More than 20 years ago the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the adoption of “The North American Waterfowl Management Plan,” a joint American-Canadian effort designed to guide waterfowl management. Its purpose was to maintain an abundance of waterfowl well into the 21st Century. The 1986 plan has been periodically tweaked and remains in effect today.

A couple of days ago I received a report about a study by Southern Illinois University professor Michael W. Eichholz. The subject of his study involves the drop in duck productivity in the prairie pothole region -- from the northern United States upward into southern Canada.

Prof. Eicholz focuses, in part, on raccoons and skunks, two predators blamed for increasingly high rates of nest predation. Anytime there is a discussion concerning poor duck production, predators are high on the list of culprits causing our problems.

The morning dawned warm and still. Only a few clouds hung like tattered gauze curtains in the grey light of the coming day.  My friend, who I will call Gregg for the sake of this piece, had invited me to share a hunt on his large ranch in an area that he had developed as wetland habitat. That was in mid-season, the time when Gregg generally enjoys fine shooting.

The road stretched ahead dead straight as I peddled along, heading for the hunting grounds on my bike. Early fall in Northern Illinois on the margins of Chicago’s far northern suburbs, where cornfields and woodlots clearly defined the boundary between town and country, with oak, maple and sumac resplendent in autumn color lining the county road.

An early fall tour of the marsh provides a wonderful respite for many of us. We find escape from the travails of everyday life by immersing ourselves in nature.  For a few hours the insanity of the world is left behind. On my most recent visit, I needed a break from the anger I felt toward those responsible for our economic crisis. The financial week had just ended after a tumultuous ride on Wall Street that would have left a fighter pilot nauseous. Out in the marsh I saw some ducks, far fewer egrets and herons than normal along with the usual denizens of the waterways.

A friend stopped by the other evening with a packet of photos for a show-and-tell about his recent waterfowl hunting trip to North Dakota.  His journey to the northern prairies, the great breeding grounds of our migrant flocks, has become for him an annual event.  Each year on his return I look forward to his sporting tales.

The three of us who founded Madduck have a combined experience with duck hunting that exceeds 150 years in the field. This experience cuts across a very wide swath of time and geography. Our collective sense is that there is something fundamentally changing in the duck world that causes us to have great concern over diminishing waterfowl populations and the future of duck hunting.

I took up fly-fishing seriously in the early ‘60s. Through business connections, I met a man I will call Ron, a skilled fly fisherman and waterfowl hunter. We started fishing together, he as mentor and I as clumsy student. He was an expert, a gifted and versatile caster, a fly tier of renown and, above all, a master of streamcraft.

Why are Adaptive Harvest’s duck seasons always liberal?

Diving-duck hunting has always attracted a devoted following, particularly where they concentrate along their migratory routes and on their wintering grounds. Hunters rig for them on the big bodies of water they frequent, enjoying some of the most exciting waterfowling there is. Always the most numerous and widely distributed of diving ducks, lesser and greater scaup once were accessible to hunters throughout the four flyways. However, scaup have been declining since the 1970’s, alarmingly so during the last decade.