scout or anything. Absolutely zero outside pressure. Open it for a week or 10 days and more mature bucks were taken. The upper Midwestern states kill more during their week long firearms season than we do here in our 3 month firearms season.


I don’t know the answer and won’t pretend to. We duck hunters would not have the equipment we have today without the money brought on by the popularity. It’s a double edge sword.

I’m guessing it to be a cycle like most things in life.

That article is a good read. I’ve been preaching for 5 years about pressure and cutting back on the season days to 40 with good splits and to it nationwide. Something has to be done it’s not all weather related

Your theory holds some validity, except that Arkansas is selling fewer duck hunting licenses and Oklahoma and Kansas are selling more.

Also, I'm not worried about ice in Arkansas (don't get me wrong, that certainly helps) but the weather north. When my buddies in the dakotas and MN aren't able to ice fish the first week of Jan because there is no ice, guess where the ducks are? Yeah, they are there cause its warm and they are north of the pressure, seasons closed out 6 weeks ago. Guess what happens when they get snow and ice? We smash mallards for days.

I can predict based on cold temps and when the thaw starts we are going to start killing them. I've seen it happen so many times, I know the pattern. That hasn't happened for years.

Last good Jan we had 23 ice days. Piles that would make the youtubers jealous. Haven't seen ice since. And this was many years ago.

That’s why I’m discussing this. Kinda wanna see where I end up with what think maybe be happening.

I have friends in Green Bay that we stay in contact with and as you mention things have changed. At the same time there is a lot of debate just how many duck hunters there are. Absolutely no doubt Alabama has increased 100 fold. The weekly duck hunter pilgrimage headed west to MS, AR and Western TN has increased significantly. When I can count 20 plus vehicles on Thursday and then Friday headed west in a 25 mile commute. That’s a lot of folks.

This year is the first time I believe since the late 90s that I didn’t buy an AR license. We were killing ducks at my buddies lease as late as 2016-17. Lost his lease cause we were killing and someone wanted the place way more. Lots of leases went that way.

Go back to the early 90s and you may recall no one really shot ducks in the upper
Midwest. They shot geese. The Canada goose was king and ducks were a nuisance to some degree. Goose hunting crapped out due to over hunting and other factors but commercial hunting really did it’s number. We have been there for some time I feel with ducks.

It’s pressure in my opinion. The duck shift west started several years back. To me it correlated with the rapid rise in AR hunters.

No doubt if everything locked up to the north ducks have to come down. 2001 was incredible. I’ve never seen anything before or since.

To me the irony is when I started in the mid 80s. The old timers saying there isn’t any ducks so they quit. Now I’m saying it. The difference however. There is way more duck hunters now and the last week of the season the skies are void of ducks at sunset.

I’ll add one more thing. I’ve never hunted past 10 even in AR. We were usually done by 7:30 and no later than 8 if need be. But with it without our limit we left. Nowadays it’s all out day long duck hunting.

More efficient farming machines/practices, Earlier maturing rice and beans, the 0 grade field. On and on in the ag world. Results in less grain left in the fields, what's left re sprouts typically, and fields are worked for next year right after harvest.

Relentless pressure

Weather not cooperating

Rest areas / flooded corn / banking ducks / white oak style operations

Spinning wing decoys slaughtering yearling ducks up north

More traveling hunters

Better hunter technology (guns/ammo/clothing/etc)

Boats / mud boats and machines that go anywhere

Skybusting and general bad practices conditioning ducks

It's a lot of different things hurting Arkansas

I was looking for Canada goose hunting and found this

https://www.ducks.org/hunting/duck-hunting-stories/how-good-were-the-good-old-days

I hunt public as well and I wish more hunters understood this. Fort Bragg is closed to hunting on Monday’s and Tuesday, unless specified for federal holidays. I get it, those are the only days some hunters have off and that sucks... I’ve been there. However, the woods need time to reset.

