The title of this essay is an example of the sarcastic solicitude expressed by your older brother after you have hit your head on the same cabinet door or bookcase corner for the fourth or fifth time. I tend to feel like the butt of that jibe, and the impacts that trigger it, after listening to waterfowl biologists who adhere to the compensatory kill theory with unconditional conviction. By this I mean the folks who contend that hunter kill does not affect waterfowl populations, even when the populations are as low as they are today. Just to have a shorthand expression, let’s call them the “dogmatists” for the purpose of this piece.

At the outset, we should establish a few ground rules. First, one of the true dogmas of true science is that dogma has no legitimate place there. Science is cumulative, collaborative and ever-changing – informed by expanding knowledge and continuous testing of hypotheses in the laboratory of the “Real World.” Science does not deal in immutable truth. Immutable truth is a religious concept, the stuff of myth and Platonic philosophy – not science.

Second, a scientific degree does not endow the holder with wisdom to which we all owe absolute and unquestioning obedience. One of the least endearing (and least persuasive) qualities of the ideologue is the superior, patronizing smile as he (and they seem to be all males so that is not a sexist remark) informs you that you are wrong, he is right, because he’s a scientist and you are not. When you get that line, imagine this scenario:

You have entrusted your entire retirement savings to a financial advisor of great renown, who graduated cum laude from Harvard, got an MBA from Wharton, a PhD. from the London School of Economics and manages several hundred million dollars for various hedge funds, using a computer program that he invented and for which he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Economics. Over the course of five years, he manages to lose about fifty percent of your hard-earned money.1

When you demand a coherent explanation, he smiles in a superior manner and recites his resume – a recitation that is intended to send you away, accepting your loss as a product of a cruel and unavoidable fate that even the genius of your advisor could not deflect. “Trust me. I’m a financial genius and you’re not.” The proper answer to such an assertion (expletives deleted) could be: “As you say, Mr. Genius – but write me a check for the money that you lost, send back the rest and I’ll take my chances with my own humble and unworthy judgment.”

Isn’t that where we are today in the waterfowl world? Who among us is seeing anything close to the bird numbers we had a mere five years ago? Who among us enjoys shooting better than last year, a sorry year in its own right? The internet provides answers to questions of this sort – and tells us that the particular cloud hanging low over our marshes bears no discernible silver lining. Yet the dogmatists stand undeterred, reciting their dogma with patronizing smiles fixed firmly in place.

One burning question rises from this pit of gloom: Why do we allow these geniuses to retain control over our birthright? They can’t write a check that will restore our birds – but we could probably force them to get out of the wheelhouse and take their wrongheaded ideas with them, if we would just raise our voices in some semblance of unison.

The most recent issue of Delta Waterfowl contains an article proclaiming that Delta stands for truth. Well? I, for one, am waiting. Professing adherence to the truth, regardless of how unpleasant it may be is one thing. Actually telling it, in detail and with no punches pulled, is quite another.

Don’t get me wrong on this. I personally believe that Delta is the best organization we have at the moment. But I keep waiting for the clarion call that befits the condition. When you stand on the edge of a precipice with the ground crumbling under your feet, convening a conclave of soils engineers to analyze the problem should be the sort of thing that you do after you step back – not something you do to determine if it would be a good idea.

* * * * *

A friend who has managed a famous wetland in Northern California for more than 25 years told me the other day that he had never seen so few birds as he has seen this year. “It’s a feeling,” he says. “You can feel it as well as see it. Something is fundamentally wrong.” He finds the feeling particularly alarming because as I write this, we approach that time of year when populations normally peak on that property – and they should be peaking early after an unusually wet, stormy and cool fall.

When my friend made his observations to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manager of his acquaintance – a man whose responsibilities include vast acreage in the Central Valley – he was told to be patient. “It’s been warm in Canada,” the Service manager said. “We’ll get our birds. You’ll see.”

But our Central Valley pintail today largely come to us from Alaska, as the Alberta and Saskatchewan populations of that species have virtually disappeared. Most of the mallards we take here are local, hatched in the Valley.

So the service guy must have been referring to teal, widgeon, spoonbills and a few of the diving species, not the mallards and pintail that provide the “feeling” for my friend. The service guy’s promise of Canadian migrants referred to birds that stand lower on the totem pole of desirability from the point of view of most hunters. Moreover, when I checked Yahoo Weather for western Canada, it showed temperatures falling well within the “cold-as-hell” range, fifteen or more degrees below freezing at night. By coincidence, a North Dakota contact told me at about the same time that cold had driven most of birds out of the Dakota pothole country.

