December 8, 2025 • 41 mins
Over the last 20 years waterfowl hunters in the lower portion of the Mississippi flyway have been asking the same question. Where have the mallards gone? It's a question worth asking, and getting to the bottom of. In this episode we talk with long-time waterfowl biologist, James Callicutt, a man who has been on the front lines of waterfowl research for years and can shed some much needed light on this burning question.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Backwood's University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
conserving both. Big shout out to aex hunt for their
support of this podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On this episode, we're gonna.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Address one of the most burning questions being asked in
the hunting community today.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Where have all the mallards gone?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Or specifically, where have all the mallards gone in the
Mississippi Flyway. This question has been getting asked for a
while and its persistence has led to more questions and theories,
such as is the flyway shifting or changing or ducks
simply not migrating as south due to human manipulations.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Or other factors.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
There's a lot of ideas and impassioned opinions on this subject,
so all the more reason for us here at Backwoods
University to lean right into it and see if we
can't shine some light on this issue. So get your
waiters on and make sure you've got non toxic shot
and duck stamps, because we're going duck hunting. It's duck
(01:18):
season in Mississippi and I'm standing in muddy knee deep
water in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. For any
that don't know, the Mississippi Delta is part of an
alluvial floodplain that has the Mississippi River to think for
its unique geographical characteristics and significance. It's flat, it's vast,
and it's known for its fertile souls and high diversity
(01:39):
and amount of wildlife. And this time of year, the
late winter months, it's at its absolute best. The cold,
crisp mornings, the white tailed deer out and stirring, the
distant sound of speckle belly and snow geese flying overhead,
and yes, of course ducks. Some of the old age
duck hunters that I got to spend some time around
in duck camps would always say things like, you know,
(02:01):
the Delta likes to show off this time of year,
which reminds me I should probably pay attention because we've
got some mallards working. What you're hearing is arguably the
most sought out scenario for every duck hunter that has
(02:21):
ever lived. Where minutes into legal shooting light and a
pair of green heads are now working our whole and
flirting with being in range as I try to stealthily
peek at my fragmented view of the dim sky, broken
up by branches and limbs of the tree. I'm leaned against,
my eyes lock on to the two of them. I've
always been enamored by duck flight, the way they seem
to fly so in sync with one another, the way
(02:44):
they cup or set their wings as they prepare to land.
I dare say it's downright poetic to watch. And I
promise I'm being truthful when I say that. I feel
lucky every single time I get to see it. It
never gets old.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Huh yeah, huh ad birth. What I'll say is my
right art stud is one of the fruit.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Though.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
All I know is that's a good way you started mooring.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, an here I be rid.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
One thousand, five hundred and thirty three miles. That is
the distance between where I duck hunted in North Dakota
earlier this year and the area in Mississippi that you
just heard me duck hunting in in that video clip.
One thousand, five hundred and thirty three miles. I know
humans that hesitate at the thought of traveling that distance. However,
these Mallard ducks do that and more every single year
(03:55):
or at least they used to, well some of them
still do we think or we know, or at least
we think we know. What I'm trying to say is
that's exactly what we're here to talk about the migration
of mallards in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley. As I
stated earlier, the video clip of the hunt you heard
painting an ideal scenario that duck hunters seek out. However,
(04:17):
in recent years, those very incidents of mallard ducks cascading
down into your decoys has become a more rare occurrence.
But why that's the million duck question there, my foul
minded friends, and you know on this show we aren't
afraid to ask questions. To kick this off, I want
(04:40):
to read you an excerpt from an article that is
aptly titled where have the Mallards Gone? A clear look
at the decline of mallards in the Lower Mississippi Valley
Over the past several winners, waterfowl hunters across the Lower
Mississippi Alluvial Valley from Mississippi to eastern Arkansas to north
east Louisiana ask the same question.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Where are all the mallards?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
It's not a new question. More than twenty years ago,
doctor Rick Kaminski and others published a popular article that
echoed the same concern, Borrowing from the nineteen sixties folk
song where Have all the Flowers Gone? They titled the
article where Have all the Mallards Gone? The article described
how mallard numbers had dropped sharply in the Mississippi Alluvial
Valley since the nineteen eighties, even though breeding populations were
(05:28):
greater in the two thousands during the drought bitten eighties.
They pointed to multiple contributing factors, including mild winter weather
and changing food availability. Importantly, they emphasized a growing mismatch
between habitat and duck needs. There was still water on
the landscape in Mississippi, but the groceries were getting scarce
in some areas, likely due to increased crop harvest efficiency
(05:51):
in changing agricultural practices. Fast forward to today, in the
mystery of the missing mallard continues. However, our tools and
data sets have improved, and our understanding of flyway scale
changes has deepened. First, the long term decline of the
wintering mallarge and the Mississippi Alluvial Valley is not completely
driven by what is happening during duck season. The dominant
(06:14):
forces behind the decline are rooted farther north on the
breeding grounds. Second, there is a perceived reduction in winter
water across portions of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley and changes
in land use and management practices since the original article,
further changes in fall and winter weather that affect duck
migration are now well documented. Okay, I know I gave
(06:45):
you a whole lot there, but don't worry. We're going
to break down every bit of that further with the
author of this very article.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So I'm James Calicatt. I'm the waterfowl and upland game
bird Extension specialists at Mississippi State University. It's kind of
like idio other professor you know that does research and teaching,
but a good proportion of my appointment is extension. And
so what that is is our arm in the university
that takes the research and puts it into the hands
(07:13):
of the stakeholder, so the landowners, the habitat managers, the hunters,
and so we try to communicate the science we produce
at the university to those audiences. So, you know, I
do workshops, field days, write popular articles. We have Gamebird
University podcast where we talk a lot about the projects
and topics that come from the phone calls that I
get here at the office. So I felt like I
(07:36):
got a pretty sweet gig here for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
James has been neck deep in waterfowl research in the
Mississippi Alluvial Valley for a long time now, and he
also wrote this article alongside two other authors, Mike Schumer
and Mark McConnell. Some of you may remember McConnell from
the first Bob White Quill episode. Anyway, I want to
start this discussion by asking James about the fact that
this is not a new question, but rather a question
(08:02):
that has been getting asked and left unanswered for quite
some time now.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So I went to work for Wildye Fisheries and Parks
in the waterfowl program in twenty eleven, I think, and
from the day one putting on the patches, man, that
was all phone call I'm gonna get, you know, And
I've had it since then, and prior to that, when
I was in grad school, and you know, that question
(08:27):
been going on for a while.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Even back then.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
At that time frame when they wrote that article, Aaron
Pearce was doing his dissertation that was creating what we
know now of the aerial waterfowl survey in Mississippi. So
his PhD word was was the first of those surveys,
and then the state adopted it and has had it
for twenty years since. But another researcher in the Delta
(08:51):
this did a lot of waterfowl work, Ken Ronicky, had
had done some aerial surveys in the Delta in the
late eighties early nineties and they had seen to client
and mallards from when Ken did those surveys to when
Aaron did his, and so it was like we're missing
like two hundred or four hundred thousand mallards or something
like where did they go? You know? And that's Arkansas
(09:14):
and Mississippi there. So that question has been going on
for a very very long time, with a lot of
theories behind why that is.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
And not to go straight doom and gloom here, but
correct me if I'm wrong. From reading that article, it
seemed like that question's been going on for a long time.
