Editor’s Note: Widespread complaints about the declining quality of duck hunting prompted the Arkansas Wildlife Federation earlier this year to appoint a “Duck Committee” to “investigate the facts (and factors) impacting duck seasons and duck hunting.”

The committee’s report, released last month, is the most significant waterfowl-management document in decades. It focuses primarily on Arkansas, but its insights and recommendations are of great importance for all waterfowlers concerned about the future of duck hunting.

We are therefore beginning a multi-part series based on the Arkansas Wildlife Federation report. We commend this series to your attention.

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By the end of the 2002-03 duck-hunting season the chorus of complaints was too loud for the Arkansas Wildlife Federation to ignore. Too many long-time Arkansas waterfowlers declared the season “had been the worst in memory. The one before it also was not up to expectations.”

Traditional explanations for the dismal gunning, offered in newspaper outdoor columns that quoted the usual biologists, failed to dampen the grumbling.

This prompted the federation to appoint a “Duck Committee” to investigate the declining quality of Arkansas waterfowling. It consisted of 11 members, all of whom were duck hunters. One had ties to commercial hunting. None were professional biologists or waterfowl managers.

The committee produced a 52-page report that is startling in scope and far-reaching in its analysis and recommendations. Entitled “Findings and Recommendations of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation Duck Committee,” it is a “must read” for every serious waterfowler concerned about the future of his sport.

It called for three fundamental changes necessary to improve the quality of Arkansas waterfowling and preserve duck hunting for the future – changes that apply with equal validity to many other states. They are:

• Reduce hunting pressure.

• Reduce the kill.

• Maintain inviolate sanctuaries and improve habitat for wintering ducks.

Importantly, the committee addressed issues that are taboo subjects for public debate among waterfowl managers and biologists -- -- the increasing commercialization of waterfowling, rising numbers of hunters and the growing mentality among many hunters that “if it flies, it dies.”

When it began its investigation, the committee noted, “there were many opinions as to why duck hunting was so poor, but not many facts. The attitude among many hunters was that we did not trust the ‘Feds’ and did not believe the Arkansas Fish & Game Commission, mainly in the area of statistics, such as duck numbers, harvest figures, size and location of the flock, etc.

“We did not want to repeat what the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission or biologists with private conservation groups said. We saw early on that we also needed to interview those outside of governmental agencies and the nonprofit groups in order to obtain the broad picture.

“We wanted objectivity. So we sought out two noted, independent waterfowl scientists. We reviewed …input from hunters throughout the state.”

The committee noted that historical winter-survey data confirmed hunters’ complaints that fewer ducks wintering in the state.

“From 1955 through 1978 (a period of 24 years), there were 18 years in which the Arkansas midwinter survey totaled more than one million ducks,” it reported. “From 1979 through 2002 (also a period of 24 years) only eight midwinter counts totaled more than a million ducks.

“It is difficult to know for certain why fewer ducks are coming to the state. Some factors, such as cyclic droughts in the prairie pothole breeding region, fall and winter droughts in Arkansas, lack of snow cover in states to the north of Arkansas, or improved waterfowl habitat developments in areas north of us, are out of our control.”

What is certain, the committee emphasized, is that fewer ducks today are pursued by more hunters over a longer period of time – in states and provinces to the north as well as Arkansas.

It noted the numbers of hunters in states to the north in recent years increased significantly. In Minnesota federal ducks stamp sales jumped from 104,369 in 1990 to 140,803 in 2001 (a 26 percent increase); Iowa, 24,686 to 32,090 (a 30 percent hike); Missouri, 29,150 to 41,657 (a 43 percent increase).

“By the time Arkansas’ season opens in late November, the ducks we are calling and trying to shoot have been hunted for some 80 days nonstop,” the committee said.

Significantly, the committee noted that Arkansas was not immune to this trend.

State duck-stamp sales jumped from 37,520 in 1990 to 95,863 in 2002 – a startling 155 percent increase. Moreover, it found that Arkansas “leads the Mississippi Flyway in the number of days we hunt (per hunter), with each hunter going an average of 14.52 days per season. Forty-three percent of these hunters come from out-of-state.”

Additionally, “Arkansas hunters … harvest more ducks per season per hunter than any other state in the Mississippi Flyway.

“We wished to be the ‘Duck Capital of the World’ and we got it. We wanted waterfowl hunting to become a major economic factor in Arkansas and we got it. Duck club memberships are now more expensive than many country club memberships. Top-of- the-line commercial operations charge $500 per hunter, per day and more. Farmers and landowners have found that leasing land for duck hunting can add significantly to their bottom line.

“Little did we on the AWF Duck Committee understand just how successful we had been in doing this in Arkansas but more importantly, that other states in the flyway were doing the same thing with an equal measure of success. A significant larger number of hunters are hunting a finite population of ducks throughout the flyway. Commercialization of hunting … has been fueled in part by a follow-the-flock type of hunting where guides will follow the fall migration from Canada to Louisiana.

“We also found duck hunters have a basic ‘if it flies, it dies’ attitude meaning that ducks served for one purpose and that was to shoot them. In coupling this attitude with the numbers, it did not take long to figure out how much of an impact hunting pressure is having on the overall quality of the duck-hunting experience.”

Not only are Arkansas hunters seeing fewer ducks, a result of diminished fall flights, but “by the time the ducks get to us they have seen it all and maybe for the second, third, fourth or more time.”

Arkansas waterfowlers who blame poor gunning in recent years on federal wildlife refuges, where sanctuary areas and food crops concentrate ducks, are missing the point, the committee concluded.

“Waterfowl are sensitive to all forms of disturbance and will almost always seek refuge. Those ducks that do make their way here seek protected areas to avoid hunting pressure.

“The AWF Duck Committee believes that fewer ducks come to Arkansas or stay here very long because they are under extreme pressure to evade the never-ending shots of waterfowlers for 60 days in a row.”

To improve the quality of waterfowl hunting, the current level of pressure must be reduced, the committee said. “The obvious solution is to reduce the season length and bag limits to a restrictive or moderate level throughout the flyway.”

In Arkansas, the committee said, the number of non-resident hunters on public hunting areas should be limited. Afternoon hunting should be prohibited on public and private lands in certain regions. And the state should ban future hunting on former sanctuaries within state wildlife management areas.

States also can “insert splits or rest periods in their season framework … to allow for the ducks to “de-educate’ to hunting techniques. Continuous hunting from mid-August to mid-January not only increases pressure, but it creates harder to hunt ducks.

“Alternatively, increases in the population should be sought. An increase in the quality and quantity of breeding habitat coupled with a moderate season could increase populations to a level more tolerant of the current hunting pressure.”

But hunting pressure, the committee emphasized, is only one cause of the declining quality of waterfowl hunting.

Next: The sport kill.

NOTE: You can obtain a free copy of the AWF report by writing or calling the Arkansas Wildlife Federation, 9700 Rodney Parham Road, Suite 1-2, Little Rock, AR 72227, phone 1-877-945-2543. We recommend you obtain and read the entire report. It is too important to ignore