Mama, we’ll have barbecued chicken tonight! Sounds like a riff from the Beverly Hillbillies, circa 1970, doesn’t it? As Homer and Jethro might muse: “Wish it was, wish it was. But it ain’t.”

Nosiree. The waterfowl world is currently exploring its own version of illogical arson, a more or less annual exercise in recent times at this season, born of frustration, unfulfilled expectations and eye-strain caused by staring morosely at silent, empty skies, hour after hour, day after day. We might just shrug the phenomenon off, paying it no mind. But this year, the idea seems to be gaining traction, vigorously waving the flag of respectability by pushing for increased “hunter opportunity.”

Our latest variation on torching the henhouse takes the form of two arguments, different but related, based on the foundation of an identical premise. First, we should open the sanctuaries to periodic hunting and, second, that increased hunting opportunity should become the paramount consideration of our management practices and should include laws that require private lands to be opened to hunters from the public at large. This last was considered a sufficiently worthy idea to justify publication of an article (“Is Fair Chase a Trojan Horse,” Dec.-Jan.) advocating it in California Waterfowl magazine, the official organ of California Waterfowl Association. Bob McLandress, the president of the association, apparently invited and endorsed the article. Curious indeed, as adoption of such an idea would immediately dry up the contributions from private landowners on which the life of that association, and the salary and position of that president, depends.

As an abstract concept, I respect a person sufficiently committed to a heartfelt belief to sacrifice himself (figuratively speaking, of course) on the altar of an idea, provided – and it’s a big provided -- that the idea in question justifies such a weighty gesture. In contrast, we all know of people who make themselves ridiculous through excesses of fervor for a trivial or muddleheaded cause. (British soccer hooligans and Oakland Raider football fans come to mind, for example). Unfortunately, the idea in this instance crumbles under the most cursory analysis, even if one concedes that enhanced hunter opportunity is a salutary goal. So I find it puzzling that our California Waterfowl Association would take such sure aim at its own feet by advocating that waterfowl management’s “overriding objective ... is for waterfowl hunters to enjoy the greatest number of the highest quality of waterfowl hunting opportunities possible and to ensure that these opportunities are fairly shared among all hunters.”

Leaving those musings, let’s examine the open sanctuary and open lands arguments. And let’s start by defining our terms, setting aside (for a salvo in a later piece) the constitutional and other legal limitations that would nullify laws purporting to require the wholesale opening of private land to public use without compensation (from a non-existent source) and/or landowner consent.

The first question we must address is this: What do we mean by “hunter opportunity?” Presumably, we mean providing a potential hunter with access to a place in the marsh where he has a realistic opportunity of seeing and taking wild, migratory waterfowl -- not the pen-raised birds released in large numbers on the Atlantic Flyway and by commercial hunting lodges in Arkansas in a feeble effort to simulate some vestige of what we have so shamefully lost. Can we agree on that? When we say “improved hunter opportunity,” we are talking about improving the chances at seeing and taking true wild birds.

And yet, most commentators seem to equate “hunter opportunity” with access to marshlands, period. Their advocacy implicitly assumes that marshland automatically means that the hunter who now has access will find waterfowl present – not just today but in the future as well. But any observer with experience of our flyways over the last thirty years knows that the one does not follow from the other. Just to pick an obvious example, Chesapeake Bay still exists. The huge flocks of birds that used to be found there do not. In the time I have been hunting, I have seen literally dozens of California marshlands decline from good hunting spots to places where one would be hard-pressed to see a migratory duck, except on rare occasions, despite consistent assurances from our leaders that the counts have not declined that much overall.1 (Indeed, DU apparently insists that all of our populations are in good health today, as its official position in its debate with Delta2).

Bluntly stated, “hunter opportunity” cannot be expanded – or even exist – without good populations of waterfowl and wetlands for them to use and in which they can rest. Frustrated hunters look over a fence, see a concentration of birds and long for a chance to get in among them – without any regard or thought for what will happen when the first volley of shots goes up. That’s tomorrow’s problem. Today, we will get our easy limit. And isn’t that our real problem? In the mind of far too many, it is always easy limits today. Tomorrow never arrives. The price of today’s excess remains out of mind.

I suggest that before we start jumping those fences, we should consider whether inviolate sanctuaries, whether on public or private ground, are essential to the welfare of our flights, particularly in these parlous times. If inviolate sanctuaries are essential to migratory, wild birds, and if the birds are essential to “hunter opportunity,” how can we hunt the sanctuaries – whether public or private -- without doing violence to our stated goal, unless we have concluded that hunting pressure won’t move the birds away from those areas or destroy their value as “sanctuaries”? What more do we need to learn to conclude that the exact opposite is true, that nothing moves birds like hunting pressure? Haven’t we proved that by brutal experience time after time after time? Here again, those in doubt would do well to read the report of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation on the decline of Arkansas hunting over the last few years – the AWF Report we have cited often in these articles and that was published in August of 2003. The AWF Report attributes virtually the entire decline in Arkansas hunting to excessive hunting pressure, both in absolute terms as well as the manner in which that pressure is applied.

