re: Fascinating Duck Study on Pressure

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Woodsland

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They’ve drained the fishing club lake an looks like it will be hot this year with all the weeds and shallow water.

That’s not Elton’s stuff over there. That is Clay McConnell’s. Same guy that owns Pin Oak Mallards. I saw a ton of dirt work going on over the Summer. No clue what they were doing but he is tight with Justin Martin from Duck Commander and that dude knows his shite when it comes to making legit duck property. Also I guess you can do amazing things to swamp land in a drought.

So if you imprint one generation, then you start shooting the next generation, doesn’t it stand to reason that the third generation will no longer frequent the area that the first generation imprinted?

I saw a study that a university did on GPS collared mallards and disturbance.

the gist of the conclusion is that disturbing wild mallards, whether with a gunshot, clapping of hands, or just walking into the area and jumping them to the point of taking flight had no difference on their leaving the area and when they'd return: simply disturbing them via human disturbance would run them off for nearly the same amount of time.

I've spent countless days in a thousand acre buckbrush swamp in a pirogue with a camera in the days before and after mud motors. 20 years ago the birds could hole up back in the thickets and getting back there either took a paddle and small canoe/pirogue, or a mud motor. I would get in close with a ghillie suit and a homemade bow blind to mask movement, and essentially stalk the birds and observe and take pictures (sometimes I'd slip in the day after and hunt if I knew nobody had come through). after awhile they'd pay me no mind as long as I didn't bang on the boat or make sudden movements. oftentimes it'd take me an hour to paddle 25 yards.

when the birds would hear an outboard coming they'd stick their necks up and listen and sit still while waiting on the boat to pass 150 yards away in the creek channel. oftentimes if it got uncomfortably close they'd almost "melt" into the thickets, but they'd never get up and fly away. within 10 minutes of passing they'd be back in the open holes of the thickets doing duck things. rinse and repeat all day. no harm no foul as far as the mallards were concerned- they didn't have to take flight and flee.

as mud motors became more accessible to the hunting public and hunters were able to blast through the thickets with zero effort, I noticed a profound change in the way mallards behaved. as soon as the motor fired up at the ramp (for the really loud ones), the ducks acted like our deer do when they hear a Honda 4 wheeler: necks up, high alert, swimming furiously in the opposite direction of the motor before finally getting up and hauling arse out of the swamp. as time went on, their tolerance for waiting became less and less- most of the times they'd fly away before the mud motor operator could even see them do it. they'd blow through what was once a refuge area for ducks in the daytime, "to see what was there." they'd call it scouting. if they did manage to see birds get up, they'd inevitably come back to hunt it only to see birds go deeper and deeper into the swamp with no birds on the strap. eventually they'd chase them to the waterline disturbing them in a game of whack-a-mole, until the birds' tolerance was depleted and they left the swamp all together. to this day, the birds do not use that swamp like they used to. there is little food, and no rest, so what's the point? I can't blame them.

I'm not knocking mud motors, as I've owned several, and remembering the study above, if it were a constant barage of outboards blowing them up it'd be the same result. however, all that to say, a mallard duck is not stupid: that we duck hunters are the only ones that think going into the home of the animal we intend to hunt and kill before daylight with lights, motors and voices blaring, blowing them out, and then wondering why we didn't kill birds is sort of perplexing. no other wildlife would tolerate it, why a wild duck- the most hunted animal on this continent? the least amount of disturbance on your property, the better. go in with lights out, low voices, and stop throwing dekes 20 yards where when they hit the water it tells the whole marsh, "there's fake birds over there." Again, a wild mallard duck, which is, in my opinion, the most majestic, most mysterious animal on this planet, is not aloof to what's going on in their neighborhood- which happens to span thousands of miles.

I had a logical, pro-hunting waterfowl biologist tell me 10 years ago that, "if we'd stop managing waterfowl habitat for being deep enough for a boat prop and start managing it for being too shallow, then it'd turn the waterfowl hunting experience on its head, but it'd take more work."

but the industry ain't ready for that conversation yet.