But while that question's been going on, we we haven't
seen mallards and going up seems like it's still just
kind of downward.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah, So the long term trend of mallards in the
in the MAV both from Arkansas and Mississippi is trending negative.
It's a little bit seems to be more stronger in Arkansas.
You know, it's not getting any better from that front.
And there's a lot of reasons behind that potentially. You know,
when you look at some of these better years of
(10:03):
mallard harvest and that sort of thing, you know, a
lot of those are driven so much by weather, and
I feel like that's where a lot of our issues
are and that's a tough place to be. Man, that's
something we ain't got. We can't do nothing about. Yeah,
and so you know, good years kind of come with
the weather, uh and and the rest of the time
it's you know, it fluctuates, but it's trending downwards in
(10:27):
the end of those trends. You know, you kind of
think about it. You look at something over twenty years
and you have some ups and downs and so you
you you're confident centerables wide and then that sort of thing.
But you know, if the overall trend line is negative,
like you have that negative line still going, but if
you looked at the points of where those peak numbers are. Yeah,
occasionally there's one that's way up here, and there's some
(10:47):
there ways down here, you know, So when the weather happens,
we get birds. But yeah, the overall trend it's not good.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Okay, So we're starting to get a bright, odd idea
of what's going on here, and frankly, it's not great news.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There's not really a way to sugarcoat it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
This has been causing biologists and duck hunters to scratch
their heads for twenty years now, and I know, trust me,
I know we want answers. The way that I'm approaching
this discussion is to start with the broader, more outside
factors and work inward to the more specific factors.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And if you caught it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
There in that last bit, James already gave us big
contributing in broad factor number one.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Weather. This is my least favorite factor. Man. I really
do hate this factor.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And you want to know why, because you can't really
do anything about it.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
The weather's gonna be what it's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Seriously, if you figure out how to manufacture a cold front,
let me know. However, it's undoubtedly one of the key
ingredients to the smaller decline problem that we're having and
we're gonna learn more about that. But go ahead and
keep track as we start this list now onto the next.
Like I said, broad factors first, and then we work inward.
(11:58):
Waterfowl are migratory.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We know this.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
However, it's easy for us as hunters to develop a
myopic view when it comes to ducks. What I mean
by this is when we see mallard declines that are
impossible to ignore, we sometimes only think about our local landscape.
And hang on, I'm not saying we shouldn't think about
our local landscape.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I'm saying we shouldn't only.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Think about our local landscape. For instance, a vital player
in this equation is the breeding range the Prairie Pothole
region made up of the Dakotas in the southern portion
of Saskatchewan and Alberta. This is the mallard factory more
or less. And if this area isn't doing well, then frankly,
it doesn't matter how good of a job we do
here in the lower Mississippi alluvial Valley, there won't be
(12:40):
any mallards to travel down here.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
There's tons of you know, reasons and threats to breeding
habitat for waterfowl. You know, ducks in the prairies and
parklands and elsewhere, what they need is grassland nesting cover
to feed on and to raise breeds on and to
molt on as well. And so there's you know, the
(13:06):
to do list. That's for one reason that when we
talk about like you know, mortality and ducks and skewede
sexu ratios and everything. You know, the breeding time periods,
that time if you die there, that that matters a
lot more, you know. So and a hen has a
whole lot of to dos that a drake doesn't, you know.
(13:26):
So hens are a little bit more predisposed to that
natural mortality up there. But you know, we need a
lot of that cover to produce ducks, especially in dry years,
and we've been kind of dry on the drier end
for quite a while now. I've seen that, you know,
depending on the age of the person who has watched
(13:48):
prairie conditions over time, you know, you know, there were
times where it was really dried and we were really struggling,
and then water came back to the prairies and we
just went through the roof. So, I mean, they can
bounce back, but it's harder to bounce back the less
you have of that habitat, because just like anything else,
whether you're talking about beer or turkey or anything, you
(14:10):
have x amount of habitat and there's only so many
animals that can support And that's one reason we talk
about this. You can't stop pyle ducks, Like, well, if
you just send a whole bunch of birds back to
the north, you didn't shoot. There's only so many that
can do their thing up there and what's left up there,
and so you just have higher natural mortality because hunting
(14:32):
in general is based on the fact that we are
compensating for that natural mortality. So if ducks that we
shoot likely could die from natural causes. Right, that's an
oversimplification of things. But we need that cover, and that
cover is disappearing for a multitude of reasons. One way
(14:52):
that we have been very successful in putting habitat on
the prairies is through programs like the Conservation reserve program,
So taking marginal crop land and putting it back into
some type of cover. You know, down here in the
delta we make plant bottomlane hardwoods with that, but up
in the prairies they're planting grass in those and so
we've lost since twenty seventeen total CRP acres like twelve
(15:18):
million somidd acres. But I tried my best to go
through and calculate on a perk county basis in the
prairies of the States, because we don't have CRP in Canada.
