(Editor’s Note: John Bell, an attorney from Searcy, Ark., is a member of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation “Duck Committee” that produced the most perceptive, significant report in decades about problems facing waterfowlers – and solutions to those problems. In the following article, Bell describes his experiences as a member of the committee. He issues this cautionary note: “Let me state emphatically that the opinions expressed herein are mine and are in no way, shape, or form the opinions of the AWF, its members or directors. When I use the term “we” it is used to denote what I believe to be the collective opinion of some of the committee members. However, my beliefs about others’ opinions are just that and are not meant to reflect their beliefs, only mine.” For more detail about the AWF Duck Committee report, search the archives of Madduck.org.)

The Arkansas Wildlife Federation is an unusual organization. In it you will find duck hunters, tree huggers, people whose most important concern in the world is the Red Oak Borer (a nasty bug that is killing a ton of trees in Arkansas’ National Forests), deer hunters, trappers, fishermen, bird-watchers, vegetarians, meat-a-tarians, Republicans, Democrats, Independents and any other sub-specialty of human beings you can imagine. Probably the only thing all of these diverse people share is a desire to keep the wild world wild and to protect that which they hold dear; namely the fields, streams and woodlands that make Arkansas what it is.

I joined the AWF board of directors on an invitation extended by virtue of my involvement in the fight against the White River Navigation Project in Arkansas My sole focus was continuing the fight against the White River Navigation Project. Little did I realize then the breadth of AWF’s concerns or the importance of its mission.

The “Duck Report,” as I’ll call it, came about as the result of an AWF board meeting in early 2003. All of us who hunted ducks were troubled by what we were seeing, or more specifically, not seeing, in the skies over Arkansas duck holes in the season just past and those before. We worried that maybe something had gone wrong with Arkansas duck hunting. If duck populations were sufficient to support a 60-day season and a six duck limit, then why we were seeing, and more importantly, killing so few ducks?

Certainly, some individuals were fortunate enough to have access to those places where killing a limit is only a matter of time. But even those lucky souls reported the ducks they saw in the sky were either well educated or, in many cases, traveling in flocks far smaller than in years past.

We formed a Duck Committee to investigate. We began with two assumptions: (1) We weren’t seeing as many ducks as we had in previous years, even accounting for the “bad” years of the late 80's and early 90's; and (2) that the ducks we were hunting were much “smarter” than those we were used to. In this context, a smart duck is one that is less likely to respond to a call, more cautious of decoys, and one that flares when a hundred years of combined duck hunting experience in the blind tells a group of duck hunters that they should have put that duck on the water.

Armed with these beliefs, we set out to find what was wrong with Arkansas duck hunting. We did not begin our inquiry with the idea that ducks should be protected, or that Arkansas had an inherent problem by virtue of the fact that it frequently kills more ducks than any other state. We never wrote a mission statement, but if we had, it likely would have read something like this:

Arkansas has the greatest duck-hunting tradition in the world. Recently, we have not killed as many ducks, nor have we seen as many ducks, as we in Arkansas expect. Accordingly, the AWF put together this committee to determine why we are not killing or seeing the ducks that we should. Our sole purpose is to increase the quality of Arkansas duck hunting, first and foremost, without regard to the condition of waterfowl hunting in other states within the Mississippi Flyway.

Each committee member came in with a personal agenda, as is inevitable in such a group. These agendas ranged from anger at USFWS policies on rest areas (mine), USFWS policies on beaver damage in the White River Refuge (someone else), Corps of Engineers projects that had altered the White River flood regime (everyone), robo-ducks (maybe half), out of state hunters (one), weather (a given), conservation organizations (maybe one or two) and government agencies in general (unanimous). Notice how little blame we, as proud Arkansas duck hunters, placed on ourselves.

We quickly realized the error of our ways. We learned, although it was obvious all along, that the entirety of the Mississippi Flyway and, to a lesser extent, the Central Flyway, is crucial to the success of the Arkansas duck hunter. We learned that political considerations still exert a great influence on duck hunting, even though Adaptive Harvest Management and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan were supposed to eliminate all politics from duck hunting. The political issue should have been obvious. When was the last time you saw a President holding up a ten-point buck? If you have, you’re far older than I am. But, I do remember seeing pictures of Presidents Bush (I & II), Clinton, and Carter holding up ducks. Just recently, a Supreme Court Justice caused an uproar by going duck hunting with the Vice-President of the United States. Ducks matter to politicians, and that ought to be a good thing, but if you’re not preaching to the choir, then you’re going to have a hard time with the politicos.

