Survey results.

[hdshot]

Mallards took a huge hit this year again. 😞

https://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-surveys/2023-duck-numbers

[ducks4days]

Pintails are up 24%, I wonder how much higher the population needs to climb before they bump the limit back up.

[hdshot]

Pintails are up 24%, I wonder how much higher the population needs to climb before they bump the limit back up.

Pintail shows -43% from LTA while mallards -23% from LTA.  Over 1 million mallards decreased in just one short year.  Also pintail population is much smaller so small gains can show nice percentage numbers. 

Mallards showed over 10 million in 2013 survey.

[mburrows]

Tough winter/spring. The good news the tough winter fixed a lot of drought issues hopefully that helps in the long terms.

[hdshot]

Tough winter/spring. The good news the tough winter fixed a lot of drought issues hopefully that helps in the long terms.

Dakota’s had excellent conditions while Canada has been dealing with wildfires since May from drought.  Also survey shows May ponds -9% from last year. I posted some articles they wrote shortly after survey was completed talking about the struggles north of the border.

https://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,279468.0.html

[hdshot]

Delta is getting nervous, mass email they sent about survey.

“ Dr. Frank Rohwer, president and chief scientist of Delta Waterfowl puts forth an important reminder: “We don’t hunt the breeding population.“

Lol! Like we didn’t know that!

[metlhead]

Meh. Never really paid attention to those surveys. Still gonna be a ShTon of birds this fall and Panz and I are gonna put the hurt on as many as we can. Prolly get in almost 30 hunts with buddies and new folks. Dog is gonna be busy. Might even blast chicken little.

[hunterednate]

Delta is getting nervous, mass email they sent about survey.

“ Dr. Frank Rohwer, president and chief scientist of Delta Waterfowl puts forth an important reminder: “We don’t hunt the breeding population.“

Lol! Like we didn’t know that!

I think you may have misunderstood what Dr. Rohwer was trying to say. He was making the distinction between the breeding population (which only includes adult ducks leftover from last year's hunting season) and the fall flight (which includes all the ducklings those breeders produced...which aren't in the survey cause they weren't yet hatched). As I understand it, Dr. Rowher is giving some reason for optimism since although there weren't as many breeding ducks as they hoped to find, wet conditions in some key duck production zones could still make for a decent fall flight for hunters.

Full quote below:

“We don’t hunt the breeding population,” Rohwer said in a news release. “We hunt the fall flight, which is made of the breeding population plus this year’s duck production. Duck production is the key to the upcoming hunting season.”

“I think duck production is going to be a much better picture than what we’re seeing in these survey numbers,” Rohwer noted. “The Dakotas got rain in late May after the pond count data was assessed, and then we’ve had intermittent rain throughout the summer.

“Many areas of the key PPR breeding grounds stayed relatively wet, and that’s really good for renesting and duckling survival—two of the big drivers of duck production. Saskatchewan started the spring with better water conditions than in 2022, and summer rains helped keep that water later in the nesting season than we have seen in recent years. I was impressed by the number of blue-winged teal broods I saw in southern Saskatchewan in July.”

[hdshot]

Delta is getting nervous, mass email they sent about survey.

“ Dr. Frank Rohwer, president and chief scientist of Delta Waterfowl puts forth an important reminder: “We don’t hunt the breeding population.“

Lol! Like we didn’t know that!

I think you may have misunderstood what Dr. Rohwer was trying to say. He was making the distinction between the breeding population (which only includes adult ducks leftover from last year's hunting season) and the fall flight (which includes all the ducklings those breeders produced...which aren't in the survey cause they weren't yet hatched). As I understand it, Dr. Rowher is giving some reason for optimism since although there weren't as many breeding ducks as they hoped to find, wet conditions in some key duck production zones could still make for a decent fall flight for hunters.

Full quote below:

“We don’t hunt the breeding population,” Rohwer said in a news release. “We hunt the fall flight, which is made of the breeding population plus this year’s duck production. Duck production is the key to the upcoming hunting season.”

“I think duck production is going to be a much better picture than what we’re seeing in these survey numbers,” Rohwer noted. “The Dakotas got rain in late May after the pond count data was assessed, and then we’ve had intermittent rain throughout the summer.

“Many areas of the key PPR breeding grounds stayed relatively wet, and that’s really good for renesting and duckling survival—two of the big drivers of duck production. Saskatchewan started the spring with better water conditions than in 2022, and summer rains helped keep that water later in the nesting season than we have seen in recent years. I was impressed by the number of blue-winged teal broods I saw in southern Saskatchewan in July.”

