After beginning my wildfowling career on Long Island in 1947, I believed old-timers when they reminisced about yesteryear’s “sky-darkening flocks of ducks.” After all, I had seen vast rafts of canvasback, scaup and scoters. I had witnessed clouds of black ducks and teal, plus abundant pintail, widgeon, goldeneye, and the other mainstream species of the Atlantic Flyway.

Throughout the late 1940s and early ‘50s, my brothers and I looked forward to each winter’s freeze when the wildfowl would concentrate in and around Long Island’s inlets. Some mornings we saw flights of greater scaup (a.k.a., broadbill) that stretched literally across the sky, from horizon to horizon. Every few minutes, small segments would break off and materialize into dozens of birds careening over and into our decoys.

During Christmas vacations in Florida, whenever it was too windy to run offshore for sailfish, Dad would borrow a rig of old Mason decoys from the manager of Stuart’s Pelican Hotel and drive us to Lake Okeechobee, where we’d conceal a rental skiff and ourselves in reeds bordering the lake. The brisk north wind that had kept us off the ocean that morning stirred up myriads of ducks on the lake’s open water. They were mainly lesser scaup (a.k.a., bluebill), but also countless thousands of ring-necks. In the dawn’s early light, the spectacle of wildfowl trading in different directions, at different altitudes, made me feel like a time-traveler to the Pleistocene.

In those halcyon years, the daily limit was four ducks each, and the season never ran beyond the first week of January. It didn’t need to. We’d stored up so many great memories by January 8th, why be greedy? Besides, we could see that black ducks in the north, and Florida (mottled) ducks in the south, were mostly all paired by the end of December. 

My father was what was then known as a “sportsman-naturalist.” He encouraged his sons to learn as much about non-game wetland species as ducks and geese. He also taught us the etiquette of shooting alongside others – to take turns and never shoot a bird better positioned for someone else, unless the bird’s already been hit. Then anyone in the blind with a loaded gun should dispatch the heads-up cripple as quickly as possible.

Dad also taught us that sportsmen get no bragging rights for shooting hen pintails or mallards. (Fifty years ago, there were far more pintails in the Atlantic Flyway than there are today, but fewer mallards.) My brothers and I later extended this rule to any species in which it’s possible to distinguish drakes from hens in flight. Teal were an exception. If you tried to pick a drake out of a flock of teal swirling over the decoys, you might never get off a shot. 

Like most young wildfowlers, my hunting activities tapered off in my late teens and early twenties due to college, graduate school, and girls. Then, from 1964 to 1970, I was involved with the war in Vietnam. Nonetheless, during the two winter terms I taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, I used a government blind at Greenbury Point, just across the Severn River from the academy, where dense beds of submerged grasses attracted legions of redheads and widgeon. Many a morning I had a successful dawn hunt and still made my 8 a.m. class on time.

Several colleagues and I also leased a small farm on the Eastern Shore, which came with two coveys of quail and regular morning flights of canvasback that streamed up the Choptank River like curling clouds of smoke. Some guests thought the flocks were blackbirds rather than ducks, until fragments broke off and swept over the decoys.  Surprisingly few of my military colleagues had hunted waterfowl before accepting my invitation to see what it was like. Thanks to the abundance of ducks and increasing numbers of Canada geese back then, I was able to introduce those first-timers to the same standards of sportsmanship with which I’d been raised.

In my post-service years, I learned that hunting ethics depend largely on the prospect of seeing lots of game. So long as a hunter anticipates seeing many ducks over his decoys, he can be selective about what and how he shoots. After duck populations began to decline in the 1970s, with no guarantees of having many, or even any, birds in range, I waived my father’s rule about taking turns. And since I wanted guests to have at least one bird to take home for show-and-tell and dinner, I even dropped the drakes-only standard.

I wasn’t alone in this. Invited to an Arkansas club during a period of low populations, where shooters had long paid a “fine” of $25 to Ducks Unlimited for each hen mallard they inadvertently killed, I found the penalty had been waived to allow members and guests to shoot “whatever’s legal.” It opened my eyes. I concluded it was immoral for a standard-bearer club to abandon its venerable drakes-only rule just when hen mallards needed all the relief they could get. Not only did I lay off hens that trip, I reinstated the drakes-only rule at home for my guests and myself.
Gradually, the contrast between what I’d experienced as a young wildfowler with what duck-hunting norms were becoming in the last quarter of the 20th century made me realize that seeing many birds is the most essential ingredient of a satisfying duck hunt and that hunting ethics depend largely on the prospect of seeing lots of game.  So long as a hunter anticipates seeing many ducks over his decoys, he can be selective about what and how he shoots.

The severe decline in numbers of ducks during the last quarter of the last century caused me to travel extensively in an effort to recapture the hope and glory of my hunting youth. I hunted in Iceland, Argentina, Russia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.  But even, or especially, on days when I tapped wonderful flights of wildfowl, the exotic settings and/or exotic species made the sorry condition of North American ducks all the sadder.