You know, they don't have a program.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Quite like that.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
But here we lost about somewhere in the neighborhood of
four point eight million acres of CRP that went back
into production.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
And you know, the things drive that.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
You know, that's a farming landscape, it's a working landscape,
and those are going to drive those decisions on what
to do with that land. And you know, but that's
four point eight million less acres. They could be per
decent ducks right now.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I'm going to interject here, and this may sound obvious,
but if we want ducks to persist, and even more
down the line, if we want mallards to end up
in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, then we have to
have breeding grounds. And losing four point eight million acres
of CRP is not good.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Since twenty fifteen, they've been declining so last ten years.
So ten years ago, though we counted more ducks than
we we ever have, you know, is the highest breeding
population on record. Forgive me, I'm gonna say deepop a lot,
but that's waterfowl breeding populations. So we have the highest
one of that survey on record. And from that point,
(16:33):
it's pretty well precipitous decline down to where we are now.
And hopefully we're kind of leveling off at this point,
or else we're gonna we are going to see reduced
seasons and bag limits, you know, when we go too
much further below where we are now, we're not producing
as many mallards. So there just are less mallards to
even be able to come here if we get the weather.
(16:56):
So we have way less than we would have ten
years So ten plus million mallards ten years ago were
like six you know, and when we get to that
half point about five million, depending on what the pond
counts are in that matrix of how harvest packages are selected.
At five million mallards with you know, a certain level
(17:18):
of pond count that's a forty five day six stug back,
So we're not that far from it.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
For me, man I so, and this is an anecdote,
but I'd been to South Dakota a lot. This past
trip was my first time ever going to North Dakota.
And you hear about North Dakota as like this waterfowl
mecha right, like growing up down here, That's all you
hear about is man North Dakota, North Dakota. The shooting
mallards in North Dakota, pre dry field hunts, all this
mallards everywhere by the thousands, and prairies upon prairies. Man,
(17:50):
I saw ducks, I did. I mean, like, there were
ducks up there. We had one good hunt while I
was up there, but it was not what I thought
it was gonna be. I don't want to go to
North Dakota and say, man, I was kind of disappointed.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
You know what I mean, you don't want to But.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Just what I was seeing, I was like, bro, where
did they go?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
You know?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And it's uh uh.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And that's a whole other conversation because people on land,
people farm people got to make I mean like, it's complex,
it's nuanced. I understand that, but it's it's it points
to a larger problem that hey, if this is gonna
be something that we're going to prioritize, somebody has to
figure this out.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, and and and conservation is always you know, nuanced
in the way that that we have to go about it, because,
like I said, it's the reality the fact that you know,
producers have to make a living, you know, and we
have to provide that those crops to people and and
and for all the various needs we have for those
and you know, ad markets fluctuate all the time, and
(18:51):
so there's times when conservations profitable and there's times where
it's not. And we have to come up with some
kind of creative ways to make that a little bit
more effect if I think moving forward, and I don't
know right now what that would be, but the game
is changing a little bit, and we got to be
adaptable and we got to we got to do it.
And I have I got a lot of confidence in
(19:11):
the conservation community because we've gone through our ups and
downs and we've had challenges. It's just it's scary to
be in those points where it's like, man, this is
this is not good. It's very scary time frame, and
I it's hard to stay upbeat about it. And you know,
we have to look at everything, but you know, we
(19:34):
do what the science tells us to do, and right
now the science is telling us that we're not producing ducks.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Big contributing and broad factor number two trouble in the
breeding grounds. In this present time, we simply are not
producing as many mallards as we were a decade ago.
From ten million mallards to six million mallards is alarming,
much like losing four point z millions of CRP is alarming.
(20:02):
This is a large problem, But now I want to
change topics. Weather in breeding grounds big parts of the problem.
We got that down, So let's transition into talking more
of the prominent theories you hear in camp conversations or
table chatter at your local du banquet. One of the
most popular ones is that the flyway is shifting. We
hear that all the time, or at least I do,
(20:24):
but I want to know if there's any truth to it.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
There was a big paper came out a year or
so ago that looked at changes in distributions of band
recovery from nineteen sixty five I believe to like twenty
twenty and see a pretty good shift north and a
little bit to the west. But it's mostly just a
(20:50):
northward shift, and there's nothing that really really spells out
wholesale shift in ducks westward. It's more of ducks are
just staying a little further north. And there's a lot
of reasons potentially for that, weather principal among those. But
I got curious because to me, I find it's super
interesting to think about how things have changed since I
(21:14):
was a young duck hunter in the nineties and early
two thousands, when I was a kid and Ducks Unlimited
was keeping the ducks from coming down south and everything,
I was whole hauled into it, you know, because that's
what everybody older than me was telling me.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
You know, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And I think with social media, obviously things can spread faster.
But when you're shooting a ton of mallards in Arkansas,
and you know, it doesn't seem like the old days,
but it's still good. Unless you went over there to
Oklahoma or Kansas, I don't really know that you would
know anything about it, true, And unless you're in desperate
measures to shoot ducks, you know. So these pictures and
(21:54):
things on social media just pushed that narrative like, oh
my god, look how many ducks. I've never heard of
people shooting ducks in Oklahoma now there's these people shooting
them like crazy in Oklahoma and Kansas, and so total
mark Mallard harvest just kind of for Kansas from when
hip data was a thing, it looks like, you know,
in two thousand, they were shooting about the same number
(22:16):
of Mallards per hunter as they did in twenty twenty,
and now they're shooting less now than they had. The
hunter numbers have increased over that time period. And that's
why reason raw harvest data doesn't mean as much until
you put that effort in there, you know, right, you
have to have the like how many hunters were out there.
And so in Oklahoma again, same trend in hunter numbers.
(22:40):
Waterfowl hunters in Oklahoma has increased over the last twenty
five years, and their harvest shows no discernible trend as
far as total ducks over that twenty year period. And
actually Mallard's specific harvest seems to have declined over time.
And so I may be completely on, but at least
(23:00):
from the harvest data and looking at it from as
far as an average duck for hunter number per year
over time, nothing out of this data tells me they're
shooting more now than they were twenty years ago, and
Mallard's it says they're shooting less, at least in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So is the flyway shifting west? Who's to say? I
can say?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
According to James, there's not any data to support that
it's happening. And more interestingly is the fact that states
like Kansas and Oklahoma that often get brought up in
this conversation show that Mallard harvest has showed no change
or even slight declines in the past twenty five years.