The politics of duck hunting, however, cannot be confined solely to the office-holders. There is another vast sub-group that has far more impact on our ducks and our duck hunting than any senator, governor or President. The professional waterfowl community, ranging from officials in the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to the various state game agencies, to the conservation organizations, sets the agenda and, more importantly, the expectations that drive the politicians’ decisions.

I sensed a sigh of relief when many things we thought we knew proved to be wrong, in spite of the fact that the “experts” kept telling us otherwise. One alarming statistic, one that to my knowledge had never before been published in Arkansas, told us that Arkansas’ mid-winter count of ducks had continued to decline after the “banner years” of the late 1990's. The decline itself was not necessarily noteworthy, as highs and lows are the norm in duck populations. What was scary was this: Arkansas’ mid-winter count decreased while the mid-winter counts of states immediately to our north and south increased. We thought the biologists would explain why they failed to raise the alarm as soon as this phenomenon became apparent.

What happened to Arkansas in those declining years? We killed more ducks than anybody. By sheer numbers, by virtue of the fact that we increased duck stamp sales from around 30,000 in the early 1990's to 90,000 at the turn of the Millennium, we managed to kill over a million ducks in a couple of those years, even though our duck numbers were on a downward spiral. We were the Duck Capital of the World. In the immortal words of Jimmy Buffett: “We made enough money to buy Miami, but (we) pissed it away so fast...” All the while, the experts told us 60/6 was a great idea.

Without reciting the Duck Report in its entirety, it is safe to say that we settled on a “Perfect Storm” scenario as an explanation for the decline in Arkansas duck hunting: As habitat conditions improved to our north and south, as robo-duck killed most every young duck before it reached Arkansas, and as we continued to hunt sixty days, trying to kill six ducks, with 90,000 waterfowlers hunting in a state with a population of two million (for a rough comparison, imagine California with three million duck hunters), we in Arkansas continued to believe that our duck hunting would still reign supreme, just because we were in Arkansas, and nothing we did could affect it. We were wrong.

One of the greatest realizations we came to in our investigation of Arkansas duck hunting was that, to the extent we were able to control our own destiny, we in the Natural State did a poor job of that. The AWF Duck Report stated very early on “It begins with the habitat”. It could easily have ended with that as well.

Ducks have a sorry sense of geography. As states to the north and south bettered their habitat, we lost ducks. A duck has no idea whether it’s in Arkansas or Missouri or Canada, except to the extent that it knows where it is. (We may be lost, but we’re making good time.) Ducks don’t realize they are supposed fly over the several hundred thousands of acres of recently planted rice in Missouri because they ought to be in Arkansas any more than they ought to stick around Arkansas once the shooting starts.

It is important to note that, especially when conditions are right, no other state affords ducks, particularly mallards, the amount of habitat they will find in Arkansas. The difference has become that, even when conditions are right, the ducks aren’t here. We know from the mid-winter counts that they aren’t here like they used to because other states have accommodated them.

I suspect there is another reason. The ducks don’t want to be here, just as you wouldn’t if you faced gunfire all day long. We pressured our ducks like they owed us money and we kept after them for their entire stay. It was no wonder ducks stayed in Missouri or flew to Louisiana.

This realization resulted in what might be characterized as the “We’re Different” concept that many of us hope to impart to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and local waterfowlers. The “We’re Different” concept goes like this: Because we are unique in terms of the numbers of our citizens who duck hunt, the frequency with which we hunt and the proficiency we display in killing ducks, we owe a special duty to our wintering flocks that cannot be adequately addressed by flyway-wide regulations. We’re not Minnesota, and we can’t have the same duck regulations as Minnesota, because even though we hunt the same ducks, they are hunted differently down here. Another song comes to mind, by the great Ray Wylie Hubbard, as he sang about the virtues of his beloved home state versus the other forty-nine: “Screw You, We’re from Texas.” We need to repeat this mantra, only with an eye toward understanding and, more importantly, showing that our well-deserved designation as the Duck Hunting Capital of the World carries with it a higher responsibility. If robo-ducks need to be outlawed or seasons need to be shortened, then Arkansas, as the leader in all things duck-hunting, ought to be first in line, regardless of what the rest of the world does. (Screw You, We’re from Arkansas)