I live in what used to be the duck hunting Meca of the country. It’s was unbelievable the ducks that would winter in this area. I killed more ducks in my back yard then some people would kill in blinds in other places. People used to farm for ducks as ducks used to be food not a sport. The young farmers now can’t or don’t do that. It’s all about the dollar now. Also rice was worth lots of money back then and you could leave some in the field and still make a dang good living. Now it takes every grain you can get. Also the families hunted the farms and shared the hunts with friends. Now every field has a blind in it and the blind is leased out to these city people who will pay $40-50k for that blind. The blinds that aren’t lease by rich city people are leased by these “Outfitters” that are cashing in on the Duck Dynasty craze. You can’t blame the farmers and landowners,it helps with the cash flow. Also now every pothole or little area of open water in the marshes is leased out.
Another BIG problem here is dang near every rice field is a crawfish pond. These ponds are flooded as deep as possible and farmers scare every bird that lands in them away because they don’t want the birds eating the food planted for the crawfish.
It all comes down to there is no food for the ducks and no place for them to rest. Without those 2 most important factors duck hunting will continue to go the way of the American Bison. Weather can’t fix this problem. The migration patterns have changed and will never get back to what is used to be. It’s a sad situation that I hate seeing because I was a duck hunter and really loved it. I haven’t bought a duck stamp in probably 10yrs. I’m not wasting my time to go out there and watch the grass move and not see a duck. Like I tell everyone, I’d rather drive 6 hours to the deer camp then 6 minutes to a duck blind now. I hope I’m wrong about it not ever getting good again but it keeps getting worse every season.
One last thing, in the past every flooded field would be covered from edge to edge with ducks this time of year. You might see a few hundred ducks if you take a long afternoon drive looking at all the fields around here. Ducks are part of history now.

I've been hearing that about crawfish farming. Messing up the ducks south of us...... couldnt imagine that would be widespread enough to really matter but it's possible.

Larry spoke about that on the Express Boats series. It makes sense and made me wonder if that may be another reason birds went west.

The one glaring comment the Larry guy said

He mentioned doing a poll that if they had evidence that a high daily limit would be bad for duck populations that the duck hunters still voted for a high duck limit

That is a bi telling

He kinda was against a limit reduction as he mentioned biologically a dead duck is a dead duck. As long as the overall numbers are the same then it changes nothing. What has happened is the average per person has declined.

I've had some horrible deer seasons. And there are areas of the state of Alabama where the deer population is crazy low. You can hunt all year and only see a few deer. I've never heard many people complain about that (besides me ). But with duck hunting, if you don't limit out every day, all folks do is complain.

I guess what I'm saying is lower your standards. Go out, kill a few ducks, call it a day. Life goes on. If you expect to have a 140 in the field every hunt, or have a barrel burner every hunt, you're going to always be disappointed.

I heard all this same stuff 40 years ago listening to my father and his friends, who heard this same thing from the older men they grew up hunting with.

None of this is new. All the thoughts and comments are the same ... "skybusting is so bad now!" ... "we need to limit things" ... "they need rest days" ... "ducks aren't wild anymore and don't fly" ... "all these darn kids out here" ... "someone needs to do something!"

Y'all really want someone to do something? You want The Government to put more limits on you? I'd rather have someone like Genzel writing this in OL that sparks some debate and MAYBE it causes some hunters to have some common sense to do the right things, instead of having The Government putting yet more restrictions, limits and regulations on us.

We're already regulated enough. You don't have to hunt every f'king day of the season. You won't be when they start closing public lands because some of you asked for that, and then you'll be pissin' and moanin' about The Government taking away your freedoms and rights. Even though you asked for it. Use some common sense without having to be hit over the head by The Man's regulation book.

Just like with the requests for more deer hunting regulations and checks and tags and limits, y'all going to keep on until chit's taken away from you.

Good reading It about #’s I’ve hunted ducks for 40+ years I’ve seen the system go from a duck point system to a duck killing numbers. ( a duck xxx is worth x point 100 points go home. Now kill 2xx ducks 3 xx duck only one hen) The clubs I’ve seen are about numbers. If a club or person can’t get a limit it’s a bad weekend they need a 6 man limit to tell there buddies. Posting and showing pics is what it’s about. Go to the local cafe pub we killed so far 423. Theses clubs can tell you the exact #. Was the point system a good thing I don’t know? Is killing to post pics a good thing ...I don’t know.

What I have to add is I heard all the same things back when I was a kid as well. And they were true then and they are true now. Waterfowl Hunters poured millions and millions maybe billions into habitat work I don't know how you would get that actual figure but it's a TON of money. And the ducks came back in a big time way. By the early 1990's they would come into even places in North Alabama thick. I have a blind in West Tennessee but I hunted the TN River a lot I grew up within 45 minutes of it from front door to boat in the water. In the 1990's you could pull up out at Swine Creek at Beulah Bay where you could look out on the river... Take some binoculars and look out at the river channel and see the birds out there rolling along the channel like blackbirds in a grain field. We would shoot flocks of pintails over at the Mallard Fox Creek that had 100 in them. I am not lying.

I can remember hunting in the Stumps out in front of the West Dike road in a T-shirt and sun glasses. Like a September dove shoot but in December.

Tell me what you see out there today....

