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Set yourself up for a successful season by tuning in to this expert discussion of the latest Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey results.
Waterfowl specialists from Ducks Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited Canada, and guest panelists from across North America share what the numbers mean for bird populations, habitat conditions, and hunting prospects for the 2026-2027 season. Stay ahead of the season with timely insights from the experts who help shape waterfowl conservation and management.
Special thanks to our partners in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service, and state and provincial member agencies of the Pacific, Central, Mississippi, and Atlantic Flyway Councils that lead the programs through which these vital data are collected.
LEARN MORE: https://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-surveys
Listen now: www.ducks.org/DUPodcast
Send feedback: DUPodcast@ducks.org
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Whether you’re winding down with your best friend, or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award-winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
Waterfowl specialists from Ducks Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited Canada, and guest panelists from across North America share what the numbers mean for bird populations, habitat conditions, and hunting prospects for the 2026-2027 season. Stay ahead of the season with timely insights from the experts who help shape waterfowl conservation and management.
Special thanks to our partners in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service, and state and provincial member agencies of the Pacific, Central, Mississippi, and Atlantic Flyway Councils that lead the programs through which these vital data are collected.
LEARN MORE: https://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-surveys
Listen now: www.ducks.org/DUPodcast
Send feedback: DUPodcast@ducks.org
SPONSORS:
Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails:
Whether you’re winding down with your best friend, or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award-winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
Creators and Guests
What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?
Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
You're tuned in to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. Conserving wetlands, restoring habitat, and working to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow, and forever. From field tested hunting insights to the biggest conservation wins across North America, This is your front row seat to wetlands conservation in action. The DU Podcast is proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're wrapping up a hunt with your best friend or kicking back with your crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment.
VO:Enjoy responsibly.
Mike Brasher:Hey, everybody. Welcome to the twenty twenty six Waterfowl Season Outlook brought to you by On X. I am gonna be one of the many hosts and guests on today tonight's episode. Doctor Mike Brasher, senior waterfowl scientist here at Ducks Unlimited. And as you can see, we have a all star lineup here in studio with us at Ducks Unlimited's national headquarters, 1 Waterfowl Way.
Mike Brasher:We also have four scientists and biologists joining us remotely. Some of those you will recognize. We're gonna spend quite a bit of time tonight having some fun discussing the twenty twenty six waterfowl duck numbers, a waterfowl status report, the duck numbers, and all the great information that came from that. I'm gonna start by going around the room here and introducing the folks that we have here. Down here on the right, Jimbo Robinson, managing director of event marketing and field support for Ducks Unlimited and the award for the longest title of the evening.
Mike Brasher:Yes. Jimbo, great to have you back, man. You were with us last year.
Jimbo Robinson:I don't know. Lakes is pretty long.
Mike Brasher:So next, I'm gonna go right here. Lake Pickle, the On X hunt marketing manager and host of Backwoods University at MeatEater. Yeah. Pretty close.
Lake Pickle:I am happy to be here. I'm I'm I'm glad that it's not too often I get asked to come back to the same event twice, so it means I didn't mess it up too much. And then judging off of the rest of the panel here, I feel like that our role here aside from doctor Mike is just to keep things light, provide color commentary because I don't feel qualified to speak on any of the other stuff, but I'm glad you're here for We were smart
Jimbo Robinson:last year.
Lake Pickle:Yeah. Yeah. That's why they asked me back. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:That's right. So here to my left, I've got Wade Shoemaker, cohost of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast and probably all sorts of other titles that we could attach to you. But, Wade, it's great to have you here in studio with us.
Wade Shoemaker:Good to be here for the first time. Excited about it. I'm glad you didn't have to spend a whole lot of breath on that that little introduction out there.
Mike Brasher:There'll be there'll be plenty of time for that. Also, case in short, good friend of the Ducks, owner of Bill Byers Hunter Club and cohost of the Standard Sportsman Podcast. Casey, great to have you here with us.
Cason Short:You tried to lengthen that out just in before.
Mike Brasher:Trying to add a few delays. Yeah.
Cason Short:Thanks for having me.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Absolutely. And a how many times have you been on this with us? Three or four. We've done this five years.
Mike Brasher:You've you've been on with us at least
Jimbo Ronquest:three I've missed I've been all but one. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Somebody somebody forgot to invite you that one year. I'll take the blame for that problem. Whether it was my fault or not. Jimbo Ronquist, vice president of development for Drake Waterfowl Systems and a cohost of the DUTV show. Is that right?
Jimbo Ronquest:That is correct.
Mike Brasher:Alright. Good deal. Great to have you in studio to talk ducks. And we're gonna go online now to do a quick introduction of these folks. I'm gonna just go clockwise in the top left.
Mike Brasher:I've got Taylor Finger, the Game Bird Ecologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Taylor, great to have you with us.
Taylor Finger:Happy to be here.
Mike Brasher:And then I've got doctor Scott Stevens, stranger to no one who listens to anything associated with Ducks Unlimited, the senior director of conservation strategy. How are doing, Scott?
Scott Stephens:Good. Happy to be here with this gang.
Mike Brasher:Doctor Matt Dyson, also another return guest to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast to the Ducks Unlimited Waterfowl Season Outlook, and you've probably you've been on every one of these. Right?
Matt Dyson:I think so, Mike. Good to be here again.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Matt Dyson, waterfowl research scientist with Ducks Unlimited Canada. Great to have you with us. And then out west, doctor Dan Smith, waterfowl scientist from the Western region of Ducks Unlimited. Dan, welcome back.
Dan Smith:Thanks, Mike. Good to be back.
Mike Brasher:We have, obviously, as you see here, a lot of people here tonight. We're every year that we've done this, we've tried things a little bit different. We want to keep things lively this year. We're gonna take questions from you. You can submit those through the comment section of YouTube.
Mike Brasher:You can also I don't know if we're checking our DMs on Ducks Unlimited Inc on any of our Instagram pages, but primarily go through that YouTube comment section, and we're gonna try to answer as many of those as possible. I'm gonna go through
Lake Pickle:a few slides here in
Mike Brasher:a moment just to kind of orient us, and then we're just gonna have a good sort of conversation, maybe some debate, differences of opinion. We're gonna discuss all sorts of things from with from from the standpoint of of what we saw on the surveys this year, also to what it might mean for hunting regulations in the future. We are going to have a break about halfway through this, about the one hour mark, so just kinda be aware of that. It'll give you an opportunity to refill your your receptacle, whatever it is that you're drinking or eating with us here tonight. And let's see.
Mike Brasher:What else do I have to do? Again, a special thanks to our sponsor for the Waterfowl Season Outlook on x Hunt. Great to have Lake here in the studio and representing that great partner as well. Am I missing anything? I don't think so.
Mike Brasher:We are gonna go straight to a presentation that I've given, a variation of it I've given each of the last few years. This is sort of where we do sort of an orientation to the numbers. If you haven't already seen the reports, this is your opportunity to learn about those, and then we're just gonna say, hey. What do y'all think? And then an opportunity to ask questions.
Mike Brasher:And I'm just I'm gonna sit back, and I'm just gonna let the scientists and and biologists on that are joining remote answer all the questions this year. They don't know that until right now, but that's what I'm gonna do.
Scott Stephens:I can tell Probably get better answers.
Mike Brasher:That's true. That's true. Okay, Chris, I'm ready for the presentation whenever you are. Let me know when is it up? We've seen it?
Mike Brasher:Okay. Good deal. Alright. So first off, what we wanna do is make sure we give a huge thank you to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service, and state and provincial partners. They are the ones that conduct all of the surveys that provide the data that go into the reports that we are gonna be talking about.
Mike Brasher:And I'm gonna put this slide up here to actually put some names to the people that are hugely responsible and influential in making this happen. You see them there from the Fish and Wildlife Service Division of Migratory Bird Management. US Geological Survey, that's where the bird banding lab is housed, and that is an absolutely crucial office to provide so much
Lake Pickle:of this important data that feeds a
Mike Brasher:lot of what we'll be talking about. Our partners north of the border with the Canadian Wildlife Service, all of
Lake Pickle:our member agencies with each of
Mike Brasher:the flyaway councils, and then a host of individuals that actually turn the crank, manage the data, do all of the hard work day in and day out within the US Fish and Wildlife Service and some other agencies there. Pilot biologists, the folks that are flying the planes, people that are counting the ducks, counting the ponds. I I put this up here and I wanna leave it here for people to realize exactly what all goes into this. There is a host of people beyond the names that you see here, dozens and hundreds of people that contribute to this. It doesn't happen on its own, and I'm sure as we get into the discussions tonight, you're gonna find out and realize even more so why the work of these people and everybody else associated with it is so important for the system of waterfowl management that we have here in North America.
Mike Brasher:These are the two main reports that we're gonna be talking about tonight, population status report and the adaptive harvest management report. And some orientation to some terms, the traditional survey area. When we're talking about that, we also may say TSA. That refers to that Midcontinent area through the Prairies, Boreal Forest, and up into Alaska. The Eastern survey area captures that portion of Ontario eastward all the way to the Canadian Maritime Provinces and a few states.
Mike Brasher:There's actually some states here in the Northeastern US that fall into this as well. If you haven't already seen it, go to ducks.org, duck numbers, to find out a little bit more information about our take on this. And here are the numbers. The total DUCs within that traditional survey area, roughly the same as what we saw last year by number down a couple of percentage points, down 6% from the long term average. Mallards, that's the one we all wanna wanna talk about, down 11% from 2025.
Mike Brasher:That one is, we'll we'll talk about the Mallard here in a little bit, down 26% from the long term average. We've seen a a multiyear decline associated with multiyear drought across that that Prairie Pothole region. And with regard to the Prairie Pothole region, total pond counts across The US and Canada came in at 4,760,000. The good news, it was up from last year. Last year was the driest year on The Prairies since, I think it was 2004, and this year, we did see an improvement in those conditions, but still still down 9% from the long term average.
Mike Brasher:Like most years, there was variation in where that precipitation fell, where those ponds filled up. The US side of the border was down 10% from last year, while the Canadian side actually provided the biggest boost this year being up 29% from last year. Pintails, that's another bird that we're gonna talk a little bit about tonight because this past year, 2627 what I'm sorry. 2526 was the first time in in many, many years that we had a three pintail bag limit, and there we're gonna talk about some of what we learned from these reports associated with that. Down 11% from 2025.
Mike Brasher:The story of it being down about 50% from the long term average is not a new one, we and can talk about that as well. Blue winged teal, this is one that probably is going to surprise us. It's down 11%. We can get into the numbers, and I'll tell you as a statistician that's not really different from last year, but still, it's a point estimate that's down that deserves some discussion, down from the long term average as well. Here's the bright spot on the dabbling duck side of things, Northern Shoemaker.
Mike Brasher:Mean, we all a lot of us around here know Ed Wall, so we'll give Ed Wall a shout out for the old
Jimbo Ronquest:Go Spoony.
Mike Brasher:For for the spoony. Up up 19% from last year and up from the long term average. Widgeon, down 8%, up 12 from the long term average. Green winged teal, another boreal forest nester, down 8%, up 6%. So hovering right there around that average.
Mike Brasher:Two of the prairie nesting divers, redheads and canvasbacks, continued to be strong. Their numbers are above the long term average by more than a quarter more than 25% each. SCOP actually increased as well. That's another boreal nester. So just some comments here, migration this year.
Mike Brasher:What I heard was that it was more normal running throughout the Midcontinent than some of the past couple of years, but delayed as we got into some of those northern areas. Cooler temps farther north delayed some of that phenology, delayed some of the arrival of those northern nesting birds. Prairies were wet in the spring. Rain continued through summer in some of those areas. Good production is expected better than last year, so we can get into more details of that here in a little bit.
Mike Brasher:I've got just a few more here, and then we're gonna save a lot of time for discussion. In the Eastern survey area, just a couple of birds to talk about here. Overall, the the the numbers for both the numbers for all the ducks surveyed in that Eastern survey area were relatively unchanged from last year. Mallards do continue a long term decline in the East, down 23% from the long term average. Black ducks were roughly, you know, down 6%, roughly unchanged, and a little bit above that long term average.
Mike Brasher:Wood ducks is the only place the Atlantic Flyway is the only place where they do a where they attempt an estimate of wood ducks, unchanged from last year and the long term average. And then real quickly, what does this all mean for harvest regulations? I do wanna emphasize that the 2026, 27 harvest regulations that are gonna be in place well, actually, that are already that are already in place are unchanged by any of these numbers. The Canada Canada and The US set regulations separately. The regulatory packages are identified through a series of adaptive harvest management models, many of which I know we will get into, and the states, including folks like Taylor Finger, are still to weigh in on any of the regulations that the numbers we're gonna talk about will affect for the 2728 season.
Mike Brasher:That's what we're talking about tonight. So here you go. Liberal duck seasons in in response to the numbers that we saw in this report, the the all of the reports at the Adaptive Harvest Management report, The US fish we expect the US Fish and Wildlife Service, well, we don't expect. They have recommended liberal duck season frameworks for all flyaways for the 2728 season. The number for pintail came in at a level that is going to allow a three pintail daily limit for all flyaways again, so that would be the third year in a row for which that three pintail daily limit is allowed.
Mike Brasher:The Blue Wing Teal number is still at a level which will prescribe a nine day early teal season for next year. And then in the East, in the Atlantic Flyway, this is a notable change for the people that are tuning in from the Atlantic Flyway. This past year, there or earlier this year, there was a change in the Eastern Mallard harvest strategy such that they're going away from the the model that they had been using, and they're going to a three Mallard standard bag limit with no sex restriction for any year during which there is an open duck season in the Atlantic Flyway. So all of that in about twelve minutes. And so you can take that that presentation down there, Chris, and we can get to discussions.
Mike Brasher:Taylor, I'd wanna go to you first. Did I screw anything up? You're prob of all the people here, like, so Ducks Unlimited has no say in harvest regulations. We don't sit at that table. We do other we don't make those decisions or contribute to those decisions.
Mike Brasher:We do kinda sit in the peanut gallery at some of these meetings and and try to stay educated on it. Did I screw anything up?
Taylor Finger:Nope. Everything sounded pretty good. We'll be heading to our flyaway meeting here in a couple of weeks, and it's nice to have this information ahead of time for those flyaway meetings so we can sit down and really get into the weeds and start digging in and having some discussions because there's definitely some some interesting information that came from this, and there'll be some significant discussions as we mow through the data.
Mike Brasher:Good deal. So this is the point where we're gonna do things different than we did last year. It was sort of structured the past few years, but I wanna see who's got a question, who's got any kind of response. We're not gonna be bashful here. Jump in, whoever wants to.
Mike Brasher:What were your take? I'll call on people if I have to.
Lake Pickle:I mean, I don't wanna weigh in on the most obvious one, but, I mean, I mean, I guess somebody's gonna do it. When those numbers come out, all of every one of us in this room know the first thing that everybody looks at, Mallard. Mallard, Mallard, Mallard, Mallard. And so when they see a red arrow pointed down that says eleven, everyone starts to have alarms going off, red flags. So, I mean, that's the I mean, that's what everyone is looking at.
Lake Pickle:That's the one I I'm I don't wanna say I'm most concerned about it, but you look at that and go, okay. What does that mean? What does that mean for me going into this year? What does that mean for the future? Am I wrong?
Lake Pickle:Anyone else No. Feel differently?
Mike Brasher:So I'll I'll say I'll offer one comment, and then I'm gonna toss it to Scott. So an important reminder, something you said reminded me that we need to need to tell people that breeding population number, that's the number of birds that returned to spring and returned in the spring to breed. The number of birds that we see in the fall is a product of the number of birds that went back in the spring and the habitat conditions they encountered and then the baby ducks that they produce and that get you know, make it to the wing and fly south. The number of mallards that went back this past this year was the lowest in thirty years. That's not a good thing.
Mike Brasher:Right? Nobody's gonna sit around and say that's a good thing. We can we can point to the multi year drought and how pond numbers across the Prairies have been at or below the long term average for about the past eight years that we've recorded those data and say, well, a decline, a long term decline in those numbers is to be expected. Or but but the steepness and depth of that decline does legitimately deserve some some scrutiny. Mhmm.
Mike Brasher:The good news is that we did have better pond conditions this year, and rain continued throughout the summer. Scott and Matt, I'm gonna queue you up here in a minute because that part about about, you know, what does this mean for us? It's your right to be concerned. What does this mean for us this coming fall? I think the the answer to that question is going to come heavily from habitat conditions on the prairies as we encountered them this year.
Mike Brasher:Scott?
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I I would say, you know, the the numbers weren't too surprising to me and, you know, it's a little interesting because we have pawns up and ducks down. Right? But there's that sort of one year lag that you're talking about, Mike, where, you know, last year we kinda said, conditions weren't great. We don't expect great production.
Scott Stephens:So that decline in numbers was not a big surprise. In contrast, we see better wetland conditions this year. Quite good in some portions of the prairies like Eastern Saskatchewan, and we would expect there to be better production, I think, overall than there was last year. So, you know, there's probably gonna be more young birds in the fall flight. That'll be friendlier once they get down south.
Scott Stephens:And, yeah, even though there are fewer birds in the spring, the production is likely better. So maybe similar or slightly more birds flying south in the fall. Matt?
Matt Dyson:Thanks, Scott. Yeah. Not really too much to add to that, but maybe just the other the other part is is is to build when the water comes to. And while we did get water and that definitely had some improved spring conditions this year, it was a little bit on the later side from what we maybe want to increase pair settling. And because conditions have been so poor for so long, it's gonna take a few more years of that kind of increased precipitation to create habitat conditions that can really result in that maybe boom in a mallard population that we might like to see.
Matt Dyson:And so, you know, certainly optimistic. I think we can probably expect good productivity from the prairies this year, which maybe means a good fall flight, and and, hopefully, that means more birds are turning next year and under reasonable habitat conditions, but we'll have to watch, those conditions to see what the prairies look like next spring too.
VO:Welcome to the Old Timer Minute, sponsored by Old Timer Knives.
