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

The committee’s report is the most important waterfowl-hunting document to be published in decades. In our last posting, we detailed the committee’s concerns related to increased hunting pressure and its effects on the movements of Arkansas’ wintering waterfowl.

In this posting, we examine the committee’s conclusions regarding the higher duck harvest resulting from longer seasons and larger bag limits.)

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To the Arkansas Wildlife Federation Duck Committee, the evidence is overwhelming. We are killing too many ducks, especially hen mallards.

The committee blamed the excessive kill primarily on liberal regulations promulgated by Adaptive Harvest Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regulatory protocol.

“The AHM model is flawed,” the committee concluded. “Because of this, season frameworks are being set too liberal, too often.”

The committee noted:

• Earlier opening dates in northern states increase the kill.

• Later closing dates in southern states increase the kill.

• Longer hunting seasons in all states increase the kill.

• Higher daily bag limits increase the kill.

• Spinning-wing decoys increase the kill.

The increased harvest is especially pronounced in the northern and mid-latitude states. From 1990 to 2001, the committee noted, the North Dakota kill jumped from 68,600 to 694,700; South Dakota, 67,100 to 290,800; Minnesota, 366,200 to 647,100, Missouri, 107,500 to 461,100; Iowa, 105,800 to 249,000, and Illinois, 186,200 to 429,200.

Not only are these states killing more ducks, they are killing a higher percentage of juveniles. In 1990, the committee noted that juveniles comprised 56 percent of the Iowa bag. In 2001 that percentage increased to 75 percent. Similar results were reported in Wisconsin and Minnesota – the juvenile percentage in the former increasing from 55 to 75 percent and in the latter from 58 to 72 percent.

It attributed a significant part of the increased juvenile kill to spinning-wing decoys, citing studies that found “hunters using spinning-wing decoys kill more ducks, especially young ducks.”

The combination of a higher kill, coupled with a higher percentage of juveniles in the bag, has had a marked impact on Arkansas water fowling. Hunters are killing more adult hens.

“When the mallard bag limit was increased to allow for a two-hen limit,” the committee said, “we experienced a 37 percent increase in the hen harvest. Even with a one-hen limit, we killed 115,061 hens during the 2002-03 season.

“At the same time we have seen …a marked drop in the number of immature or juvenile ducks being killed in Arkansas.”

Before the current liberal regulations were imposed in 1997, juveniles comprised about 44 percent of the Arkansas bag. In the 2002-03 season, the percentage of juveniles dropped to 35 percent, the committee noted.

The impact of this increasing adult kill cannot be underestimated, it warned.

Biologists believe 20 percent of the hens – so-called “super hens” – are the most successful nesters and produce 60 percent of the fall flight, the committee said. These super hens are old, mature birds – birds that make up an increasing percentage of the Arkansas bag.

The ducks we are shooting today “could very well be our brood stock. We must stop killing so many hens.”

Because AHM’s flawed population model allows continued liberal seasons, resulting in an excessively high adult hen kill that is exacerbated by the growing use of spinning-wing decoys, all of which bodes ill for the future of hunters along the entire length of the Mississippi Flyway, the committee called for flyway-wide restrictions that would:

• Reduce the overall daily bag limit.

• Reduce the hen mallard bag limit to one per day.

• Reduce the maximum season length to no more than 45 days.

• Prohibit spinning-wing decoys.

“We strongly urge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, as well as all state wildlife agencies to consider duck seasons less than 60 days and six ducks, either in the number of days, number of ducks or both.

“The population of ducks that we hunt in Arkansas is a population under stress,” it concluded. “Without management decisions designed to reduce that stress, we fear the quality of the duck-hunting experience in Arkansas may not improve. It could actually get worse.”

Next: Sanctuary and “grained refuges.”

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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.