The only thing that has increased is hunter numbers. See
y'all draw whatever conclusions you want to from that, But
(23:42):
me personally, that leads me to believe that the problem
lies elsewhere. So let's move on to another heavily discussed
theory on this topic about changes in the flyway. Some
suggest that Mallards simply aren't migrating as far south as
they used to, and this one comes with all kinds
of colorful ideas. Been hearing this for as long as
I can remember. The Duck's unlimited has heated ponds in
(24:04):
the north that completely halts the Mallard migration, or that
the number of flooded cornfields in the north has become
so vast that it is the sole reason that mallards
don't come down this far south anymore. Is there any
truth to all this? Hearsay, James, you got to help
us out with all this.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
I've been hearing the heated ponds things since the nineties.
I've been hearing that and heard it when I became
a state Duck biologist used to get that, you know,
the younger me was all.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Full in it.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Like I said before, I was like, I can't believe
they heat those ponds up there. That's just it's just ridiculous.
And now DU's headquarters is in Memphis. Their largest office
is near Jackson, Mississippi, in Ridgeland, and they have field
offices stretched across the southeast, and they consistently are some
(24:53):
of the most productive office as far as when you
talk about deliverables like acres you know, conserved in that
region and all that. So it doesn't line up with
why would you heap ponds up north when you're putting
all these acres of habitat on the ground on public
refuges and public WMA's doesn't make a lot of sense.
(25:13):
And when you raise probably most of your money in
the southeast too, I don't know that that's still at
the thing, but at one time I know it was
like kind of more their dollars, you know, reported are
kind of coming out of those so and they invest
heavily in the breeding grounds obviously just as much, you know,
and the southern states you know, have grant programs, do
you Canada? And du Canada does a tremendous work in Saskatchewan,
(25:35):
which is super important, Mississippi mallards and so yeah, all
those things together just kind of don't support the notion
that du itself is trying to ruin your duck on it.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
A lot of evidence to show that Ducks un Limited
is not keeping ducks up north.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
So the follow up question of that is what actually
is keeping them up north? I think the biggest driver
is the weather. Some of the farmers I grew up with,
and folks that I think would have never told you
that the climate's changing, are telling you the climate's changing.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
See, that was going to be my follow up question,
and you have to ask it these days when someone
talks about long term weather effects, the questions are we
talking climate change type weather scripts or we're talking like
year to year fluctuation.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Now it's the trend seems to be we're trending warmer,
and we do get so, you know, I think everybody
needs to step back and think about, Okay, in the
nineties and early two thousands, how many times were you
breaking ice through the season? And then now how many
times do you do it? And so we're trending milder.
And when we do get a weather event, it's super severe.
(26:47):
The last several years are good examples of that, super
severe cold events. And there are occurring at times where
you're like, okay, I got about eight to ten days
left in this duck season to hunt.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
What this gave us?
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yeah, And so unless you're out there in the field
on that thing, we may hit peak abundance of ducks
typical to an average year. But did we see it
in the blind No, probably not unless you're out there
taking advantage of it that whole time after that occurred,
and the question is, too, how long do those to
(27:19):
northern latitudes that would be holding birds waiting for that?
How long are those freezes? You've got to have consecutive
days of freeze. That's a pretty quick event, and that
falls quick. Sometimes those birds can ride it out, and
so there's a lot of things that play there. But yeah,
that's what I always go back to, and I think
about now, like every Halloween.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
I think about it.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Every kid's coming up to our doorstep, you know, in
their costumes and everything. And I think back to the
nineties when I used to get irritated because my mom
would make me wear a jacket over my Halloween costume.
He's like, man, nobody can seem like Halloween costume, you know.
And they know kids wearing jackets at Halloween these days.
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I told y'all earlier how much I hate when weather
is a contributing factor. Do you want to know what
I hate even more when you have to bring up
climate change on a podcast, or even worse, when you
have to label it as a contributing factor to Mallard declines.
So I humbly ask you to let go of any
of your predetermined thoughts that you might have when you
hear that term, or forget that I said it all
(28:21):
together if.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
You need to.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
But just think about some of the questions and examples
that James brought up. How much do you bust ice
during duck season compared to ten years ago? How often
do you see kids wearing jackets on Halloween these days,
you gotta admit the man has a point. Duck hunting
seems to be this is anecdotal, seems to be growing
(28:42):
popularity among the younger group of hunters. Right, the younger
group of hunters doesn't have quite the hindsight that someone
with a little bit more years on them. And not
that I'm an old sage, but I'm thirty three years old.
And when I was in high school and we were
hunting all public land in Ssissippi, we didn't have access
to any private ground type stuff, so we hudted all
(29:03):
private ground.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
It was definitely.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Colder, We dealt with sub freezing degrees much more often,
and they would stay for longer amounts of time. Yep,
we killed more ducks. And this is when I was
sixteen years old. We didn't kill more ducks because I
knew what I was doing, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. It had nothing
to do with my skill level there. They just seemed
to be more available.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
When you talk about climate change for a while now
in different topics where it would come up in the
wildlife space, I'm almost scared to say it. Sometimes because
you know, it's gotten so like charged as such, like
a loaded term. Yeah, but it's you gotta at some
point you have to address it when these things are
becoming more and more evident.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I have no idea what to do about it. I
just know that it's happening.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And so the way I think about it is we've
swapped on a lot of things because it is a
contentious topic, and it still is. I think most people
are going to say, yes, the climate's changing. It's the
why that's still contentious. So regardless of what the cause is,
or anybody's belief on the calls, or how much evidence
there is to anything for the cause, the fact that
(30:17):
it's happening, I think is pretty well established, you know.
And so that's why, you know, I had somebody asked
me about that on LinkedIn that had read the article,
and they said that feel nervous to say that most
farmers would agree with it, And I was like, I
feel like most farmers would agree with that the climate's changing.
