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Originally Posted By: Stan
Originally Posted By: ClapperZapper
. I'm surprised more people here don't read the waterfowling magazines.


I guess we are fortunate that we have you to keep us enlightened.

SRH


I thought the same thing myself. But Grey Man doesn't seem willing to enlighten us about what his waterfowling magazines say about the populations of Mallards in the Atlantic flyway. Get your own damn magazine.

Originally Posted By: ClapperZapper
The Pacific flyway has it's own set of problems. The water issues on the west coast are very complicated.
But essentially, no water, no waterfowl.


This thread wasn't about conditions on the Pacific flyway. If it was, it might be understandable if biologists and game managers were seeking a harvest or season reduction there. According to the National Weather Service Hydrology and Precipitation maps I looked at, the west coast has been dryer than normal in 2018 while most of the east coast and mid-Atlantic region has been wetter than normal. Much of it has been much wetter than normal. Maybe the ducks got too wet!

https://water.weather.gov/precip/

Scroll down to Year to Date under Time Range in "Timeframe", and Departure from Normal or Percent of Normal in "Product".

What's really surprising to me isn't Grey Man's condescension... I'd be more surprised if he wasn't condescending. Actually, I'm more surprised that BrentD hasn't given us his scholarly and unassailable reasoning for the proposed bag limit reduction. Believe it or not, BrentD knows even more than the Grey Man. Probably some complex mix of anthropogenic climate change, a coyote/coopers hawk partnership, over-harvesting by King Brown, and the use of lead ammunition by eastern deer hunters that we mere mortals would never understand.


A true sign of mental illness is any gun owner who would vote for an Anti-Gunner like Joe Biden.

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Originally Posted By: Stan
Don't confuse him with the facts, craig.

SRH


My first mother in law was easily confused by facts before her death. My second mother in law just ignores facts all together like a few here do.

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There would be no public waterfowling if it wasn't for the determination of a relatively few grey men.

Here's a nicely prepared set of FAQ's from the State of Virginia.
https://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/Atlantic-Flyway-Mallard-Bag-Limit-Reduction-FAQ.pdf

Reader's will see relatively bleak inferences toward the end. Anytime a biologist starts talking about being below sustainability levels, it's not just bad news, it's tragic news.


Out there doing it best I can.
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Originally Posted By: ClapperZapper
....Reader's will see relatively bleak inferences toward the end. Anytime a biologist starts talking about being below sustainability levels, it's not just bad news, it's tragic news.

When 'biologists' assess blame by penalizing one group, wouldn't it make sense to connect the dots that lead to waterfowl hunters rather than infer anything? Sportsmen have always been the true conservationists through the support of their time and money as well as by their actions.

Do we really need fellow readers trolling for emotions by inferring that the sky is falling? Just kidding, if half is good, a complete ban has to be better, right?

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Good point craigd. If we are truly below sustainability levels, then we could be one dryer than normal spring away from disaster. Killing even one puts the declining population in jeopardy. In that event, a total closure of harvesting mallards would be justified... if the data was real.

sus·tain·a·bil·i·ty-- the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level

This part of Grey Man's link from virginia.gov jumped out at me:

A long-term decline means that either survival or production (or both) is too low to maintain the population size. However, banding data indicate that eastern mallard survival rates are not measurably different now than they were in the 1990s, when the population was stable. Production estimates obtained from the USFWS Parts Collection Survey have not decreased from that time either. Yet the population decline is evident. This indicates there is a problem
with either one or both critical data streams.


Seriously??? So production rates have not decreased from the 1990's, and neither have survival rates. Hunter numbers have continued to fall, and mallard harvest has decreased by about 40% in that time period. Yet bag limits need to be reduced by 50%??? This is getting interesting, even though I'm not a duck hunter. All I know about it is what I've read here, and the numbers of mallards I see in my little corner of the world. I don't need any biologists to tell me that grouse populations have declined, and that ringneck pheasants should probably be on the endangered species list in my state. I see it myself when I am hunting them or taking my guns for a walk. Those of you who spend a lot of time hunting ducks hopefully will tell us if mallards are really getting scarce, or if there is something else going on here. At this point, it would be easy to blame a decline on wounding from steel shot, and toxicity from tungsten or bismuth, and to call for bans on those too.

I wouldn't be so skeptical and cynical about Fake News if there wasn't so much Fake News.

Some of those "relatively few Grey Men" who saved public waterfowl hunting for the unwashed masses ought to be able to fill in the blanks.



A true sign of mental illness is any gun owner who would vote for an Anti-Gunner like Joe Biden.

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I belong to a duck Club next to the Montezuma Refuge in the finger lakes region of western NY. We have kept detailed hunting records since 1986. Mallards have traditionally made up just under 50% of our bag. In the last 12 years our success rate has dropped from 2.6 ducks per hunt to 1.5 ducks per hunt. All of the reduction in success is due the fewer mallards taken every year in light of stable regularization. The mallard count in the Atlantic fly has dropped from 800,000 to a little over 400,000. From my observations and hunting records mallard numbers are way down. In our area other factors many have caused some of the decline. The Montezuma Refuge has expanded by 3500 acres in the last decade which allows more safe/ non hunting areas for the birds. Mallards seem to be arriving later and later which means our marsh could be frozen during peak mallard migration.

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I have confidence that biologists are reporting what we're seeing although they sometimes lag in accommodating populations with regulations.

Hunters hereabouts are way down in numbers. I don't know where pressure fits in the sustainability debate. But hunting without a dog is a sin.

Just roaming around the tules the last two days, my Lab picked up six mallard cripples shot earlier in the morning.

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Watching with interest.
The North American waterfowl situation and issues are probably very different from ours.
The pursuit of them here is now highly emotive and political. Here, there are people who have made it their life's mission to close down duck hunting, and the increasing urbanisation of the population and disappearance of habitat under drainage and development is putting ever-increasing pressure on hunting. Beware.

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Originally Posted By: King Brown


Just roaming around the tules the last two days, my Lab picked up six mallard cripples shot earlier in the morning.


So what can we infer from this observation???....

Perhaps the biologists have trouble counting mallards hidden in the bullrushes.

And perhaps the use of ballistically inferior steel and non-tox shot is causing even more crippling losses than previously thought.

I was hoping for more real world observations about mallard populations in the Atlantic flyway, from the guys who actually hunt them. I find it somewhat strange that we often hear from plenty of hunters who lament the low numbers of grouse or quail in recent years, but I don't recall hearing the same concerning mallards in the Atlantic flyway. And wasn't it strange that Grey Man provided us with a vague pdf from the state of Virginia when he has all of those great waterfowl magazines to tell us what's going on with the ducks? Vague pdf is actually an understatement because it didn't even begin to answer why the mallard populations are supposedly at levels below sustainability in a wetter than average year. It would be easy to not care about it, but I just don't think that all biologists and all wildlife managers are doing right by the sportsmen who fund most of their activities.


A true sign of mental illness is any gun owner who would vote for an Anti-Gunner like Joe Biden.

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All the baby ducklings
laying in the grass
all their little heads bit off
cos no one eats the arse.
O.M

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