Every now and then, one can benefit by revisiting pivotal decisions of the recent past to see how they worked out. I thought about that while working in the marsh on some of our blinds on February 5, 2005. This year, our waterfowl season extended to January 30 with youth hunt days on February 5 and 6.

Until fairly recently, we ended our season in California between the 15th and 20th of January, with youth days at the season’s beginning rather than the end Hunters lived with a mid-January closure – generally without organized complaint – until 2002. At that point, it suddenly became vital to “hunter opportunity” to extend the season to the end of January, an extra two weeks, not just here but throughout the country. What set of circumstances spawned that idea in full cry from the cerebral cortex of the hunting fraternity? No one seriously disputes the accuracy of the story.

It seems that one Trent Lott, then a powerful Senator from Mississippi – since discredited for various indiscretions – responded to the pleading of his waterfowling constituents to push for an extension of the season. Many of these supplicants felt that most of the birds they wanted to kill did not arrive on their specific local killing grounds until after the season had closed. Perhaps a manifestation of the “global warming” phenomenon, the perception spread throughout the southern end of the Mississippi Flyway that the birds held “up north” later and later each year, putting a damper on the fun that everyone had come to expect during the halcyon days of the late ’90s.

And this lament rose from more throats than just those of hunters themselves. The plentiful ‘90s had fired an explosion of commercial enterprises based on hunting – guiding services, motels, restaurants, commercial clubs, all catering to the needs of out-of-state and local hunters flocking to the sport in response to the rising bird numbers. Duck hunting became “cool.” It became the “in thing” to do in fall and winter. Enhancing commercial activity based on hunting became a matter of declared policy in certain states.

One Arkansas newspaper account I read during the year 2000 declared that every day of the hunting season added more than $1 million to the economy of Stuttgart alone. That’s a big number when you think about it, considering that Stuttgart is not such a large town and, for all its fame, is but a small part of the duck country in the four states at the southern end of the Mississippi Flyway.

So Senator Lott pressured the Service (some say “bullied” with threats of budgetary retaliation if he didn’t get his way) to extend the season. Believing in “equity” for hunters (apparently without regard for the conditions of the waterfowl populations), the Service figured that if they caved in on the Mississippi Flyway, they had to do so on the other flyways as well.

I attended the public meeting in the auditorium of the Resources Building in Sacramento where the issue came up for open discussion in California in an atmosphere of fevered anticipation.1 The subject of declining population numbers – for the population of almost all species was already in sharp decline by that point – never arose or became part of the discussion. Only the clamor to kill more ducks, from those who claimed that they saw a lot of birds a week or so after season’s close, filled the air. It apparently did not occur to the frustrated and unfulfilled clamorers that they saw more ducks after the shooting stopped because the silence told the survivors it was safe to leave the sanctuaries.

By that point, it had become accepted dogma – at least for the sake of lip service – that waterfowl regulations should be solidly based on “science.” But the only “science” of any kind to support a decision to allow hunting within four to six weeks of the start of the nesting season was of the political rather than biological variety. After the fact, those who supported the extension invoked the compensatory kill hypothesis, i.e., hunter kill doesn’t affect populations so extending the season to January 30 will do no harm. In which case one wonders why we should stop shooting at the end of January, if hunter kill really doesn’t matter? Shucks, where I hunt turkeys at the end of March and into April, the drainage ditches, creeks and ponds are full of mallards. If the compensatory kill people had the courage of their convictions, why aren’t we hearing about the hunter opportunity we could enjoy with a spring season in conjunction with the turkey hunt, at no risk to populations?2 If the North American Migratory Bird Treaty prevents such an action, why aren’t the compensatory kill theorists advocating an amendment based on their “science”?

In a somewhat contradictory variation on the theme, supporters contend that the extension doesn’t hurt because the birds pair much earlier than the end of January. Thus, the late shooting does no more harm to bonded pairs than shooting earlier in the season, particularly in the case of mallards. Hunting inevitably busts bonded pairs, even as early as opening day. It’s an unavoidable attribute of hunting whether hunting affects populations or not. Thus, an extended season does no added harm – except to the extent that it increases total kill, and then only if you assume that hunter kill reduces the population.

