DuckSouth.com

The reason that most want to cut the days as opposed to the limit is that "Days kill ducks." If you have a 3 duck 60 day season, that is a max of 180. If you have a 6 duck 30 day season, that is a max of 180 ducks. However, probably twice as many ducks would be killed overall in the 60/3 scenario, since more people hunt more days. That is why folks want to dial back the days. Cutting back the limit does not do near as much statistically. I would rather have more days in the field and less ducks, but that probably will not happen due to the statistical increase from "more days" in the duck kill numbers.

good point GC... i agree with that

I am not for 30/3. But I hunt a minimum of 4 days a week. Two in the Delta, and a couple mornings on the coast.

Although people cannot directly compare annual harvest numbers because of varying season lengths and bag limits, coupled with different methods of gathering data, most northern states harvest far more ducks now than a decade or two ago.

For example, during a 40-day season, North Dakota hunters bagged 77,600 ducks in 1961, said Paul Padding, chief of the USFWS Harvest Surveys Section. In a 50-day season in 1985, North Dakota hunters bagged 135,000 birds. In 2001, hunters in North Dakota bagged 694,700 birds during a 60-day season.

“We are certainly seeing more ducks being shot because of the longer seasons,” Checkett said. “With 10 more days on the front end, northern hunters can hunt a higher percentage of days so they shoot more birds.

North Dakota averaged about 365,000 birds a year in the 1970s. Now, they are shooting between 500,000 and 700,000.”

During those same years, Louisiana sportsmen bagged 211,000 birds in 1960-61, 1.717 million in 1984-85 and 1.710 million in 2001.

In 1985, Louisiana hunters bagged about 31 percent of the birds taken in the entire Mississippi Flyway and 300,000 more than the entire Central Flyway.

Recent North Dakota bags contained high percentages of gadwalls and green-winged teal, two ducks that comprise the bulk of birds harvested in Louisiana.

Only so many birds hatch in a given year, and that figure dropped by 25 percent over the last five years. Any bird short-stopped by steel in North Dakota or elsewhere simply cannot fly south. Starting with smaller numbers and taking more along the way equals fewer and smarter birds that arrive on the Gulf Coast.

Also in the late 1990s, spinning wing decoys hit the market. Initially, these devices that simulate birds landing in ponds led to increased harvests even in marginal habitat. They work especially well for fooling young birds or birds unaccustomed to shooting pressure, increasing harvest rates of juvenile birds, especially in northern states.

To read more go to this post: http://www.ducksouth.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=14601

I think everyone on this site needs to read this:

http://www.madduck.org/pdf/ignorance_envy_greed.pdf

[quote="GulfCoast"]I think everyone on this site needs to read this:

http://www.madduck.org/pdf/ignorance_envy_greed.pdf

This is an awesome article. Let's try a 30 day season and get rid of the "self-serving fractious behavior."

what does the article say, i can't pull it up...

[quote="bigwater"]what does the article say, i can't pull it up...[/quote]

For some reason clicking the link on my post does not work. Click the link on Gulfcoast's post.

do you have to have sometype of adobe reader program to read this article.. i can't pull it up by cliking on the link..

[quote="bigwater"]what does the article say, i can't pull it up...[/quote]

The word quote was behind the link causing it not to load. Either one should work now.

[quote="bigwater"]do you have to have sometype of adobe reader program to read this article.. i can't pull it up by cliking on the link..[/quote]

You need Adobe. For some reason I can not copy the article. I will keep trying.

it mus be my puter.. all i get is a bunch of jiber jaber formula lookin bullchit

[quote="bigwater"]it mus be my puter.. all i get is a bunch of jiber jaber formula lookin bullchit[/quote]

Go to http://www.madduck.org/commentary.htm and scroll down to the "Ignorance, Envy, And Greed" article dated July 18, 2003.

Let me know if this works.