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OTM:So I've I've watched a a hunting dog take a number two in somebody's basically, right on top of somebody's blind bag, and that was quite entertaining for the rest of the day. That guy got some some grief, and the the dog owner got quite a bit of grief out of that too. That's your Old Timer Minute brought to you by Old Timer, built for generations.
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Jimbo Ronquest:So with that, with the late water, a lot of guys are talking about it now, buddies that are up there. How does that light water that came after maypond counts were done, how does that affect possible re nesting attempts or later production or recruitment later into the summer?
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I I would say it will improve re nesting attempts for for most species. You know, mallards are really good at trying and trying again until they're successful. It also improves wetland conditions, which should improve brood survival and, you know, result in more of the ducklings that hatch surviving to the flight stage. So, you know, all of those things are positive and, you know, I think that's why we're suggesting we think production will likely be better than it was last year because we have better conditions.
Mike Brasher:You know, one of the things that Matt said, was I pulled up a spreadsheet here. The arrival the timing of water arriving on the prairies or the condition of those prairie wetlands and its effect on the settling of birds. One of the things that we've commented on each of the past few years and I'll again reiterate, although we saw an increase in pond numbers, they're still below average across the prairie landscape. So what I'm about to tell you is not necessarily too surprising. One of the things you can look at is where do these birds settle?
Mike Brasher:You know, the the surveys are conducted in a way where they can estimate the the sort of strata specific breeding population size. Now I they're not gonna the finer you parse the data, the more variation there is, but still over the long term, you can look at some trends. Long term average for the percentage of the mallard population estimated in that traditional survey area that went north into the boreal forest strata to settle was around 35%. Each of the last probably three years or so, we have seen about 50% we have seen about 50% of the mallard breeding population that returned to the to the traditional survey area settle in the Boreal Forest. And so that's a reflection of the dry prairies.
Mike Brasher:It probably is also going to contribute to some of the low production that we've that we've probably seen, and that's, I think, supported by the by some of the age ratio data that we've seen. Taylor, anything to add from your perspective looking at this data more closely and more frequently than anybody else?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. No. Just from our end because we're we do our own state survey that contributes to the Mid Continent Mallard count. So again, we were extremely wet, during, you know, late April, early part of May. But so again, conditions were really good.
Taylor Finger:In the eastern half, I would say Michigan and Wisconsin had really good conditions going into the spring. I know the further west you got in the Minnesota and the Dakotas, it was less so. But yeah. No. I think that this is it's it's interesting because as whenever the Prairies, The US and Canadian Prairies are dry, even if Wisconsin's dry, we got, you know, 15,000 lakes.
Taylor Finger:So we're still wet. And so we did see we've seen shifts like things with blue wing teal. As things have dried out on The US and Canadian Prairies, our teal numbers have gone up over the last five years and those birds are just finding places where it's wet. And so, no, I'm not overly surprised. It'll be again, I know everyone cares about mallards.
Taylor Finger:And when we go to the flyaway meetings, you know, the North versus the South, it'll be a lot of good discussion as it relates to how important that one particular species is going to be in terms of driving our regulations moving forward.
Jimbo Robinson:Is it that people care about mallards the most, so they've always been the most adaptable? And that's what's fear. That's where the fear comes in.
Mike Brasher:Well, Well, I think it's a little bit of both. It depends on, like, from the like, so I'm a hunter and biologist scientist, so as a hunter, I care about the bird because it's the most widespread, it's the one that I count on, it's a big bird. I was talking to somebody about this just well, it
Jimbo Ronquest:was On live Monday night, we talked about
Mike Brasher:this what is it that makes the mallard so special to a hunter? It's the whole it's the entire package. And so anytime it's a callable duck, it's widespread, it's the most numerous, it's a big bird, it tastes good if you shoot it at the right time from the right place. They're pretty good across the board, but you can get some that are that are a little strong depending on where you get them. Kaysen, come on.
Mike Brasher:Just come on back in. Kaysen had to step out for just a second. We're being casual this year. It's all good. So I think it's a number of things, Jimbo, on the on the biology scientist side of things.
Mike Brasher:I I don't think any of us are panicking. We're still talking about nearly 6,000,000 mallards in the breeding population. If you have a good year, you're talking and that's only in the traditional survey area. There's a million in the East. There's Flint Mallards are so widely distributed that there's a ton that are well, I'm actually thinking here, Taylor, we're not even counting the traditional survey area.
Mike Brasher:That number, that 5.9 doesn't include Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio. I'm trying to it probably I'm gonna I'm gonna pause before I get too far over into the Eastern States because we do have a survey that contributes to us there. But California, Oregon, Washington, there's mallards out there. So there's a lot of mallards still out there. It's that longer term trend that that folks, I think it's fair to say, are concerned about.
Mike Brasher:Not panicking, but there's a lot of folks in the waterfowl science field that are asking questions, they've always asked questions, but anytime you see a decline like this, you start probing the data and saying, is there anything other than just dry conditions that's driving this? Anybody online have something else to offer to that?
Matt Dyson:Mike, I'll I'll just add that that, you know, the the increase in ponds is encouraging for this year, but we really wouldn't expect the numbers to reflect that as as closely in terms of that because we need that productivity to happen from those wet conditions because conditions have been so poor. And so it's really from my perspective, it's it's next year that we're looking to to see that hopeful response with with some of those numbers, but that's how I would interpret that data.
Jimbo Ronquest:So last night, I I hadn't had much time to dig into this, but y'all see my my cheat sheet here. This is very high high-tech stuff.
Jimbo Robinson:It's very Ronquest esque.
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. And you brought this Very much
Lake Pickle:so. That's what you were trying to say. But I
Jimbo Ronquest:I sat down and and pulled up some stuff, and I I went through Bee Pop and May Ponds from 1973 to the present. And it's pretty interesting when you start reading that, seeing just exactly what Tyler talked about. And I started with '73 based on the idea that y'all correct me if I'm wrong. According to the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, we hope to have an average Mallard BPOP of 7,500,000 birds, I think, somewhere in that area. So I thought, well, that's by the based on the mid seventies population.
Jimbo Ronquest:So I thought '73 was a good time to start. It's the only reason. So we had eight point zero seven nine and five point million 5,000,000 ponds in '73. And it's funny there has been some slight shifts in season. They are these are Mississippi flyaway.
Jimbo Ronquest:Season's the limit, so went from forty forty days to fifty, fifty, forty five. And you've seen some slight changes in in harvest opportunity, but everything follows the ponds. So in '75, we had 7,700,000 mallards. 5,300,000 ponds went to 7,900,000 mallards in '76. Lost some ponds, lost some ducks.
Jimbo Ronquest:In '77, we had 3,000,000 ponds getting kinda tight there, but still come back with 7,400,000 mallards. But you see two years of dry, and you just go to 7.4. So you can kinda see that trending down and trending back and forth with those pond counts. It's really quite telling when you look at it, and you look at from '97, '66, to now, how it really ponds really track population. It's pretty interesting.
Lake Pickle:Yeah. When you can look
Jimbo Ronquest:at it side by side, it's way different.
Mike Brasher:I I must I'm still trying to get over the fact that you wrote all that stuff out on a piece of paper rather than putting it in a spreadsheet. I just
Jimbo Ronquest:It was way easier for me to write it on a piece of paper than it was a spreadsheet.
Mike Brasher:No. That's that's great, Jimbo. And and that is where my mind goes. I did that a lot this year. I looked back because I said that we've had several years now.
Mike Brasher:I think we missed a couple of years due to COVID, didn't actually have estimates upon counts. But if you look over that eight year period, two years prior to that, all of those estimates of pond counts were were near or below the long term average. And so what I found myself doing is going back through the record and saying, well, what when were the other time periods when we saw something similar? And you can go back to the early two thousands, and you you get to some pawn a series of years where the pawn numbers were about the same. There's some variation around it, but the Mallard numbers were a lot higher.
Mike Brasher:So that's why I say there's a little bit of there's something that make that that piques my interest and and makes me pay attention here, not panicking. What all of us are gonna be eager to see and probably a little anxious to see, what happens the next time we get two or three years of really good 25% above average long term you know, above average pond conditions across the prairies, how do the birds respond? Because we all know that there are continuing threats to duck habitat in the prairies. Conversion of grassland, loss of wetlands, Alberta, just there there's some some things going on in Alberta that could weaken protections around some of those those wetlands on that landscape. We all know what we've just gone through here on The US side of the border with trying to protect some of those US Fish and Wildlife Service wetland easements.
Mike Brasher:The threats are real. The habitat loss is real. And so at some point, it matters how much well, it always matters, but at some point, you really start to see it in the numbers. As we've seen with pintails, you look at how that Canadian landscape or the entire prairie landscape has changed for that bird and the effect that it's had on their population levels. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:We you don't really know how the population is gonna respond until you get some of those other conditions.
Lake Pickle:Can I ask a very fundamental question before we veer off of this too much? I had I I've I've tried to recognize that, like, we all get in here and probably most of the people that that are watching this livestream, and we can nerd out on all this stuff and know what all these terms are. But I I had a couple of people reach out to me yesterday on Instagram and be like, what exactly is a May pond count? Like, they know and and some folks, they get in that situation where it's like, I'm in too deep, I'm too afraid to ask. You know what I mean?
Lake Pickle:And so I'm just I'm thinking about the folks I got. I know what they are, but there's a chance that folks are like, alright. I'm watching this, and I'm hearing them saying pond counts, and apparently, it's important, but I don't know what they're talking about.
Mike Brasher:No. It's a great question. I'm I'm glad you said that. Who online wants to take that?
Scott Stephens:On that contains water when they fly the survey in May.
Mike Brasher:It's it's a wetland. A shallow yeah. Shallow wetland across the Prairie Pothole.
Lake Pickle:But why is it important? Mhmm.
Jimbo Robinson:Can on x do this for us next year?
Lake Pickle:Yeah. No. Actually, I'll go Just do it the layer? Individually, I'll go out
Jimbo Robinson:and open
Mike Brasher:it. Add a layer.
Lake Pickle:Y'all just tell me when to go, and I'll just go, one, two, three, four.
Mike Brasher:So, yes, through decades of data collection and all sorts of of research being conducted across the Prairies, it has been clearly demonstrated that the higher the density of wetlands let's just so wetland equals a pond. Mhmm. But but the higher the density of of prairie wetlands, and and it's not just it it matters what kind of prairie wetland we're talking about, preferably as these smaller wetlands that that recharge more frequently and are more productive. The higher the density of those, the higher the density of breeding ducks that that area will support. So the the estimate of ponds that they count in May, that's I e May ponds, but it's May because that's when the survey is conducted
Lake Pickle:Sure.
Mike Brasher:Is the is thus far has been has demonstrated itself to be the best indicator of breeding habitat quality in that landscape. And that number that's important whenever you try to predict the the population change from this year's data. You can count the number of birds or estimate the number of birds, but you have to have figure out some way to predict the number of young ducks that they're gonna produce if you want to predict to the following year. And in the Prairies, is the and really across the entire Mid Continent, pond count has been a good predictor of has has been a good sort of partial predictor of recruitment and subsequent breeding population size. Sure.
Mike Brasher:Taylor, Matt, did I do okay there?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. I would just say from, you know, our perspective at the Flyway, it's, you know, important because it's one of the key components to our matrix. So, again, from that perspective, it's, yeah, it's really important. But when we look at it, we're matching up where the Mid Continent Mallard numbers as it relates to the May Pond count and where those two intersect. That's gonna tell us, you know, what we're gonna have for length of the season and bag limits and things along those lines.
Taylor Finger:So from a pure technical perspective, that's what we look at because it's going to dictate how that relates to Mallard numbers and what we're ultimately gonna see for hunting seasons.
Jimbo Robinson:When was the last time that was updated, Taylor?
Taylor Finger:The well, the eight it's actually updated annually. The matrix does fluctuate annually as we get information. We haven't had where in general has kinda gone through multiple iterations right now. There's actually currently a bunch of work going on between the flyways, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Canadian Wildlife Service to look at updating what we look at for like, you know, the Atlantic Flyway. They've moved away from saying a mallard stock package where they structure their season based on mallards because their population continued to decline.
Taylor Finger:So okay, well, do we need to look at something else? And so they have a multi stock analysis that looks at, I think, wood ducks and ring necks and black ducks and other suites of things. And I think the flyways are starting to look at that as well. I know the Mississippi flyways, moving forward with trying to make sure that adaptive harvest management now is reflective of what's on the landscape.
Mike Brasher:I wanna I wanna jump in here because we've got a couple of questions. We can come back to this. I have a I have a series of slides I wanna show to get to a point that that Taylor was making about how the adaptive harvest management matrix adjust. We'll come back we'll come back to that in a second, but I wanna go to one of the questions that we that came in a few minutes ago from from Carrie in the Atlantic Flyway wanting to know wanting justification for why the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Atlantic Flyway went from four mallards with a max of two hands to a three bird limit without a sex restriction.
Jimbo Ronquest:That's a good question.
Mike Brasher:This is where I'm going to wade not this Wade. I'm gonna wade softly You won't get into that. Into this. Because when I say Ducks Unlimited does not have a seat at the table of the harvest regulations, this is one of the this is a decision that is that is brand new. The justification, the models behind it, the discussions behind it had all happened within the past year.
Mike Brasher:I became aware of it just within the past few days. This decision was made a few months ago. There is a there was some analytical work done. What what I can tell you based on what I have read, and it's in the Adaptive Harvest Management report, the Eastern Mallard was first put into place maybe four years ago, 2022 or '2 and 2023 may have been the first year that it was implemented. And they have looked at that every year and evaluated it, and they have they have found that it did not perform very well in in the decisions they were trying to inform and the predictive power of that of that model just was not was not giving them what they what what they felt they they needed to continue with the justification of that.
Mike Brasher:So then they conducted an allowable take exercise or something of that nature. It's something that based on knowledge of the population dynamics of any kind of wildlife species, you you can can estimate or identify what is the allowable take on an annual basis without driving that population, you know, without harming that population. And so they did that. I don't know the details of it, but I just know that that that analysis revealed to them that that a three Mallard, no sex restriction bag limit was consistent with that allowable take analysis. They'll continue to look at that, I'm sure, but that's the decision that they went to for to to reduce some complexity.
Mike Brasher:Part of it is reduce some some analytical work that is getting more and more difficult for The US Fish And Wildlife Service to do. We talked with some folks about that not too long ago, about constrained capacity, constrained resources. It's just not possible to build out highly sophisticated models for every species, and that relates to some of the other other work that Taylor's already referenced. So that's the best answer I have for that right now for the Eastern Mallard, but it's on our list of things to try to discuss in a future episode of the DU Podcast to get some clarity on that. I wanna put up this slide here, this series of slides, Chris, if you can show this.
Mike Brasher:So this is that matrix that that Taylor talked about, Mid Continent Mallard Adaptive Harvest Management Matrix. You can't read the labels on the top, I realize that. It's Canadian ponds across the top, and then the BPOP, which is mallard breeding population size across the left side there. And so the gray, early on you had a closed, in the gray you had a very restrictive, then you had a moderate, then you had a liberal package. There's some of those other lighter grays, just ignore those because the overall scope of this matrix has changed through time, and I just did some things to standardize it across the same space.
Mike Brasher:What I want you to pay attention to is as each year progresses, you will see a shift in the red squares, the yellow squares, the green squares, the gray ones. That reflects what Taylor is talking about when he said the adaptive harvest management model and process adapts every year. That's why I always get so frustrated when people say hasn't adapted. Yes. It does.
Mike Brasher:It just keeps recommending a liberal duck season framework based on the data that is being collected and based on the model that is driving it. And so just watch that. You'll see the you'll see it shift. Periodically, you'll see some big changes, which reflects some more structural changes and refinements in the analysis and analytical work that our partners are doing. The gray at the top is a closed season, the red or pink is restrictive, and you'll see it changes every year.
Mike Brasher:You can see in some years, over a period of years, you get more more green, and now you're going through a period of time where more of that area was was shifting towards a restrictive package. And then it begins to sort of stabilize once you get a series of years that are sort of average or within that same sort of environmental state. Then we had a big change in '23 and '24 when the Fish and Wildlife Service implemented a new model that added US ponds to this. It wasn't a simple addition. It was they finally got to a point where the use of US ponds in combination with Canadian ponds became a better predictor than using Canadian ponds only.
Mike Brasher:Canadian ponds, there's a longer record of Canadian ponds. They've been estimated since, don't know if it's '61, all the way back to 1961, US ponds, they didn't start estimating till like 1974 or something like that. So you had a longer data stream to work from. So that's what it this is the big change here. You can notice all of a sudden, you get a lot more green on there.
Mike Brasher:But we've been running this, turning the crank on this for a few years since, and you will see the slight change in here over the past few years, notably right here and here, you see the closed area begins to take up more of that space. The red area shifts down, and you're losing some of that green. So it is it is adapting. It is changing every single year, at least in terms of what that model is predicting for that, yeah, that that part of that model. Taylor, you're our expert here, but we'll get you here in a second.
Mike Brasher:We we don't hear you. We got an audio issue.
Taylor Finger:Sorry. There you go. We're good now. Yeah. No.
Taylor Finger:No. Yeah. Absolutely. And so that's, like I said, from our perspective, and I know one of the questions that was asked earlier was asking about why are mallards important? Like what is the thing that's important?
Taylor Finger:And again, from a state perspective, particularly from Wisconsin, I mean, mallards make up a little less than a third of our overall harvest and so, I mean, that's, you know, two thirds are made up by something else. And so from my perspective, I'm looking at that number because ultimately, that's gonna affect the number of days I get to harvest. I know it's important to shoot mallards, but still two thirds of our harvest is coming from other species. And so, again, I know I'm not a I'm not a hunter down in Arkansas or I'm not a hunter in Missouri that is looking for an entire bag limit of mallards. But those mallards are important on our end because ultimately that's going to define how long our hunting seasons are going to be and what opportunities available for our hunters.
Mike Brasher:Questions?
Jimbo Ronquest:I have one come in. I actually had two come in. This one's kinda
Mike Brasher:You got your wait. Wait. Wait a minute. What you got going over there? You got your own little
Wade Shoemaker:I got
Scott Stephens:my I
Lake Pickle:got my own deal.