Interestingly, at the outset of my conservation writing career in 1970, I acquired a farm in coastal Virginia where I could field-test wildlife management theories and techniques. Over thirty years, I developed six wetland impoundments, ranging in size from ½ to 31 acres, using assistance from various USDA wildlife-enhancement programs and a generous donation from DU. I planted native sedges, tubers, and other wetland plants that ducks allegedly prefer in these impoundments. Most of the plantings did well, and they – along with the impoundment’s sand (grit) and fresh water – attracted ducks.  But my impoundments depended on undependable rainfall for water, and they never drew enough ducks to meet my primary objective of seeing lots of birds.
That’s when I decided to buy and release mallards.

I acquired ducklings from four different suppliers over the course of a decade.  But only a small percentage of these birds matured into game meeting my standards of “fair chase.” Few flew often enough to develop the strength and speed of wild ducks, and those that survived shooting and predators during their first year after release became so familiar with the local area and knew the location of each of my blinds and quickly adapted to any attempt to vary my hunting schedule.

The effort was instructive, but I stopped buying and releasing mallards.

Does my pessimism mean I’ve given up duck hunting? Not in the least. I’ve been too deeply imprinted with the sport to forgo my need for autumnal outings in the marsh.  But I have taken certain steps to create a downsized approximation of great mornings.

I started by donating a conservation easement on my farm to the Nature Conservancy and then selling most of it –  keeping only 40 acres of salt-marsh, timber, a freshwater canal, and a small, two-acre field for myself. Forty acres may not sound like enough for a wildfowling haven, but it’s more than ample when those acres form a wedge between two streams flowing into a tidal estuary that’s controlled by only six landowners, and whose upper end is regarded as a sanctuary by all six, including me.

I made my two-acre field more attractive to ducks by bordering it with a dike and installing an electric-serviced, 4-inch well, whose outlet is directly in front of a partially sunken blind that holds three hunters comfortably and four in a squeeze. Each summer, I plant millet and/or milo. In the fall, I flood the crop to one of three levels, depending on what kind of ducks I want to attract. The advantages of having just two acres to flood are a) my winter electric bills are far less than they would be if I were trying to manage a larger field or fields; and b) incoming ducks are more likely to swing in range than if the birds had a larger field or fields to land in. My property’s proximity to the estuary means guests and I always see lots of birds, if not over my decoys, then over the estuary. And when a freeze locks up all the area’s fresh water – except for what’s continuously pumped from my well – I need only a token decoy or two to attract swarms of ducks to an ice-free hole immediately in front of the blind.

I hunt my blind only once a week, usually on a Friday or Saturday morning to accommodate weekend guests. If a major cold front is forecast earlier in the week, I’ll occasionally plan that week’s outing to coincide with its arrival, but not hunt again until the following week. I allow no shooting after 10 a.m. Rarely do guests and I stay that long. We’re usually out of the blind by 9 a.m.

I restrict each hunter to two ducks.  However, if a guest shoots a hen black duck, he’s done for the day. He’s not allowed a second duck of any species.  Once they learn that the trailing bird in a pair of black ducks about to land is almost always a drake, some guests risk taking a shot. Last season, of the five black ducks taken, only one was a hen, and she was in the lead when the guest shot her by mistake.

Since guests can almost always count on seeing swarms of green-winged teal at first light, I explain to newcomers that the choice they must make is whether to take (or try to take) their two-bird limit quickly or wait for larger ducks – which may (or may not) show up later. Two winters ago, we had abundant numbers of large ducks. Of 52 birds taken from my blind, only six were teal. Twenty-three were mallards, including a banded drake from Minnesota. (A couple of years earlier, I shot a drake mallard from the same banding station. Guests also shot a banded drake green-winged teal and a banded drake black duck, both from the same Quebec station, but banded two weeks apart.)

Last season, most Eastern Shore duck hunters had lousy shooting. Yet my guests killed almost as many birds as they did the year before. To do so, however, they had to increase their take of teal to 34. Several guests consoled themselves with an increase in the number of geese visiting the little impoundment. During the 2005-06 season, they shot only four Canadas; last season, they killed six Canadas and three snows.

One guest mistook a hen bufflehead for a teal in the early morning light and protested when I reminded him the bufflehead counted as half his two-duck limit. He protested so much, I didn’t invite him back. No loss, since many people want to hunt here, and they’re happy to trade invitations to hunt their land for dove and turkey.  I’m willing to accept such exchanges, not only because I don’t have a place of my own to hunt dove and turkey, but also because I want to show other landowners, who have – or are thinking about constructing – water-controlled impoundments of their own, that less in the way of “shooting” can offer more in the way of “hunting.”

Each season, I also make room for one or two young, but experienced wildfowlers. I try to show them that great hunting means seeing lots of ducks and, perhaps, killing two rather than killing the only few they see. Without abundant game, hunters won’t learn to become selective about how they behave and what they shoot.  And without the element of choice based on abundance, hunters can’t develop into sportsmen.