DuckSouth.com

This should make things a little more interesting this duck season. $1,000,000 worth of bands headed south this year. Check it out at http://www.megaduck.com Click on the Mega Ducks Challange icon on the top left side.

Forget it Don Miller, You know good and well dat duck will go straight to Dundee, Ms., and kill himself when he flies into Delta Ducks windshield.

Lucky sucker wont even hafta fire a shot to collect that quarter mill!

Rip Em !

hey don, this year would sure be a good year to kill my first banded duck huh. And just like they say on their site it gives me an excuse to go out every morning.

Your right iron grip. I have to get up at 2:00 am just to go hunting, and I will band or no band. However, it will sure help my feelings a little more this year knowing that I could get a prize bird.

I am going to tell ya'll right now if those ducks come any where near Don Miller his is going to get one of those bands.

There's a catch. You have to be a member of NWR to claim a prize. The membership costs $20, so you are buying a $20 dollar lottery ticket.

First let me state up front that I am employed by the NWR.

That being said, it is not a lottery. As with many prootions it is no purchase necessary if you look. I do however feel it is worth joining but I will not try to sell or spam here, "just the facts" as they say.

Micha, if you feel my post is outof line feel free to delete it. It is an od position being both a user of this forum and an employee of such a company and I do not mean to run afoul of yourpractices. I have known about this for over a year and have never mentioned it.
So if I am in the wrong I am sorry. But please, as with all things make sure of the facts.

M.B.

Is there a Mississippi boy from around Grace involved in this organazaiton?

hey don this could lead to pure pandemonium i mean people will be quick drawing and on and on. sure want be anymore genleman hunts where u take turns shooting. oh yea ducman 77 is right don miller can smell a baned bird as soon as he crosses the mason-dixon line. hey watch some numnuts kill this bird some corp. type who goes to stuguarrt with nothing goes into macs and comes out with the whole store

later bigwater

I based my opinion on this part of the FAQ:

Q: What happens if more than one hunter shoots a banded bird?
As long as everyone involved in harvesting of the banded bird is a member, everyone is entitled to an equal percentage of the $250,000. If any of the party responsible for shooting the bird is not a member, then everyone involved is disqualified. Since in such a case no one can prove who killed the bird, it would be impossible and unfair to offer the grand prize to any unregistered hunter.

After reading the official rules, it seems that the FAQ does not agree with the Official Rules. Reading this statement leads me to believe that I must be a "Member" of NWR to participate in the contest.

Here's another statement that seems to backup my observation:

Q: How long does my membership last?
NWR membership benefits, such as web access and news letters last year round but you must renew your membership each year before the opening day of the regular waterfowl season in order to be eligible to participate in the $1,000,000 MEGADUCK CHALLENGEâ„¢ and retain your unique member I.D. band number.


I would suggest that they clarify the language of the FAQ as to prevent the public from being confused. I'm sure that you can see where one might be mislead to think that the "Lottery" was only open to paying members of the NWR.

Micah

Micah,
I read that and also believed that you had to be a member to take part in the money.

I would be very interested to see the statistics on the number of mallard drakes banded each year vs. the number of banded drakes harvested in the same year that they are banded.

What means is used to determine the pool of elligible bands? Does it consist only of the drakes banded in the year of the contest?

For example, in 2001, 222,006 ducks were banded. Let's assume that 50% are mallards just for ease of calculation. Only 50% of the mallards are drakes ,so that gives us a figure of around 55,000. In 2001, 48,576 duck bands were recovered; if we assume 25% of those were drake mallards, that gives us around 12,125 recovered mallard drake bands.

I think that we have to assume that a number of the bands recovered are not that years bands, but we'll assume that 75% of the bands recovered are young birds banded that same year. This gives us around 9,000 recovered bands from the pool of 55,000, which is a recovery rate of 16.36%.

5,216,700 mallards were killed in 2001. I will assume that 75% of those were drake mallards due to the increase in selective harvest among hunters. That gives us around 3,913,000 mallard drakes harvested in 2001. Divide 12,125 recovered mallard drake bands by the total population of harvested mallard drakes,. Based on these numbers, the odds of a mallard drake being banded are 0.31%

4/55,000 gives us the percentage of winning bands based on the pool of possible

.00727% (probability of a banded mallard drake being a winner)
.31% (probability of mallard drake being banded)
________
.000022537% Chance that a mallard drake harvested will be a winner

For one winning bird to be recovered, a total of 4,437,147 mallard drakes will have to be harvested based on the calculations above. That's alot of ducks considering the harvest numbers for 2001: 5,216,700 mallards (hens and drakes).

My numbers and logic are probably not very accurate, but I think they do give a good picture of how the contest really works. I would love to see some solid calculations from some one that knows.

Please don't take my post the wrong way. I would like to satisfy my curiosity, and these were the questions that came to mind after reading the information on the web site.

Micah

Micah,
There you go with the math, but I have not know you to be wrong with numbers before.

I think i spent about $250,000 trying to shoot a Greenhead the last couple of years.

Micah wrote:There's a catch. You have to be a member of NWR to claim a prize. The membership costs $20, so you are buying a $20 dollar lottery ticket.

That's what I thought too but says to send an dindex card with name address etc “Million Dollar Megaduck Challenge” to: National Waterfowlers’ Registry, Ltd., P.O. Box 28, Jonesville, TX 75659.

I think this thing is bogus and I'll believe the Million Dollar Payout when I see it - SHOW ME THE MONEY! the sheer odds of killing 1 of 64 banded birds. If they pick a sequence of band numbers and assign prizes - why don't they go ahead and print the numbers outright for everyone to see right now?

Their mission is to "encourage new and experienced hunters to learn more about bird identification, selective “drakes only” shooting, responsible and ethical harvest, increase the number of banded waterfowl reported and additional motivation to adhere to the laws that govern the hunting of Migratory Game birds" which sounds GREAT - so why don't they partner to band those 64 birds with a special coded band (don't make the band color public) and include the banding/conservation effort in thE take? Like I said, I'll believe it when I see it.