Wade Shoemaker:I got
Jimbo Ronquest:my own deal going
Mike Brasher:over there. You didn't authorize that to run that through us.
Jimbo Ronquest:My apologies. Well, I just I used to beg forgiveness for that permission.
Lake Pickle:So here we go.
Jimbo Ronquest:So my daughter sent a good one in. This is kinda goes along with what we're talking about a little bit. She asked, in order to increase ponds and therefore increase duck populations, are we simply reliant on mother nature, or is there any positive human interaction that can work alongside her?
Wade Shoemaker:It's a
Jimbo Ronquest:pretty good question. That's strong. I'm tossing that there to the panel.
Mike Brasher:Well okay. So I've been talking too much. I'd I'll defer to other folks online here first. Or anybody else here in the room?
Matt Dyson:But I'll take a stab at that if you want,
Jimbo Robinson:Mike. Sure.
Matt Dyson:But it's a great question. I think and and Mike kind of alluded to this a little bit with some of his his thoughts about when we might be concerned about this, but the the wet dry cycle on the prairies is is actually one that's that's fairly important to duck production in general because when those ponds dry out, that allows vegetation to reestablish, and it's when those wet conditions return around that vegetation where we get a boom in invertebrate production. And those invertebrates are key forage resources for those hens, those pairs that are gonna settle and then use that to create more ducks. And so we kinda need that that wet dress dry cycle in order to have those big population booms that we look for periodically on on the Prairie region. And so we're certainly hopeful that we kinda move back into that wet cycle in the wet, dry cycle where we've been in this this drought for for a prolonged period now.
Matt Dyson:But but really, we are waiting for for mother nature to so to speak a little bit in terms of delivering that water back. And and there's not a ton we can do in in the situation on the prairies in terms of controlling that other than just ensuring that that habitat base is there, those basins exist so that when that water returns, they can fill back up with those basins can fill with water and we can produce more ducks. And that's one of the things that is is really under threat right now is when it becomes dry, we have more wetland loss because it's easier to potentially drain those basins that might fill in the future or manipulate those basins similarly and and and take them off the landscape. And so it's something we really have to pay close attention to during these dry cycles.
Wade Shoemaker:So you're saying that we don't participate in cloud seeding? Is that what you're telling me?
Mike Brasher:You know, I think Dan Smith actually has some thoughts on cloud seeding when it comes to water out wet. It it I mean, I don't
Jimbo Robinson:Scott Stevens Scott Stevens just tried to crawl
Jimbo Ronquest:under his desk.
Wade Shoemaker:I was ready.
Lake Pickle:I was hoping. I
Wade Shoemaker:I was
Taylor Finger:glad that went to Dan. Danny,
Lake Pickle:you a few on the foul seating.
Mike Brasher:But I I
Wade Shoemaker:was just hoping you'd say you did.
Mike Brasher:Well, it is Dan, correct me if I'm wrong. There have been some conversations out west or in in not not saying within necessarily the waterfowl space, but when you when you think about all of the water water limitation issues and water shortage issues in the in the Western US, yeah, people are having these conversations about what can anything everything's on the table. Dan, I mean, I I know we've talked about that and what's the latest?
Dan Smith:I mean, it's always a controversial topic, but there have been a couple of startups that have looked at it. I mean, the technology exists. There's some really cool historical stuff about, like, cloud seeding in the early nineteen hundreds. It was done and to great effect. So it's a it's a thing that we can do, but it's not popular.
Dan Smith:So we're not really doing it.
Wade Shoemaker:It could get popular real quick if you guaranteed me. Wow. Yeah.
Lake Pickle:You're telling me we can make it rain? We can make it rain.
Wade Shoemaker:Not like t pain. Like, we can make it rain.
Scott Stephens:And and Mike, maybe now's the time to talk about you know, we we talked about ponds increase. That's good. But unfortunately, the predictions for the winter are a strong El Nino Mhmm. Which means warmer temperatures and less precipitations in the prairies.
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Scott Stephens:So, you know, if if that holds true, we will we will be, you know, drier again next spring and, you know, having the same conversation that we had last year, unfortunately. So we'll see what happens, but that's the prediction.
Mike Brasher:That was right on cue, mister Gray Cloud and silver mining. Exactly. So I I wanna I do wanna ask you, Scott. I wanna expand a little bit. So I don't know if if Jenna was getting at this when she asked that question, but we hear it often, see it on on in in social media comments.
Mike Brasher:Like, why don't we just start drilling some whales up there on the prairies and start pumping some of these these wetlands full of water? And and I I can understand the the question from a lot of people that we got we got a phone ringing somewhere. A computer,
Cason Short:I think.
Mike Brasher:Oh, I can under from people that that are down here in southern areas where when they think about wetland management for waterfowl, you're thinking about about installing a pump or doing or capturing water somehow and and and putting it in a in some sort of managed wetland, and you can support a 2,000 or more ducks. It doesn't work like that, does it, up there in the up up there in the prairie, Scott?
Scott Stephens:No. There's a little thing called territoriality that kicks in when they show up in these areas to breed. So, you know, let's say we pump one wetland. Well, we get to have, you know, depending on the size, let's say it's a two acre wetland. We get to have one pair of mallards, one pair of pintails, one pair of gadwall, you know, one pair of blue winged teal on that wetland.
Scott Stephens:Not not 10,000 ducks because they're defending that food resource and trying to ensure that the hen has access to the food that she needs. So that change in behavior where they become territorial territorial when they reach the breeding areas, you know, changes the game completely. That's why we need lots of ponds spread out across the landscape so the birds can spread out and do their thing. And like Matt talked about, you know, we've had wet periods that have lasted a while and the productivity of the wetlands decline if they're wet too long too. So, you know, we get that sweet spot where things first get wet and the for the first few years, we have a boom in production and populations go up, but then they kind of tail off again.
Scott Stephens:So if we put that in the lingo of Johnny Lynch, you know, he he talked about there can only be a super crop for a little bit of time and then you return to mediocrity, which is kinda where we are now.
Jimbo Robinson:The El Nino pattern, mister Gray Cloud. Is that have we have we followed that the last few years?
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I I think in general, we we've been stuck in that pattern during the time period that we've seen the prairies dry out. And, you know, maybe the most disturbing thing is the prediction for this year is a very strong El Nino pattern.
Mike Brasher:Godzilla. Godzilla El Nino. I've heard some call it.
Dan Smith:Oh, that's
Jimbo Robinson:not what social media says.
Wade Shoemaker:Then it
Dan Smith:must be true.
Jimbo Robinson:It must be true.
Jimbo Ronquest:It's gotta be.
Jimbo Robinson:I've heard that too. Yeah. That I'm still going.
Mike Brasher:For sure.
Scott Stephens:You better. Oh, yeah. You you better hunt for sure.
Jimbo Robinson:Jimbo is not very happy, cause you need less clothes when it's warmer and drier.
Lake Pickle:That's right.
Mike Brasher:Right. Right. That's true. I I do want to time goes by fast here, fellas. It's already forty eight minutes after the first hour.
Mike Brasher:I wanna I wanna continue to pay attention to the comments that we have coming in. If you just joined in and you got questions for us, drop those in the YouTube comment section. We're gonna do our best to get to all of those. I've got two others here. The first is from Nancy in the Northwest Territories up in Canada.
Mike Brasher:And so so so get ready, Matt. So she is interested in what has been happening in the numbers up here. She said we've had real problems with drought too. So maybe kinda speak to that, what what wetland conditions or drought conditions have been in the Northwest Territories over the past several years. And I'll pull up this I'll pull I'll look at my numbers here and tell you what the trend has been for the percentage of birds settling in that landscape while you're talking there.
Matt Dyson:Sure. Thanks for the question. I think it was Nancy. Nancy. So, yeah, I mean, in the Northwest Territories where we consider the area of the Boreal Forest, so generally, we have lots of birds produced in the Boreal, but they're spread out over a much larger area.
Matt Dyson:Part of that is because our wetlands are a little bit less productive in this region. So not the same as the Prairie Pothole Wetlands in terms of super production and having high density birds in those areas. And of course, as you know, that those areas have been relatively dry for quite a long period of time now too, and they've experienced some increase in forest fires in those regions too. So certainly potential of reducing some habitat in those regions, but also increasing habitat in terms of early seral reproduction in some of those forests as well, having some of those young trees and dense cover created from that regrowth in some of those regions. So certainly, it'll be interesting to see what we you know, what happens as as water kind of returns to that landscape.
Matt Dyson:I think they had a little bit more water in the over winter this year, but then it's been a pretty dry summer again, especially a bit further up north there in NWT. And so I haven't I don't have the numbers in front of me, Mike. Don't know if you were able to bring them up to look exactly what the trends are are doing there for for ducks in in the NWT. But
Mike Brasher:Yes. Hey, Matt. Go ahead, Mike.
Scott Stephens:I I was just gonna say I'm I'm looking at the habitat conditions map and, you know, this at least southern part of Northwest Territories was red suggesting poor last year. Most of it's green, but there is some yellow and red in the far northern part of the of NWT.
Mike Brasher:I'm looking at
Matt Dyson:Oh, go ahead, Mike.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. I'm looking at my at my my data sheet, my the one on my computer, Jimbo. You didn't draw that? No.
Lake Pickle:You believe in that data stuff? And
Mike Brasher:the long term long term average for the percentage of of total ducks settling in the Northwest Territories is around twenty one percent. This year yeah. I'm looking at total Ducks in the Northwest Territories. And it also includes BC, Northern Alberta, Northern BC, and the Northwest Territories, the strata that fall into that area. Long term average is about 21% of the well, this is an average that goes back, I think, to maybe to the maybe late nineties.
Mike Brasher:I haven't yeah. Late nineties. It's about 20%, 21%. The past several years, 32%, 32%, 33%, '25, and then and then back down to 22% in in 2022. So over the past four years, yes, we've seen an uptick in the percentage of breeding ducks settling in the Northwest Territories in that Western Boreal Northern Western Boreal Forest area consistent with what we were talking about earlier in a time where we've had some dry prairies.
Mike Brasher:So
Jimbo Ronquest:I've had certain outer bands from NWT over the years when they come in.
Jimbo Robinson:Casey, one of the things that you and Brent talked about last year when this when this came out. I remember this like it was yesterday. I don't know why. Was how important the May Pond counts were to the to people's thoughts about what's going what the numbers are gonna look like. And y'all had done a bunch and you'd looked at a bunch of stuff.
Jimbo Robinson:You remember that that kind of podcast, that conversation?
Cason Short:Yeah. Vaguely.
Jimbo Robinson:It was interesting, though.
Lake Pickle:I know
Jimbo Robinson:you had many more, but it stuck with me because one of the things that y'all talked about had a great discussion was how people, when they see the numbers, they instantly it instantly goes to this season's gonna be bad.
Wade Shoemaker:Right.
Jimbo Robinson:Right? That's the first thought that people have, and that's not because of you know? I mean, I look at potentially, but the ponds are a mat are a big, big part of that.
Cason Short:Yeah. But I'm gonna I'm gonna air with Scott here. If you look at it and, Scott, you can back me up on this. I'll I'll
Lake Pickle:be doom and gloom with you. The the even
Cason Short:the pond counts this year are still at, a twenty year low. I have to go back and look. Yeah. I think it's it's been lower one time in the last twenty years. So I think that's what people need to be cautious of.
Cason Short:Hunters are gonna see that up 29%, and they're gonna think, man, this is we're gonna have a good hatch. It's gonna be a great year. But the numbers are still really low long term speaking. So, yeah, I think there's gonna be more recruitment this year. Are we gonna see it on our end of the flyway?
Cason Short:Maybe unlikely with El Nino depending on how big of effect that has. And if it does dry up, then we're looking at more long term.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yes. Sorry.
Cason Short:I don't think you wanted me to go that way with that answer. But
Jimbo Robinson:No. Absolutely. I mean, Scott Scott does. So
Scott Stephens:Well, what what I was gonna say too is I think you're right. You know, you you look overall, the pond numbers were up across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but not everywhere. Right? Like, you dive into the details, it's like there are spots that are wet. There are more spots that are still dry.
Scott Stephens:So, you know, we will see good production in those areas that were wet. Those are gonna be the ones that had had the breeding pairs in them. So we're gonna have better production there. But there's more of that geography that's still dry or on the drier side than there is that's wet. So, like, that's just the reality.
Mike Brasher:Chris, can you bring up this slide here? Give me a thumbs up when okay. We got it. And these are the moments where I sit back and I remain in awe of the wealth of data that we have to even be able to have these conversations. And yes, we can can dig into these data and the methods and find reasons and opportunities to we can find reasons to critique them.
Mike Brasher:We can find ways to improve them. Those two things are fine. A scientist and the scientific process is all about asking questions, scrutinizing, trying to get better. A 100% agree with all of that. But you can't ignore the value that these data give us.
Mike Brasher:It's just amazing that we have these data broken down the way we do for such a long period of time that allows us to look at some of these things and say, okay, Mallard's being down as much as they are, Blue Wings being down as much as they are, that concerns me. But it can I can look at this data and I can also say I shouldn't panic about it because I know that a lot of that is driven by ponds? We've seen that and you did that with your with your notepad there. But you look at this up up here on the graph, you're seeing three lines. One is total ponds, US and Canada, and the other is Canadian ponds and US ponds.
Mike Brasher:And we are what did I say we were? Total, like, 9% below average right now. And for the for the total, there are not a whole lot of years if you look at those those horizontal lines. Not a whole lot at what maybe about half of the years, you're above average. In about half the years, you're below average.
Mike Brasher:So we shouldn't freak out.
Scott Stephens:The way an average works.
Mike Brasher:That's right. That's right. Actually, it's the way a median works, but it's pretty close. Right? So it's we shouldn't freak out about these these periods, but we should pay attention because we do know and we should continue to ask questions because we do know that the habitat continues to be threatened and we continue to face struggles in some of those important landscapes.
Mike Brasher:You can take that down now, Chris.
Scott Stephens:One thing I would add here is sometimes I see folks sort of, you know, we put these numbers up and they say,
Mike Brasher:ah,
Scott Stephens:you know, I remember this year and I don't believe the pawn data because it wasn't like that where I was. And so none of that's any good. And like, I'm always stuck with if we throw out that data, if you say, you know, I don't I don't believe any of this, then I don't know. I don't know what you base decisions on. Right?
Scott Stephens:So, like, think all of us say, no, this is this is useful information. It's collected in the same way. Like like I made a comment recently. It's like that survey data on ducks is the envy of anybody who studies any wildlife population on the globe. Like, period.
Scott Stephens:End of story. So, you know, I take offense, I guess, when people are like, oh, no, the data is no good. It's like, well, like, what do we do then? Do we flip a coin? Do we roll dice?
Scott Stephens:Like, how do we decide what we do? Right? Like, without the data, it's hard to make an informed decision. And and I think the data is very useful. Is it perfect?
Scott Stephens:No. But is it useful? Yes.
Mike Brasher:I have another question from Richard. I'd like to hear more about how the new survey will affect We've kinda touched on that a little bit. We can probably get into that a little bit more here in the next hour. I've got a couple of other comments here. One may relate back a little bit to what Jenna asked Jimbo.
Mike Brasher:This one is from Jan Young. Maybe it's our Jan Young friend out in California. If so, thank you for watching, Jan. It says, in your opinion, do these increased pond numbers reflect just weather boost or are we seeing signs of longer term habitat improvement? This is going to be precipitation driven for sure.
Mike Brasher:One of the things that one of the things that is a reality is that when we lose wetlands due to drainage or filling or conversion, it is very in the prairies, it is very difficult and very expensive to get those back. We think about a lot of the work that we do in migration and wintering areas as restoration enhancement, things of that nature. The opportunities for restoration of prairie wetlands, enhancement of let's just let's we could go to Minnesota or some of the some of the lakes in that part of the world for enhancing the well, that's probably not a good good example. Let me just stay in the prairies and say the opportunity for the restoration of prairie wetlands is pretty limited and it's pretty expensive too. So the vast majority of the conservation work that we do in the Prairies is protecting what we have.
Mike Brasher:So it's it would it would be a phenomenal undertaking to restore enough prairie wetlands over our lifetimes to begin to see a measurable effect of that, I think, at that at that large scale. I'm maybe stumbling through that a little bit, Scott, but I I think I mean, that's the message. Right? Is that it is far easier and more affordable and efficient to protect the wetland basins than we that we currently have than to restore those that have already been drained or converted. We do a little bit of that, but it is far more expensive and and troublesome.
Mike Brasher:Scott, Matt?
Scott Stephens:Yeah. That's exactly right. It's far easier and cheaper to keep what you have than to try and restore it. And I think the lessons that we've learned on restoring Prairie Wetlands is we almost need to pass through the chain of title. So we almost need to own the property for a period of time, restore the wetlands, sell it with a conservation easement to get it restored.
Scott Stephens:Otherwise, once it's gone, there is just little incentive even if you've got a bunch of money to get it restored. So, yeah, that's exactly right, Mike. We're we're better off paying to keep that wetland basin and, you know, when we were talking about fish and wildlife service easements in the Prairies right now, going rate is about $2,500 per acre to keep that wetland forever. But that's far cheaper than trying to restore and put it back, especially if you have to buy the property first.
Mike Brasher:Matt, you have some thoughts on that? Because I know we have some restoration programs and projects going up in Canada.
Matt Dyson:Yep. So, yeah, just in terms of thinking about that Prairie Pond count number, really it doesn't take into account what type of wetland we're thinking about when we're we're we're talking about, you know, doing that, or or, you know, if it's a if it's a semi permanent or a permanent wetland. It's just basically if it's if it's some sort of, like, wet feature on the landscape. And so that doesn't give us an index of quality. And so, you you mentioned earlier when we look at these declines and how they relate back to those numbers, we do have some concern in thinking about the quality of wetlands currently compared to maybe what they were like back in the early 90s or back in the 70s in those times.