It isn't the weather, guys. You do realize they have zones up North and hunt ducks in some parts of those States for months and months. It isn't just open everywhere all the time. It's open over here for a while and then it closes and over there in the next county for a while and.... next thing you know you've been shooting ducks about like we shoot deer here in Alabama. For months on end.

It is all the habitat we have built up North a duck doesn't have to migrate anymore. Second it is the fact that ducks imprint on areas (that's real) and we have killed the chit out of them in the MS Flyway that actually fly South and don't stay on the edge of the ice..

For what it is worth I have never believed the Wheeler Refuge counts reflect the actual situation in that area. I think the refuge itself is capable of holding about the average number of ducks they report each year but what they fail to take into account is all the ducks on the river and surrounding areas. It has always seemed to me that the duck hunting in N. Alabama was always at it's best when the refuge was essentially "full". They gonna count about the same number every year because that's about what they can hold. And thank God we have that. Because all the other river systems in the State owned by AL Power don't have WMAs on them all they care about is selling a lake lot. And that puts more duck dynasty hunters in less area.

What pisses me off is people raising money for DU and DW for them to spend it all up north on habitat improvement, then people wonder why they won't come south.

I've never seen them putting out wood duck boxes or improving habitat here in Alabama. They may well do it, but I haven't seen it. It'd be nice if we could have a bigger local population of ducks.

The above is one reason I quit my membership years ago. They treated Alabama like we did not exist with state monies raised going out west to the prairie pothole regions.

I was on Etowah Co. committee for 2 years back before the decline of the banquets. First year I was in we raised over $30K and that had never happened before. We used unconventional tactics like "you sell this many corporate adds, you get a xxx shotgun". Big prize was a SBE, DU Alabama man Doug Lasher found out about this and threw a chit fit. He said you cannot represent DU in this fashion all monies raised goes to corporate and you cannot go outside banquet packages bla bla hipocrite he was. Well, night of the banquet he was there hanging out at the front door constantly asking what the intake was. Money got redirected by someone to take care of the shotguns owed to members who sold the adds. Someone in our group pimped to him the following week and all hell broke loose but president of chapter had already paid for the guns. Doug tried to somehow figure a way to get them in trouble but finally gave up. If I remember right, I was told at one time Alabama DU Chairman's salary is based off banquet success.

It’s not just DU or DW in pursuit of that all mighty duck dollar.

We got a 6/60 season because of the monetary desires to have one. It was pushed by big government and big corporations. Look at ALL the companies making a lot of bank off of ducks. Same thing happened under market hunting but from a totally different perspective.

Back in the early 90s it was guesstimated that 8 million dollars per day by duck hunters was contributed to the economy of Arkansas. Can only imagine what it is today. The growth in duck hunting came along with longer seasons and larger bag limits. Heck look at Mack’s Prairie Wings store. I used to go to hen it was a hole in the wall. Haven’t even seen the the new store.


I think there is enough blame to go around. DU and DW have went the way of every similar organization prior and will as well in the future. It’s just how it is.

You're right about the 6/60 and money. If they tried to go 3/30 or 1 a day like years ago, the outcry would be insane even if the biology was there.

Not unusual, of course, since we've seen biology overriden by politics, money and influence in countless other ways.

Like the comment I made the other day to my Son and on this board, how much money was lost this year in revenue up and down the Mississippi Flyway because of the crappy duck season? Not only on retail merchandise but guides, outfitters, quick shops, hotels, oil change places and I could go on and on.

There is no easy choice and money always wins.

I was apart of the QDMA craze. As usual it’s always about greed. Individual greed and I’ll be the first to admit to it. Just like my greed to have a few decent hunts per year is all I hope for now. Honestly I debated for over a year about getting another duck dog. I was leaning towards a bird dog so I’d get some exercise. Still may but this yellow lab is gonna have to have something to do too.

I’ve reached the point where I’m just as content walking my rescue Boston and cooking stuff. I’m understanding that get off my lawn guy more and more.

I've been saying something along those lines for years. Guiding is becoming modern day market hunting. Difference is who is pulling the trigger. One market hunter used to be the cause of death for 50-100 ducks a day on a good day. Well now(ok not this year but in year's past) one guide is the cause of death for 50-100 ducks on a good day, but he's only the trigger man on 6 of those. If i was a guide and had my life and money invested in guiding, i'm sure I'd feel differently, but i wonder if one day we'll look back on today's guides like we look back on yesterday's market hunters. Enforcement of "no guiding" would be a nightmare though, just like it is on public wmas in some states. It still happens, even though it's illegal.