The world is full of fights between Haves and Have-Nots. No matter how fat the fat cats are, they are always squabbling about who among them has the most. Most of us, however, worry less about who has the most fat than its unequal distribution. It seems intolerably unjust. It’s human to think that way. Always has been. Always will be.

But it can be terribly self-destructive when it splits a minority group such as our hunting community that today is under ever-increasing pressures from anti-hunting forces. And make no mistake about it. Even the poorest waterfowl hunter among us is really a Have by almost any non-American yardstick. Most of us are middle class. No one hunting in my home state of California should pretend to be a Have-Not.

The Haves/Have-Nots fight is as old as hunting itself, and is not confined to our shores. Some of the best accounts come from England, where poachers (Have-Nots) have always competed with keepers (representing Haves) on the big shooting estates.

My favorite is the fictional poacher who spread doped grain for pheasants on one estate just at sundown. After dark, as the birds passed out on their roosts and fell to the ground, he had only to listen for the thumps to collect a sack full. The cutout between him and his market was the local parson’s wife whose concealment device was a baby carriage. She was pushing it into the village when the estate owner appeared in his Rolls Royce just as the first of her load began to revive. Sensing the developing unrest in the pram, the poor woman first trotted, then galloped down the road, trying to steer a careening carriage while holding its cargo intact. She could not cope. As hens and cocks erupted in all directions, the truth began to dawn in the Rolls. By then, however, its owner could take no action. Once the birds were off his property, said the law, they were no longer his.

The only winners in this tale were the pheasants, yet our sympathies of course lie with the poacher.

But look at the other side. Unlikable though some estate owners might be, they have always provided valuable community services. Many birds they raise survive the shooting to spill over onto neighboring farms. Keepers vigorously suppress predators that, left unchecked, would victimize local farmers’ flocks. Unimproved parts of estates provide habitat that shelters other wildlife that could not survive on the surrounding cultivated farmland. And guest shooters certainly boost local economies.

Long before the above tale’s era, we in California were seeing the same kind of class warfare develop on the Suisun Marsh. In the 1890s, the Cordelia and other clubs took repeated heavy flak from the local press for “English lordism.” Their keepers were called “great big bullies” for driving off “so-called poachers.” The employers “smacked strongly of the sporting aristocracy of ‘Merrie England’ (who are) nauseating to Americans.” Imaginations ran wild as keepers were accused of setting night-time fishing-line snares so the dawn’s shooters had only to sluice their game on the water and then reel them in to fill their bags.

Just as in England, such unreal outcries ignored what the clubs were doing on the positive side. These well-named “preserves” shot only two (later three) days a week, on acreage that was legally leased from registered landowners. Some club owners advocated tighter restrictions than the law allowed on limits and methods of take. In the mid-1880s, when there were no legal regulations, many clubs closed the season from mid March to September. When a 50-duck daily limit became the law in 1900, one club limited its take to 25 per gun – the limit that was then established by law a few years later. In fact, the three-day hunting week, pioneered by the private clubs, eventually became the rule on our federal refuges here.

The locals, for their part, observed no such restraints. They complained bitterly that the private properties had become sanctuaries that were depriving local hunters of “opportunity.”

Fast forward a bit over a century, and here we go again.

Before proceeding, let me assure you that I am not an elitist. Though I shoot on a private club, its (and my) seasonal average hovers a bit over 3 birds per hunter/day. In what follows I do not rely on “science” but gut reactions to some things I’ve heard about our shooting in California, which also applies in many states elsewhere.

• “We need longer seasons, higher limits, and robo ducks for the poor guys whose situations only let them get out maybe three times a season and who have no chance of learning how to call, set decoys, etc.” Balderdash. If wife, boss, or the Kiwanis won’t let you free more often than that, (1) you don’t care that much, (2) you aren’t going to get many birds no matter what, and (3) you probably don’t deserve to.
• The California Waterfowl Association (CWA) depends for its mass support on such challenged shooters, who might desert it en masse if rules got tighter.” Not much of an en masse. A CWA member survey of a few years ago showed that fewer than five percent shot less often than 5 times per season, and a 34 percent plurality clocked in 11 20 times. When in earlier years CWA came out for tighter restrictions than the law would have allowed, membership rose. And let’s not forget the six-digit contributions by its most generous supporters. Does it pay to offend even one millionaire conservation-minded donor?
• “The rich guys are hogging all the ducks.” Even those who have had five-bird limits when the law allowed seven? Even those who claim to have hatched more ducks than they harvested? Be real.
• “The fat cat clubs control all the good habitat, limit out early, so the ducks all just sit there snoozing, shoulder to shoulder, and deny us our shooting for the rest of the day.” Come off it. The state and federal refuge system has vastly more acreage than all the high-end clubs combined, and with today’s state ban on burning rice stubble, the flood-and-rot alternative alone provides more than enough additional wetland sanctuary.

As you look aloft next season and see fewer ducks than you used to, there are two possible answers: (1) there really are fewer ducks, or (2) they are Somewhere Else. And no one really knows which -- or both -- or neither -- solution is the right one.

But while we seek an answer, let’s forget the finger-pointing and try to get along. As a species, we hunters are already endangered enough.