Matt Dyson:And so we are interested in understanding how that might be changing as well and their ability to support waterfowl in the same way. And in saying that, we do some restoration work on the prairies in Canada where surface drains have been put in those wetlands. We can put the hydrology back in place by putting what we call a ditch plug, which is just an earthen berm so that we are now retaining that water that was drained off that wetland before. And so we can put the hydrology back in place. But even in some years, you would still have some water in that area in the spring, and so they still could get counted.
Matt Dyson:But we've improved the quality of that wetland by allowing that water to stay on the landscape, longer. And it's that variation in hydrology that really creates that productive landscape for ducks. And so may that pond does a good job of indexing habitat quality, but it's not a perfect measure. And there there is some thinking about like how does that currently track as its measure of quality like it did previously. You know, we have we do need to understand how that's changed through time.
Matt Dyson:I don't know if anybody has any thoughts on that.
Scott Stephens:You know anybody doing research on that?
Matt Dyson:Yeah. A few.
Dan Smith:I was just I was just gonna say, Matt, I think that's like a point that needs to be highlighted potentially more. I mean, it's like when we look at long term trends of prairies and we have a May Pond index, to your point, you know, Scott, it's like, yes, that's a very enviable dataset, but ponds can change kinda as we count them. So to Matt's point, are we counting the same ponds? Are they still there? And then back to how well ponds track populations, you know, are we still going be able to see the booms that we've historically seen, or are the ponds so degraded that the ducks will just never get to that super crop again?
Dan Smith:And so I think that's something that keeps us up at night and trying to figure it out and better quantify it because, like anything, we have a long term data set. It's great, but it also gives us the opportunity to try to improve that. And so I think there's a lot of work going on right now to say, this is awesome, but let's do better. We can do better. We should do better.
Dan Smith:And and looking at pawns and what that means is that's important because coming back to how do you count ponds in a from an airplane going at basically stall speed, it's not easy. Right? So it's a great dataset, but it's certainly far from ideal. Yeah.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. It's useful, not perfect. Right? And and you're exactly right, Dan. It's like, you know, it it gets counted as ponding water if it's 25% full or if it's, you know, a 110% full.
Scott Stephens:But the impact on ducks of those two that would be counted as a pond is way different.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. And there are efforts underway to look at alternative alternative methods, alternative datasets, some involving remote remotely sensed imagery, satellite imagery. That is the era that we find ourselves in now, and and there are a lot of folks that are asking that question. I'm I'm pretty confident that in the coming years, you're gonna see some changes to the way certain things are done. Definitely, some datasets are already being used to develop indices of wetland conditions in some places, and so you will see more of that going forward, always trying to get better.
Mike Brasher:We are going to take a break. We are seven zero five. Dan, we are going to come back. When we come back, I want you to sort of give us a well, I got a few slides, I think, about number of ducks in the West, and I want you to also just kinda talk about Klamath Basin, that kind of stuff. What?
Mike Brasher:I have something before we leave.
Lake Pickle:Oh, okay. Yeah. Absolutely.
Jimbo Ronquest:Well, we
Cason Short:were kinda talking about the quality of wetlands. So I was hoping you guys could shed some light on, say, like a frost seal and snowfall versus spring rains that we kinda saw this year because those are two different animals.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I mean, the traditional way that those wetlands get filled that we would think about is with good frost seal in the fall going into freeze up and then some snow stacked up. And then when that begins to warm, all that all that snow running off on top of the frost seal and into the wetland. What we see happen more often now is less of that and more of the water falling as precipitation. In my mind, either is okay as long as it comes at the same time.
Scott Stephens:Like, if we got all of the precipitation as rain in late April or early May, that'd be okay. If it waits till June, that doesn't work as well. Right? Because the birds have already made their decision on where they're gonna settle the breed. So that's some of the differences that we see, you know, more recently compared to historic trends.
Cason Short:Good. Yep. Thanks. Alright.
Mike Brasher:I thought you were going to and it was a good reminder. You got something to you you wanna talk about the buy two ducks stamp promotion? You wanna promote that? I think that that's a great idea. I think this would be a good place to do that.
Cason Short:Heck yeah. Well, I mean, it's pretty simple. Right? Just buy two.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Tell me. But Oh, wait. So how did this start? Let me just ask you that.
Mike Brasher:So you you guys, standard sportsman, you and Brent, kinda had the idea to
Jimbo Robinson:Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Coming out of the drain tile thing.
Cason Short:Right? That's right. Yeah. It was really Brent's idea. Like, he kinda steer ahead of that whole thing.
Cason Short:It's not an original idea. We've seen other people do it before. 98% of every dollar spent on duck stamps goes to you might can help me with what fund it goes into, but it goes to conservation directly. So you you know where your money's going. And, yeah, I mean, it's common sense conservation.
Cason Short:Right? I mean, it's
Wade Shoemaker:as simple as it gets.
Cason Short:And as we were talking beforehand, it's the cheapest thing you'll spend on duck hunting this year.
Mike Brasher:It's one of the best things that the US federal government does, and they've been doing it that way the same way for a long period of time. It goes into migratory bird conservation fund. That money along with some other funds go to some of it goes to purchase land that goes into the National Wildlife Refuge System. A good chunk of that, I think at one time, I don't know if it's still the case, but more than 50%, maybe up to 70% of that money went to the prairies. And and instead of acquiring through feed title, that money gets spent on those easements, grassland easements and wetland easements that we heard so much about.
Mike Brasher:And so that's where 98¢ out of every dollar you spend on a duck stamp goes into that fund, it goes into those things that are yeah, that that provide migratory bird habitat that all of us benefit from it. I thought that was a great movement that y'all started. Buy two duck stamps. Buy one because you have to. Buy another because it's it's it's good for the ducks.
Mike Brasher:Right?
Lake Pickle:Yeah.
Mike Brasher:And I would encourage people to buy two dozen if you've got the means to do so. Absolutely.
Lake Pickle:Well, and
Jimbo Robinson:it got a lot of I mean, a lot of people got behind it because it makes sense.
Wade Shoemaker:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jimbo Robinson:Right? If you didn't understand the drain tile setback issue, which Jason and I have talked about a couple times, and you understand this. Yeah. Right? So and I think somebody I think Justin Martin actually hit on it, the the financial means of what that impact could be for everybody to sign the petition if everybody else bought one.
Jimbo Robinson:It was, like, 5,250,000 is what
Mike Brasher:he said.
Jimbo Ronquest:That's right.
Jimbo Robinson:And and so that's an interesting number. Like, if every you know, if you cared enough to take the time to sign the petition, blah, blah, blah, then you go out and buy an extra duck stamp. That's a lot of more resources.
Mike Brasher:And that goes to protect those wetland basins forever so that when it does rain, it puts water in the basin, and they get counted, and baby ducks get get produced on them and all that all that good stuff that we care about. We are halfway through the 2026 Waterfowl Season Outlook brought to you by our good friends at On X Hunt, and we're gonna take five minutes. Dan, you're up whenever we come Stay with us, folks.
VO:Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
Wade Shoemaker:I think so. Yeah. There we are.
Scott Stephens:You gotta have weasels to take your
Lake Pickle:We're live. We're live. I feel like I walked in a weird conversation. Yeah. We're
Mike Brasher:live. Okay. We are live. We're talking about
Cason Short:in this frame.
Mike Brasher:Well, yeah, somebody was talking about weasels, and and and that's all we'll say about that. So we are back at the 2026 Waterfowl Season Outlook livestream.
Wade Shoemaker:Weasels get into a duck hunting conversation?
Mike Brasher:Weasels can be effective predators of ducks, I think, you know, at certain times of
Lake Pickle:the year.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. Mink mink Mink her hard on. Baby ducks.
Wade Shoemaker:Baby ducks. Yeah.
Scott Stephens:That's the weasel family.
Mike Brasher:Yep. Yep. So we are well, yeah, welcome back y'all. Waterfowl season outlook brought to you by our friends at On X Hunt, and let's go out to doctor Dan Smith. Actually Hey.
Scott Stephens:Before we do that, I wanna give
Jimbo Robinson:a shout out to Lake.
Mike Brasher:Do so.
Jimbo Robinson:If you haven't checked out the location sharing, that is an awesome feature.
Mike Brasher:What are we talking about?
Lake Pickle:I appreciate it. That that would technically be a shout out to On X and not I would like to take credit for everything that On X does. I just work there. Oh, no. No.
Lake Pickle:We give you credit
Jimbo Robinson:for not here.
Wade Shoemaker:I thought you
Scott Stephens:We give you credit for all of it. We're like, yep. Lake must have done that.
Lake Pickle:I was telling I was telling right before we came in here, I forget who asked me the question, but they asked me, like, a very technical app question. I was like, look, brother. I'm a I'm a marketer. Like, there's some very smart people that work at On X, and I I I just kinda, like, shine a light. I'm like, look.
Lake Pickle:On X is great. I market it. I don't know how it works.
Jimbo Robinson:Alright. Never mind. Anyways, if you haven't seen the location sharing that On X is now, it is an awesome feature.
Lake Pickle:Yeah. It's pretty nifty.
Mike Brasher:Like, for sharing your location with your hunting partner.
Jimbo Robinson:Yeah. Like, deer hunting and being able to move around.
Mike Brasher:What if you don't wanna share it with you? You know? Don't You don't have to. Have to. You
Jimbo Robinson:Turn it off when you if you don't wanna know if you don't
Lake Pickle:want people. But if you have four or
Jimbo Robinson:five guys, deer hunt the same property Mhmm. I mean, that's a
Mike Brasher:I see. You we probably all
Lake Pickle:can relate to the guy that if you're in a in a group of guys hunting together and you rely on that group text, there's at least one buddy that's terrible at replying, and you're like, I don't know where he ended up at. Yeah. But then if you turn group location sharing on, you don't have to you just go, oh, I see him. He's at that spot. You know?
Lake Pickle:So it is it's handy.
Wade Shoemaker:Able to track you when there's no signal, like a GPS type deal.
Lake Pickle:Well, you wanna have signal. You about to get me in some deep water. But Sorry. Yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:Offline mode.
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. We can skip.
Mike Brasher:But What? We're ready? Are we ready to go back?
Lake Pickle:Sorry. We are so back.
Mike Brasher:So I am I'm actually going to bypass the slides here. I'm gonna just point out a couple of things here. Dan, I I think so ducks in Alaska this year were down what was it? Were they down 11%, or am I making that up? I'd have to go back and find my my notes.
Mike Brasher:Why don't you take it away here? Because I got too many numbers running through my head when I'm I'm gonna grab a piece of paper. How were things out west?
Dan Smith:Out west, I mean, Alaska is a bit of a different beast for us, but at least in the Southern Pacific Flyway, we had almost no snowpack. It was a very challenging and and kind of dry and warm winter for us. We had some decent precipitation kind of later in the season, but overall, you know, pretty dry landscape out here in the West. So when we kind of got some of those state BPOP reports, it kind of bit with what we'd expect to see. And I know Alaska, we're kind of unfortunately continuing a bit of a downtrend.
Dan Smith:Kind of two bright spots that I saw at least was Mallards were up 43% over the long term average. So at least Mallards in the West seem to be doing okay. And then green wing teal were up about 20% from last year. But I mean, those primary species for Alaska that at least the Southern Pacific Flyway enjoys hunting like green wing teal, pintail, wigeon, they're all down, and they were and they're continuing to be down from the LTA. Right?
Dan Smith:And so that was a bit of a concern, but unfortunately not too surprising.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Dan, I'm looking at the numbers here. Total ducks in Alaska were down 11%, now down 37 from the long term average. I'm looking at Widgeon also for that Alaska Yukon territory, Old Crow Flats area, down 20% 26 per now it's not a huge number right now. It was 218,000 widget estimated in Alaska in that area, but that was down 26% from last year, down 60% from the long term average.
Mike Brasher:And one of the other things that's kind of interesting is that in an area adjacent to it, there was this year, the Central And Northern Alberta, Northeastern British Columbia, and the Northwestern Territories, Widgeon, were at 2,000,000 this year, and they were at 2,000,000 last year, and that is a 100% higher than the long term average for that survey region. So, again, an example of what these data can do, having this data at at this scale in these different survey area, and when you combine that with some understanding of maybe what's happening with with habitats in those areas, changes in environmental conditions, that's what gives folks like Dan and his research colleagues out west to begin kind of probing some of these questions, say, what the heck is going on here? Because there was a twenty year period or so where duck number breeding duck numbers in Alaska were just going up into the right. Now they're going down and to the right, and that's trying to figure that kind of stuff out.
Dan Smith:Yeah. I think for us, you know, when we looked back from like 1960 to 1970 in Alaska, we had about 2,300,000 breeding waterfowl. It wasn't wasn't that big. And to to your point, it just kept increasing, like decade after decade, it kept going up, and really we hit our peak in like the two thousand to twenty ten period. And at that point, I think we were averaging we were averaging about four 5,200,000.
Dan Smith:So that was like, man, we just doubled it. Right? Like, this is great. This is good news. We're happy to see that.
Dan Smith:But since about that, you know, 2000 period or, you know, now if we look from 2014 to 2025, it's declined about 40%. Right? So we're kind of coming down that mountain and we're still ahead of where we used to be, like in the sixties and the seventies, but we're looking back ten years and we're going, man, we wish we were there. So there's a lot of concerns on on why that's changed. You know, it's a pretty dramatic change over a decade.
Dan Smith:And to our point or a conversation earlier about May Ponds, there's no pay May Pond index up there. Right? So that's a prairie index. And so when we look at Alaska, you know, we're thinking what what are we doing out here. Right?
Dan Smith:What what's going on with what we're seeing?
Mike Brasher:And so, Dan, what are some of the logical hypotheses that you're starting to think about? It's it's mostly related to sort of decadal climate patterns or longer term changes in sort of environmental condition driven by driven by changes in climate in that area. Right?
Dan Smith:Yeah. I mean, one of the things that we have seen in a lot of data from a whole bunch of researchers I mean, that's one of the nice things about doing waterfowl science. I mean, you're working in a wetland system, which is an exciting system to think about and a lot of other folks invest time and effort into understanding it. And what a lot of the research has shown is that climate change is really impacting Alaska wetlands at a very high rate, much higher than other places in the world because it's so far north. And so we're seeing a rate of change there that really outpaces everything else.
Dan Smith:And so that landscape is, you know, forcing ducks to respond to it. And so they're using it potentially in a different way. And so the fun thing to do now when we look at all this data, the benefit of looking at this data, is we can start to come up with hypotheses of why we think it's happening. It gets really hard to test some of those hypotheses at scale, particularly if you're in Alaska. I mean, it's not like, oh, yeah, you know, we'll jump in a truck and we'll drive down the road and we'll go figure it out.
Dan Smith:Right? It's like, well, we got to plan a flight and the weather's got to be right, and it's logistically really challenging to see these places. So we're trying to find new opportunities and technologies to test some of these hypotheses of why we think birds are changing. And we're really just kind of starting to do some of that. We're helping our or we're working with our federal and state partners to better understand that right now.
Dan Smith:But right now, it's a lot of fun to think about what we might be able to learn in the next handful of years.
Mike Brasher:Well, and folks need to stay need to pay attention or or continue to pay attention to to the work that we're doing out west. If you're in the Pacific Flyway and you care about ducks and and what Ducks Unlimited is doing, we have a brand new Alaska initiative that we're we're standing up to to bring additional attention to these kind of issues, to this incredibly important landscape. What's its nickname, the last frontier? Is that the Alaska Alaskan nickname? Is that right?
Mike Brasher:Did I get that right, Dan? The state nicknamed the last frontier?
Dan Smith:I don't know every state's nickname, but it sounds great.
Lake Pickle:Yeah. Let's go
Jimbo Ronquest:with it.
Mike Brasher:And so it is like the next frontier for Ducks Unlimited and the work that we are doing and the additional investment that we are making in science and understanding what's happening with duck populations in in that area. It's also a very important region for pintails. They are sort of in a similar boat. Last year, they were at 712,000 estimated in Alaska in that area. They're down 37% there this year.
Mike Brasher:So, you know, a one year change is not is not something to get too worked up about, but it's those longer term trends that we'll keep an eye on. Coming a little bit farther south, what about Klamath and and that area? I know there was a botulism outbreak here recently. Can you give us a report on that as well as Great Salt Lake? Was there some recent rain out in that area?
Mike Brasher:What's the what's the what's that area looking like?
Dan Smith:Yeah. Well, I'll start with Great Salt Lake. I would say go check out our drought tracker online that was put together by a great collaborative effort, Pat Pat Donnelly, Patrick Donnelly, who works for us is is really spearheaded that. And so you can actually see some of those changes. You can play around with some sliders and you can see surface water changes over time.
Dan Smith:Unfortunately, for for us right now, we're looking at not that much water because there's almost no snow. And so there's some challenges going on in the Great Salt Lake for sure. So we'll see how that kind of progresses with the El Nino that Scott alluded to. It's not particularly a great forecast that we're we're looking forward to, but there's a there's always a chance that the models are wrong. Right?
Dan Smith:So maybe we'll cross our fingers and hope for that. In regards to Klamath Basin, just for some added context for folks, when we think about the West, Great Salt Lake, the Klamath Basin, and the Central Valley Of California are kind of like our three primary waterfowl areas. And the Klamath Basin is just fantastic because it really supports every stage of a waterfowl's life cycle. And one of the emerging kind of more important aspects of the Klamath Basin has been supporting spring migrating waterfowl and locally breeding waterfowl in the West. And Mike, as you alluded to, there was a botulism outbreak.
Dan Smith:We had receding pond levels, botulism started to take over with some really kind of anoxic water, really low dissolved oxygen levels, and therefore a lot of dead animals, protein to to really kick off that outbreak, and it impacted, I think it I'm gonna guess right now, haven't talked to the refuge staff recently, but it's probably around 15,000 birds. A big help that we've had recently was the community got together and we've kind of established at least a lever that we can pull in the future, which is a flow through concept where the agricultural producers are letting water flow through their system into the wildlife refuge to kind of refill those areas with water to offset the botulism outbreak. And it's really shown us this year particularly, and we kind of learned a little bit last year about how effective it could be, but this year we got a big kind of amelioration of that outbreak because that additional water entered the landscape.
