Is duck behavior changing? An article posted on ESPN Outdoors in early June bears that title. The article reports on a gathering of concerned duck hunters in West Tennessee, meeting with Tennessee Resources Agency officials to air their concerns. According to the author, the hunters had a common complaint. “Workable/huntable ducks, those that come to a call or decoy spread, are not the norm anymore . . .If it were only happening in one specific area, I would not have anything to say about it, but it seems the problem (unsuccessful duck hunting) is widespread, and for several years in a row.” Wildlife officials at the meeting agreed, “saying there is no doubt that duck behavior has changed in recent years.” (Emphasis added).

The hunters at the meeting did not perceive the problem as one of bird shortage. “During the season, you drive down to one of the refuges and there will be a lot of ducks on them. Basically, we don’t have any working ducks . . .”

The article makes extensive reference to the Arkansas Wildlife Federation Duck Hunting Report that we have cited often in Madduck pieces. The AWF Report described similar behavioral phenomena in that state.

Both the Tennessee article and the AWF Report attribute the problem to increased hunting pressure. Hunter numbers have dramatically increased in both states over the last decade, commensurately increasing the stress on the birds. It is easy to understand how concerned and informed people would reach the conclusion they have reached in light of that increase. But there’s a bit of a problem when one takes a wider perspective. We have the same phenomenon in California, despite a gradual decline in hunter numbers and a gradual increase in the acreage of wintering ground. And, curiously in light of those facts, the problem seemed to push its way into the consciousness of California hunters just as hunters noted a palpable change in bird behavior on the Mississippi Flyway during the 2001-02 season (according to the AWF Report).

Even more curious, we in California do not share the same mallard population with hunters on the Mississippi Flyway. Almost all of the mallards we see during the hunting season breed in this State. Very few migrate to us from prairie Canada or the pothole country that produces the birds the waterfowlers of Arkansas and Tennessee hunt. Yet, we share the same disturbing behavioral trend, beginning at roughly the same time, in our disparate populations. The situation prompted recall of an interesting parallel from distant memory.

I hunted pheasants while growing up in the Midwest. A neighbor and friend of the family used to take me hunting to various places in Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin and Central Iowa. He and his buddy were always looking for new spots, always trying to find and wangle their way onto farms that had not been hunted for a few years. Being clueless like most teenagers, it never occurred to me to ask why – why we never returned to the same place twice, no matter how good it had been – until several years later. They had a pat answer.

“Pheasants fall into two rough groups, those that sit tight and those that run and flush wild. We kill the ones that sit. The ones that run and flush wild get away, no matter how hard we try to surround the field with guns and risk our lives trying to outfox them. Guess which ones live to breed and possibly pass on their renegade ways? Show me a field that gets hunted hard every year and I’ll show you a field where the roosters run like racehorses and flush a quarter mile out, twenty of those for every one of the other kind.” The older I get, the more truth I have found in this simplistic summary.

Pheasants, of course, differ from ducks about as radically as birds could. If they’re not pushed by flood, fire, clean farming or other disruption, pheasants will spend their whole lives within a two-mile radius of where they hatched.1 In contrast, ducks fly hundreds of miles in a single night with relative ease and for no reason apparent to anyone or anything but themselves. Indeed, the Tennessee story makes the point that opening the sanctuaries to periodic hunting would just move the birds entirely out of the area. And yet, isn’t it possible that we are witnessing a similar phenomenon with waterfowl to that my pheasant hunting mentors observed? Isn’t it possible that low-flying, daytime birds susceptible to call and decoy are the ones that get shot -- while high-altitude, night flying birds that are conditioned to using sanctuary ground for resting are the ones that survive to breed?

But (and there are a lot of buts here), if high flying, night flying, sanctuary conditioned birds have become the norm, how does one explain what happens within ten days or so after the season ends? The refuges empty, like magic. The ducks fan out, blanketing the country. I always find an excuse to sit in a blind with a call and a camera on the second weekend after the season closes. Birds in full plumage, brilliant in the slanting light of the winter sun, helicopter in over a meager set, at close range, acting like opening day all over again. What does this tell us?

I submit that it is not a penchant for night-flying, or high altitude or sanctuary conditioning, or decoy or call aversion that causes the behavior we have witnessed. Rather, it is sensitivity to the sound of shotgun fire. In this instance, I mean the type of sensitivity that prompts certain birds to respond by adopting evasive strategies the instant they hear the distinctive sounds of a hunting morning in the marsh. They head for an area where those sounds cannot be heard and adopt feeding and resting practices that render them invulnerable.

Yes, but . . . those sounds have been with us since the dawn of waterfowling. And I submit that we have had some degree of behavior modification of the type described here often in the past.2 It is not a new thing. We have taken particular note of it over the last few years due to the sharp contrast in bird behavior with the years immediately before -- and the frustration engendered when one goes from good times to bad, with no warning or satisfactory explanation. Here’s my theory as to what is really happening. (I can’t prove it – but you can’t disprove it either, whether you hold a PhD in waterfowl biology or any other discipline).