Isn’t all of this entirely consistent with our first hand experience as hunters? What characteristic do almost all of the good hunting spots have in common? They are located close to a sanctuary – and the hunting is generally good when the sanctuary holds a lot of migratory waterfowl. Not always, of course. Sometimes the birds don’t leave the closed zones. But in most cases, show me a hunter coming in with a limit and I’ll show you a hunter whose blind was near an area closed to hunting and heavily populated with waterfowl. The “closed zone” could be an impromptu overflow that is physically inaccessible to hunters, or it may be a formal sanctuary. But in most cases, it will be an established area that has been off limits to hunters – or human disturbance of any kind, for that matter – year after year.

Most of the best private hunting clubs either maintain a sanctuary within their property lines or abut one on adjoining lands. The blinds in highest demand on those lands are those that lie in strategic position with reference to the sanctuary. Ask a diehard refuge hunter why he goes to the trouble of dealing with the public land situation when he could afford a private blind and he will almost invariably reply: “The refuges are where the birds are.” Meaning that the best hunting spots lie in the vicinity of a closed zone that is managed for minimal disturbance of any kind during periods of waterfowl concentration. The hunter takes his quarry from the small restless percentage that fly from the safe area for reasons that only the birds know. Those vulnerable birds may be but a small segment of the concentration – but the larger the concentration, the more careless birds in absolute numbers, the more likely that the hunter will achieve success.

What happens when the main concentration suffers the shock and disturbance of shotgun blasts? The birds go elsewhere. Sometimes they come back, sometimes not. Hit the “sanctuary” every day or every other day and it will degrade to the point where it is no better than any other ground that receives equivalent hunting pressure. And the lands in the vicinity will lose the benefit they derived from its undisturbed condition. .

The property I hunt most frequently is too small to include enough land for a viable sanctuary. But we are bordered on the south by a huge private club. A band of dense riparian forest, roughly two hundred yards wide with two branches of a large creek running through it, separates us from our southern neighbors. In years past, mallards and wood ducks congregated in the wide spots in those creeks, providing occasional but consistent targets for hunters on both sides of the tree line.

About three years ago, our neighbors converted roughly three hundred acres of rice ground adjacent to the riparian forest into natural habitat, intending to keep it as a sanctuary. They hired the same biologist who had created a remarkably successful sanctuary on a property a few miles away. But unlike that property owner (who assiduously protects his sanctuary ground from all disturbance), they stuck two blinds in the middle of the converted ground as soon as they saw how attractive it was to the birds. Some of the members could not resist the temptation. Now, they pound the hell out of that violated “sanctuary.” Result? Little or no bird usage – and their fusillades have driven the mallards and woodies out of the creek branches as well. They experience poorer shooting today than they did before they spent all that money on the conversion project. We, of course, suffer right along with them.

Many other examples illuminate the point: Disturb a sanctuary and you risk destroying the “hunter opportunity” it contributes to all the lands around. Hit it too hard and the birds leave more or less permanently. Unfortunately, “how hard is too hard” varies with the property, depending upon factors that only the birds know. Always recalcitrant, the ducks refuse to return the questionnaires.

This is not rocket science – nor is it a secret. Professional managers know that inviolate sanctuaries, in the same location year after year, are vital to the health and prosperity of the populations, without which “hunter opportunity” is nothing more than a barren, theoretical concept. A man can go almost anywhere to gaze into an empty sky. If that’s hunter opportunity, then opening the sanctuaries presents a quick route to the destination.

A well-known political scientist once observed that a man (or a woman, presumably) could achieve immortality through spectacular error. In my more gloomy moments, I tend to believe that all this jabberwok about opening the sanctuaries comes from a self-centered, narcissistic unmentionable striving mightily for that brass ring. Nothing else could possibly explain what has got to be one the most self-destructive, brainless concepts ever promoted among waterfowlers (setting aside the accursed roto-duck, of course).

Torching the henhouse is a pretty poor way to attain chicken barbecue – even poorer if one depends upon the poultry flock for future nourishment. Opening the sanctuaries provides an apt analogy.

Any of you who gives a damn about tomorrow, or the day after, has a clear and distinct mission. Submerge in buckets of scorn those prophets who urge us to sacrifice our waterfowl birthright on the altar of “hunter opportunity.” Read the message for what it is – a dealer offering nothing more substantial than a quick fix. In this context, “spectacular error’ understates the matter.

We should apply a simple test to any new management proposal: Will the measure proposed contribute toward achieving high and stable waterfowl populations? For that’s the way to achieve greater hunter opportunity. It’s not the hard way. It’s the only way. Anyone who tells you a different story is just a snake-oil pitchman with a taste for barbecued chicken in the rough.

1 I know an avid hunter who lives and hunts in Louisiana. He belongs to a fine club there. I saw him during the first week of January, 2004. He stated that the Louisiana situation this year has been beyond dismal. “We keep good records. We would normally have taken at least a thousand birds by this time of year. This year, our count is below one hundred.” So the conditions we have described are not just left coast miseries.

2 In which case, one might wonder why DU is currently soliciting funds from all its heavy hitters nationwide to raise $100 million for a land acquisition and management program to rescue the pintail. If that population is in good health, why do we need such a monumental effort at this particular time? Well, the population is not in good health – and DU’s or anyone else’s suggestion to the contrary as to any other population is almost equally suspect.