Mike Brasher:Thank you for that update, Dan. I was kind of eager to hear about the the improving conditions in the Great Salt Lake. We are I'm getting some other questions coming in here. Anybody around the table got a got a question for anybody here at this point while I catch up with some notes here?
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. I think I'd add something here. I I was able to hunt Klamath probably ten years ago, I think it was. It was actually with On X. I went with Matt Siedel, of all people.
Wade Shoemaker:Good day. Went and did that, and it was a pretty cool deal, and even then, they were struggling with water. I don't know. That was probably I guess it was a while back, but struggling with it pretty bad, and then there seemed to be an uptick with it. There was a lot of people rejoicing.
Wade Shoemaker:A guy over there, last name McVeigh, he was he was a pretty big advocate for all that over there, and he was excited, and then all of a sudden the botulism stuff comes up. But something that I wanted to ask about, and me and Lake actually talked about this on your podcast one time, and I live in Louisiana, so everything's kind of different over there, but one thing I noticed when I sort of duck hunting, mean, early two thousands, like nineteen years ago, California has stayed pretty steady on the harvest numbers, I think, for the last twenty years or so. You're looking at, you know, around a million every year. Maybe it's 800, maybe it's 1.2, whatever it is. And then in the early two thousands, there was one point when Louisiana was sitting just over 3,000,000 that year for waterfowl harvest, and since then, we've lost about 66% of the harvest.
Wade Shoemaker:Right? This isn't a question about Louisiana. This is more of a question about the West Coast. What do you think really attributes to the consistency in the harvest there to stay at that number for that amount of time and then to come over you know, then you got the Mississippi flyaway that's been seeing such a decline. Is it the fact that it's the Alaska birds coming down?
Wade Shoemaker:Is it what what is that? Is that a habitat thing? Is there a real answer?
Dan Smith:I mean, that's a really interesting question. I haven't I haven't thought about that originally. I mean, I'll I'll leave the Louisiana comparisons to someone who understands that landscape better. But at least in the West, we have a very limited wetland footprint. Like, there's a handful of places for ducks to go.
Dan Smith:Sure. And it's entirely, almost entirely plumbed. And so people make decisions on when water shows up, and and right now, ducks still drive a lot of where that water goes, and so that wetland footprint is gonna be wet, and so ducks are gonna be there and guys can hunt it. Yeah. And so I think that's really why we've seen some consistency in that harvest.
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. I would I I think that makes sense, but I would I would say just knowing that the amount of people that hunt in this area well, I mean, the joke is where there's water, there's guns most of the time when you hunt over here. So, like, I I would I'm not saying that's wrong. I just feel like there's a world where that's I think there's more to it, and I think that'd be something cool to look at, especially as consistent as the harvest numbers have been for thirty years.
Mike Brasher:Yep. We it's a great question, and we recently recorded an episode with Elliott Snyder, sort of a a co branded episode with Elliott Snyder, the North American Waterfowl Podcast. It'll be out in a couple of weeks or something like that. I think maybe it's waiting on waiting on me to give one final review of the of the of that of that episode. But it was an episode where we talked with Lisa Webb and Heath Hagey about a study a that we did here not too long ago where we looked at the changing distributions of waterfowl harvest, duck harvest during during the during winter.
Mike Brasher:And, yeah, you do see some changes in those distributions, and we did that for the Central And Mississippi Flyway, and so we've got those data that shows those shifts. Some are more pronounced for for some species than others. We're working on a paper to try to link some identify some of the causes of that. That paper is is still in in review. But so that's the Mississippi Central Flyway thing that we're trying to piece together to document and describe the changes and hopefully try to explain those based on whether it be environmental factors, landscape change factors.
Mike Brasher:And then we're also working with some folks to do that same type of analysis for the Pacific Flyway and the and the Atlantic Flyway. And the important thing there is as as I think, Dan, maybe you both described, they are different landscapes. Yeah. Pacific Flyway, you've got some a small number of very discreet wetland, you know Yeah. Geographies, and there aren't as many alternative places for ducks in that landscape to adapt to and to shift into in response to all these other changes in environmental conditions and landscape conditions.
Mike Brasher:But there are probably some. There's probably going to be some signals on changes that may be occurring in the Pacific Atlantic flyaway. Whether they're as strong as the signals that we've seen for the Mississippi and Central remains to be seen. Mhmm. But those are the type of, again, intriguing questions that we can answer with the wealth of data that's been collected.
Mike Brasher:Some of it's from band recovery data, parts collection survey through the harvest surveys. But, yeah, to be determined. Yeah. Good question. Cool.
Mike Brasher:Anybody online have anything to add to that? Nothing. K. What other questions do we have?
Jimbo Robinson:Oh, I've got a good question.
Cason Short:Yes. Go for it.
Jimbo Robinson:I'm dropping. I'm I'm I'm dropping the bet bomb.
Mike Brasher:Oh, yeah. Okay.
Jimbo Robinson:Alright. We were challenged a little bit that we wouldn't have a conversation. I knew this is gonna come up about strict seasons and dates and limits. Right? So restricting the season down and limits because there's too much money involved and that the hunting industry is ruining duck hunting.
Jimbo Robinson:And the the question says when the resource runs out, the money making will stop. 5,800,000 mallards from 12 million ten years ago is saying something. I think the question is more about that the harvest is part of it is dropping the numbers and that the industry itself and there's four three industry professionals. One that also I mean, industry professional for sure, and you, and that your business is farming. And Mhmm.
Jimbo Robinson:And
Cason Short:Not me, bro.
Jimbo Robinson:One that makes a lot of money off the industry. We have gear, ammo, and, I mean Tech.
Lake Pickle:Marketing tech. Tech. I I wasn't gonna give you credit for all the tech. Same company.
Jimbo Robinson:But marketing. Right? So I know it means a ton to the three of you. It obviously is our life and, you know, as an outfitter and a and a voice for conservation is what I like to call you, Jason, this this impacts us all. Right?
Jimbo Robinson:So
Lake Pickle:who's that? Is that well, let me
Mike Brasher:let me first make sure I understand the question. Is this is this the question or the accusation that we will never see a this person thinks we'll never see anything other than a liberal season, liberal framework because there's too much money attached to it?
Jimbo Robinson:There's too much money being made.
Wade Shoemaker:There's a lot of people in that opinion.
Cason Short:You you can go on, but I I have something pretty good that may just put it into all this.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Go ahead. Alright.
Cason Short:I'm looking around, and I know the answer to this. Raise your hand if you've got kids. Would you put money in front of your kids' future hunting? No. Not not a chance.
Cason Short:Mm-mm. So, I mean, I'm not in it for that. I I care about my kids being able to hunt and their kids being able to hunt. That's what matters to me.
Jimbo Robinson:Because that's what was given to me.
Cason Short:That's right.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. We we were fortunate, a lot of us, to grow up doing it. You know, it's been a part of my life as long as I can remember. And I'm gonna go by memory here, so you guys help me out. But used to study duck stamp sales pretty heavily Mhmm.
Jimbo Ronquest:And how it reacted back to what we do for a living. In 1975, we were selling double the federal duck stamps we're selling now. Now, sure, there's some states like home that are hotspots, but we had double the duck hunters in the mid seventies. That's what we have right now. There were people in the mid seventies building product, building gear, making gear specifically for waterfowl hunters.
Jimbo Ronquest:Nothing's changed. I Mhmm. I know a lot of us in the industry that go to Washington DC to lobby for resource management, for policy, for other things. I don't know of any one company, and I may be wrong. I'm just speaking for our company that builds products for waterfowl hunters.
Jimbo Ronquest:We don't have anybody on the payroll in DC that has office in DC to lobby our lawmakers about, hey. We need to make sure that we got a sixty day duck season. You know? We that's not happening. Yeah.
Jimbo Ronquest:Now I've been to a couple meetings where some people kinda lean that way, but they were the minority more so than the majority. If we don't take care of the resource, we're thanks. You're not gonna be here in the end. So if we don't have that Waterfowl resource takes care of us, what are we gonna be there to support it
Scott Stephens:And I I think I think Taylor should weigh in on where do where does the industry weigh into the regulation process?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. Again, it's definitely coming from a guy who isn't, Salary is not going
Wade Shoemaker:up by the number of dozen around there.
Lake Pickle:He may
Wade Shoemaker:end up with the game, dude.
Taylor Finger:Yeah. Sitting sitting at those tables in this discussion again, like, we set the seasons Wisconsin seasons for, you know, 65,000 waterfowl hunters that we have out there. And then when we go to the flyaway meetings, we're sitting and having these discussions and we are not thinking about is this group gonna make more money. And what we're talking about and this has been something that we've had a lot of discussions with, particularly with the people that are doing the research right now and looking at the overall impact of harvest on populations. We know, you know, at our current level and depending on the species, it tends to be relatively low.
Taylor Finger:What scares us the most is that again, if harvest is not driving the population, the last time we went from a liberal season to a restrictive season, we lost half of the duck hunters and they never came back. And so the idea from the app, you know, the avid duck hunter that's out there that says, well, we need to go to thirty and three to give the ducks a break to bring them back. You're probably still gonna hunt because that's your thought process but there's a lot of duck hunters that'll never come back and what we have done then is we have cut the number of duck stamps that are purchased in state and federal, thus the money that's being produced to help protect habitat to help do work has been cut in half. All with the result of likely not increasing the number of ducks at all on the landscape. And so this is something that we discussed from a flyaway perspective.
Taylor Finger:All the states is like, yeah, we know that you as an avid duck hunter want this to happen, but we know if we do this, you know, if this is the route that we, you know, are gonna go down, it's going to be this downward spiral. And so this is from a flyaway perspective and from a state perspective, it's not a we're worried about, you know, somebody making money or, you know, guides making more money or people making money off of leases or things along those lines. It's ultimately the overall impact that's gonna be on the resource and the habitat and everything down the road.
Wade Shoemaker:Which is all the more reason to buy two duck stands. That's right.
Scott Stephens:Exactly. And the thing that
Mike Brasher:I'll the thing that I'll add to what Taylor said, just to kinda add a a finer point of clarification, is that the reason that folks like Taylor and Fish and Wildlife Service and all and can have those discussions and can can set those regulations at that at that liberal in that liberal framework as it turns out to be is because they have the data, they understand, they're able to look at the effect of harvest, and they know it's a, as he said, a relatively small effect on annual changes in population size. Correct me on this if I'm wrong, Taylor, but if if the models and the data began to show that harvest was driving the population change from year to year, the models would adjust and we would not be in, we would not have been in a liberal framework for the past however many years. Right? And that's an important point. Absolutely.
Mike Brasher:That's a very important point.
Taylor Finger:Yeah. And and again, we we look at those types of things. That's why bag limits are different and specific. Like, there's a reason we're not shooting six hen canvas bags. Like, there's there's a reason why we don't do that because we do know at a certain level, at a certain threshold that harvest does affect populations.
Taylor Finger:And so, again, based on the modeling, based on the population data, based on the habitat information that we have, all of that information is, you know, developed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, developed by academia folks that work and help with this and get in front of us and share that information. We're not just sitting there as Scott was saying, we're flipping a coin and saying, well, here we go. It's no there's that week at the Flyway meeting is we are ten, twelve, fourteen hour days where we're sitting there talking, and then you're done for the day, and then you're having a couple of extracurricular beverages and you're still talking about that for the next four hours talking about these types of situations. So it's it's not a thing that we're trying to drive because of we're we're making money off of it. I can promise you that.
Jimbo Ronquest:That
Cason Short:Well, I mean,
Jimbo Ronquest:look at
Scott Stephens:the And to be and to be clear, Taylor, like, there's no rep from industry that sets there with your group. Like, DU doesn't weigh in on the regulation package portion. So, like, it's the biologists based on the data doing this.
Taylor Finger:Right. Yeah. We have no stake in the game financially on these decisions. Again, it's we're looking at this as the future for opportunity and the future for resources. Where can we maximize most amount of opportunity without negatively affecting the resource?
Taylor Finger:And we recognize that. I know the gut feeling right now is all populations are going down. We gotta we gotta do something. But just because your gut tells you that doesn't mean that the data or the science is actually backing it up. And so we wanna make these informed decisions not based on on feelings.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. Can't make wildlife policy based off emotions. When you look at the matrix, it kinda shows, and I know my buddy, Michael, if ever gives me a hard time about my yellow notepad, but the one thing I kinda noticed is I started really paying attention how well that followed the matrix. When you just start looking from year to year, from one year, let's see, where was it? Ponds were way down.
Jimbo Ronquest:Next year's b pop is down, then we had a couple wet years, and you you see you see the b pop follow the the pawns. And that's so much kind of in my mind, I put that together kinda as the matrix. You could kinda see how that does work. But it's all all the data's there to work for us and let it move around as needed.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I mean, the the comment that comes to mind for me here is it's easier to construct a conspiracy theory when you don't know how the stuff actually works. Right? Like, when when you get into the details of what Taylor just described, it's like, okay. So, like, explain to me how that would work, you know, how how how that influence driving money is is sort of setting these regulations because the process is not set up that way.
Jimbo Ronquest:And if
Lake Pickle:I could speak one more industry making money thing
Mike Brasher:We're not.
Jimbo Robinson:This is rolling into a lot more.
Lake Pickle:So so so I've been in the hunting industry since I was 18 years old. My first job was guiding duck hunters. God bless those souls that had
Wade Shoemaker:me as a guide. But, hey,
Lake Pickle:I'm I'm 34 years old now. And the the data I'm about to share with you is all anecdotal, but I have never met anybody in this line of work, whether I've crossed paths with them, worked with them, worked alongside them for years, whatever. I've never met anybody or know anybody currently that got into this space to go, man, I'm here to make money. They got into this space because they love the resource and they love to hunt, and that's what drives them to be here. I know that's I mean, I can't speak for everyone here, but I'm sure y'all would agree with that.
Lake Pickle:That's why we're here. It's not a money making thing. We all love the resource.
Jimbo Robinson:I think they're also saying too that the amount of money that's in the Yeah. In the industry as
Lake Pickle:a whole. Sure. Yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:But I think the avid hunters down here, Casey and I just talked about this at the break, though, is if we will shift our expectations in this same time frame that we're in, it will also shift our mindsets to some of the questions and some of the opinions that people have. If you're expecting in a year like this to go out and and have your best duck season you've ever had Yeah. You're probably gonna have the worst duck season you've ever had. And so then the the blame game comes. Right?
Jimbo Robinson:But if you go into this duck season of, it could be tough, I'm gonna give it my best effort. I'm going to do what what made me fall in love this with this sport, which was enjoy time with friends. Mhmm. Stand next to a tree. Sit in a pit.
Jimbo Robinson:Sit on a blind. Enjoy watching my son maybe shoot one or two ducks and me not shooting any one day. If you'll change your mindset going in into times like this, it will shift your, I guess, the the your overall emotions. And it's like y'all just said. Right?
Jimbo Robinson:If these emotions drive the decisions, if the emotions drive your decisions on what you're gonna base your Ducks season on, then you're probably gonna be disappointed. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Let's be honest. The satisfaction is the degree to which experience overlaps expectations.
Cason Short:Yeah. If it
Wade Shoemaker:if it's Yeah. I think it's
Lake Pickle:in your motive to be selfish or is it to sustain, and I think that's really what
Wade Shoemaker:it boils down to. That could be money, that could
Lake Pickle:be ducks, could be whatever it is, but are you trying to sustain the sport, or are you trying to be selfish for what you take from it?
Jimbo Robinson:And I think that what we've learned tonight is that things aren't great.
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:Right? And and and things They're not horrible.
Lake Pickle:They're not horrible. But if doctor
Mike Brasher:They're about average.
Jimbo Robinson:Scott, you know If his El Nino comes to risk, we're
Scott Stephens:gonna be in trouble with El Nino. Super El Nino.
Jimbo Robinson:I'm not saying he's Godzilla or whatever
Jimbo Ronquest:he said earlier. Yeah. I
Jimbo Robinson:do have I do have some optimism in me. Yeah. Alright? But, I mean, next spring's gonna be could be tough.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. One one thing I wanted to point out, like, we've had talk about industry folks here. I I would give some credit recently when we needed people to stand up for the habitat base that we've all invested in. The industry folks showed up.
Wade Shoemaker:Yep.
Scott Stephens:So, you know, I I don't know how many haters online put comments into the federal register, but I know industry folks showed up. So that was important.
Cason Short:So we're we're touching on the human dynamic aspect of this. Right? And the initial comment about making money and all that, like, we're we're talking about the extremes. So there's a certain group of people you're not gonna reach. Right.
Cason Short:I I don't think you can. But somewhere in the middle, you've got your average duck hunter. Right? And, Taylor, you brought up something interesting. You're talking about going restrictive and losing almost half of our hunters.
Cason Short:And I would pose the question, did we lose the hunters because we went to restrictive, or do we lose those hunters because the where the bee pop and maypons were at that time? And and I'm I'm looking at 88 here, looking at those numbers because that's when we switched from 40 to 30. So I'm assuming that's kinda what you're referencing, and those numbers aren't too dissimilar from where we're at now. So that's kinda my my question. Like, are are we gonna lose people because we lose opportunity, or we're gonna lose people because we're not killing ducks?
Cason Short:They're not seeing ducks. Because I've said for a long time on our podcast, all the opportunity in the world is worthless if you don't see ducks.
Lake Pickle:Yeah.
Cason Short:So and I'm not advocating to to reduce opportunity. I've said that as well at, you know, a lot. That's not what I'm advocating for. But at a certain point, quality is what retains hunters, not just being able to go. They've gotta be able to see ducks and kill ducks for it to be successful.
Lake Pickle:Yep. I think we all
Wade Shoemaker:hunt with people that swear I've hunted with guys for
Lake Pickle:five or eight, ten years that swear they're quitting at the end of every year.
Wade Shoemaker:Right? And they come back every year. Right?
Cason Short:I get a little sour sometimes.
Lake Pickle:Yeah. Doing all this. Done.
Scott Stephens:Yep. I I don't ever say that.
Lake Pickle:I'm not
Cason Short:a joke.
