and its really scary. I started looking at the USFWS annual duck surveys and frankly the birds, and subsequently the hunters are in trouble. Below is a list of bird counts for their annual surveys:
2016- 48.363 million breeding pairs
2017- 47.26 million
2018- 41.2 million
2019- 38.9 million
There are 10 million + missing ducks from 2016- 2019. I do not believe that hunting alone can account for that type of number of ducks. In fact almost every time you hear that hunting has little effect on populations so its something else. I also believe that I either read or heard that somewhere around 38 million is the cut off number where the Feds close the duck season. Frankly I think they have already had way too many liberal seasons but that is water over the dam now.
Pa.'s waterfowl symposium is in March and it will be very interesting. The Feds are going to have to do a survey this year,as last year they didn't do one due to covid. When that survey comes out I think us hunters are in for a shock, not only at the low duck numbers but how bad things really are. If they don't close the season then they ought to reduce it to 3-30. We are losing our ducks and after the drought this year out west I'm predicting we will be lucky to go duck hunting again in our lifetime.
Keep in mind that the U.S. lost over 3 billion song birds since 1970, its not a stretch to think something on a smaller scale is happening to ducks.
Roundup is one of the main problems IMO. Its used everywhere in agriculture and it can't be good. P.S. as a side note I haven't seen squat for grasshoppers anymore and they used to be everywhere. Thanks Monsanto.