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Where? I hear this a lot, but have never seen the

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Almost every refuge in the nation.

The practice of adding grain to water is frowned upon but artificially adding water to grain is encouraged. It keeps duck numbers inflated but makes hunting almost impossible for anyone without access to the artificial habitat. I know, I know, the answer is scouting and scouting and scouting but when public land is closed because the regulators don’t have the resources to manage it hunters lose out, pure and simple. Why soooooo many public land hunters support the practice of corralling more hunters in smaller areas so they can be managed is beyond me. I know of at least 30 areas of prime waterfowl habitat spread out across the country that is on public land that is closed to hunting because the regulators can’t monitor it properly. Most of the hunters in those areas recognize the problem but never get involved. Meanwhile the commercial operations in those areas stay vocal and involved to ensure the only viable hunting areas are on their places or on refuges closed to hunting or open only in some areas. Drive the loop road on a NWR anywhere and you’ll see this in action. The amount of suitable habitat on public land that is closed or so regulated that the hunting is marginal is disgusting….and every organization that is supposed to be about hunting is OK with it because the leaders hunt private land that enjoys massive numbers of birds at the expense of normal hunters. And they rely on normal hunters to perpetuate the problem

If public land didn’t have rest areas, private lands with minimal disturbance would probably just have more ducks on them. Pressure can turn the best duck habitat into a flight day only location pretty quick. I heard of a speck gps’d along the coast of Louisiana or Texas (can’t remember which one) flew all the way to some state like Iowa on opening morning and never came back south.

I generally agree with the video chene put out. The best duck hunting areas I know of have huge Rest Areas that get no-minimum disturbances. These areas hold large numbers and hunt birds swapping locations. The idea I think is basically trying to convince a few limits to commit out of a thousand-several thousand that are flying over head. It becomes a game of numbers. If you can only convince 1% of the birds then you better have 600 birds flying over head per hunter. It becomes a lot easier when you have a couple thousand birds flying over head.

I will have roughly 100-150 acres of standing rice next year that won’t be hunted or disturbed next year and a few blocks of timber that will also be used as rest areas.
I know of areas with up to 600 acres of flooded ag and then 1,000’s of acres that aren’t hunted at all. Then to top that off they may only hunt a couple days a week. They know they can’t hunt daily because of the pressure. Others might hunt daily, but the number of groups are very small 1-3 over 4-6,000 acres so the pressure is minimum even when hunted daily.
Some people we see killing mallards when nobody else is seeing them are actually releasing farm mallards. I know of a couple people that do this. They will release a few thousand every year. I am extremely against this unless the wings are clipped and they are used more for drawing ducks to an area, and they aren’t allowed to interbreed with the wild mallards. Even then you might be affects wild birds with unknown diseases, but I think that would be better then them interbreeding.

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If public land didn’t have rest areas, private lands with minimal disturbance would probably just have more ducks on them. Pressure can turn the best duck habitat into a flight day only location pretty quick. I heard of a speck gps’d along the coast of Louisiana or Texas (can’t remember which one) flew all the way to some state like Iowa on opening morning and never came back south.

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There is no doubt this is true. The problem is that all public land is managed in a manner where hunters are congregated in a small area, on the same day regardless of conditions, with HUNDREDs of times more public land, suitable for hunting, that goes unhunted by regulation. Far too many public land hunters will defend this because of large bag limits and high numbers of birds and that’s all fine EXCEPT numbers of people willing to spend what it takes to hunt waterfowl are losing interest and they pay the freight for ALL areas, public land open to hunting, public land closed to hunting, and they also pay the freight for huge numbers of birds on private land. Public land hunters are being squeezed out of existence and milked of their money to sustain a resource most have no real and suitable access to. It’s a damn shame considering the nature of waterfowl hunting.