In the United States, the number of hunters has plummeted as our nation has moved away from its agrarian base. We are not rearing our younger generations to be our partners in the hunting lifestyle. Yet, even as the number of hunters has decreased since the early 19th century, the number of available acres for remaining sportsmen to hunt has fallen more drastically. The amount of public hunting land available for waterfowling is now a mere pittance compared to the land that previous generations of hunters had available. Therefore, despite having the lowest number of hunters in the history of our nation, the lack of available of land for those hunters is dwindling towards nothing. Therefore, a large proportion of the United States population has found that there is simply not enough public land to support a quality hunting experience. Unfortunately, this affects those just getting started in hunting the most. And these “new hunters” are the ones we most need to encourage to keep our sport alive.

Take a child hunting: or else!

It is a simple fact that we are not replacing older hunters with younger hunters. Not only are we not keeping pace, our numbers are dwindling. One of the leading duck hunting magazines has reported that by 2006 there will be very few waterfowl hunters under 35 years old. If the implications of that statistic do not make you sit up and take notice, you are in a coma. Of all the hunts that I can remember over the last 2 years, I can remember exactly 3 where there were children involved. The truth hurts. The truth is if we have no children now, we have no hunters to protect the sport later.

The good news is that there is no aspect of the problems facing duck hunting that is easier to fix. All we have to do is get off our rear and take a child hunting. It is not hard to find children. They seem to come out of the woodwork whenever I am trying to take a nap. If you don’t have a few “in the family,” then look no farther than the local Boy Scout or Girl Scout troop, your church youth group, or your next-door neighbor. All of them have children who are ready and waiting for your tutelage.

Make a special effort to take a little girl hunting and shooting. There are more little girls than little boys. They vote more than men when they grow up. Also, girls do not usually have the same opportunities to experience the hunting sports that little boys sometimes take for granted. So, girls need your help to become involved. Take a young girl hunting and the sport could make a friend for life. Plus, little girls look adorable in hunting clothes, especially when they are trying to tie a bow on a wiggly duck dog!

Kids love the outdoors. Kids love extreme sports. Your goal: Become a coach for the new extreme sport of duck hunting! You have GUNS! You have BOATS! You have DOGS! You have racket-making CALLS! You have WEIRD CLOTHES! You can see BEAUTIFUL birds! You can drink HOT COCOA in the blind! What is not to love about duck hunting if you are a kid? Keep them warm and dry, let them see some birds, and you have a kid hooked. Have you ever seen the radiant joy on a child’s face when they harvest their first bird? You deserve it to yourself and the sport to experience this for yourself. And please do it soon!

Behavioral psychologists have told me that if you can get someone to participate in something three times, it becomes a habit. In other words, if you invite someone to church and get them to attend three times, the probability is that they will join. After three times our mind forms an attachment, a sense that we belong here in this place, or doing this activity. It works the same way with hunting. And we need the children of today to grow up feeling that affinity for waterfowling. They have to feel like they belong hunting when they are faced with voting on public access and gun rights issues. Take a child hunting. Do it now. That’s the bottom line.

Learn the science and challenge authority!

All waterfowlers consider themselves to be biologists. Just ask any duck hunter if he has an opinion about season extensions, predator management, hunting refuge areas or “short-stopping” ducks. If you raise any of these subjects with the average hunter, they will give you an earful. And, they will give you the same earful whether or not they actually understand the issues. As a population, duck hunters lag far behind even deer hunters in our communal understanding of the species that we hunt. The average duck hunter expounding on biological issues related to hunting is very much like a well-intentioned blind man trying to drive down to the corner market. We know just enough to be dangerous to ourselves.

One of the reasons that we have not made ourselves more knowledgeable about biological issues is that we have abrogated this responsibility to others. Ducks Unlimited and Delta Waterfowl are fine organizations. They have some of the best waterfowl biologists in North America on their respective staffs. And we waterfowlers have relied on these organizations to do our thinking for us for way too long. You cannot think outside the box if you cannot personally perceive where the walls of the box are located. We cannot debate intelligently the critical issues facing our sport if we need to call a waterfowl organization to explain things to us, or tell us what to think. While the large waterfowl conservation organizations are good for the ducks, they also have vested financial interests in their positions, which we would do well to remember when we quote them blindly on some scientific point.

If we are to truly become “sportsmen,” we must also become ardent conservationists. And we cannot be conservationists if we do not understand the basics of waterfowl behavior, ecology and biology. The present cornerstone of waterfowl regulations is the concept of “Adaptive Harvest Management.” All hunters have probably heard of this guiding principle, but few actually know what it means. The AHM concept takes as a given that in wet years we get long seasons and high bag limits, and in dry years we get shorter seasons and lower bag limits. Yet, duck productivity has been basically flat for the last 10 years, even in high water years. Despite of this demonstrable trend, we have the longest seasons and highest bag limits in decades. All duck hunters need to read the data and make their own decisions. Something is broken. We can never know how safe our retirement fund is if we don’t know enough to audit the books. We owe it to the sport, and to the ducks, to become more knowledgeable sportsmen, and much more vocal on issues of biology.

Follow the Money!

We simply have to have more land for public hunting in the United States if the sport is to survive. Otherwise, hunting will become a sport of only the rich and famous, as it is in England and the United Kingdom. If this happens, a tremendous portion of our American Heritage will be lost. The only way that we will get more land for hunting is for the individual states to purchase it, or to improve more of our already existing public land for duck hunting by impounding water and doing moist soil management. This takes new money, a reallocation of existing money, or a combination of both.

