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.