Like I basically said, we all know we don’t hunt during breeding season, but many others sound like they could be hitting the panic button and he is trying to calm them down. But breeding surveys could have some say in how future seasons and limits are managed. So my feeling is delta is getting flooded with questions on what could be next after this year’s result.

[hdshot]

Meh. Never really paid attention to those surveys. Still gonna be a ShTon of birds this fall and Panz and I are gonna put the hurt on as many as we can. Prolly get in almost 30 hunts with buddies and new folks. Dog is gonna be busy. Might even blast chicken little.

I hope you’re right, my former hunting partner who misunderstood my frustration as being negative even admitted duck numbers were down in eastern Washington last year even riding coattails on to exclusive properties.  Was funny to watch him have gulp moment because he forgot for a short moment that he threw me under the bus for talking about duck numbers being down.   

[ducks4days]

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/1196943504/the-epa-removes-federal-protections-for-most-of-the-countrys-wetlands

The EPA requirement to replace wetlands when existing wetlands are used for development just went away. Good news for private property rights. Bad news for waterfowl across the continent.

[hdshot]

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/1196943504/the-epa-removes-federal-protections-for-most-of-the-countrys-wetlands

The EPA requirement to replace wetlands when existing wetlands are used for development just went away. Good news for private property rights. Bad news for waterfowl across the continent.

Not good, ground water is basically not wetland anymore, so now industry could drop water tables with little or no regulation from what I understand that most wetland’s desperately need for their surface water.  I tried to get a thread going on here but our lovely monitoring kick it out of waterfowl to another section. Surprisingly most support this court ruling from what I can tell.

[LDennis24]

I have always felt like duck number surveys were just as ridiculous as the deer number surveys. They are totally erratic and up and down every year depending on the species but I seem to see the same numbers in the water around my house. I have actually been seeing more pintails and shovelers than I normally see around 4th of July lake and Sprague also. I feel like harvest reports from folks like you guys posting on here during the season show what is actually going on. 

[ducks4days]

I feel like harvest reports from folks like you guys posting on here during the season show what is actually going on. 

Unfortunately, that's just not the way that aggregated data works. Success rates can vary based on local weather on any given day. Or fluctuate year to year based on regional conditions not linked to geography across the breeding grounds in their entirety. Survivorship bias is a thing, people dont post success stories when they get skunked, so you hear about hunting conditions from people after a good hunt more often, irrelevant of what percentage are successful. Biologists need to look at raw numbers projected from enough samples that they can normalize for outliers. Otherwise, a single kid with a .22 and a decent amount of drive can kill enough raccoons at a local pond to artificially double the projections.

The surveys shouldnt be taken as absolute truth, but they are more reliable than a lot of people give them credit for. Especially when they are segregated by flyway. What I would really like to see is a more complex data set regarding bird banding, wintering migration, and breeding populations. If somebody had that, they could predict with pretty good accuracy how many ducks of which species from different areas would migrate to which areas and provide more accurate guidance on how much harvest each could sustain.

[hdshot]

A one year survey shouldn’t be taken too seriously but if surveys are taken over years then they show the direction.  Unfortunately these surveys over the years compared are showing steep and steady declines of the breeding population.

This year’s survey did show pintail up 24% from last year but well below long term.

[LDennis24]

I still believe they are inaccurate studies 

Every species with the exception of Pintails and Scaups and Black ducks is above population goals listed by the dept. Pintails and Black ducks have been in a decline since the 1950's. If I remember correctly there are more ducks now than there has been in basically a hundred years. They hit an all time high in about 2014-2015.    Everything's fine...

[metlhead]

Weather patterns and agricultural changes are what causes the majority of hunters to assume there are less birds come autumn. That is true, just in your weathered old spot.

[hdshot]

I still believe they are inaccurate studies 

Every species with the exception of Pintails and Scaups and Black ducks is above population goals listed by the dept. Pintails and Black ducks have been in a decline since the 1950's. If I remember correctly there are more ducks now than there has been in basically a hundred years. They hit an all time high in about 2014-2015.    Everything's fine...

Market hunting about destroyed the waterfowl population about 100 years ago. Today is about lost habitat and methods to develop and farm are much better today.  Everything is fine we would not see these types of losses consistently over this period of almost 10 years.  Hope your right but facts are not on our side atm for sure.

[hdshot]

I responded to a Delta mass email basically asking if the record Canadian wildfires have had any or no impact on breeding duck populations and this was their answer!

“Hello, Delta Waterfowl’s science team doesn’t identify the fires as a concern for ducks and has not heard anyone raise the issue either. The ducks use a different habitat type, so this likely didn’t impact ducks substantially.”
 
Thank You,
Derrick Schiff