I think it's just that why that's contentious now. So
I don't think we have to dance around it as
(30:39):
much as before. You know, the why is not as
important to me at this very moment, other than just
saying yes, it is, and we've got to figure out
how to adapt somewhat to it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I remember when I was a kid, not even in
the hunting space, but in grade school, learning that ducks
fly south for the winter. Some of you out there
probably got that same lesson. However, ducks don't just fly
south because our calendar says it's winter. We actually have
to have a winter to drive them to do.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
It, particularly a good proportion of the mallards. You know,
It's not just freezing temperatures. Snow has to occur up
north that covers food so they can't get to it.
So when their latitudes where they field feed, they know
snow on the ground. They can hang out on open
deep water and then go feed and they ain't got
(31:31):
to move, you know. So it's more than just freezing temps.
It's freezing temps plus snow cover to a certain latitude,
and then as you get more mid latitude, it's freezing,
but it's for duration long enough to push them. And
it's always been that just happened more frequently, you know,
And there's been some research with some of the GPS
transmitted ducks they've marked up there, like if a mallard
(31:53):
hasn't left North Dakota by winter solstice, they're probably not leaving.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Okay, let's do a quick view before we turn to
a different topic, big and broad contributing factors to this
lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley mallard decline One weather and or
climate change if you're find with using that terminology, and
two problems in the breeding grounds that lead to their
(32:18):
being simply less mallards overall. As I stated, start broad
and work our way inward. We've covered what's going on
on the outside, and now it's time that we focus
on what's going on in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley itself.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
One thing that we don't know as much about right
now is the landscape changes here. Anecdotally, I would say
it's obvious to me spending as much time in the
delta as I spend and my time flying aerial waterfowl
surveys in the delta, and you know, my father's family
(32:59):
farmers and tala Hashi County, and so I had made
a lot of trips driving through the delta, even from
a very very young kid and coming over to duck
hunt and I duck hunted public lands all over the
Delta for most of my young childhood through college and
grad school, and get research in the Delta in grad
school and all that and worked. So I've spent a
(33:19):
lot of time over there. And it's fairly evident to
me that two things. One we don't have near the
winter water we used to have. There were times I
could drive from Batesville to Tutwiler and as you were
getting closer to Marx on six, you would see flooded fields,
and then all down highway through you would see flooded fields.
(33:40):
I can make that same trip now in January, and
I can count on both hands how many flooded fields
I see. Probably on one hand.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, if you can make it the hand number two,
you're doing better than I do.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
And I haven't been up in the airplane.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
I think it would almost make me sick if I had,
because the last time I flew in area waterfowl survey
in the Delta was probably the fourteen fifteen winter. Even then,
I mean, you know, you'd fly over Boliver County and
be like, there's more rice in bar Ever County than
there is anywhere else. Sitting it's like finding there more
winter water here. Same thing kind of Washington County and
some others, but all across the delta it's just a
(34:14):
dry landscape. And historically that wasn't the case. There was
a lot more winter water, you know, And there's lots
of reasons behind that. You know, you probably think, you know,
farm families, you know, kids move off, they're not coming back,
and duck hunting, you know, farmers aging and that sort
of thing. And then you've got other people that are
you know, maybe that's just not what they do, that
(34:35):
are farming some of that ground now or whatever. But
you don't see people winter flood. Also, we plant crops
super early, you know, and probably in the nineties when
I was duck hunting, and remember my uncles still talking
about are they going to get their beans out by November?
And that's not a thing anymore. And every bit of
corn that's left is germinated well before you know, you
(35:00):
would flood it, and so there's a lot less food
out there if you do flood it. And too, we
do fall tillage now, you know, getting the fields ready
so you don't have to worry about the risks of
spring rains. And so there's a lot of things going
against the ducks of the delta, and a lot more
winter water would help, even if you're just flooding, you know,
a bean field that doesn't have much food left in it.
(35:22):
I think that would certainly help. And if you could
reduce some fall tillage in some areas, that would be
helpful too. But you know, you got to make that
work with producers because we don't. We can't do things
that are counter productive for them. But we have a
bad problem sometimes with looking into our own WMA, the
WMA that we hunt or whatever it is, and say,
nothing's changed. Well, nothing may have changed on your property.
(35:44):
You look in within a duck's you know, movement patterns
surrounding your property lots change, and so is the delta
as sticky for ducks, you know, as it used to be.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
I don't know if it is.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
There's a lot there, some hard scientific data, some anecdotal evidence,
but what's clear is the landscape has changed. And honestly,
this is something that we kind of already know. We
already referenced doctor Mark McConnell as one of the authors
of this main article that we've been referencing, and we
referred back to his Bob whack Quill episode, which was
the second episode ever of Backwoods University, and if you remember,
(36:21):
in that episode, we learned how much large scale agriculture
and agricultural practices made changes to the landscape. The Mississippi Delta,
in the whole Mississippi Alluvial Valley simply does not have
as much or as high of quality waterfowl habitat as
it once did. It's a sad fact, but it is
(36:41):
a fact and one that folks like James Callicut are
working to be able to quantify. I want to round
this conversation with James off by simply asking him where
do we go from here? What do we do with
this information? Is there any silver lining or hope that
we Mallard enthusiast can hold on to To summarize all
of it best I can, it's much. It's much like
(37:03):
anything else in terms of wildlife, especially when there's a
problem with it, people tend to want to find like
one large smoking gun.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
While there may be one, you know, a couple of
predominant factors, there's several that's making the state of the
Mallard sound here in the Mississippi alluvial Valley the way
that it is.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yeah, and it's that you want an easy answer to
a complex question. And I totally get that when you're passionate,
because every one of these individuals that is whole sale
on flyway shifts or standing corn. How should I put it.
It's like anger or it's love disguised as anger. Yeah,
because I get it. Waterfowling is a part of.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Who we are.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
And when something that is to that level of passion
for you and you seem to be losing it, you know,
it's scary and you're you get upset.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Matt.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
You know we've all long talked about, like in wildlife,
what's the fascination with silver bullets? I didn't take any
psychology in college, so I'm probably off base here, but
I've got to think that there's in human nature that
the solution to your problem about something that you care
immensely about needs to be something I can change. You
(38:23):
want it to be something that's quick, instant kind of gratification,
a regulation change or a law outlawing something that if
we can make that happen, that does it. But things
like we need to make our landscape back, what it
used to be a long time ago, and we need
to make the prairies look like they looked like, you know,
ten years ago. Takes That takes time, and that's not
(38:47):
a quick fix either. And you know, all these folks,
I totally get where they're coming from, and I don't
want to discount them at all. That's why we're looking
into the corn things. Try to quantify that so we
can say, Okay, if it's impacting something, let's do something.
