[KO]

While some may argue that there are ducks, most of us who grew up years ago and had fathers who also grew up hunting know better. This info is from waterfowl biologists.

Nesting success in 1955 was approx 21%
Nesting success in 1972 was approx 15%
Nesting success in 1992 was approx 10%

Now do you see why some of us older hunters see a real problem....sure some are seeing birds....but its not what it used to be and its getting worse...we continue to subsidize agricutural for overproducing and continue to lose acres of grasslands and small marginal wetlands to the plow...now Canada is doing the same. Meanwhile duck hunters sit quitely in their blinds hoping that next year is somehow going to be better. Well my friends, if you want to see it get better, sitting quietly won't cut it. If your getting birds now, look again at the above numbers and ask yourself how long before the trend impacts me. How low does the nest success have to go before we are shooting our base /breeding population. At what point do I make a comitment and start rasing cane to get things changed. If your okay with the way things are, view nothing wrong, do me a favor, print this. Ten years or even five from now, read it again and see if your mind has changed. If the above trend holds true, today's nesting success could be as low as 5%. Don't tell me there are birds...there is no comparison to what there used to be...I was there and saw it....don't tell me about migration shifts...thats an excuse...it isn't reality....the truth is we're plowing up nests and burying duck hunting in the proccess.

 

[recker]

Could not agree more with what you said. My season mercifully came to an end today with of course no shots fired today or yesterday.Only hunted each afternoon for an hour or so after scouting and driving many miles to locate ducks. I went through morris, clinton, graceville beardsley,chokio and basically saw no ducks.The areas are just choked full of geese that you cannot shoot. Today the refuge near alberta held a few thousand mallards it did not have last week. With the big wind last night I thought finally maybe some ducks would move but I was wrong. Proobably because there are not any ducks to move to speak of. My season basically ended on nov 1 in north dakota. I have not shot a duck since. It certainly is not for a lack of scouting. I probably could have a shot a duck or two if I sat int he blind longer but I am not going to have to hunt four or five hours for a shot or two. I have hunted these area since about 1994 and they used to be great from open right until close.You could always count on the greenheads in a certain area the first couple of weeks on november. On one big private slough and the fields near it the mallars would just pour into. I have not seen more then a few ducks on this slough in the past two years. I know alot of people like to use the weather excuse but I am not one of them. Why is the area full of migrating geese? Given it being this very late in the year a wind like last night would move birds if there were birds to move. I as well just dont think there are many ducks out there. I guess my good old days were the mid to late ninties. I think next year instead of driving around for three weekends in november look for phantom ducks I will take that money and put it towards a northern canada duck hunting trip. Canda, north dakota, and maybe opener in minnesta and call it a season.