We need a season change, We need everyone's help

[tupe]

[sportsman450]

[greenheadgrimreaper]

I am glad the season cannot change. It will weed out the guys who can't hang tough. Bitch all you want as long at your bitchin while your selling your duckin' stuff on ebay. I think the transition is about to take place. I know so many guys 10-15 years older than me that say "Yeah me and my buddies use to duck hunt just didn't love it enough." Alot of these guys nowadays will be sayin the same thing years from now. You can market duck hunting to the new guys all you want, but until they start killin ducks like the guys on the videos do they will weed themselves out. What's sad is some guys will actually try to take this to the lawmakers. When they get the big N-O maybe that will push em over the edge and they'll start droppin out. I personally don't think it has anything to do with weather. Skybusting and so many other bad habits of hunting are being done by guys who watch crap like Flyway Highway so the ducks either migrate very little or go refuge hoppin. Coupled with the fact that so many younger birds, who make up a large part of the migration, are killed far north of us. I'll be lookin forward to the days when these little gripers leave the sport for awhile and we won't have to hear constant complaining 24-7. I'm going to put my "If it Flies it Dies" sticker on now.

[Don Miller]

Sporty, 20 or 30 years ago there was not the habitat/water that we have today. Most every farmer in the delta has put in slat board risers and are
holding some ducks that would not have been there 20 plus years ago. You have this practice taking place from one end of the flyway to the other and it's gonna look like there are not many ducks. My belief is we have just as many ducks, they are just distributed different.

[h2o_dog]

I must not understand exactly what all was included in what Trent Lott did when we got back to hunting until the end of January. I've been hunting ducks in the Mississippi Delta since the late 60's. It is my understanding that closing the MS duck season at the end of January has been standard practice except for a period of years around the 80's and 90's (not exactly sure of the period when MS closed mid-January). I thought Trent Lott included verbage in a finance bill that insured MS could return to ending their season at the end of January (without regard for how many days the season included).

I used to be very vocal about my views that 6/60 was too much pressure on ducks. My concern then was that hunting pressure would seriously deplete duck populations long-term. I'm not nearly as opposed to 6/60 now, because I believe the expanded refuges have insured that hunters can't seriously impact duck populations.

But that is not to say that the combination of refuges and 6/60 hasn't seriously impacted the QUALITY of duck hunting in the MS Delta - in my observation, it most definitely has had a negative impact. But I don't hold Trent Lott responsible for expanded refuges and 6/60 (should I?).

All that being said, I'm not complaining about the current framework...I've accepted it and I'm going to enjoy it as best I can.

[sportsman450]

h2o -- I started in the 60s, and the season always closed on the Sunday closest to the 20th of January with the exception of 1 or 2 "trial" years. I don't remember which 2 years they were, but it seems like they were in the mid or late 70s. It wasn't until Lott held the country hostage that we got the later closing.

[h2o_dog]

[gator]

[sportsman450]

[gator]

[Duckdawg10]

[sportsman450]

[gator]

[sportsman450]

[bigduck]

Pair bonds between ducks happen throughout duck season...think of how many greenhead/suzy pairs you have come in the decoys on opening day...the main thing with the USFWS is that the majority of birds are paired by the end of January...I have done some research on this and I firmly believe that with the ratio of drake to hen mallards...any female not paired by february should not have a hard time finding a mate on its migration north...so in the biological aspect...Frebruary hunting has less of an arguement...the real arguement come with the USFWS and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act...if hunting continues into February it violates the act and the USFWS is scared to do so because they are afraid a violation of the act will give Mexico and Canada reason to pull out of it and set their own seasons not based on the act...that allows the two countries to set their limits as liberal as they would like or maybe even no limit at all...if that were to happen...the harvest numbers would dramatically increase and we could see a huge decline in population numbers...going back to the reason the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was created in the first place...to set guidelines for harvest in order to protect the population...