Lake Pickle:I'm not
Wade Shoemaker:a quitting.
Cason Short:I've never said I was quitting.
Scott Stephens:I'm a little unhappy.
Jimbo Robinson:Talk about and and when it's 70 degrees and you're swatting mosquitoes in January, you get sour.
Jimbo Ronquest:I don't care.
Scott Stephens:Come on down here.
Lake Pickle:We'll see
Jimbo Robinson:what that's
Wade Shoemaker:about. Questioned our motives. Yes. Why are we still doing that?
Lake Pickle:I've questioned my sanity.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. On several occasions. Yeah.
Taylor Finger:I will I will comment. I think that, I mean, shortening the season and reducing bag limits and limiting opportunity, we do see that large scale effect over over it just being like, well, there's less ducks this year than there were last year, I still got hunt 60. Those types of things. Mhmm. Because it's when the amount of money in terms of what these people invest to do this, again, for example, my my my picture in background there, if you are a person that is gonna lay out hunt and you have all of that invested into that and all of sudden you've cut your opportunity in half or you've cut you know, right now, we're talking about SCOP going from three SCOP a day to one SCOP a day.
Taylor Finger:I mean, you don't do this. This is not what you would do then. Like, those are the types of people or, again, if you're paying a lot of money for a lease for a certain property and all of a sudden, it went from sixty days to thirty days, are those people still going to invest that time and energy and effort into it? And so, again, that's those are the types of discussions that we have as a state or as a flyway when we come up against these tough decisions.
Cason Short:Sure. I mean, the thirty thirty day season flies by quick. I mean, take how many weekends do you have to go home with your kids?
Jimbo Robinson:Absolutely. But those decisions aren't based on the industry and ruining duck hunting. Those decisions are based on on dollars spent on license, federal duck stamps, state duck stamps.
Mike Brasher:Yep. I do wanna I I got a couple of questions here from the
Jimbo Robinson:We heard some questions.
Mike Brasher:One of them is is lingering, and I'm gonna mention this, and I'll let Scott and Matt think about a response. Ask, do you coconut. You anticipate they were ever they will ever start flying the brood production surveys again? How useful would that data be? Scott, I know you're gonna have an answer for that because there's some work that's kinda ongoing up there by some of our our DU folks.
Mike Brasher:But then I'm gonna skip down to the one that just came in, and and this is a fair observation. It says this year's numbers, when put in the 2021 matrix, would have required a restrictive season alternative. In other words, thirty days in Atlantic And Mississippi flyaways and thirty nine days in the Central. I've noticed that too. And the the only thing that I can say, and I'll turn this over to Taylor here for a response here in a minute, is that the change that was made to that model back in boy, Taylor, you're gonna have to tell me when that when y'all really started working on that, but that was a decision that was put in motion to, you know, develop an integrated population model that made it that took advantage of all of the pond data at that at that time, and and it began to perform better than the model that was based only on Canadian ponds.
Mike Brasher:And I say perform better, meaning that it it either predicted better or it gave you just better performance in in some other metric, and that was implemented around the time when we were starting to go into that multiyear drought. And so some of that is just kinda coincidence in terms of the timing of all those things. But, yes, there was a change. Chris, if you wanna put this back up again for people to to see, there was a change. Here's the 21 matrix.
Mike Brasher:Here's the 22. I noted that and the the matrix was supposed to be implemented in what? 2020, I think. I believe that's right. But then we we didn't collect the data because of COVID for a couple of years, so they had to delay implementation until the 2324 season, and you see the big change there.
Mike Brasher:And so, yes, that's a that's a fair observation. That's a a fair question. The only thing I can tell you is that there was nothing nefarious, nothing there was no conspiracy that went into that decision. It was another example of how the Waterfowl Management Community is always looking to make the best use of the best data available, and as analytical methods advanced, they began to use those, and it painted a different picture on the amount of harvest that the mallard population could sustain. The goal of this is not to keep mallards above 5,500,000 or above 6,000,000 or above 7,000,000 or anything of that nature.
Mike Brasher:There's some very specific objectives that this equation is trying to satisfy whenever it's, you know, making these regulatory decisions. Taylor?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. I think, I mean, you you hit it nail on the head there is that, yeah, during that process, we just as science should work, we got more information and, you know, we updated how we do things. If you keep doing things the old way, you're going to get the same results and that's not what we're in in this forum. We're trying to learn. We're trying to improve what it is that we do.
Taylor Finger:And ultimately with that, you're you're going to find out or realize that what you were doing before was probably not right. And that's this is the struggle that we have with communicating with the public hunter there. The average hunter, it's like, well, again, as we talk about shortening seasons and bag limits, it's like, well, all of the research for the last ten years has said that hunters are not necessarily driving duck populations. But for the last sixty years, we have adjusted the bag limits and the season dates when duck numbers go down or up. And so we have forever been telling people this is how we should do it.
Taylor Finger:Now we're reacting to new science. We're reacting to what we have that says, oh, yeah. Well, we probably didn't need to be doing that the whole time. And this is this is the hurdle that we have as state agencies, as federal agencies, as organizations to communicate. And that what we were saying thirty years ago was incorrect.
Taylor Finger:And what we're saying now was probably incorrect, but it's with more information. It's with more data, and we feel a little bit better about this than what we used to say. So
Scott Stephens:Yeah. It's it's more evidence that the adaptive harvest management process has been adaptive, you know, like Taylor talked about the fact that, you know, the accusation had been, oh, it hasn't changed. Well, maybe the output or the regulation package that's prescribed hasn't changed much, but the model and all the science behind it has definitely adapted just like it was designed to do.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. And I Chris, I want you to put up the the the PowerPoint here one more time. This is the adaptive harvest management matrix for Northern pintails. The first time it was used was was for the 2526 season, the one that we just we went through last year. Was the first year we had that three pintail bag limit.
Mike Brasher:This is the this is what the matrix matrix looked like when they first ran it through, and it gave us the regulation for 2025. It looked the same in for setting regulations this year because we had not gone through that 2526 season at the time they ran it. They kinda turned the crank for the 2627 because it's all this being done one year in advance. Now I'm gonna show you what happened to the matrix after this, after the data from 2526 were were run through the model. You can see a big portion of that matrix became red where it was previously green.
Mike Brasher:That's what the modeling process does. This is sort of your optimal decision space based on these two criteria here. The one on the left side is the breeding population size for pintails. The one across the top is mean latitude of settling. Don't worry about what that means.
Mike Brasher:It's just one of the it's just one of the predictors that is valuable for selecting that optimal regulatory strategy. But this op this space, this matrix which tells you based on where you fall during a given year in terms of population size and where that population settled, the intersection of that as you see it out there to the far right in the bright green, that's where we are for that's where we are right now. But but that's for next year. I'm sorry. That's for next year.
Mike Brasher:It's still in the green. But the red space got a lot bigger, meaning that this model is telling us, sending the initial signal that maybe we need to be a little bit more careful with pintails, but you're still liberal, but we're we're painting more of that domain red than green.
Jimbo Robinson:And that's that is a obvious that's another obvious opinion out there when the numbers come out. Pendales are dropping and the limit's still three. I mean, I saw that.
Mike Brasher:But this is adjusting. It's adjusting. And and this is the other really, I think, beneficial thing. I I understand the comments, but if you talk to scientists and biologists, this is how you learn, is you have to try and I don't want to make it sound like this is an experiment because it's not. These are recommendations based on an improved model, but they're going to reevaluate that model in a very formal way after three years, And this is an opportunity to learn a lot and to learn a lot faster than we really ever have, and that's a pretty cool thing.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. I think Taylor said it best a few minutes ago, everything's new and fresh, it may not be right, but it's more right than it was twenty five, thirty years ago, constantly evolving to do a better job managing our resource. Yeah. Give give the science an opportunity to work, and it looks to me like it's working.
Cason Short:Well, yeah, the point system, you could kill 10 pintails.
Mike Brasher:Is wild. Yeah. Right. Right.
Lake Pickle:You don't think you're
Wade Shoemaker:gonna be
Lake Pickle:Nobody doing it better.
Jimbo Robinson:Nobody responds nobody responds with that.
Cason Short:Yeah. I'm I'm that guy.
Lake Pickle:No. No. No. No. I'm saying that
Jimbo Robinson:you don't see people talking about it's it's the memory. People's memories are very shortsighted.
Cason Short:Oh, yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:And I think that's that's what to what you just
Lake Pickle:said, plays a lot of plays a lot into it.
Cason Short:But there I mean, there so there is some fuel to their fire, though. Because even if you know, bless Al Gore and the Internet, people have access to more information. That's a good thing. We're smarter as hunters now than we were. But, you know, you referenced the the pintail and the restricted moving there.
Cason Short:You can go back and look at on Mallards, and it more often than not is shifting the other way. You know, there was years you and I had conversations. I was like, man, I think next year we're gonna be in restricted. And lo and behold, the framework moves the goalpost a little bit. And I and I do think that's better science.
Cason Short:We're getting smarter. But if you're just looking at those numbers and you're trying to figure out why your season stinks, you keep thinking, hey. We should be in restrictive, and they keep changing it. So I think it's important that we try to not be dismissive of those hunters and try to educate those people because, I mean, this stuff, it is getting better. I'm with you.
Cason Short:I don't wanna call it an experiment, but it's a their learning curve. Is that would be accurate way to call it?
Mike Brasher:Well, I mean So it's constant learning. Any that's one of the beauties of the adaptive harvest management process is it is iterative on an annual basis. The model weights, the model performance, everything updates on an annual basis. So you're continually learning. And I could go back I don't I'm not gonna bring up another slide, but I could go back to when for Mallards, Mid Continent Mallards, first went in.
Mike Brasher:Those first few years, I think all the model weights were 24 were equal, had four models, competing models. Within the first two or three years, those model weights shifted dramatically because you're putting information into a very naive well, not totally naive because this one is based on data, but it but the number of years that fed this model that had a three pintail bag limit was pretty small. So it's pretty naive in terms of what a three pintail bag limit was gonna give us in terms of harvest rate, survival rate, etcetera. Now we're gonna here in a couple of years, we'll have three additional data points. There's gonna be a lot of learning there.
Mike Brasher:And so one of the things that it's looking at is the relationship between harvest rate, which comes from band recovery rates, and survival rate, which also comes from band recovery rates and some analysis of those. And so if there is a strong effect of harvest on on driving populations, you're probably gonna see that in a in a decrease in the survival rate commensurate with increases in harvest rate, you know, that would, you know, be driven by a three pintail limit. Didn't say anything.
Dan Smith:Yeah. I was just gonna add something, and I think you're kinda getting there. But it's important to recognize that we're not looking at a static system. Right. I mean, it's like we're trying to track a very dynamic system, both landscape and species, and then also what hunters harvest.
Dan Smith:Right? So it's like, we got all these moving pieces and we're trying to manage for tomorrow. And so when Taylor talks about, you know, these models are updating and oh, well, if we looked at this data and we put it in a model three or four years ago, Well, why would we do that? Like we've learned and the system has changed and so that gets really really hard to do. But to the point that was made earlier, there's a lot of folks looking at this.
Dan Smith:We're very fortunate to have a lots of data sources and we're constantly questioning them. Mean, when we go talk to researchers, when we have conferences, no one is like, we've got it all figured out. Like, we're often facing the other problem where it's like people do not trust what we've been doing. We're like, there's got to be a better way. We need to figure this out.
Dan Smith:Like, we're constantly trying to improve.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. Mike Mike, you and I had a little debate about this before the show. You know, we were talking about pintails in that model and and the point that I was trying to make, Dan, was exactly yours. It's like, okay. The context and what those models are telling us is gonna change as the system changes, you know.
Scott Stephens:That model will tell us something different if we put water all across the prairies and we pump the population size up and you have phenomenal reproduction, like that model should tell us a different story then than when we're super dry and we have low populations. Right? Like, we would expect it to behave differently under those different conditions. So the fact that those models shift through time as we have, you know, different environmental conditions, different population sizes, all of those things doesn't surprise me at all.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. So y'all y'all biologists and scientists aren't trying to sabotage continental duck population? No.
Scott Stephens:Not that I love. I love that one.
Cason Short:You know,
Scott Stephens:it's like, why why would why would we do that? You know, like you guys said earlier that we we didn't get in this to be rich and famous. You know, we got in this because we care about the birds. We we enjoy doing the things that all of you do. And so, you know, we're we're always like, if if we knew something was gonna have a negative effect on populations, you can bet you would hear about it.
Scott Stephens:You know? We would be talking about it. We would be ringing the alarm bell. But the science guides us and, you know, that's what we advocate based on.
Jimbo Robinson:And I think it goes back to also taking the the harvest information program seriously
Lake Pickle:too because a lot of
Jimbo Robinson:that goes into this as well. And I think a lot of people don't. It's just a quick click click click click click. And and listen to Taylor and doctor Scott talk, you know, they have to the data has to come from somewhere and something has to back it, and correct data will happen. And taking that program seriously is is a big help.
Mike Brasher:Answering the questions when you're doing your hip registration, answering those questions correctly is important. But more important is answering and participating in the harvest surveys when you're asked to do so, whether that be that parts collection survey, that's the where you send in your wings, or the diary survey where you're asked to record your yeah. Your keep a record of your hunts and so forth.
Scott Stephens:And reporting bans and doing all those things. Right? You know, like like, we we get a bad rap for, oh, you guys are messing with the data. And then it's like, well, if folks are like, no, don't wanna report the ban because I want a higher limit or you know? It's like, no.
Scott Stephens:No. Report the band. You know? We need information to make good decisions here.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. There I know we are over the 08:00 time limit or the 08:00 mark. Are we good to keep on going? Do you wanna wrap it up? You got I
Cason Short:was told nine.
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. You were
Mike Brasher:told nine? Okay. Yeah. Made a mistake on the run of show, and I forgot to yeah.
Jimbo Ronquest:I said
Mike Brasher:09:00. So we'll go to nine. No. We're not gonna go to nine. We do have a couple of other questions here.
Mike Brasher:One of them relates to this thing. I'm gonna come back to the brute survey thing in a moment. Says, can we talk about the fact that the majority of the hens that get shot are also the young mallards that maybe that would breed? So why is it that we think that hunting has no effect on the population? I mean, I understand that question.
Mike Brasher:I think if you go back, it's it's a it's an evolution of understanding. This is just like it's fundamentally an evolution of understanding in the relative role of harvest on driving population change, and that evolution and understanding comes from data, and it comes from rigorous science. Taylor, I'll I'll toss this to you, but, you know, think back forty years ago before you or I were even around the table, and you've heard stories about how they made the decisions, and it was this kind of stuff, debating and this and that, and that's why you you tinkered with with regulations from one year to the next. Dale Humberg likes to refer to it as creative tinkering, and there was no evidence that it was making a meaningful change. Taylor?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. Yeah. Again, it was based on those feelings, the misconception that, well, guns kill ducks, so why not we have to shoot less ducks if we want more ducks. And again, that was that was how we functioned. And again, we've done this stuff.
Taylor Finger:There are some really smart people out there right now. Todd Arnold's of the world that are doing this stuff that have looked and we had them pull, you know, the Wisconsin data where over the last seventy years where we were shooting three hen mallards, two hen mallards, one hen mallard, two hen mallards, and you're looking at it and you're seeing that there's no difference in survivability of mallards based on bag limits. So there's no data there indicating, oh, yeah. Well, if we did this or we did that, that's gonna boost the population. But when you overlay the survivability graphs with when Wisconsin was wet and when Wisconsin was dry, Oh, yeah.
Taylor Finger:You really see that that's when those things actually made a difference. And so, again, I I get it. I get it. It's like, oh, yeah. You shot that hen, so that one's gonna be one less hen that's gonna be out there nesting.
Taylor Finger:And the assumption that every hen that shot was going to successfully nest and pull off a brood is wrong. And that's where we get hung up here is that it's the folks that are saying this don't understand the dynamics of mortality during the non hunting period and things along those lines. There's a ton of research. And, again, I would challenge them to rather than just sit and complaining, you know, in a marsh or sitting in a blind to ask those questions. There are plenty of smart people out there that pick up the phone that answer these types of things and pose those rather than going on social media and complaining under a Facebook take post.
Taylor Finger:So yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:Well, to your point, just because you're allowed to shoot two hens doesn't mean you have to. Yeah. That's right. I'm just throwing that out there. K?
Jimbo Robinson:I mean, we can take some of this into our own hands a little bit.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. It's it's personal choice whether you want to shoot a hen And I'm probably
Jimbo Robinson:gonna get roasted for that.
Mike Brasher:No. It's a personal choice. I mean, it's a personal choice. So I think who was it? Was it you I was talking to?
Mike Brasher:It's like, you think about Gadwall. There is no sex restriction on Gadwall. It is the one species that is the most difficult to tell drake from a hen in most situations. I don't think we see any different signal on on population dynamic, population change for a species like that, or ringnecks, or any of those others for which there
Scott Stephens:Blue is teal.
Mike Brasher:Bluing teal, for which there is no sex restriction. If for some if for some of these species, shooting hens at the level that we do, that is the important caveat that we always have to say is at the level that we do and that we are allowed to do, if it had a profound effect, it would have shown up in the data for some of those species and all the analyses that Taylor's talking about, looking at relationships between survival rates and harvest rates from year to year, there may be a small signal there for some species in some years, but it's not what's driving the annual changes in in in the population.
Jimbo Ronquest:I haven't heard anybody talk about putting this sex restriction on Northern Shelter.
Mike Brasher:There you go. That one too.
Jimbo Ronquest:You know, that that that one for Dankster. Yeah.
Dan Smith:Well, I think it's it's worth kind of mentioning though. We have all this data. It's in these documents that are publicly available and from the band data that we have, I mean, particularly with hens, you're you're 92 or 95% of these hens are making it through the duck season.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. The harvest rate's
Dan Smith:pretty with a liberal season. Right? So it's like, you really think 97% of the hens making it through the duck season is gonna all of a sudden recover duck populations? I just I don't see that happening.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. That's the real question, Dan. And that's the way they look at a lot of this is like when you go from one restriction or one regulation to to the to the next, it's like, what's the marginal change? It's it's not what the overall rate is. It's the what's the marginal change from making that decision.