The reaction to the AWF duck report has, honestly, been a bit overwhelming in many respects. With one important exception, we found a very distinct difference in the reaction to the report between public land hunters and private land hunters. Private land hunters enthusiastically embraced the report, while public hunters gutted it at every opportunity. This puzzled me from the beginning, since I still consider myself a public land hunter. I have private land on the White and Cache rivers, adjacent to public areas. If the public guys in my area can’t hunt, neither can I. Furthermore, the best spots near me are in the public areas. Sure, I like my blind when the conditions predict a mediocre hunt, but when things are right I’ll be the first one at the boat ramp jostling for position. It boggles my mind to imagine that public hunters may be more shortsighted than the Big Duck Club guys who can kill a limit virtually at will. The significant exception to this rule involves age. It seems that the longer a waterfowler has hunted, and the more he has invested in it, whether financially because of an expensive membership in a duck club or emotionally because of a long-standing family tradition, the less likely he is to care about how many ducks are hanging on his strap and the more likely he is to care about the number of ducks he sees in the sky or pouring into the woods the day after the season.

If I could make all duck hunters in Arkansas understand one thing, it would be this: Nobody cares more about the future of Arkansas duck hunting, private and public, than the Arkansas Wildlife Federation. Nobody has more members who would give up duck hunting today if it meant that our children and grandchildren could enjoy it the way it used to be than the members of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation. Disagree with us, shout to the rafters your disagreement with us, but please, please don’t question our motives. There is too much at stake for inconsequential arguments over motive to stain this debate. If you believe nothing else that I, or the AWF, stand for, believe this: The same group that made the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission the standard by which all other game and fish agencies would be measured, the same group that helped save the Cache River, the same group that stands in the forefront of protecting the White River, is the same group that wants nothing more than the best possible duck hunting for every person in Arkansas, by whatever means necessary.

No article like this would be complete without a hunting story, so here goes: In the fall of 1999, my old law-school roommate called and told me to get to Bayou Meto, forthwith. He put it more colorfully, as was his way, but his message came across. I knew we would be hunting the Scatters with his father-in-law and I knew that the old man had, for some reason, a definite dislike of duck dogs. I told my friend that I appreciated the invitation, but that I had marital duties to attend to and that, to be honest, I just couldn’t stand to hunt anymore without taking the dog. She enjoyed it as much as I did. Fueled by whiskey, undoubtedly, he mouthed to his father-in-law that it was about time the old man got over the whole “dog thing”, to which the old man replied “Bring that SOB down here and put an orange life jacket on it. Ain’t gonna make a difference.” The old man’s tank was sufficiently full, as well.

The dog and I set sail for Cornerstone, Arkansas immediately. After an hour or so of sleep, we left the boat ramp at about five minutes after “Haul Ass” and proceeded to the hole. We put out decoys then sat for two hours, as night became first light and shooting time became shooting-time thirty. With a couple hundred mallards swimming around us, I finally asked the old man when we were going to start hunting. (The dog, God bless her, just sat on her stand watching ducks swim around and looked at me with an expression that said, “Dad, don’t you know why we’re here? Shoot that danged thing before I jump off here and catch it in my mouth”.) The old man looked at me and said “Are you in a hurry?”

“No, sir, I guess not,” I replied.

He was right, because it ended way too soon. We killed 13 limits in 38 minutes, on a Saturday in the most over-crowded wildlife management area imaginable. The ultimate compliment came later that day when the old man took me aside and said “I haven’t hunted with a damned dog in fifteen years. Most of the time they bark and break and screw up your hunting. That dog’s all right. She’s welcome to hunt with me any time.” I wasn’t sure if that meant I was invited back, or if the dog would have to find a ride, but it was a proud moment nonetheless.

I remember us “young guys”, even though we were all married and in our late 20's, being told to pick the ducks, while the older guys watched football and napped. I remember remarking to my friend that we could put in $10.00 a piece and haul the ducks to the picker. “We’d better not do that,” he replied. We picked ducks for about three hours longer than it took to kill them. We laughed, told stories and tried to figure out a way to drink beer with bloodied, feather-covered hands. In the end, I remember the number of ducks we killed, but that’s the least of it. Watching them pitch in the trees, watching the dog do what she was made to do, laughing about everything at the time and still laughing about it all today is what I remember most. All I want is more days like that and, more importantly, for my kids to have some of those, too.