Ducks Unlimited vs Flyway Federation

[darealdeal]

Well seems to be as common practice...... I can pretty much bet that any of us given the opportunity would do the same as the yanks up north or those in other states with better duck hunting and enough money...... Buy land and plant corn...........

[Duck Tape]

Buy land, dike land, add water control structures, add electricity, plant corn, fence corn, flood corn, hunt once a week when you have ducks... spend money.

[darealdeal]

Buy land, dike land, add water control structures, add electricity, plant corn, fence corn, flood corn, hunt once a week when you have ducks... spend money.

I was going with a shorter version....... but yes if one has the money to do that I am sure they are going to as long as they allow it and as long as the keep inviting the right people to hunt with them on occasion I don't see it changing anytime soon.

[Southernduck]

Shared natural resources are a finicky thing.

Ducks fall into that category.

But let’s look at water, just for the sake of discussion.

Let’s say your family owns land that has a sizable creek running through it.
For generations your family has enjoyed fishing, swimming, etc.

I come in and buy 1000 acres upstream of you, and dam up the creek for my personal 600 acre lake, slowing your once fishable creek to a trickle.
Now the fish no longer move into your area and you are unable to swim, ride on a boat, or shoot wood ducks.

Is that ok? I mean this America, we should be able to do what we want on our own land, but would that sit well with you and your family?

The US Army Corp of Engineers would have fun with that.
This pumping water to keep a field open is not a good thing. There is a finite amount of water in the ground and pumping it to the surface to prevent a duck from migrating is not a good use of that resource. Now it is documented that the less a duck travels in their migration the more successful they are at nesting so it is a double edge sword.

[wskinner]

Shared natural resources are a finicky thing.

Ducks fall into that category.

But let’s look at water, just for the sake of discussion.

Let’s say your family owns land that has a sizable creek running through it.
For generations your family has enjoyed fishing, swimming, etc.

I come in and buy 1000 acres upstream of you, and dam up the creek for my personal 600 acre lake, slowing your once fishable creek to a trickle.
Now the fish no longer move into your area and you are unable to swim, ride on a boat, or shoot wood ducks.

Is that ok? I mean this America, we should be able to do what we want on our own land, but would that sit well with you and your family?

I've never agreed with people being able to change the flow of water onto another persons land. It's fine if you want to do what you want on your place, but when those have a detrimental effect on my land that where a problem is created.

[FEETDOWN]

How bout Lake Greenwood and Lake Murray? I guess those people were pretty pissed when their creeks dried up below those dams and they couldn't put a boat in or catch any fish huh?

[Duck Tape]

I do not believe they allow dating of any stream. This includes ditches that drain water off of land above you. Pumping is allowed.

Well water is another issue. Provided you are not robbing drinking water from your neighbors, flood as you can afford.

[coot nasty]

Just wait till these farmers realize they can plant corn an flood it and make more money then if they were to plan it and harvest it. Arkansas farmers already doing it switching from rice to corn.

[JABIII]

Ark farmers do not stand a chance. It is simple geography...

[beanhunter]

The bottom line is we live in a world where manipulation of situations to enhance our interest at hand isnt always manipulation for betterment of the future.
Not just duck migration related.

[BOGSTER]

It’s privatization of a public resource is what it boils down to.

Ducks are already out of reach of the general public in our state and it’s rapidly spreading north and westward.

No doubt, whacking a bunch of birds in flooded corn is good fun, but it doesn’t hold a candle to hunting them in the wild.

As usual man’s greed will be the downfall of all things good.

[BOGSTER]

Also, it was an analogy - don’t get hung up on the details.

If you owned family land and elk hunted it for generations and another landowner built a fence on his land, routing their migration path around your land, you would pitch a fit.

Or better yet, they just baited em because they like looking at them, and that stopped them from ever coming down into your land...

[darealdeal]

It’s privatization of a public resource is what it boils down to.

Ducks are already out of reach of the general public in our state and it’s rapidly spreading north and westward.

No doubt, whacking a bunch of birds in flooded corn is good fun, but it doesn’t hold a candle to hunting them in the wild.

As usual man’s greed will be the downfall of all things good.

Agreed!!!!!

[2thDoc]

its hard to make an analogy for a critter that migrates through the air.

that being said, I think we all "know" that short-stopping occurs.
I think we all "know" that the planet is getting warmer.
I think we all "know" its someone's fault besides our own.

Time goes by and things change. While I think we need to look far beyond our time on this earth, if you wanna kill a duck now, you gotta work a bit for it...