Mike Brasher:And then you're really talking about one percentage point, two percentage point things of that nature. It really really gets to be a small effect there.
Scott Stephens:But but that's exactly the question that we that we ask with with population models like, you know, the classic Huckman one. Right? You know, when we change each of these things by a small amount, how much does the population growth rate change? And when we do that for non breeding season survival, it's like you tweak that a little bit. It's hard to see a change.
Scott Stephens:Now, there are some duck species, Mike, that we've talked about that that is not true. Like Camusbacks, it's like, yep, you can you can impact them with very little harvest. So, you know, depends on the species, depends on what we're talking about. For geese, like, drives their populations. Right?
Scott Stephens:So it it it's not a blanket statement either.
Cason Short:Yeah. Scott, it would depend on the time of year as well. Right? I mean, a hen a hen that's alive January 30 is much more valuable than a hen that's alive September 1.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. That's right. The these models that I was talking about, look at it throughout the whole annual cycle and and the non breeding season is is one that was very was the least sensitive of all of the factors that they looked at. You know, the change in populations when you tweak that one just didn't change much.
Matt Dyson:Yeah. Matt Just with regards to voluntary take, you know, I think it's a it's a good discussion, personal decision and all those things. But to try to put my demographer hat on a little a little bit here, a lot of these models we're talking about require band returns and and information from those, and and those birds are banded. And so they're required to be reported to put data into those models. And so if you are shooting hens and you shoot out with a band, please report it because that's useful information to inform these models too.
Matt Dyson:So important stuff.
Mike Brasher:That's a great point.
Jimbo Robinson:I got a question from a bunch Can of
Mike Brasher:I go to the brood survey thing first? It's been hanging out there.
Lake Pickle:Do it.
Mike Brasher:Alright. So, Scott, do you ever think we'll return to brewed production surveys again? How useful would that data be? Are there any alternatives being considered?
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I I think there's definitely alternatives being considered, and and Matt's right in the middle of these sort of discussions because we'd we'd love to have new measures of reproductive success relative to habitat features across the Prairies because a lot of things have changed since the last time we did those studies. And we probably wouldn't do it the way we did the studies back then. Right? It's like if we're doing things the way that, you know, that I did my graduate work, you know, twenty five years ago, then something's wrong.
Scott Stephens:So, you know, Matt, you can talk about looking at techniques with combining pair surveys and drone surveys of broods and those kind of things. But, yeah, measures of reproductive success is valuable. It probably won't be the old brood survey that the Fish and Wildlife Service used to do in July, but, Matt, you should weigh in.
Matt Dyson:Yeah. So I think, like, you know, for certain conservation planning decisions and understanding where brood habitat is in the landscape and how that's important to to improve productivity, really valuable stuff to do brood surveys. And we can do targeted brood surveys with things like drones and us. And many researchers are experimenting with that technology now to understand how we can use that most efficiently, most effectively to get an understanding of productivity. But I think what we're talking about today really is some of our data streams related to making decisions on harvest and understanding populations.
Matt Dyson:And I think we have a really good handle on that with a lot of the ways we currently manage ducks from banning programs, our BPOP surveys, harvest reports. And I'm not sure that information per se would benefit some of these decisions greatly at that scale either. And so I'm not sure we'll see the brood survey come back. It's also really expensive, and I know there's lots of concerns right now too around budget, restrictions for for the survey moving forward. And so I think there's unlikely that we're in find ourselves in a scenario where US Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service are are able to allocate resources to something like that.
Matt Dyson:I think it's always nice to have more data, more information. I don't think you'll ever hear a scientist that doesn't want more more of that. But I I think we've also shown that that within the current framework that we work within, we we can be pretty confident in some of the decisions we're making. And I think it's a real testament to to some of these models. You know, we we talk a lot about how harvest doesn't has limited impact on on populations.
Matt Dyson:And one of the reasons that is is because it's it's well managed and and it's within those confines of of the way it's managed with the information that's produced from the BPOP, from the harvest surveys, from the banding data that allow us to make good decisions informed by data and and adapt as things go. And so I don't think that we would see a return from the brood surveys for for for the to inform, harvest management. But I certainly think that there's opportunity to improve our understanding of productivity on these landscapes with landscape change to help conservation planning, which helps put habitat back on the landscape, which we know good quality habitat, more ducks. And so I would say too when we talked about, like, a lot of folks that might want more restrictive seasons or changes in regulations, I'd go back to, hey. Buy your second duck stamp because that's what's gonna put more habitat back on the landscape, and and that's where we're gonna see, you know, those populations increase.
Cason Short:So from a from a data standpoint, what would be more valuable to you guys? The brood survey or midwinter surveys?
Lake Pickle:I'd probably say brood surveys.
Taylor Finger:I would think so. Doesn't even do a midwinter survey. We stopped doing it because, quite honestly, there was we're not any making any statewide decisions on the, you know, couple thousand mallards and however many Canada geese that are still braving the Wisconsin winters. Like, it was in terms of value. The cost was just not there, and I know some of the northern states have made the same same decisions just from a perspective of cost versus value.
Cason Short:Yeah. Because that's an expensive survey in midwinter.
Matt Dyson:And and, I mean, I would like I I would agree. I would take the brood survey over over the midwinter, but I would, you know, maybe this is blasphemy, but I would go one step further and I put that money into habitat conservation.
Lake Pickle:There you go. God. That would be okay with that.
Scott Stephens:Well, and I think the reason that they discontinued the brood survey is because it wasn't incorporated into the process to, you know, help make decisions. Right?
Mike Brasher:I do not recall. I I don't I don't know how that transition went. I don't know if Taylor has any insight on that. I I saw the last year they reported the brood survey data in one of those reports not too long ago, but, yeah, I don't know when that was. Taylor, any any idea there?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. I believe it wasn't being incorporated into how we inform and how we do those types of things. It was nice to have it. And like Matt said, it gives you a good idea of what the fall flight might look like or what that productivity is to help inform, but it's not ultimately being used to decide on what seasons were being made just again, especially now that we're making, you know, determinations a year ahead of you know, with year old data, that information is not gonna be all that helpful for the following year.
Matt Dyson:And broods are hard to count.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Stephens:They are. Yeah. Are. They move around. They hide.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. They do all kinds of
Mike Brasher:Jimbo, you had a question.
Jimbo Robinson:Well, I think that I think that Matt doctor Matt answered it, but, I mean, it it basically the gist of the question is is, you know, killing a pintail you kinda said it, but killing hens late in January, do they does the season gonna continue to stay at the thirty first? Right? But that just went to what he he just answered that question with with the importance of of the heart you know, what the harvest numbers mean. But, you know, I think the question was, are we gonna continue to push the season to the very brink of January 31?
Jimbo Ronquest:And
Jimbo Robinson:what's that impact have on on Henson? And and
Mike Brasher:Yeah. So the framework extends to January 31 right now, and and states have the option to to extend to that. There may be some rules around that that I'm not entirely aware of, but and and that's fine. The thing that I occasionally, hear is people saying we need to push the season into February. I think that's a a very concerning thing.
Lake Pickle:A case. That
Wade Shoemaker:Have you
Jimbo Ronquest:ever met with me for a little while?
Lake Pickle:Have you ever sat a snowgies blind
Jimbo Robinson:with 10 other duck hunters on February sixth or seventh?
Mike Brasher:It was me trying to be diplomatic, guys. And that would be very concerning because at some point yeah. At some point, she gotta give the birds an opportunity to get on with with producing more ducks, man. It's just and then there's some data that will that that yeah. That shows you start to have some effects later on.
Mike Brasher:So I don't wanna go too far down that road, but that would be a bad idea.
Wade Shoemaker:So just
Scott Stephens:But we've had but we've had that framework since the late nineties.
Taylor Finger:Right? Mhmm.
Scott Stephens:You know, with that late framework, with the constraints that we currently have and how we manage harvest, you know, we saw pretty high peaks of populations in, you know, 2012 through 2015. So it's like.
Mike Brasher:I think the January 31 extension came along when, Taylor. It wasn't the late nineties, was it?
Taylor Finger:No. I mean, it it was more recently because that was something that was legislative to the last day. It was the Saturday nearest January 31, and so
Jimbo Ronquest:Then it moved to the thirty first. Correct?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. That's
Jimbo Ronquest:correct. It first was the Sunday closest to January 31. Yeah. And they moved it from January 20. Used to be the Sunday closest to January 20 and then went to the Sunday closest to January 31, and then went to January 31.
Jimbo Ronquest:I mean, more recent.
Mike Brasher:I know as it is right now, end of January down here, you're shooting you're shooting wood duck hens that are that are at minimum prospecting for their nest if not already having eggs develop inside them. So you're you're getting into the breeding season at that, certainly for some species.
Cason Short:That's all Lake's fault. That was his was my idea.
Lake Pickle:That was yeah. It was Mississippi
Cason Short:politician that got that done.
Wade Shoemaker:So are you saying that if they were allowed to shoot them into February, then the harvest rate would affect the population?
Mike Brasher:Again, I kinda go back to this. You gotta let them you you gotta give them a break at some point. Sure. And and if you wanna go back to market hunting days and understand the how stark an effect we can have by shooting breeding birds
Wade Shoemaker:Mhmm.
Mike Brasher:Just just do that.
Jimbo Robinson:That would be money making.
Mike Brasher:I mean yeah. Mhmm. So at some point, you gotta let them breed. You you gotta take the pressure off and and let them breed.
Jimbo Robinson:I have never understood the thirty first. Yeah. I mean, just
Wade Shoemaker:From what angle?
Jimbo Robinson:Just that I love
Cason Short:it when season ends on a Tuesday. There's nothing more romantic than that. Yeah. Being
Jimbo Robinson:able to close out your
Jimbo Ronquest:season with your kids.
Wade Shoemaker:You have to wake up and go to work the next morning. Yeah.
Lake Pickle:I mean,
Jimbo Robinson:I can only take my son out for mental health days so many times during the duck season. Right? I mean and that's a struggle with me. It's like, it's the last two I wanna spend my last two days. Yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:I I know I am of the minority, and I am different, but I wanna spend the last days with him.
Wade Shoemaker:Oh, yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:Right? My daughter. I I don't, like, going two extra days, three extra days. Last year was five or recently, it was Friday.
Jimbo Ronquest:I wanna say last year needed on a Thursday or Friday. Yeah. I think it
Jimbo Robinson:was my kids. Sure it Friday. This past year was Saturday.
Jimbo Ronquest:It was a Saturday.
Jimbo Robinson:That's right.
Lake Pickle:Y'all never
Scott Stephens:But the year
Jimbo Robinson:was not it.
Lake Pickle:That's Saturday. Smartphone with a Cali. Just you just hang on. Our technology marketing He does all kinds of crazy stuff.
Cason Short:You you make a good point, Jimbo.
Scott Stephens:Like, if
Wade Shoemaker:you It's good. You look
Cason Short:at how Arkansas does its framework. Right? So let's say it ends on a Friday. So you got five extra days there, weekdays. The way Arkansas used to do that before they hunt until the thirty first, they would take those five days and shorten that December split when a lot of people, a, weather's nice.
Cason Short:It's great to take kids when the weather's a little bit warmer. Like, so are are is there any benefit to having those weekdays on the tail end?
Wade Shoemaker:We we can adjust them to the thirty first. Like, Louisiana didn't do thirty
Lake Pickle:first until recently recently, like,
Wade Shoemaker:last few years.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. I selfishly like our long split because I do. We travel so much. It gives it gives me an opportunity to travel. Hey.
Jimbo Ronquest:I'm being selfish here. Yeah. It gives me an opportunity to hunt another state
Lake Pickle:Right.
Jimbo Ronquest:Without taking days away from home. But to your point, hunting wise, why why put that five days in on the very end, put it in the middle?
Lake Pickle:Yeah. I mean, it's gonna be
Jimbo Ronquest:I'd almost we're a stud on the front.
Jimbo Robinson:We're getting lucky.
Cason Short:There's nothing there's nothing to argue about.
Lake Pickle:But I've been pretty outspoken.
Taylor Finger:You realize guys that ducks don't arrive until the season ends. Oh, right.
Jimbo Ronquest:We we don't Trust me. We hear
Lake Pickle:it all the time.
Cason Short:Despite what the midwinter surveys say, yeah. They don't get rid of the flu.
Jimbo Ronquest:All the time. I would also I would maybe argue, put those five days on the front of our duck season. I can remember back Mhmm. Some of these days here, we had some fantabulous duck hunts
Lake Pickle:Yeah.
Jimbo Ronquest:In mid November. So that's what I
Cason Short:would argue, and I've I've been outspoken on our podcast about it, about shortening that early December split. We're just talking Arkansas here, but I know that people have started to manage property differently because you spend ten days not being able to hunt a place, and you've got snow geese. You've got white fronts. You've got all these things going on, and you and you can't hunt those birds. So people are holding off on their early flooding.
Cason Short:They're doing it later, and you're affecting the habitat on a on a pretty wide landscape level in the state of Arkansas, and early water matters. I know they don't get it till February 1, but Right. Water in November matters.
Jimbo Robinson:And it's interesting though. It's interesting. I hunted near somebody in this panel last year, and I held off on water on a couple places because he had water. I was like, I'm just gonna push all the snow geese towards him. That was not the philosophy, but it's exactly it's exactly No.
Jimbo Robinson:Didn't you? It was exactly what people are doing, though. They're not flooding in November. They're not flooding. People are not starting to flood until mid till that you know, I would say December 5 seems to be a day in my head, but December 5, and they're not doing it again until later than that Mhmm.
Jimbo Robinson:Based on what's happening.
Wade Shoemaker:Would you say October is probably when they should be flooding? Anybody that manage the property?
VO:Oh. Oh, there?
Jimbo Robinson:Yeah. You're gonna stir a big pot.
Wade Shoemaker:But I'm I'm being like, I think that's
Lake Pickle:the truth.
Cason Short:Think I it depends on the size of your property and
Wade Shoemaker:what you have
Cason Short:the ability to do. I
Jimbo Ronquest:mean Exactly. And the type of habitat it is. Yeah. Because there there's definitely a need for some early water. Yeah.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. The Halloween Mountains are still no joke. We Yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:It's a
Wade Shoemaker:real thing.
Jimbo Robinson:Absolutely.
Cason Short:Yeah. A 100%. Yeah. I mean, it's get in the midpoint theory if you want to. But
Wade Shoemaker:yeah. They're trick or treating for sure.
Cason Short:Yeah. I mean, it's you're halfway between the solstice and the equinox. I mean, that first week of November is very important. So, yeah, October water matters. I think
Jimbo Robinson:if you had the luxury
Cason Short:of doing it now you're talking about pushing ducks onto I mean, geese onto us last year. Like, we we kinda sacrificed some stuff early. Like, we know the geese are gonna hammer it. We know we're not gonna hunt on it, but you you need that habitat. You need those birds.
Cason Short:So, yeah, I think it matters. I think it matters in October.
Jimbo Robinson:And that we're getting, you know, way off into it, but I think the point of this is is those five days or whenever that last Sunday, this year would be it'd be the thirty first no matter what.
Cason Short:Right? Wouldn't matter this year.
Jimbo Robinson:Wouldn't matter this year. But in other years, like, it's gonna be probably Monday next year, tech guy. When is it? Yeah.
Lake Pickle:Let me get on my calendar.
Jimbo Robinson:But it's very interesting, though, because a year that it ends on a Tuesday, which I think the first year ended on a Tuesday. For some reason, have that in my head. Tuesday, we'll go with Those two extra days, like, if you move it back, right, does that change what the split looks like? Because there's splits in a lot of states now, and people are moving you know, there are states that have a two day season, and then they're off a week. Mhmm.
Jimbo Robinson:Tennessee is one. They open Thanksgiving weekend. Right? You have two days. You're all five, then you're back on, you stay on.
Wade Shoemaker:Mississippi. Yep.
Jimbo Robinson:And so a lot of they've moved theirs back to kinda crunch it into later November. But, you know, a lot of people have said, to your point, is, you know, moving that season back just to hear into November. It's so hot. It's so hot. Well, there have been years when it's mid November, there's always a cold front.
Wade Shoemaker:We've usually have a cold front the week before opener at home.
Jimbo Ronquest:You know, mid latitude, there's always a good push Veterans Day. Mhmm. One of the legacy properties near me that you can go there first week in November, there's a couple 100 ducks on it. You go there somewhere eight, nine, ten, eleven, there's a couple thousand ducks on that rest area.
Mike Brasher:I'm looking here at Taylor, and he's just itching to jump into this conversation because it reminds him of all the public the the public meetings that he has. Right?
Taylor Finger:I I can tell you that there is no Wisconsin duck hunter that is clamoring for five days earlier, so we get to September 16 depending on one year. Again, it's not gonna do me any good. So yeah.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. So we are I got a couple more questions here. Maybe I only have one more question here. I think we've mostly addressed it, but it's an interesting one. I do wanna mention it.
Mike Brasher:Scott, you might have some thoughts on this. It says it's from Dylan. It says, I would love the panel to discuss the outlook on blue wing teal. We are close to hitting the 3,300,000 number to end early teal season. Does hunting affect the population of Blue Winged Teal?
Mike Brasher:The answer on that question is, I don't think you're gonna find any biologist that says we're over harvesting teal, But I do yeah. That three point that early teal season has an interesting history there. Taylor, I wanna go to you first to be in the state, you know, the state biologist. Do you have anything to offer there? Yeah.
Mike Brasher:You have anything to offer?
Taylor Finger:We are one of the new states that did get the early teal season here. I think we started in 2016, 2015 or 2016. So all the other states that had an early teal season for decades and, you know, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa, and then Minnesota here more recently, we just added to it. And again, looking at the impact of we actually are bluing teal harvest during the regular season has gone up since we've had an early teal season. So, again, there's no correlation there whatsoever that the early teal season seems to be affecting opportunity or affecting the resource from our overall harvest levels.
