The two most important lessons my father taught me when he introduced me to hunting sixty-two years ago were, first, never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to eat. His second hunting lesson, and one that has become more significant with each passing decade, is that outings are more fun when you see lots of birds and get to shoot a few, rather than shoot the only few you see. This distinction wasn’t as important in the late 1940s and early ‘50s when Long Island’s Great South Bay (near where we lived) wintered countless thousands of black ducks and greater scaup, or on Florida’s Lake Okeechobee (near where we spent Christmas holidays), which wintered countless thousands of ring-necked ducks and lesser scaup. So long as the wind was brisk and blowing from the north, we always saw lots of birds whenever we went hunting.

Beginning in the 1960s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gave into pressure from sportsmen more concerned with maximizing their opportunities to kill ducks than to see them. Whereas hunters in the Atlantic Flyway were once satisfied with a four-bird daily limit and seasons that never ran beyond the first week of January, we were now offered bonus bags and seasons on any species for which figures could be concocted to make it appear that they could take the increased pressure. In the 1950s, the average hunter was pleased with three or four scaup per outing. By the 1970s, if a hunter didn’t shoot his legal limit of ten – if he got only three or four -- he was unsatisfied. (Today, he has to settle for one or none.)

Despite the abysmally declining numbers and diminished flights of several key species, the USFWS continues to offer Atlantic Flyway gunners five- and six-bird daily limits and seasons that run into late January during the crucial pair-bonding period for mallards and black ducks, when hens need to switch their diets from seeds to invertebrates to be in prime condition for the upcoming ordeal of reproduction. Many hunters complain of seeing fewer ducks, and most today never shoot a limit. Yet dare suggest, as I did several times in my Field & Stream conservation column, that wildfowlers should adopt the same standards of success respected by upland hunters – namely, contentment with a daily limit of two or three birds – and I’d be swamped with mail equating what I’d written with an assault on the Second Amendment.

Unable to dent the business-as-usual obduracy of the Duck Hunting Establishment – biocrats more devoted to perpetuating duck-stamp sales than ducks, and commercial guides who’d rather sell the hope of six birds in the bag than a genuine possibility of two or three -- I decided to create on a small scale what I couldn’t accomplish nationally. My plan revolved around a small field owned by my son, which is bracketed by two streams flowing into an estuarine marsh. I built a road berm around the field then installed a well to give me a reliable supply of water with the flip of a switch. I plant millet and milo and tap the well for supplemental water during summer droughts, and in the fall, flood the crops about ten inches deep. On frigid winter days, I use the well’s 55+ degree water to maintain an open hole in the ice directly in front of the blind.

At last, I have a less than one acre pond where I can create regulations for optimal hunting. These rules include a daily limit of no more than two ducks per hunter. Since green-winged teal, black ducks, mallards, widgeon, pintail, bufflehead, and hooded mergansers, in that order of abundance, come to feed in the flooded grain field, guests have a variety of birds from which to select two. Some guests are reluctant to shoot teal, either because they’re waiting for larger quarry, or because they don’t want to embarrass themselves by missing these difficult targets. Others want a drake bufflehead or hooded merganser for a mount. Like choosing items at a salad bar, each guest designs his own two-bird limit based on personal preference, shooting skill, and that day’s selection of species.

However, if a guest shoots a hen mallard, pintail or black duck, that one bird becomes his limit. Although drake mallards and pintails are relatively easy to differentiate from the hens of these species, I include black ducks because, as I tell guests before the hunt, while a pair of blacks may circle with the drake in front, when the two birds finally lock up to land, the hen is almost always the first bird in. Shoot the second bird, and you have a drake. This rule of thumb is ninety percent certain. On those few occasions when someone shoots the following bird and it turns out to be a hen, I allow him to take another duck of another species. But most times I have the satisfaction of seeing a skeptic, like my friend and professional decoy-carver, Mark McNair, become a convert.

Although I no longer have a dog, I enjoy duck hunting with competent canines. That’s why I make sure that at least one of my guests (and preferably no more than one) brings a trained retriever. Since I count every downed bird as part of a shooter’s limit, it’s important that he/we find every bird that falls. Even with a good dog, birds are occasionally lost among the weeds and still-standing crops of the shallow-water impoundment.

In my twilight years, nurturing a small, floodable field has become the best part of wildfowling for me. I experiment with different crops, flooding and drawdown schedules, even with the type, number, and placement of decoys. In the process, I’ve learned that the best “confidence decoy” for ducks is not a heron or gull, but a full-bodied deer. First-time guests are amused when they see the fake deer standing in ankle-deep water to one side of the blind. But they’re invariably impressed when normally wary black ducks or pintail abandon their usual circling caution and lock up for landings after only one or two wind-testing passes. In extremely cold weather, my best “decoy” is steam rising off the water in the ice hole in front of the blind. This warmer water activates worms, snails, insects, even amphibians. Late-season ducks come for them as avidly as for what’s left of the milo.

The secret to sustainable waterfowl hunting is restricted shooting. I hunt no more than twice a week – ideally, once a week, but guests and cold fronts have to be accommodated according to their schedules, not mine. No one is allowed to hunt past 9 a.m. I’ve also stopped hunting the last week of the season to protest the fact that most mallards and black ducks are already paired. The USFWS tells us if we only shoot drakes, the hens will find another mate. But this second- or third-choice drake is likely not of the same caliber as the hens’ first choice, which necessarily affects the quality of ducklings they produce.

Despite my restrictions, guests and I have averaged over fifty ducks per season during the past five years. We also shoot a few geese -- with as few as four Canadas during the 2006-07 season, and as many as 15 Canadas and three snows the following year. The 2007-08 season was also our highest duck tally, with eighty taken including three banded drake mallards from Quebec, Maryland and Minnesota.

Last season (2008-09) was our worst showing with only 36 ducks and eight geese. However, these numbers represent a reduction in hunting days, not a reduction in the quality of the hunting experience. I scheduled outings to coincide with approaching fronts so guests would have the best chance of seeing birds and, perhaps, getting two. Guides continue to tell me their clients would never settle for a three-bird -- much less a two-bird -- daily limit. Yet I’ve been offered goodly sums of money by people eager to hunt my impoundment, knowing I allow only two birds per hunter. (Sorry, Charley, the hunting’s free, but by invitation only.) It turns out my father was right: so many people want to hunt here, despite restrictions, because seeing lots of ducks and being able to shoot two is far more satisfying than shooting the only two one sees.