Rain needed to jump start duck season

Lack of rainfall is hurting Arkansas' duck hunt, according to the state Game and Fish Commission.

Many areas normally sitting with waist-high water are barely ankle deep with no hope of floating an aluminum duck hunting boat. Exceptionally dry conditions have stymied many early season efforts of duck hunters throughout Arkansas, but there's still plenty of season left, the commission said.

According to historical data, however, this "late" wet season is right on time. Natural flooding rarely took place during September and October and was much more prevalent during the holiday season and turn of the new year. Reservoirs and artificially flooded agricultural fields held water during the earliest part of duck season, but flooded hardwoods were more common during the latter half of the hunt.

"It just makes sense that September and October, two historically dry months, would not see flooding very often," said Luke Naylor, waterfowl program coordinator for the commission. "And that falls in line with the food sources that flooded hardwoods provide."

Naylor said hunters looking at the big picture can start to piece together how the whole system works in harmony. Flooded bottomland hardwoods provide acorns to ducks as well as invertebrates found in rotting submerged leaves. Invertebrates and plentiful seeds can be found in naturally occurring moist-soil plant communities along the edges of flooded hardwoods and fields as well.

The water begins flooding the system about the same time waterfowl typically begin making their way from northern states to Arkansas.

"A lot of the beneficial oak species in traditional bottomland hardwoods are red oaks, which often drop their acorns long after the white oaks that deer hunters look for have gone bare," Naylor said. "I've seen bottomland species holding acorns even into January. This is a big portion of the food the ducks are after in our flooded timber. Acorns provide energy that ducks need to build and maintain fat reserves during the harshest part of winter while completing key annual cycle events such as pair formation and maintenance, molt and building of reserves before migration."

Later and shallower flooding of bottomland hardwoods and greentree reservoirs actually can provide much better hunting once the ducks arrive. Most dabbling ducks cannot reach deeper than a foot to get to the acorns and insects sitting on the bottom. Any deeper, and those resources are not available to foraging ducks. A gradual flood or rising and falling water during the time when most mallards make it to Arkansas is more beneficial, as they provide fresher, more accessible food along the edge of slowly rising water.

Later, more random flood cycles also ensure the continued health of the forest and food sources for ducks.

"It really wasn't until people intentionally started flooding these hardwoods that you saw more reliably inundated areas to hunt early in the season," Naylor said. "But when you manipulate the natural system, you run the risk of changing things, which is what we're seeing in our greentree reservoirs."

Naylor said the consistent push for early and stagnated flooding that has made access to ducks easier for hunters has also had some unforeseen consequences, particularly in those red oak species that provide the food.

"Those oak species were not meant to have water on their root systems for such long stretches of time," Naylor said. "And they need to be dormant before they see flooded conditions."

Sports on 12/06/2016

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