re: interesting numbers on ducks and hunters...

I always have trouble making sense of the fact that per license sales, we have substantially fewer hunters, but I swear every year it seems there are more people fighting over limited ground on public nwr or wma’s. Am I just misremembering it? Seems that public areas are way more crowded now. I mean when you think of what someone has to do to get down into Delta NWR, you’d think you would have the place to yourself, especially of theres only 2/3 of the hunters there were 20 years ago.

On a side note, ive always wondered if there is anywhere else in the US where people have more of an arduous journey to get to their duck blinds than in southeast louisiana. I mean I watch hunting videos and most duck hunters in the country seem to be hunting within 500 yards of a road where they just park their truck and walk across a field. In Venice you run a large mothership boat (hopefully with radar) in the pitch dark through what has to be one of the most dangerous waterways in the country, for 15 miles down to the head of passes or main pass, only to then have to navigate smaller waterways known for sandbars, and then anchoring, launching your pirogue and often pushpoling or skidding through really tough mud flats. I just cant believe the Missouri guy is going to do that. And yet, with all that, there will be someone parked in the spot you were hoping to get.