But if it's not, then we really need to focus
on these other things. You know, I don't think because
of the weather factor. I don't think unless that changes somehow,
(39:10):
I don't think we're ever going to be back to
us having mallards to the numbers we did twenty thirty
years ago, but we certainly could have.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
More than we have now.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I think if we work on the issues and at
the prairies, and we look into these other things and
figure out one way or the other do we need
to be focused on that, and we work on our
own landscape, I think we certainly could be in better shape.
Like it's not lost, All hope is not lost. It's
just that when we say adapt to new normals in
(39:43):
that article. I think what we mean is that even
if we figure out all the answers that, you know,
the weather's the one thing we can't change, and there's
going to be some level of new normal, you know,
and we don't kill a million mallards and in one state.
You know, maybe it's just we're going to have to
settle with what the weather will push to us after
(40:03):
we've solved the habitat issue, because that's always what it
is most often the time when somebody complains about something
with the wildlife issue, the answers habitat and for right now,
I'd say that that's habitat here, but most certainly habitat
to the north. I think right now we've got the
evidence on the flyway shifting portion. At least it produce
(40:24):
that uncertainty enough to feel like that's not one of
the things driving this. But we're looking into the other.
We're not just dismissing folks arguments. We're going to look
at it and we're going to figure out what it
means to us, and we're going to make actionable items
out of that, like we do with any other conservation
issue that we have.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
If there's one part of this I want you to
hang on to It's that all hope is not lost.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
We'll likely have to adjust, but there is hope. My friends.
Hold on to it because it's there.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
And if there's any action items that you can walk
away with, it's waterfowl conservation organizations or a high importance.
For instance, if you're wondering how someone who hunts down
south can help the breeding grounds up north, then join
a conservation organization like Ducks Unlimited or Delta Waterfowl or both,
and donate and get involved.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
I want to thank all of.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
You for listening to Backwoods University as well as Bear
Grease in this country life. I can't tell you how
much I appreciate it. If you liked this episode, share
it with someone this week, a friend, a family member,
a buddy who's no good at blowing a duck call,
take your pick and stick around, because if this podcast
was a duck hunt, we've scratched out a few, but
there's a group of mallards working up top, and I
(41:42):
think they're going to do it on this next pass.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
There's a whole lot more on the way.
Welcome to Backwood's University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
conserving both. Big shout out to aex hunt for their
support of this podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On this episode, we're gonna.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Address one of the most burning questions being asked in
the hunting community today.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Where have all the mallards gone?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Or specifically, where have all the mallards gone in the
Mississippi Flyway. This question has been getting asked for a
while and its persistence has led to more questions and theories,
such as is the flyway shifting or changing or ducks
simply not migrating as south due to human manipulations.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Or other factors.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
There's a lot of ideas and impassioned opinions on this subject,
so all the more reason for us here at Backwoods
University to lean right into it and see if we
can't shine some light on this issue. So get your
waiters on and make sure you've got non toxic shot
and duck stamps, because we're going duck hunting. It's duck
(01:18):
season in Mississippi and I'm standing in muddy knee deep
water in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. For any
that don't know, the Mississippi Delta is part of an
alluvial floodplain that has the Mississippi River to think for
its unique geographical characteristics and significance. It's flat, it's vast,
and it's known for its fertile souls and high diversity
(01:39):
and amount of wildlife. And this time of year, the
late winter months, it's at its absolute best. The cold,
crisp mornings, the white tailed deer out and stirring, the
distant sound of speckle belly and snow geese flying overhead,
and yes, of course ducks. Some of the old age
duck hunters that I got to spend some time around
in duck camps would always say things like, you know,
(02:01):
the Delta likes to show off this time of year,
which reminds me I should probably pay attention because we've
got some mallards working. What you're hearing is arguably the
most sought out scenario for every duck hunter that has
(02:21):
ever lived. Where minutes into legal shooting light and a
pair of green heads are now working our whole and
flirting with being in range as I try to stealthily
peek at my fragmented view of the dim sky, broken
up by branches and limbs of the tree. I'm leaned against,
my eyes lock on to the two of them. I've
always been enamored by duck flight, the way they seem
to fly so in sync with one another, the way
(02:44):
they cup or set their wings as they prepare to land.
I dare say it's downright poetic to watch. And I
promise I'm being truthful when I say that. I feel
lucky every single time I get to see it. It
never gets old.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Huh yeah, huh ad birth. What I'll say is my
right art stud is one of the fruit.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Though.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
All I know is that's a good way you started mooring.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, an here I be rid.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
One thousand, five hundred and thirty three miles. That is
the distance between where I duck hunted in North Dakota
earlier this year and the area in Mississippi that you
just heard me duck hunting in in that video clip.
One thousand, five hundred and thirty three miles. I know
humans that hesitate at the thought of traveling that distance. However,
these Mallard ducks do that and more every single year
(03:55):
or at least they used to, well some of them
still do we think or we know, or at least
we think we know. What I'm trying to say is
that's exactly what we're here to talk about the migration
of mallards in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley. As I
stated earlier, the video clip of the hunt you heard
painting an ideal scenario that duck hunters seek out. However,
(04:17):
in recent years, those very incidents of mallard ducks cascading
down into your decoys has become a more rare occurrence.
But why that's the million duck question there, my foul
minded friends, and you know on this show we aren't
afraid to ask questions. To kick this off, I want
(04:40):
to read you an excerpt from an article that is
aptly titled where have the Mallards Gone? A clear look
at the decline of mallards in the Lower Mississippi Valley
Over the past several winners, waterfowl hunters across the Lower
Mississippi Alluvial Valley from Mississippi to eastern Arkansas to north
east Louisiana ask the same question.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Where are all the mallards?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
It's not a new question. More than twenty years ago,
doctor Rick Kaminski and others published a popular article that
echoed the same concern, Borrowing from the nineteen sixties folk
song where Have all the Flowers Gone? They titled the
article where Have all the Mallards Gone? The article described
how mallard numbers had dropped sharply in the Mississippi Alluvial
Valley since the nineteen eighties, even though breeding populations were
(05:28):
greater in the two thousands during the drought bitten eighties.
