Article - Arkansas Duckhunting Decline - Climate Change

But subsistence hunting and legalized egging also negatively impacts both breeding and recruitment. Results in the waterfowl population's decline.

So the potential of that late-August-early-September blizzard may also reduce recruitment success and the Pacific Flyway's Fall Flight.

And we can't change any of that!

 

So true. The last few years have been up and down on bird production up here. The first hard frost has been getting later each fall. We had ducks and geese stay here in AK until early October this year. No wonder they didn't get all the way South. I think the triggers that get them to even begin migrating are off. If water isn't freezing and foods still available then birds will stay North. Saw it this year when I was still shooting teal in mid September. They would normally be long gone. Things are shifting. From up here in the arctic all the way to Arkansas. Mother Nature is kind of fickle.

 

Try telling some of the knuckleheads here who refuse to accept the changes because “this February was cold so climate change is a hoax”.

 

We had one cold snap this winter that went to -40 for three days. Otherwise it was weks and weeks of +10 daytime and -10 nighttime. Ten years ago we would see weeks of -40 to -50 and colder. The last few years have seen record warm temps.
When I started duck hunting up here I was heartbroken. My favorite sport. Season opens 1 Sept. I would get about 10 days and everything was gone and first snow by the 15th. The last few years the birds are leaving later and later. Goose and crane hunting in Delta went into October. When we were coming back from caribou hunting we watched wave after wave of trumpeter swans going through Tetlin refuge heading into Canada and that was the end of October.
Two years ago I bought two new snowmobiles on 1 Oct. Didn't get to ride until 1 Dec due to no snow.

In fact the Iditarod sled dog race no longer starts in Anchorage. No snow. The have to drive North into the mountains to Willow to have enough snow.
It's global warming and no one can deny that. Just ask the last mammoth if it's warmer now. Oh wait you can't... He froze to death.
I thing the alarming things is the Rate of warming. We can see that each spring. It slowly starts to warm and thaw and then whoosh it warms and melts fast. Same effect. Just bigger scale.
Animals and (maybe) people will adapt. We're just seeing some first effects in flyway migration patterns.

 

Until there is a better grasp on migration & bird numbers, why not cut the limits?

 

Because the only people who don't believe migration and bird numbers are a handful of people who will never believe what the science says.

The people who make our management decisions have as good a grasp on pops and migrations.

Heck, they could probably increase limits and it wouldn't make much difference.

 

Or...
With todays technology. Alot more tracking chips instead of just bands. We can learn so much from.... For example 100 of each species tagged in the South and another 100 of each species in the extreme North.
Get telemetry data on each species. Mortality rates etc. If we did that for 5 years over and over the database would be huge for each flyway and each species.
Maybe some of that duck stamp money? The bands have served their purpose and boy have we learned alot. But actual satellite tracking hour by hour, location, species, etc will take our knowledge of ducks and geese so much farther.
All these organizations have manpower and most of all computers. Each group take a few species to track and build databases on. We all compare info and it could be us the hunters and conservationists learning and solving and maybe just maybe USFWS would work in concert with the effort.

Sad sigh. Just woke up from that knap at my computer.... I had this neat dream.

 

Days a field have a bigger effect then limits. There’s no proof saying either should be cut, so why the hell would we do it in the first place?

 

I was born and raised on World Famous Beaver Dam. I have hunted the big swamp, surrounding fields and Miss. River for 65 years. My heyday years were from 1962 to 1982. We had the Mallards and Gadwalls then. We haven't had nearly as many ducks (mallards and Gadwalls) this century (21st). Nowadays, I lease most of my land out to duck hunters rather than hunt myself. We just DON't HAVE the DUCKS! I think we ought to go back to a 30 day season and a mallard limit of 2.

 

No way, Jose! We have plenty of ducks up here.