[quote="bigwater"]it mus be my puter.. all i get is a bunch of jiber jaber formula lookin bullchit[/quote]

Here it is:

July 18, 2003 Mad Duck.org
The Alternative Voice
For Sportsmanship and
Waterfowl Conservation
IGNORANCE, ENVY AND GREED
By James H. Phillips

Anyone who spends time with duck hunters quickly realizes that ours is a contentious sport. We argue incessantly about all manner of things – predators, spinning-wing decoys, regulations, sanctuaries, the effect of hunting, biological data and waterfowl management, to name a few.
The passion we bring to our friendly and sometimes not-so-friendly debates says a lot about how we feel about ducks and duck-hunting. But our arguments change few minds. A consensus is rarely reached. We part company having shed more heat than light.
Why?
The answer, I suggest, lies not in facts surrounding the subject of debate, facts that may or may not be contradictory. Instead, it lies deeper and involves the old bugaboos of ignorance, envy and greed.
I recently listened to a hunter in the southern portion of the Mississippi Flyway complain that Pacific Flyway hunters are allowed a 100-plus day season and seven-duck-a-day bag limit while he is restricted to 60-days and 6-ducks. He demanded equal hunting opportunity.
I had no idea where this man had been hiding all these years, but I pointed out that the flyway concept had been in effect years before I first went afield in 1952, that it represented biological research from the 1920s and ‘30s showing each flyway for the most part hosted its own migrant flocks, and that flyway regulations were designed to preserve each flyway’s breeding stocks by balancing the kill with the fall flight, the kill being determined largely by numbers of hunters and season length. I related that the differences in flyway regulations in general reflect these inequalities.
Was he mollified? Of course not. He cited the Democratic ideal that all citizens in this nation are equal – and the regulations should reflect this. I pointed out the government had not targeted him for discriminatory treatment. He could move to Idaho and enjoy longer seasons and higher bag limits. This, too, fell on deaf ears.
That this individual was totally ignorant of waterfowling’s storied history is less important than his overweening envy. The fact that others might be able to hunt more days or kill more ducks rendered him deaf to rational thought.
Next Page
I marveled at his ignorance and envy. Both increased his desire to kill more ducks to the point that he was consumed by greed. He could not entertain the thought that a few ducks taken under difficult circumstances provide greater satisfaction than gross numbers. He was psychologically hard-wired to the tawdry bumper-sticker mentality that he who kills the most ducks wins, a pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.
This individual may represent an extreme example, but his underlying psychological motivations are more prevalent than many of us would care to admit. One acquaintance constantly berates ducks for increasingly sitting out the season within the protected confines of nearby wildlife refuges, leaving him to stare at empty skies.
“The damn ducks have all gone to the refuges,” he says.
“Are you blaming the ducks?” I ask. “Where would you go when the shooting started?”
“I’m not blaming the ducks,” he replies. “The refuges should be opened to hunting.”
“Where, then, would the ducks find refuge?” I ask.
This man is highly knowledgeable about ducks and a dedicated conservationist. But his first instinct is self-preservation – in this case preserving his opportunity to shoot ducks. He conveniently forgets that refuges are designed in part to preserve our breeding stock in order to preserve hunting.
I suspect his attitude is common to many waterfowl hunters.
In our effort to protect our individual hunting opportunities, we conveniently ignore biological data, forgetting that the role of science is to perpetuate sufficiently large fall-flights to preserve waterfowl hunting for decades to come. We forget our conservation heritage to protect and preserve our breeding stocks. We lose sight of the imperative that it is the challenge – and not the number of ducks hanging on the strap – that is the hallmark of sportsmanship.
Instead, we allow ourselves to be subtly manipulated by the most basic of malign emotions – envy and greed. We react to change – especially restrictive changes designed to rebuild our beleaguered flocks -- as if it threatens our very existence.
Isn’t it time each of us privately stepped back and examined our personal motivations? Wouldn’t this eliminate much of the psychological fog that clouds most debates. Don’t all of us need to make sacrifices to increase our flocks and preserve our sport, at the same time admitting the sacrifices will not fall equally on everyone?
It has been my observation that the waterfowling community grows more fractured with each passing season. Each of us may think we have the answer, but it will take all of us to reverse the steady decline in numbers of ducks that each autumn wing the length of the continent.

How much longer can we afford to continue our self-serving, fractious behavior?


If we take care of the ducks, the ducks will take care of us.

If the choice is 30 or 60 days I'll vote for 30 every time.
But I think 40 is probably the right mix.

h2o_dog wrote:If the choice is 30 or 60 days I'll vote for 30 every time.
But I think 40 is probably the right mix.

I'd like to know why you would pick 30 EVERY time if given the chance.