There are lots of acres on public land in Mississippi that are not being used for duck production or duck hunting. This is not from a lack of commitment or enthusiasm on the part of the land managers. The problem is a lack of money. I have heard stories of public land not being “pumped up” with water for duck hunting as there was no money for diesel fuel in the budget to run the pumps. And that is truly sad. It has long appeared to me that most public land in Mississippi that is managed for hunting is managed for deer hunting. The duck hunters have to become much more vocal with our representatives and senators regarding land management issues. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and we must become the squeakiest wheel. Waterfowlers must begin to fight aggressively to have our interests protected when it comes to public access hunting, and the allocation of funds.

Where can additional money come from to provide more huntable acres? There are several likely sources. The most readily accessible is duck stamp money. Every state sells duck stamps. The Mississippi duck stamp recently doubled in price, but is still a bargain. I recently received an Excel spreadsheet from the state auditor’s office in Mississippi and was dumbstruck to see where the state duck stamp money travels. In Mississippi, the vast majority of our duck stamp money for the last 2 years has traveled right up Interstate 55 to Memphis. That’s right; Ducks Unlimited got the lion’s share of the duck stamp money the last 2 years. Every waterfowler in every state should do the same investigation. I suspect you will find similar results.

Now, I like DU as much as the next guy. In fact, I have been a sponsor for many years. But there is no reason that 90% of our state duck stamp money should be going to DU if we can’t afford diesel fuel to pump up our WMA’s. Ducks Unlimited can sell extra raffle tickets and make up the shortfall. The taxpayers of Mississippi are not so lucky. We need to take this up with our representatives and the appropriate state agencies. There is no need for our “local bucks” to do anything other than help the “local ducks” and the local duck hunters. Knowledge is power. And now you know where the money is going.

Time to Police Our Ranks!

The entry point to the sport for most “new” duck hunters is public land. The problem with starting your hunting journey on public land is that you tend to start the journey with some of the biggest knot heads that you will ever meet in the field. I am not criticizing the good people who hunt public land. I frequently hunt public land myself. Hunting public land does not make you a “slob hunter.” Unfortunately, there are a lot of slob hunters on public land. We have to either run the slobs out of business, or force them to conform their behavior through peer pressure.

I remember once last year sitting in a boat on a public waterway in the Mississippi Delta. We noticed a group of hunters downstream from us on the edge of a Waterfowl Management Area was doing a lot of shooting. I mean an awful lot of shooting! After a few minutes, we started counting their shots. We counted over 200 shots fired by this group after we became curious. The funny thing was, there were not many ducks flying that day. So, we eased down the river a bit so that we could put some binoculars on the situation. Sure enough, there were 2 boats with 3 guys each. They blasted away in unison at any duck that got within 70 yards of them. We watched this sorry spectacle for an hour, before the hunters packed it up and left. Then we went and picked up the beer cans and piles of hulls that they tossed overboard. We found out later that one of the cavemen was a local “guide” and the other five were from another state.

It is unfortunate that situations like the one that I witnessed last year happen on our public land. It is unfortunate, and preventable. However, scenes like these seem to be on the increase in our state. Part of the problem is overcrowding. Part of the problem is a lack of education. And part of the problem is a lack of common courtesy. All of these problems can be addressed, if the hunting public is willing to do what it takes to address them. If not, we are doomed to repeat history.

Obviously, we need more public land which the taxpayers of this state, and every other state, can have available for the sport of waterfowling. However, we also need something else. The sport of duck hunting needs a program of education on waterfowl hunting safety and etiquette. Frankly, I think that it should be a requirement that every single person, no matter when they were born, should have to take a hunter education course. The certification should have to be renewed every 5 years. I also think that our hunter education courses should have a significant component of waterfowl hunting instruction. We need to teach young children and adults not only that “skybusting” is wrong, but also why it is wrong. We need to show that setting up on top of another group of hunters is bad manners, and profoundly unsafe. We also need to do this in a structured manner.

I can imagine the backlash from hidebound hunters who don’t want to spend 9 hours every 5 years becoming safer, more ethical, more knowledgeable hunters. Is the sport of duck hunting worth a few hours a year to you to improve? Think of the good that we could do the sport with such a simple program. Talk to your friends and fellow hunters, I think, upon reflection, they will agree that such a program is necessary. There are several people working on the curriculum for such a program now. Stay tuned to your friendly neighborhood Waterfowl Review website for more details to be announced.

Act Like it Matters!

The best ambassador available to duck hunting at this moment is you. Yes, I mean YOU! Think about it. You are the man on the street. You interact with the public. You are the duck hunter best known to your non-hunting friends. So, the very best person to improve the image of duck hunters is you. Pay attention to how you act when you are hunting. For instance, avoid public relations fiascos like sitting on the tailgate of the truck drinking beer after hunting with guns lying around. Anything that you do while wearing camouflage affects all of us hunters. Shooting stop signs or trooping around parking lots with guns outside of the case is not the best public relations idea, either.

I am not suggesting that we slink around and not attract attention to ourselves as hunters. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We should attract attention to ourselves by our positive and thoughtful actions when we can be identified as hunters. You never know when a friendly smile or opening the door for a lady may make a friend for hunters everywhere. You never know when tossing your garbage carelessly out the window may leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth that is blamed on hunters everywhere. The moral of the story: Act like it matters! By acting like it matters, becoming involved, and working for change, we can save our sport. And if we don’t save it, who will?

 Copyright © 2003 by Mark Edwards at WaterfowlReview.com.