They pointed to multiple contributing factors, including mild winter weather
and changing food availability. Importantly, they emphasized a growing mismatch
between habitat and duck needs. There was still water on
the landscape in Mississippi, but the groceries were getting scarce
in some areas, likely due to increased crop harvest efficiency
(05:51):
in changing agricultural practices. Fast forward to today, in the
mystery of the missing mallard continues. However, our tools and
data sets have improved, and our understanding of flyway scale
changes has deepened. First, the long term decline of the
wintering mallarge and the Mississippi Alluvial Valley is not completely
driven by what is happening during duck season. The dominant
(06:14):
forces behind the decline are rooted farther north on the
breeding grounds. Second, there is a perceived reduction in winter
water across portions of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley and changes
in land use and management practices since the original article,
further changes in fall and winter weather that affect duck
migration are now well documented. Okay, I know I gave
(06:45):
you a whole lot there, but don't worry. We're going
to break down every bit of that further with the
author of this very article.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So I'm James Calicatt. I'm the waterfowl and upland game
bird Extension specialists at Mississippi State University. It's kind of
like idio other professor you know that does research and teaching,
but a good proportion of my appointment is extension. And
so what that is is our arm in the university
that takes the research and puts it into the hands
(07:13):
of the stakeholder, so the landowners, the habitat managers, the hunters,
and so we try to communicate the science we produce
at the university to those audiences. So, you know, I
do workshops, field days, write popular articles. We have Gamebird
University podcast where we talk a lot about the projects
and topics that come from the phone calls that I
get here at the office. So I felt like I
(07:36):
got a pretty sweet gig here for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
James has been neck deep in waterfowl research in the
Mississippi Alluvial Valley for a long time now, and he
also wrote this article alongside two other authors, Mike Schumer
and Mark McConnell. Some of you may remember McConnell from
the first Bob White Quill episode. Anyway, I want to
start this discussion by asking James about the fact that
this is not a new question, but rather a question
(08:02):
that has been getting asked and left unanswered for quite
some time now.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So I went to work for Wildye Fisheries and Parks
in the waterfowl program in twenty eleven, I think, and
from the day one putting on the patches, man, that
was all phone call I'm gonna get, you know, And
I've had it since then, and prior to that, when
I was in grad school, and you know, that question
(08:27):
been going on for a while.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Even back then.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
At that time frame when they wrote that article, Aaron
Pearce was doing his dissertation that was creating what we
know now of the aerial waterfowl survey in Mississippi. So
his PhD word was was the first of those surveys,
and then the state adopted it and has had it
for twenty years since. But another researcher in the Delta
(08:51):
this did a lot of waterfowl work, Ken Ronicky, had
had done some aerial surveys in the Delta in the
late eighties early nineties and they had seen to client
and mallards from when Ken did those surveys to when
Aaron did his, and so it was like we're missing
like two hundred or four hundred thousand mallards or something
like where did they go? You know? And that's Arkansas
(09:14):
and Mississippi there. So that question has been going on
for a very very long time, with a lot of
theories behind why that is.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
And not to go straight doom and gloom here, but
correct me if I'm wrong. From reading that article, it
seemed like that question's been going on for a long time.
But while that question's been going on, we we haven't
seen mallards and going up seems like it's still just
kind of downward.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah, So the long term trend of mallards in the
in the MAV both from Arkansas and Mississippi is trending negative.
It's a little bit seems to be more stronger in Arkansas.
You know, it's not getting any better from that front.
And there's a lot of reasons behind that potentially. You know,
when you look at some of these better years of
(10:03):
mallard harvest and that sort of thing, you know, a
lot of those are driven so much by weather, and
I feel like that's where a lot of our issues
are and that's a tough place to be. Man, that's
something we ain't got. We can't do nothing about. Yeah,
and so you know, good years kind of come with
the weather, uh and and the rest of the time
it's you know, it fluctuates, but it's trending downwards in
(10:27):
the end of those trends. You know, you kind of
think about it. You look at something over twenty years
and you have some ups and downs and so you
you you're confident centerables wide and then that sort of thing.
But you know, if the overall trend line is negative,
like you have that negative line still going, but if
you looked at the points of where those peak numbers are. Yeah,
occasionally there's one that's way up here, and there's some
(10:47):
there ways down here, you know, So when the weather happens,
we get birds. But yeah, the overall trend it's not good.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Okay, So we're starting to get a bright, odd idea
of what's going on here, and frankly, it's not great news.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There's not really a way to sugarcoat it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
This has been causing biologists and duck hunters to scratch
their heads for twenty years now, and I know, trust me,
I know we want answers. The way that I'm approaching
this discussion is to start with the broader, more outside
factors and work inward to the more specific factors.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And if you caught it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
There in that last bit, James already gave us big
contributing in broad factor number one.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Weather. This is my least favorite factor. Man. I really
do hate this factor.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And you want to know why, because you can't really
do anything about it.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
The weather's gonna be what it's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Seriously, if you figure out how to manufacture a cold front,
let me know. However, it's undoubtedly one of the key
ingredients to the smaller decline problem that we're having and
we're gonna learn more about that. But go ahead and
keep track as we start this list now onto the next.
Like I said, broad factors first, and then we work inward.
(11:58):
Waterfowl are migratory.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We know this.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
However, it's easy for us as hunters to develop a
myopic view when it comes to ducks. What I mean
by this is when we see mallard declines that are
impossible to ignore, we sometimes only think about our local landscape.