I believe that in normal years, our flight consists of two types of birds: a majority that adjust their behavior immediately to the stress of hunting – gunfire and the specter of their fellows tumbling from the sky – and a minority that are either too stubborn, too stupid or too prone to dangerous behavior to make such an adjustment.3 Let’s refer to the majority as the “fast group,” and the remainder as the “slow group.” On opening day, on the day after migrating birds first arrive in a new area and during major weather events, hunters get a crack at both the fast and slow groups. After a short exposure to gunfire, the fast-group survivors quickly disappear behind the curtain of invulnerability. Most days, only members of the slow group offer opportunities while the fast group rests safely in a closed zone. Thus, hunting mortality bears most heavily on the slow group segment of the population.

When we have high and rising populations, hunting mortality doesn’t materially skew the relationship. We have enough birds to absorb the hit. But as populations decline to lower levels, attrition materially reduces absolute numbers in the slow group. In the most recent downturn, we intensified that impact by overestimating the flight, thus setting seasons too long and limits too high – and by condoning use of mechanical and electrical decoying devices that increased the lethality of hunters by several orders of magnitude. Combine that with the threefold increase in hunters in several states on the Mississippi Flyway and you have a recipe for a virtual wipeout of the slow group in those locations – with serious inroads everywhere else.

Consider the implications of those factors. We deal here with creatures that reach self-sufficiency in less than five months and are considered adults in one year. They have little time to learn by experience. Their predispositions may in part be hereditary. So while a large proportion of the slow group roasts on a barbecue or awaits such a fate plucked, pulled and confined in freezer vacuum bags, the fast group propagates – producing a high percentage of offspring. Thus, a greater proportion of our birds are not of the “huntable/workable” sort, to echo the Tennesseans complaint reported above.

How should we respond? “Let’s hunt the sanctuaries” seems to be the knee-jerk reaction. “The birds are in the closed zones. Let us have at ’em.” That’s like using your retirement money or your kid’s college fund to buy a fix from the local drug dealer. It feels good for a short time only. No amount of remorse cures the hangover or redeems the misspent cash.

When you drive down to that refuge and see a huge grind joyously working and clearly out of reach, quell your frustration and respect the sight for what it is – for therein lies the future. Only when those birds breed and we regain strong production will the balance between the fast and the slow groups restore itself. When and if that happens, maybe we won’t screw things up again as we have done over the last few years. Maybe we won’t rush to “harvest” the increment like spoiled heiresses squandering their capital.

The most constructive possible response to the duck behavior modification phenomenon would be a hunter mentality modification. Why, for example, cannot waterfowlers approach their sport with the mindset of a turkey hunter who revels in the quest for an elusive gobbler, the deer hunter seeking that trophy buck often glimpsed but never quite nailed, the fly fisherman casting for a five pound brownie under a log just a bit too far, working a hatch that can’t quite be matched? That may no longer be a question. It may have become mandatory while we weren’t paying attention, while we were thinking that the sky would always be filled with birds. We may no longer have a choice.

Mark my words: Hunting will not materially improve for at least four or five seasons – and then only if we protect our birds against further excesses. That’s how long it will take to redeem the profligacy of the recent past, longer if the weather does not cooperate.

If you don’t like that news, take up golf. If you need to shoot a lot, try sporting clays. If you absolutely have to kill birds, go to Argentina. If you don’t like long plane rides, go to one of those game farms where they push as many tame mallards off a tower for you to shoot as you can afford. Those are your options.

Because it is going to take years of great care and gentle handling to restore our wild waterfowl flight to any semblance of what we saw in the late ‘90s, in both quantity and quality. That’s the reality. Anyone who tells you different is just trying to get his itchy palm between you and your hard-earned money. This is nothing more nor less than a simple application of Darwin’s law -- and it isn’t going to change no matter how high the volume of complaint.

Time to “suck it up, quit whining and get to work” (expletives deleted) as a DI in my past would often observe, with much less cause. Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.

1 When the Butte Sink floods, it is not uncommon to see pheasants fly up into trees rather than move to high ground ahead of the floodwaters. If the flood persists they’ll sit in those trees until they starve to death and fall into the water, rather than fly to dry land plainly visible, less than a half mile away.

2 According to various sources, many waterfowl biologists share this view, although it is based entirely on anecdotal evidence.

3 I base my majority/minority estimate on the number of birds counted on certain sanctuary ground in California as a percentage of the estimated total flight. I am also addicted to visiting the observation platforms at certain closed zones and comparing what I see with the vista over hunting marshes. In short, the numbers are “rough” and could be substantially inaccurate – without affecting the concept.