Duck food is in abundance this year, meaning coastal hunters will have to do more scouting to determine exactly where the birds are holding.
Will you kill as many ducks this year as you could?
Let me be the first to tell you that, no, you absolutely won’t.
A group of writers, including this one, had the privilege of touring the breeding grounds in Saskatchewan last month, and what we saw was eye-opening.
I’ve written about the prairie pothole region my entire career. I know it’s the “duck factory.” I know it’s in trouble. I know that a fair amount of American money gets spent there.
But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
First off, the view from the plane was staggering. The otherwise flat terrain is more pock-marked than the surface of the moon. In every direction, as far as the eye can see, are neatly planted crops that run in misshapen circles around literally dozens of small ponds per field.
To the uninitiated, this seems heartening. From the plane, it looks as though a nesting duck could choose the perfect pond for her like a billionaire perusing real-estate ads.
But not until the plane touches down and you begin to drive around do you see how incredibly crowded these potholes are. They’re absolutely loaded with ducks.
That’s certainly a good thing, but it’s clear that the more potholes you have, the more ducks you have. And that’s where the problems arise. The potholes are evaporating like the fragile marshes of Southeast Louisiana.
Farmers, understandably, hate the potholes. If a farmer has 25 acres of potholes on every 100 acres he owns, he’s making only 75 percent of the money he could be pocketing. Take a look at your paycheck, multiply it by .75, and see what that does to your budget.
So the farmers are doing all they can to convert the potholes into usable farmland, and they’re having success at it. In St. Gregor, Saskatchewan, a full 90 percent of wetlands have been converted to farmland.
That’s where Ducks Unlimited comes in.
If you’re one of those hunters who will tell anyone who’ll listen that DU is heating ponds in the Midwest and dumping grain in the Plains, just please stop it. You’re making a fool of yourself.
If your brother-in-law’s cousin’s friend has pictures of the giant heaters as well as the grain trucks pouring feed to obese mallards, tell him you also want to see the shots of the aliens and of Elvis pumping gas. He probably has those too.
The work DU is doing on the breeding grounds is astounding. Drive the countryside, and you’ll see DU signs everywhere, indicating DU projects that have preserved or constructed wetlands in the area.
I’ve been critical in the past of DU’s emphasis on the breeding grounds and relative neglect of the wintering grounds here in the Bayou State.
But the organization has gone a long way to right this wrong, even declaring our coast and delta to be priority 1 areas within the organization and pouring money into projects here. In fact, DU has now spent more money in Louisiana ($41.7 million) than in any other state in the Mississippi Flyway.
The breeding grounds of Canada and the Plains states share that priority 1 status, and they should. If the ducks don’t have suitable habitat in the breeding grounds, new ducks will never be born, and it won’t matter what condition the wintering grounds are in — at least from hunters’ perspectives.
DU has a number of tools at its disposal to fix the problems on the breeding grounds, one of which is to purchase wetlands that would otherwise be drained or degraded.
The good news is that this can be done relatively cheaply.
“A dollar goes a long way in Canada,” said Pat Kehoe, manager of the conservation programs on the prairies.
For example, the organization recently purchased 316 acres on the ultra-productive Missouri Coteau for $54 an acre. That little money wouldn’t get you a bucketful of wetlands here in the States.
Also, every dollar donated to DU is matched by North American Wetlands Conservation Act funds, and becomes $4-$6.
The bad news is that donations to DU from the U.S. are declining. In economic slowdowns, one of the first expenses businesses cut is charitable giving, and the ducks are paying a steep price for that.
Also, individuals who are having trouble keeping the lights on probably aren’t going to scrape together their pennies to send to a conservation organization.
Fortunately, every legally licensed Louisiana hunter contributes to Ducks Unlimited. State law mandates that 10 percent of every basic hunting license sold in the state be dedicated to preservation and development of the breeding grounds.
But even that’s been cut. In 2002, the commission decided to give one-third of those funds to Delta Waterfowl, and in 2008, the commission voted to up that to one-half of the funds.
This year, each organization got $166,000.
Aside from that, Louisiana residents and corporations contributed $2.8 million to DU last year, ranking the state as the fifth-most generous in the U.S. That’s a remarkable statistic considering the relatively small population of the state.
But there’s so much more to do. Membership in DU costs only $25 a year, and bronze sponsorships, the lifeblood of the organization, are only $250 a year.
Considering all we spend on decoys, guns, shells, boats, calls and leases, $25 to $250 annually is a tiny investment to ensure our skies look like those over the Canadian breeding grounds.
For more information, visit ducks.org.
