LITTLE ROCK — Duck hunters received good news and bad news from the Prairie Pothole Region this month.
Mike Checkett, communications specialist for Ducks Unlimited, said the North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s annual spring breeding duck survey shows an index of 4.8 million birds. That’s an increase of 16 percent from 2011 and 112 percent above the long-term average in 1948-2011.
The 2012 index is the third-highest on record. Mallards, gadwall, blue-winged teal, shovelers, redheads and ruddy ducks exceed the long term average by more than 100 percent.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is nesting cover in North Dakota is declining. Biologists conducting the survey noted many large tracts of grassland and properties formerly protected in the Conservation Reserve Program were converted to cropland since last year. North Dakota currently has about 2.3 million acres of CRP land, which is 30 percent less than 2007.
Ducks Unlimited predicts more than 650,000 acres will be lost in 2012, and an additional 1.1 million acres will be lost in 2013-2014.
The full 2012 North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s waterfowl breeding survey is available online at www.ducks. org/hunting/migration/northdakota-2012-spring-breedingduck-survey.
MORE DUCKS LATER
Delta Waterfowl recently finished a study showing that hunters are killing more waterfowl significantly later in the year than they have in previous decades.
The Delta Duck Migration Study, commissioned by the Bipartisan Policy Center, was written by science director Frank Rohwer, LSU graduate assistant Bruce Davis, and John Devney, Delta Waterfowl’s senior director of U.S. policy.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has collected comprehensive harvest data from hunters since 1961.
Rohwer said that since 1961, on average, mallard harvest is 10 days later in Arkansas, 15 days later in California, 16 days later in Illinois and 12 days later in Virginia.
The study found that most migrant duck species, including gadwall, ring-necked, pintails and green-winged teal, have significantly later harvest dates. Blue-winged/ cinnamon teal and mottled ducks were the only species exceptions.
“Hunters have suspected this was happening, and forthe first time we’ve seen the data that confirms this on a big scale,” Rohwer said. “As usual, hunters seem to know more than we give them credit for.”
Comprehensive fall migration studies do not exist, so it is impossible to tell whether mallards are actually migrating later, Rohwer said. Hunters might be killing ducks later because duck hunting seasons extend later than they did in the 1960s.
Duck hunters debate whether changes in northern agriculture that provide additional food might hold ducks longer in northern states.
Rohwer said if food drives migration and harvest dates, then other ducks that never feed in fields should migrate and be harvested at the same time as in prior decades. That isn’t happening. The idea that northern agriculture is holding ducks back is “unlikely,” the report concludes.
According to the survey, harvest data can neither prove nor disprove any connection between migration and climate change.
“Hunters, the outdoor industry and resource managers are not passive observers,” Rohwer said. “They are expecting an answer to the deceptively simple question: Are ducks migrating later?” FLIGHT PATHS
Clay Smith of Little Rock and Derrick Wilson of Sheridan attended a recent publicmeeting in Little Rock to discuss waterfowl regulations for the 2012-2013 season in hopes of stimulating a discussion to reinstate the ban on spinning wing decoys.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission lifted the ban in 2007 and does not plan to restore it.
Smith and Wilson said they believe spinning wing decoys have diminished the hunting experience at Bayou Meto WMA by altering duck flight patterns over the area. The devices have caused duck flight patterns to become erratic, making it virtually impossible to work ducks in a traditional manner. Wilson said he’s come to this conclusion over years of observations while hunting.
I’ve hunted Bayou Meto since the early 1970s and have noticed the same thing. However, it might be equally attributable to larger numbers and more closely packed concentrations of hunters. Ducks tend to get skittish and erratic when they draw volleys of gunfire every time they drop to treetop level. They get conditioned quickly to stay high and look for gaps in sonic and visual activity.
I’ve noticed that ducks tend to fall into “dead” areas that they see from high altitude. I kill more ducks while standing against a tree and doing nothing than I do by calling.
Of course, that could also mean I don’t call very well.
Sports, Pages 24 on 06/21/2012