mallardecho - 2/4/2010 10:29 AM
Richard,
Excellent post. Do you believe that the liberal season format that we have had for the last 10 years, 6 and 60, has had an impact on overall population numbers? I firmly believe that the spring and summer counts are incorrect and created to keep the liberal season format. There is entirely to much money to be lost by the gov't and private industry with a shortened season and bag limits.
It seems to me everything in nature is cyclic meaning populations rise and fall, birds seem to be on the more extreme side of the scale. I feel we are actually in a low swing in the overall duck numbers.
Along with my percieved lower duck population I also feel the migration habits are changing as well. Refuge's , no-till farming and a decade of lower than usual snowfall up north all have a effect on the migration of our beloved duck.
I personally would like to see the federal season framework actually work the way it was designed based on more accurate spring and summer pond counts.
Short answer, "No."
I don't think the liberal season has any impact. It is well documented that hunters kill roughly 15% of the overall duck population in any given year. That is well below the number it takes to maintain a healthy population with current habitat conditions.
I think the big issue is historic changes in localized migration patterns (emphasis on "localized"). When I started hunting Chickamauga in 1969, if we killed a single mallard it was considered a GREAT day!
Beginning in mid-to-late 70's, milfoil came on the scene in Chickamauga & Nickajack. Duck numbers climbed and climbed, especially gadwalls (that love milfoil). In the late 70's and early 80's, we killed hundreds and hundreds of gadwalls on Chickamauga and Nickajack. It was a slaughter. A few years we had the point system and gadwalls were 10-point ducks. We stacked 'em up like cord wood... and as East Tenn. waterfowlers, we got horribly spoiled in the process.
The milfoil die-off came. The Chickamauga ducks left with the milfoil Some milfoil remains on Nickajack, however a lakeshore housing boom began. There are now houses sitting on most of my old favored Nickajack duck hunting haunts. There is a wintertime bass fisherman sitting on most of the others.
Over time ducks quit wintering here... and young juvenile ducks learn from their parents. When their parents quit coming here, the youngsters don't even realize the Tennessee Valley even exists.
Combine that localized issue with the bigger picture of warm winters and it's a recipe for duck disaster. That's why I don't think significant numbers of ducks found us this year, in spite of good weather conditions. The younger birds have simply learned to migrate elsewhere.
I believe it will take multiple years of optimum conditions for them to find us again.
Footnote: All of the above is in regards to East Tenn. Comparing what happens here versus what happens in West Tenn. and Arkansas in regard to duck migration is comparing apples and oranges. We live in two completely different waterfowl worlds. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