A strong thread of developing science gives the lie to that entire line of “logic.” Recent studies provide credible evidence that hens, particularly mallard hens, select a drake carefully, seeking one strong enough to protect them from the pressure of younger, less suitable drakes. Hens particularly need such protection when they are putting on weight and taking in nutrients needed for the nesting effort – the very time when the unprotected hen is most exposed to harassment by sex-crazed males. One study suggests that a widowed hen will normally take thirty to sixty days to select a new mate. If she loses her mate at the end of January, she will be engaged in the rigors of courtship activities when she should be fattening up under the protection of her chosen drake. The process subjects her to a level of harassment that impairs the nesting effort – in some cases to the point where the hen might make no nesting attempt at all.

If this thesis proves correct, then shooting a greenhead out of a pair in late January can do far more injury to production than if the same drake falls into a barbecue in November3. Is the thesis valid? One or two studies, no matter how carefully done, do not establish an immutable truth. But with our populations declining, why should we be taking what could be a serious risk simply to gratify short-term kill and personal enrichment urges?

The advent of the extension week (or two weeks, depending on individual proclivities) prompted these thoughts. A substantial number of California hunters of my acquaintance declared a personal moratorium on mallards after the fifteenth of January. A number of us also elected not to take a drake pintail paired with a hen, waiting instead for the larger flights of several drakes. And many others closed their personal season a week or two early. We were the minority, of course.

In most parts of the state, hunting was pretty poor during the extension week. Picking up decoys on the first youth hunt day in February, I saw not a single duck and only a few high-flying flocks of geese. Only a handful of distant shots rang out in the first light of shooting time. And yet I would not be surprised to hear a clamor for further extension, in the name of hunter opportunity, supported by the mantra of the compensatory kill theorists. One more week can’t really hurt. I can hear it now: With global warming, we need it or we won’t be able to kill our birds.

As I pondered these issues, questing grumpily for a ray of hope, I recalled one of the more humorous and insightful Seinfeld episodes. In the Seinfeld piece, all of the characters got hooked on some wonderful ice cream sold by a local shop. The shop owner claimed that his product contained no fat and had less than 100 calories per scoop. These facts enhanced the appeal to the characters who were all narcissistic and self-absorbed – who were consuming large quantities of the stuff and who wanted to continue to do so without any inconvenient burden of guilt or restraint. Perversely, Seinfeld himself could not suppress his suspicions and had the ice cream tested at a local lab. Sure enough, it came out 35 percent butterfat content and over 400 calories per scoop.

When he informed his friends of his startling findings, they attacked him viciously, expressing outrage and personal anguish. They preferred what they wanted to believe to what they needed to know. They preferred fable over truth because the latter was unpleasant and the former not.

Isn’t that where we are now in the waterfowl world? Somebody “in authority” throws out a counter-intuitive but scientific sounding premise to support a conclusion we want to believe, and we grasp it as drowning men clutch at straws – even when simple math exposes the error, the statement is strictly self-serving and the premise is not logically applied. Thus, the extension lives on, despite its pernicious nature, illegitimate origins and misguided purpose. What is worse, it may be poised to grow beyond its current obscene dimensions.

As Pogo declared: “We have met the enemy – and it is us.”

1 Curiously, although the meeting was sponsored by the Department of Fish & Game, it was chaired by a local sportsmen’s’ talk show host on Sacramento radio who is an unabashed supporter of spinning wing decoy use, an advocate for opening up the sanctuaries to periodic hunting and other notions of that ilk.

2 Not too many years ago, spring hunting in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta threatened to wipe out Cackler and White Front populations nesting there. When the feds shut down the so-called “subsistence” hunts, populations rebounded. Biologists generally concede that hunter kill is additive as to geese, so the case may be distinguishable – but the cause and effect relationship was startling as populations rebounded in a few short years.

3 There is, of course, no issue if the hen is killed as well. In that case we know for a certainty that production potential has been reduced.