[ajwf662]

I want to agree with the idea that the issue has become privatization of a public resource but the documented loss of habitat at a landscape scale vs the scale of acres that are we're talking about here (planted, left standing, kept open corn) keeps me from it. Another thing that keeps me from it is the carry-through of that idea to the maximum (which isn't likely, I know) would leave no one creating or managing waterfowl habitat on private land and I don't like those implications. The last thing that keeps me from agreeing that the issue has grown to a level of privatization of a public resource is related to the previous - I recently over-heard but haven't been able to check it out myself so don't quote me - that food may be a limiting factor on the wintering grounds in the Mississippi Flyway. If the Mississippi Flyway doesn't have enough food to send fat birds back to nesting grounds or even doesn't have enough food for our desired population numbers to get fat and happy before going back, then that's a real problem for everyone in the flyway from top to bottom.

I'm not willing to potentially sacrifice an entire flyway of ducks to a crappy season, or even 5 crappy seasons, blamed on people up north having so much food the ducks don't leave so don't let them plant corn anymore, when they are meeting a documented need (simple habitat availability) and considering the landscape scale habitat loss, not enough food in that habitat, impacts of disturbance, impacts of snow cover or lack thereof, a decreased fall flight anyway based on spring nesting numbers, and more issues that we aren't even beginning to have a clue how they impact migration.

Add to it data that shows the "good ole days" that these Louisiana boys are trying to re-create weren't actually as good as they remember when it comes to harvest numbers... it doesn't add up to the problem we are being told that it is to me.

[Duckman#1]

So if I plant chufa and pull turkeys off someone’s land is that bad ? Or if I build a dove field and hold more doves than the guy next door what then ?

[Highstrung]

Then you should just be polite about it, don't really open up conversations with it.

[cajunwannabe]

There are many more variables than just plant, then flood = ducks.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the theory that 41,000,000 waterfowl can be short stopped by artificial habitat, ie corn ponds, flooded harvested crops, "heated" ponds, etc. There were MILLIONS of acres of crops available to waterfowl this past fall, plenty of water and limited to zero snow cover.

Bog, I am playing devils advocate here. Consider this: Devastating floods in 2015 and subsequent storms (hurricanes) and flooding destroyed a lot of our coastal habitat. Could it be the Rimini / Manning area has "short stopped" what few birds we get by replacing (and constantly increasing) the habitat lost over the last few years due to storms?


There was an attempt to short stop ducks and other migrating waterfowl from utilizing the Gulf marsh due to the impacts of the Horizon BP oil spill........it didn't work. https://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-s...nt_keep_d.html

"The idea, hatched before BP temporarily capped its well in July, was that ducks, geese and shorebirds would see tempting wetlands and stop there rather than continue on to oily marshes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture joined in, spending $20 million in the five Gulf states and Arkansas, Georgia and Missouri to provide respite for tens of millions of birds heading south from as far north as Alaska and Iceland.

About 50,000 acres of farmland flooded with BP money was in Louisiana, where more than 600 miles of coastline was oiled in the months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20. Another 28,800 acres were in Texas, and nearly 71,000 acres were in Mississippi.

If you measure success by whether those temporary shallow ponds kept ducks out of coastal marshes, "it was a miserable failure. And it really had no chance of keeping substantial numbers of ducks from southeast Louisiana," said Larry Reynolds, waterfowl study team leader for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Flooded fields won't grow the food some species need, he said."

Most folks won't even remember the weather pattern for December 2010 and January 2011 that year. SC was smashed by a snow event in January 2011......I'd bet folks have forgotten what they killed that year too.

[Dawhoo]

I am a libertarian but I do believe one a few true functions a governments is to protect shared resource.

I however do not consider providing a better food source for a migrating duck to be a harm of a shared resource. I do however the detriment of public hunting will come full circle and harm the very ones who are artificially proving better habit secondary only to the size of their wallets. It is the role of organizations to attempt to come up with solutions, not the government.

[Sparkleberry Ridge Runner]

Serious question. I understand what many have said. Some are trying to compare apples to oranges IMHO. I do not agree with "the evil corn pond owners are keeping all the ducks from going south" mindset, on a small scale. However, what about on a large scale. 25 years ago there was way less man made "flooded food" for ducks than what is being produced now (no facts to back this up, simply assuming). There are way more places keeping water from freezing now than there was 25 years ago (again, assuming). If generation after generation of ducks are being met with habitat that their ancestors did not have, could that effect a migration(think "no need to go south as normal because now we have ample food and the water never freezes). How will a duck "know" where to go to the south if it has never followed an older duck to that habitat in the south. I get the instinct to migrate. But where is the imprinting. For example, if Sparkleberry Swamp suddenly became full of oak trees and hydrilla, will the mallards show back up next year? Or even 10 years from now?