Being of cynical bent, I conclude from this information that the service manager in question is basically wrong on his facts and out of touch with both field conditions and the wishes of his prime constituency. If there’s another answer out there, I don’t see it. Perhaps excessive indulgence in servings of sautéed spoonbill breast have clouded his capacity to process unpleasant information, i.e., Canadian prairie temperatures have lowered to a level that normally moves birds – and we don’t get our most desired birds from that location anyway.

So what does this “still warm in Canada” garbage have to do with anything? And why is a guy in that position so far off the mark? Could this be yet another symptom of our problem?

* * * * *

When a reporter asked the president of California Waterfowl Association before the season how CWA could have supported a “liberal” package, given the low bird numbers, he purportedly replied: “We lost 4400 hunters last year.” If that’s accurate (and it is certainly consistent with other CWA actions and pronouncements), our leaders are apparently (and openly) prepared to create false expectations in order to avoid erosion of the membership rolls. The hierarchy hopes that a few “good” days of limit kills at the end of the season (and we extend the season to the eve of the nesting period to help assure that result) will keep those skittish members in line until they can be sold a new rasher of barnyard byproduct in the late summer before next season.

In short, the association gears its agenda (which currently drives the agenda of our Fish & Game Commission) and its interpretation of the “truth” to gratify the marginal member, the one most likely to desert the ranks if he suspects that the upcoming season might be mediocre2. So the most tenuously committed, generally the least skilled and least knowledgeable or caring hunters effectively dictate policy – because the leadership quivers in terror at the prospect of losing their $25 renewal and $75 dollar license and stamp money. If this doesn’t stand proper priority on its head, I cannot imagine what might qualify for that description.

We are told that we cannot afford to lose more members because we will lose political clout and will stand at the mercy of the anti-hunting crowd. With at most 70,000 hunters in a state where more than 25 million are registered to vote, it would be difficult to imagine a more ludicrous argument. We are now at the “mercy” of such folks (and would remain so even if we increased our numbers tenfold) who, by the way, generally do not oppose ethical hunting and see hunters as informed and interested stewards of the wetlands they cherish.3

Our basic problem is as simple to define as it may be difficult to change: Our organizations and regulators have focused on hunters – membership rolls, license and stamp revenue, etc. – and have lost sight of the birds.4 They have decided that hunter kill does not affect populations, i.e., the mantra of the dogmatists, so they can promote their “hunter opportunity” and “hunter gratification” agendas without fear for the impact on the one thing upon which all else depends. For without birds in the sky, the issue of membership and stamp money will become irrelevant, unless, of course, we can channel our hunting urge into lawn bowling or croquet.

Our dogmatists suffer from the same problem that afflicted our financial manager described above: Their credentials mattered only at the time they interviewed for the jobs they now hold. Once hired, only their performance -- and results achieved --count. The results over the last five years speak for themselves – and could hardly proclaim a more ringing condemnation. How do you spell “bankruptcy” in waterfowl population terms?

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail – the purest form of dogmatism. As I cast a questing eye at empty skies morning after morning, in locations and under conditions where those same skies teemed with life no more than five years ago, I’m beginning to feel more and more like that nail myself.

How does your own head feel right about now?

1 Not a fanciful example, by the way. This roughly fits the description and credentials of the man who took Long Term Credit International into bankruptcy and nearly destroyed the entire banking system in the process.

2 I am not referring to public land hunters. They are some of our most dedicated, persistent and skilled. On the last day of the last season, I suspect that the last guy in will be a refuge hunter who toughed it out from dark to dark and came in with a nice strap of good birds.

3 This is a position generally taken by the Sierra Club and Audubon, for example. Two years ago, when our Commission last considered outlawing spinning wing decoys at a raucous public hearing, the anti-hunting crowd turned out to support a ban on SWDs, not a ban on hunting. Occasional speakers before the Commission push an anti-hunting agenda and threaten initiative drives, etc. Most of those threats have proved empty, the vaporings of one or two overwrought individuals. As the SWD incident suggested, we will catch the initiative that will destroy us when we act in a way that spectacularly and publicly grosses out a significant segment of the populace. That could happen any day, any time – and can be avoided only by policing ourselves to prevent such provocative behavior.

4 The goal of Adaptive Harvest Management, for example, is to create optimum sustainable “harvest,” not maximum sustainable populations.