re: Duck migration makes no sense at all...

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I do think La got complacent, and waterfowl hunting has always been big here and in the deep south in general. With the longest stretch of 60/6 seasons, the states further North saw the $$$ it could bring in and here we are.

There's videos of Tony Vandemore in the early 2000's I believe talking about their strategy of getting birds to stop in Missouri, and if they stop they can/will hold them all season.

Another issue that is discussed a lot is all of the refuges that are are planted/flooded/not allowed to be hunted up and down the flyway, and you have birds that sit there and don't move b/c they don't have to. So you have could have thousands of birds in your area that you never see and the hunting sucks. Which also plays into birds going nocturnal when the hunting pressure starts.

Each year more and more birds imprint on these areas. Look at the clubs that bait for banding projects after the season, those are the clubs that shoot a lot of bands b/c a lot of those same birds come back the following years.

All of these things are discussed every year and I don't think anything will change until we have restricted seasons where it won't be feasible for all of these clubs to dump money into a place for 30 days. Assuming we haven't already reached the point of no return.

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Yeah that's a good point. Classic Missouri I have always wondered how some of the places are always killing tons of bands. I personally think rotating the un-huntable refuge areas every other year or just set it up where they're changing each year in every area would mix it up. They definitely know where to sit and not have to do much in the day, down here at least.