Congratulations to Madduck for the move to a more interactive website. As a professional involved in habitat and waterfowl habitat management and development in California and as a hunter in Califnrnia since 1980, I have seen a few changes. I see that the present day hunter's goal is two-sided; we want more ducks, and we want more access to the remaining ducks. A dependence on "scientific principles" to give us the "maximum sustainable harvest" has blinded us to the vagaries and unpredictabilities inherent in trying to "manage" a fundamentally wild system, subject to many uncontrollable variables of weather, behavioral adaptation of humans and wildlife alike (Roto-duck). The dependence on science to legitemize our hunting seasons and limits (adaptive management harvest strategy) has been our defence against the anti-hunters that want to de-legitemize our pursuit of game, and is a relatively recent development in the history of the american experiment in game management. See John F. Reiger's book on the "American Sportsman and the Origins of Conservation".

Hunting in this country is for the most part a privelege, not a right. For years the fair chase ethic and the "code of the sportsman" restrained methods of take and seasons in order to put the welfare of the resource first, and also legitemized the place of the sportsman in the care of the public resource of fish and wildlife...increasingly, public trust resources are being championed by many distinct and diverse groups in addition to hunters and fisherman, and we, as the original champions, seem to be losing the moral strength of our voice. Some hunter organizations such as Jim Posewitz' Hunters Institute, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and others are addressing this issue, but most professional waterfowl managers ae content to argue the intricacies of population biology,with little effort given to how the larger society views the debate...in california, this matters, in some other states it does not...