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

[1deadduck]

[sportsman450]

[sportsman450]

[GulfCoast]

[GulfCoast]

[Po Monkey Lounger]

[GordonGekko]

it's almost always a bad idea to jump in on page four of one of these things...but, nobody ever accused me of being sensible....

first off, in my opinion, the changes in Ag. practices are the most significant changes to the duck migration there is....period....there is now more food up north and less food down here...thats the bottom line.... maybe it will change maybe it won't, but aside from feeding your family rice 3 meals a day every day, and lobbying the federal government to encourage rice production there isn't much we can do about it.... but, if you look at the history of Stuttgart, AR for example, while there were historically a good number of ducks in the area, it really came into its own with the introduction of rice...now that rice production is lower, and there is fewer dropped grain, what do you think the ducks are gonna do, keep coming back forever?

the second most important factor is wintering habitat, the fact that there is now more habitat for the ducks when they get down here spreads out an already light migration, further more in the northern part of the flyway means less need to migrate....

even though there is more habitat, there is more pressure...all this does in my opinion is push birds to the low pressure spots while they are residing in an area....there is plenty of unhunted habitat for them to occupy, so what happens...high pressure areas on a local scale...hold fewer ducks....

as a result of all of these changes, southern duck hunters are now more weather dependant than they have possibly ever been. only when the weather system gets just right is there a big push of ducks, the last time I can remember would be the 99-00 season when the ice storm came through and pushed many of the northern ducks down here.... but, it has to get REAL bad to push ducks....

Season length changes will affect only one of those factors, pressure, but I don't know that it has enough of an impact to overcome the other changes.... I used to think they needed to shorten the seasons, and it probably would not hurt. But, the more I look all the factors the more i realize pressure is just a small piece of the migration puzzle, and it alone doesn't cause mass numbers of birds to move. However it will reduce the total number of ducks killed, and maybe that's what we need...I don't profess to know the answer....

on a final note, I think Po Monkey has a valid point, back in the days when the south was holding most of the ducks, there may have been a feeling that southern hunters were killing all of "their" ducks, and changes needed to be made. But, now that the shoe is on the other foot and the north is holding most of the ducks everything is fine.

oh, and did i mention spinners are the devil

[mottlet]

[tupe]

[GordonGekko]

[h2o_dog]

[sportsman450]

[sportsman450]

[Po Monkey Lounger]

[GulfCoast]