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.