doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lowering limit on mallards in Atlantic Flyway

This is true and it will be the death of hunting for sure. It has already started that way.

But your first license, at $12 was a resident license, I'd wager and the value of those $12 in today's money is, hmmm, abit more than $12. In state licenses everywhere I have looked, have not kept even close to the cost of inflation. Meanwhile, the state agencies are being systematically defunded and forced to depend more and more on excise tax returns from the feds and license monies. Since in state licenses cannot be increased easily due to political liability, that leaves out of state tags to go sky high. If you think that's bad for birds, try big game out west.

(1) Mallards from interbreeding are taking over from blacks in my region.

(2 Ducks and geese are plentiful, and it's bad form to take a limit, which we can any day within 2km from home. Four of us called time today when we had six.

(3) When the guys I shoot with observe lowering population of any species, we don't shoot them regardless of what regulations allow.

(4) Waterfowling around here is not a rich man's activity, way less expensive than golf, curling and chasing women.

One fact is for sure: migratory bird numbers in N. America are at an all time high:

1. I hear say the birds aren't in the Atlantic flyway so harvests reduced. Why is that?
2. 50 bird limits per day on white geese in W. Canada
2. The birds didn't make it that far south this year (heard it from my hunter clients from the USA many times over. That is a factor of many things but climate mostly)
3. The migratory route shifts (that is my comment because even in Alberta it shifts up to 400 miles east to west depending on feed, water, snow/freeze up line.
4. Higher license costs have no impact on hunting except for the whiners
5. In my country it is bad form not to take a limit (King Brown not sure what world of ethics you live in)
6 Yesterday I had all the birds in Calgary drop in on me in 30 minutes. Two of us shot our limit in 15 minutes. Not rubbing it in but birds here are plentiful even when the local areas are frozen.
7. As King Brown said hunting in Canada is cheap to hunt. Lots of land, small populations, rural people who live simply and a law that incriminates paying for access. God bless those who saw it fit to install that law in Canada.

What is my point? Hearing too may whiners who don't know what resources they have that others don't. Alberta was THE place to go in the 1920's for upland birds and even into to 1970's Then the Gov't dramatically reduced the number of released pheasants and southern Alberta went to hell. Small town bars and motels shut down because they were dependant on the 'no vacancy' for hunting season. Interestingly the Govt of Alberta has decided that pheasants have an economic value and over the last few years have increased the release number and increased the seasons by 2 months in most regions. But farming practises have decimated the other wild bird populations to the point many areas are shut down to upland birds. (that comment is pertaining mostly to sharp tail and greater prairie chicken)

I hear Stan and others talking up the hunting on doves and quail. I would love to live in an area that had those populations and opportunity. We have doves here but no season. Quail non existent.

Bless what you have and pray for what you don't. But whiners have no place in my world.

I should have thought to do this upon starting this thread, but I went back into my trash bin and found the email. Here is the introduction to it.

"The Atlantic Flyway is in the process of developing a new harvest strategy for mallards. As many of you already know, the bag limit for mallards in the Flyway is being reduced from 4 to 2 starting in the 2019-20 hunting season. We will likely not be able to move away from a 2-bird bag limit until a new harvest strategy is developed. Biologists have already begun working on this important issue and as we craft a new strategy, the attitudes and desires of our constituency, you the hunter, are critical. Your desires for harvest and for how many birds you encounter on the landscape will be integral in how we set our seasons into the future for mallards, and more importantly, as we try to improve the hunting experience in our respective states.

Please take the time to give this survey your full attention. The results of this survey will assist us in developing a regulatory process that will provide the maximum amount of opportunity, while still insuring the long-term health of our treasured waterfowl resource."



Georgia - https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/4644908/AF-mall-GA


SRH

This is a croc. As Tamid says, it's just more whining. Rich man's game ........... pshaw! I regularly drive 1200 miles to Arkansas and back to hunt ducks for 4-5 days at the trip. I do the whole trip for between $400 and $500, licenses, fuel and shells. You could bump that up to about $750 if I used the going rate for mileage costs of $.535/mile. I don't count food because I'd be eating if I stayed home. And actually I could knock some off the mileage costs because I'd be putting miles on the truck if I stayed home, too.

In one sense any sport hunting is a rich man's game, compared to the income level of much of the world. But, I don't think that's how the comment was meant. Flying to England or Spain to shoot driven birds is a rich man's game. Going to Africa to hunt any of the Big Five is a rich man's game. Not that it's for everyone, but you can still shoot high volume doves in Cordoba for four full days for under $6K, if you plan and do it right, with a group. It costs more than that to plant one 30 acre field of sunflowers for doves here, and you might not get but one good shoot out of it.

This is all just complaining to be complaining, IMO. Those who want to hunt badly enough can find a way without taking out a mortgage to fund it.

SRH

I don't often agree with jOe, but in my opinion he's right on the money. Keith, I've worked extremely closely with Delta, particularly with Jim Fisher, on a couple of Delta initiatives that drastically affected the esthetics of my hunting property at Delta Marsh. And not in a good way. However, I don't regret it for a second as it was the right thing to do for the birds and the overall health of the marsh. We are already seeing the difference.

IMHO, Delta Waterfowl is so far ahead of DU (certainly in Canada) in being an effective and consistent voice for hunters. Science based and strong advocates for hunting and gun ownership. DU seems to have lost it's way in the last 20 years, pushing hunting to the back of the line.

Most duck hunters I know and have hunted with over the last 40 years are NOT rich men. They are passionate about the activity and make sacrifices in other areas to be able to engage in their love of waterfowl hunting. It is the overall, incessant regulatory burden and social admonishments that will be the end of hunting, not the cost.

Just an aside as per weather.

I'm not that far away from you here in Ontario. I'm just across the Lake from Rochester. We had an very dry spring and then NO rain from late June until about Aug 10. If you weren't watering your lawn, it was toast. A few little sloughs in the area dried up. A pair of nesting swans that come to one every year had to bugger off....I doubt any of the cygnets made it this year. No ducklings in them. The only waterfowl that seemed okay were the resident Canadas, marching their broods around town and stopping traffic as usual.

When I began duck hunting in the early '60s the duck limit was two. I've never taken two mallards in a day around here in my life. Duck stamps are $25 and I have a free old age GA license for everything else. Long as I can hobble down to the duck pond I'm still going to be after'em...Geo

Duck hunting pressure is much reduced from what it was in my youth. One short creek had over 20 blinds on it, now only has four. Six of the eight duck hunting clubs are gone, consolidated down into two. Another portion is owned by the State and over half has no duck hunting activity on a regular basis. People no longer want to rent it for duck hunting. A few hunters will sneak in with blinds built on boats and try to shoot a few ducks. But what was a marsh with several thousand ducks harvested in it is lucky if they take 500.

There is just not the interest in duck hunting by the younger generations. As a boy half my friends were active duck hunters and I bet that has dropped down to one if thirty or fifty. They are more into deer hunting and turkey hunting. Plus trapping the marsh for muskrats has drastically diminished. Where I use to be able to rent my marsh out for a small fee I now almost have to beg people to trap it. Muskrats do a fair bit of damage if their population gets out of control. So people just are not out on the marsh anymore.

Years ago, when duck populations were much lower, there was some talk about having a season or two with no hunting, so populations could recover. They studied it and concluded that hunting had almost not impact on duck population. Nesting habitat and nesting success were the critical factors. So while reducing bag limits might seem like the real answer, if you have bad nesting success, like they site for the last several years, then ducks and geese will struggle to recover.