I looked up the place that guy was talking about yesterday, coon creek farms. Very impressive
If this is the place I think it is, my BIL grew up with the owner. They have an impressive operation and attract a lot of wild ducks. They also release a ton of mallards prior to the season and with all the food and water on their farm, those ducks usually stick around.
Apparently a small % of those released ducks get loose every year and interbreed and now there aren’t many truly wild mallards in the eastern US.
This is probably not a good thing. Pretty cool podcast I listened to talked about it. I’m a bit surprised just releasing ducks into the wild is legal, honestly.
The gamekeeper podcast had a good biologist on talking about the impact of farm ducks on the wild population. The data was quite eye opening
Several guys/clubs have been releasing thousands around here yearly They do it increase the local population for their place. I liked at doing it back in the 90s. At the time I didn’t see the harm but have been educated about n the farm mallards.
We used to have cripples, mostly broken wing ducks swim up to spring park in Tuscumbia. You could see divers and puddle ducks swimming around there. We had a speck hanging out until someone killed it with a pellet gun.
One of my duck hunting buddies is a diver and he mentions seeing local populations during the summer. I watched a flock of about 200 mallards work the drainage pond by NWSCC last summer.