Taylor Finger:And, again, I think there's a bunch of research looking. I think the harvest rate on bluing teal is, like, two or 3% or something. Percent. Yeah. And so, again, when you look at that, it's we are not driving that boat at all.
Taylor Finger:And so, again, they're a short lived species. They reproduce rapidly. They migrate to where there's good habitat. They take advantage of when they can. And so, yeah, I I based on everything that I've looked at and what we've experienced, I don't see the early teal season as as driving the population at all.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Scott?
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I was just gonna say, Mike, we've talked about updating models and, you know, that the science moves along at a pretty good pace. Like, I think those guidelines that guide the teal season, like, it's probably time to I mean, this isn't my realm, Taylor. So, you know, passing off work to you guys, but it it seems like it may be time to revisit those things because, yeah, like Taylor suggested, I think if there's a species that harvest is not having much of any impact on it is blue winged teal, which most of them are in Mexico or Central America by, you know, October. So
Taylor Finger:Right. Yep. And those are the discussions we're having. We're having the same discussion right now with SCOP. You know?
Taylor Finger:Right? I mean, there's what is it? There's eight times as many SCOP as canvasbacks, and the bag limit on SCOP is one for fifteen days and two for forty five. Whereas you could shoot two canvasbacks the entire season. So those are the types of things that, hey.
Taylor Finger:You know, this maybe made sense back when we developed the SCOP harvest strategy, you know, in the late nineties. Alright. We've learned a whole lot since then. And so that's kind of the role that we've been playing with the Fish and Wildlife Service to inform those things. It takes it takes longer than we want because, again, everyone is busy, and we only have so much money and time to get things done.
Taylor Finger:But I agree, Scott, that that's definitely that that thing with bluing teal and the early teal season, that's been on the books for a long, long time. And is reflective of reality anymore? Probably not.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. We are at 08:33. Who has a pressing question or two? Anything left here? I'm gonna make sure I don't have anything else that I need to look at.
Mike Brasher:Any other questions?
Scott Stephens:I thought you were gonna ask who's getting hungry, and that would be me.
Mike Brasher:Well, that's not our fault. We've had some we our food did arrive.
Cason Short:We
Scott Stephens:ate. And My my DoorDash did not show
Lake Pickle:up. Like, no.
Scott Stephens:I don't think Taylor's did either.
Mike Brasher:We'll look into that here in a second. Now sorry about that.
Wade Shoemaker:I've got a couple quick answered questions if I could pull them
Mike Brasher:out here.
Wade Shoemaker:One, Minnesota, I heard that this I think it's for last year. They implemented an option to choose kind of what you harvest, like, no species kinda whatever. If anybody could walk me through, like, the thought process there.
Jimbo Ronquest:Nebraska did the same thing.
Lake Pickle:Nebraska. Splash
Wade Shoemaker:limit. South South Dakota has had a Help me understand.
Scott Stephens:Basis too. Taylor. That's you. Taylor?
Taylor Finger:Yeah. Right. Exactly. No. So it's a tier two licensing process, and so South Dakota and Nebraska trialed it out for, I think, three or four years where essentially the idea is is you can buy one tier license, which is the for there, the central flyways, the maximum amount of days, and then you have to follow the species specific bag limit restrictions, or you still the other tier license is the maximum amount of days, but it's a three bird splash limit.
Taylor Finger:And the argument is is that this will recruit, retain, and reactivate more hunters because the difficulty in identifying it, it's the number one hurdle that we hear from new hunters is waterfowl identification. And so is this a way that we can provide an opportunity for birds without negatively affecting the resource. And so this was trialed for four years and right now the flyways are all looking at other states within all four flyways to do a second trial or experiment because the problem is that South Dakota and Nebraska are not high harvest states.
Dan Smith:Mhmm.
Taylor Finger:And so they're looking for states that have a lot of hunters and have a lot of harvest of particularly some species that you would be concerned about. Like, again, if you shoot a lot of camisbacks, is the fact that you could shoot three hen camisbacks going to be a problem? Or for SCOP, again, for example, you hunt on the Great Lakes. If I was a SCOP hunter, I'd buy the one tier so I could shoot my three bluebells, and, you know, I don't have to worry about that. And so we wanna make sure that people aren't necessarily taking advantage negatively of the opportunity, but is this something that actually does result in increased hunter retention and reactivation and recruitment?
Wade Shoemaker:So do you know oh, go ahead. Sorry.
Scott Stephens:Sorry. Taylor, do you know what percentage of hunters in South Dakota and Nebraska chose the three splash?
Taylor Finger:It was a relatively small amount. Yeah. Again, it wasn't it wasn't a high number. And, there was relatively like, pintail and canvasbacks were the ones that that we're potentially concerned about with a three bird limit at that point because pintails weren't at three. And, again, harvest was very low, so we didn't see an overall people negatively taking advantage of it.
Wade Shoemaker:Right.
Taylor Finger:But that's why the second iteration is being asked of to add more states to the pool to see if this is something that we would like to incorporate on a national scale.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I can tell you if if I'd had a kid at the right age getting started, it's like, that would be attractive. It's like, just shoot three ducks. Yeah. You know?
Wade Shoemaker:You think
Scott Stephens:Throw yourself out. Are they gonna
Taylor Finger:The Minnesota doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me for Minnesota because the first three weeks of the season, every duck is brown.
Scott Stephens:Yeah.
Dan Smith:Right? Yeah.
Wade Shoemaker:Are are they gonna limit the amount of times you can purchase that license since the reason behind it is bird ID?
Taylor Finger:No. The the argument would be eventually that they would graduate to a regular one if they enjoyed it so much that they said, hey. Yeah. This is good. I'm now two, three years into it.
Taylor Finger:I know how to identify birds. I'm going to go the other route where I can shoot more birds and be you know, know exactly what I'm shooting. So that's that's the argument. We're just it's early enough right now that some states are not sure yet if that's the route that they wanna go down, and we're letting other states kind of volunteer to see if this is something that's feasible for everyone else. Sick.
Scott Stephens:And Definitely kind of a niche One last point. Option though. Yeah.
Wade Shoemaker:Cool. And one last thing going back to the well, you went to three Mallards on the Atlantic Flyway. I think that's a cool cool deal, and I don't know. I'd and I missed kind of the conversation there on the count. I'd I forget what was said, but do you think and this is just me being completely clueless on this.
Wade Shoemaker:Do you think there's a world where the the the farm raised have something to do with why they did that? Because there's some that need to be shot that don't have any hind toes.
Taylor Finger:Mike, do we have enough time for
Lake Pickle:that discussion? I mean, it could be just
Wade Shoemaker:a simple yes or no. It's kinda shallow. But, mean, it's that went through my head when I heard it because that is a real thing so much so that the studies are going on about that's part of the reason they're not making it as far south as they used to, even in our flyaway, which is interesting because Tennessee is weird that it would be a cutoff there. But, anyway, do you think that's part of the reason?
Taylor Finger:I think that there is, I mean, the research shows that, yes, the European genetically European mallards that are being added into it are likely driving some of the population decline on mallards. And so for that perspective, I think, yes. Hey. We don't think that, you know, at three and three hens, we're not gonna we're not gonna be the reason hunting is not gonna be the reason that's gonna drive that population one way or another. I think there's gonna be other factors that ultimately make that decision.
Taylor Finger:Sure.
Mike Brasher:Cool. Yeah. I don't have anything to add to that.
Jimbo Robinson:Talking Hey. About
Wade Shoemaker:No no
Lake Pickle:shameless plug
Scott Stephens:for duck DNA or
Jimbo Robinson:What's interesting on the dna.com? Was I listened to doctor recently Yeah. And a question was posed to him about pheasants and releasing pheasants and what that DNA is doing. People think when they go out west, they're shooting all wild pheasants.
Mike Brasher:No. Do you know how hard it is to keep Phil reined in?
Jimbo Robinson:It was fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. And if you and they they went off. They were talking about duck DNA. Yeah.
Jimbo Robinson:But they dove off into a few other things, and it was fascinating to hear him talk about that because, you know, the the the question was posed. Well, if there's so much research being done on ducks, obviously, we know turkeys as well. What about what is it doing to the the wild pheasant the wild pheasants out west when we're releasing so many. So just interesting go go go type's name into the podcast world and and listen to that. But that's a your Duck DNA is fanning to everything.
Mike Brasher:I know. I know. You know, more data is good. More data is good, but we need the resources to collect all that data too.
Jimbo Robinson:Yeah. More roundtables is
Lake Pickle:good too.
Mike Brasher:That's right.
Wade Shoemaker:That's good.
Jimbo Ronquest:So why are spoonies doing so good?
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. That's a good question.
Mike Brasher:Why are spoonies doing so good?
Cason Short:Because they're hard to kill now.
Wade Shoemaker:Do they do they nest
Lake Pickle:the same amount of people? On them is
Jimbo Ronquest:terrible. We're making them nocturnal.
Mike Brasher:So help me out, Scott. Help me out. So they are they'll nest heavily in the they'll nest heavily in the prairies. They Yeah. But but we should
Scott Stephens:we should be honest. The answer here is we don't know. Like, the the answer to the question, why did situation. Why did Gadwald do so well during
Jimbo Ronquest:Oh, for years, Gadwalds were going crazy. Super duck.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. I was gonna try to
Lake Pickle:make something up.
Scott Stephens:I know you were. I was trying to be honest.
Lake Pickle:It's like, you don't through for a minute, then I was gonna come back to say it. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. I don't know.
Scott Stephens:We're we're good about wild speculation, but the answer is we don't know, Jimbo.
Jimbo Ronquest:Why? That's a solid honest answer right there.
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. That's good. People appreciate that.
Mike Brasher:Yep. What else that we can say I don't know to?
Wade Shoemaker:Why and I know it's just that you'd mentioned the nest and the boreal like the divers do because most dive the canvas bags, all the all the things went up. Right? Except for all the puddles and dabblers except for the shovelers.
Mike Brasher:Well, so most of those so there were really only two species in the traditional survey area where a statistician would look at it and say those were meaningful, measurable changes. Yeah. Everything else would have been similar to last year. Sure. Sure.
Mike Brasher:Now, so so in that kinda in this kinda year, one of the things that I do is I look to the long term average. How are they relative to the long term average? If they haven't changed from last year, that tells and then I can look the graph also and just see what the overall trend is. And, yeah, as Scott said, there are individual years and species combinations where it's like, well, that's kind of a weird thing. Let me keep an eye on that.
Mike Brasher:The redheads and canvasbacks are more prairie nesting species. They're overwater nesters using a lot of those semi permanent and permanent wetlands. And I don't know if we wanna speculate here, guys, Matt, Scott, about consolidation drainage, kinda keeping some of those semi permanent permanent wetlands wetter for longer periods of time than historically did. I know there's some hypotheses out there about that, which if that was the case, then and consolidation drainage, basically meaning directing water from a number of small wetlands into a few big wetlands, which you kinda keep them wet for longer periods of time. I know one of our colleagues has observed that in Southwestern Manitoba on a famous research site.
Mike Brasher:And so but there's some other dynamics going on there with some food webs associated with those areas now being occupied more by redneck grebes, I think it is, which are territorial.
Wade Shoemaker:I thought you mean like rednecks. I was just saying.
Lake Pickle:Right? No. Was like,
Wade Shoemaker:rednecks with the grebes.
Lake Pickle:That's wild way
Wade Shoemaker:to describe
Matt Dyson:me here.
Wade Shoemaker:I'll refer to your left side.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. Yeah.
Lake Pickle:Because those two species Man, I could use more.
Wade Shoemaker:I'm saying he looked at me when he said it.
Scott Stephens:Because rednecks and cabins That's
Wade Shoemaker:facts. I mean,
Lake Pickle:I get it. It'd be less if
Mike Brasher:I was living there anyway. Go ahead, Scott.
Scott Stephens:Because redheads and camispacks use more permanent water, more more consistent water, you know, we would expect them to be a little more resilient when the shallow water dries up. And, you know, that's we we've had we've had much of the shallow water dry up over a number of recent years, but not the more permanent water. So we would expect them to be a little more resilient, you know, like, I I think that's it makes sense in my head that, yep, redheads and cans are okay, but pintails and blue wings are down. Yeah. You know, those are the shallow water species.
Wade Shoemaker:So we should teach mallards how to nest like redheads, canvas bags.
Lake Pickle:Just teach them what So teach
Mike Brasher:the issue there
Lake Pickle:is more to it than that.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. Look how many there are. Yeah. How many The abundance of them.
Wade Shoemaker:Teach one, they'll teach one. It'll multiply, it compounds, it grows. Ten years from now, we've got triple the population.
Lake Pickle:Yeah. Redhead DNA That doesn't quite work that way.
Jimbo Robinson:It's just like how we used to talk about you
Wade Shoemaker:studied it. You know? We do have data backing that up, but you can't teach a mallard how to nest like like a canvas bat. Well, so if
Matt Dyson:you Mallards will overwater nest.
Wade Shoemaker:There it is.
Matt Dyson:There are some mallards, but the but the challenge being is that those those same wetlands don't provide the same food resources that mallards might rely on in a similar way, and so that that those cans and redheads might be looking for too. So
Jimbo Robinson:So do we need to
Taylor Finger:You can't eat all bait those?
Wade Shoemaker:Yeah. That's right.
Jimbo Ronquest:The black helicopters need to come back.
Wade Shoemaker:Hey, dude.
Matt Dyson:See, the the the the the the the
Lake Pickle:the the to nest in trees.
Mike Brasher:There it
Wade Shoemaker:is, dude.
Lake Pickle:And then we'll fix everything. Feel
Wade Shoemaker:like this
Jimbo Ronquest:is gonna be a idea. Where we're losing lots of turkeys on West Spring.
Wade Shoemaker:And teach the clouds to rain over the PPR.
Jimbo Ronquest:Yeah. That's the seed,
Mike Brasher:and we're gonna seed it. All we gotta do is figure that out.
Wade Shoemaker:That's simple, dude. Three points. Done.
Mike Brasher:So alright. We have everything figured out, y'all. Check-in with us in 2027 whenever we're gonna have a bumper crop of mallards. Doctor.
Wade Shoemaker:You may You're welcome, brother. And
Mike Brasher:turkeys out the wazoo as well because we have taught them to nest in trees. So alright. So Taylor, did you
Jimbo Robinson:get enough information from that last conversation for your meeting? Are you excited?
Taylor Finger:Oh, yeah. This is all valuable. I appreciate that.
Jimbo Robinson:I'll send you doctor Wade Shoemaker's phone number later, so
Wade Shoemaker:you just
Jimbo Robinson:take him with you.
Wade Shoemaker:I'll talk to you until you're tired of hearing it.
Mike Brasher:With that, we are gonna wrap this up. It is 08:45. We almost made it to 09:00. I greatly appreciate all of my guests here on the set. Is there any final burning question?
Mike Brasher:Nothing.
Jimbo Ronquest:No. I'm there is, but I'm not gonna ask you to take too long
Lake Pickle:to answer.
Mike Brasher:Alright. Good deal. We can we can yep.
Lake Pickle:Can I can
Cason Short:I plug something? Sure. Sure. Hey, Scott. I told you the day to keep up with that picture of your duck stamps.
Cason Short:Hit on Jimbo here before the show, and I've got some other brands that are jumping on board. We may do some giveaways to guys that are buying multiple stamps, so hang on to that picture. Okay. You can check it out. Buy2duckstamps.com.
Cason Short:It'll take you
Wade Shoemaker:There you
Mike Brasher:There you go.
Cason Short:That'll take you wherever you need to go to buy your stamps.
Scott Stephens:You only bought two? I bought two for now. I'm waiting for Sam Sohalt to do the Stampin' Forward, and then I'm gonna buy some from him too.
Wade Shoemaker:There you go.
Jimbo Ronquest:So There
Cason Short:you go. Alright. That's all I had.
Mike Brasher:Thank you. Good. Thank you for plugging that. Let me do my thank yous here around the table. Jimbo Ronquist with Drake Waterfowl Systems, Case and Shore, Bill Byers Hunter Club, and the Standard Sportsman's Podcast.
Mike Brasher:Sportsman. Right?
Cason Short:Yes.
Mike Brasher:No s on the Internet. Sportsman Podcast. Wade Shoemaker, cohost of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. Great to have you here with us, buddy. Lake Pickle with On X Hunt, and also a big thank you to On X Hunt for sponsoring both the duck numbers and the Waterfowl Season Outlook.
Mike Brasher:Jimbo Robinson, always a great addition to what we do here. Appreciate everything that you've done to help pull this together. We also have some folks here in studio that are doing all the work behind the scenes. Sam Crane has been working, pushing buttons over here. Chris Isaac, our producer, has been doing all sorts of things.
Mike Brasher:In the room next door, we have Mallory Murphy who has been manning the content, the comments that have been coming in, and then we also have Bobby Meeks who has been helping out with all of the video stuff as well. Final thank you to all of our Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service, state provincial partners with all the flyaway councils, everybody else that contributed to the data, all of the banding banding crews, and all of you hunters as well that have contributed in meaningful ways to every aspect of what we do. Life is short. You better hunt. And that reminds me, I need to thank the people that that are are joining us remote.
Mike Brasher:I got carried away there. Got Doctor. Scott Stevens with Ducks Unlimited. We also have Doctor. Matt Dyson with Ducks Unlimited Canada, Taylor Finger with Wisconsin DNR, and Dan with Ducks Unlimited out in the Western Region.
Mike Brasher:Thank you, Chris, for pointing that out and not letting me forget those guys. So, yes, as Scott would say, life is short. You better hunt. Enjoy the fall. Enjoy the winter.
Mike Brasher:Get out and have a great time, and we'll see y'all next year, 2027. We'll have it all figured out.
Jimbo Ronquest:Thanks, everybody. See you, guys. Take care.
Jimbo Robinson:Watch out for geese.
VO:That's a wrap for today's episode of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast brought to you by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. From post hunt unwinds to celebrations back at camp, Bird Dog delivers award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and check out ducks.org/dupodcast for more stories, science, and all things waterfowl. Guest opinions are their own and don't necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited.
VO:Until next time, stay fired up, stay focused, and stay tuned to the Ducks.