And hang on, I'm not saying we shouldn't think about
our local landscape.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I'm saying we shouldn't only.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Think about our local landscape. For instance, a vital player
in this equation is the breeding range the Prairie Pothole
region made up of the Dakotas in the southern portion
of Saskatchewan and Alberta. This is the mallard factory more
or less. And if this area isn't doing well, then frankly,
it doesn't matter how good of a job we do
here in the lower Mississippi alluvial Valley, there won't be
(12:40):
any mallards to travel down here.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
There's tons of you know, reasons and threats to breeding
habitat for waterfowl. You know, ducks in the prairies and
parklands and elsewhere, what they need is grassland nesting cover
to feed on and to raise breeds on and to
molt on as well. And so there's you know, the
(13:06):
to do list. That's for one reason that when we
talk about like you know, mortality and ducks and skewede
sexu ratios and everything. You know, the breeding time periods,
that time if you die there, that that matters a
lot more, you know. So and a hen has a
whole lot of to dos that a drake doesn't, you know.
(13:26):
So hens are a little bit more predisposed to that
natural mortality up there. But you know, we need a
lot of that cover to produce ducks, especially in dry years,
and we've been kind of dry on the drier end
for quite a while now. I've seen that, you know,
depending on the age of the person who has watched
(13:48):
prairie conditions over time, you know, you know, there were
times where it was really dried and we were really struggling,
and then water came back to the prairies and we
just went through the roof. So, I mean, they can
bounce back, but it's harder to bounce back the less
you have of that habitat, because just like anything else,
whether you're talking about beer or turkey or anything, you
(14:10):
have x amount of habitat and there's only so many
animals that can support And that's one reason we talk
about this. You can't stop pyle ducks, Like, well, if
you just send a whole bunch of birds back to
the north, you didn't shoot. There's only so many that
can do their thing up there and what's left up there,
and so you just have higher natural mortality because hunting
(14:32):
in general is based on the fact that we are
compensating for that natural mortality. So if ducks that we
shoot likely could die from natural causes. Right, that's an
oversimplification of things. But we need that cover, and that
cover is disappearing for a multitude of reasons. One way
(14:52):
that we have been very successful in putting habitat on
the prairies is through programs like the Conservation reserve program,
So taking marginal crop land and putting it back into
some type of cover. You know, down here in the
delta we make plant bottomlane hardwoods with that, but up
in the prairies they're planting grass in those and so
we've lost since twenty seventeen total CRP acres like twelve
(15:18):
million somidd acres. But I tried my best to go
through and calculate on a perk county basis in the
prairies of the States, because we don't have CRP in Canada.
You know, they don't have a program.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Quite like that.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
But here we lost about somewhere in the neighborhood of
four point eight million acres of CRP that went back
into production.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
And you know, the things drive that.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
You know, that's a farming landscape, it's a working landscape,
and those are going to drive those decisions on what
to do with that land. And you know, but that's
four point eight million less acres. They could be per
decent ducks right now.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I'm going to interject here, and this may sound obvious,
but if we want ducks to persist, and even more
down the line, if we want mallards to end up
in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, then we have to
have breeding grounds. And losing four point eight million acres
of CRP is not good.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Since twenty fifteen, they've been declining so last ten years.
So ten years ago, though we counted more ducks than
we we ever have, you know, is the highest breeding
population on record. Forgive me, I'm gonna say deepop a lot,
but that's waterfowl breeding populations. So we have the highest
one of that survey on record. And from that point,
(16:33):
it's pretty well precipitous decline down to where we are now.
And hopefully we're kind of leveling off at this point,
or else we're gonna we are going to see reduced
seasons and bag limits, you know, when we go too
much further below where we are now, we're not producing
as many mallards. So there just are less mallards to
even be able to come here if we get the weather.
(16:56):
So we have way less than we would have ten
years So ten plus million mallards ten years ago were
like six you know, and when we get to that
half point about five million, depending on what the pond
counts are in that matrix of how harvest packages are selected.
At five million mallards with you know, a certain level
(17:18):
of pond count that's a forty five day six stug back,
So we're not that far from it.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
For me, man I so, and this is an anecdote,
but I'd been to South Dakota a lot. This past
trip was my first time ever going to North Dakota.
And you hear about North Dakota as like this waterfowl
mecha right, like growing up down here, That's all you
hear about is man North Dakota, North Dakota. The shooting
mallards in North Dakota, pre dry field hunts, all this
mallards everywhere by the thousands, and prairies upon prairies. Man,
(17:50):
I saw ducks, I did. I mean, like, there were
ducks up there. We had one good hunt while I
was up there, but it was not what I thought
it was gonna be. I don't want to go to
North Dakota and say, man, I was kind of disappointed.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
You know what I mean, you don't want to But.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Just what I was seeing, I was like, bro, where
did they go?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
You know?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And it's uh uh.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And that's a whole other conversation because people on land,
people farm people got to make I mean like, it's complex,
it's nuanced. I understand that, but it's it's it points
to a larger problem that hey, if this is gonna
be something that we're going to prioritize, somebody has to
figure this out.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, and and and conservation is always you know, nuanced
in the way that that we have to go about it, because,
like I said, it's the reality the fact that you know,
producers have to make a living, you know, and we
have to provide that those crops to people and and
and for all the various needs we have for those
and you know, ad markets fluctuate all the time, and
(18:51):
so there's times when conservations profitable and there's times where
it's not. And we have to come up with some
kind of creative ways to make that a little bit
more effect if I think moving forward, and I don't
know right now what that would be, but the game
is changing a little bit, and we got to be
adaptable and we got to we got to do it.
And I have I got a lot of confidence in
(19:11):
the conservation community because we've gone through our ups and
downs and we've had challenges. It's just it's scary to
be in those points where it's like, man, this is
this is not good. It's very scary time frame, and
I it's hard to stay upbeat about it. And you know,
we have to look at everything, but you know, we
(19:34):
do what the science tells us to do, and right
now the science is telling us that we're not producing ducks.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Big contributing and broad factor number two trouble in the
breeding grounds. In this present time, we simply are not
producing as many mallards as we were a decade ago.
From ten million mallards to six million mallards is alarming,
much like losing four point z millions of CRP is alarming.
(20:02):
This is a large problem, But now I want to
change topics. Weather in breeding grounds big parts of the problem.
We got that down, So let's transition into talking more
of the prominent theories you hear in camp conversations or
table chatter at your local du banquet. One of the
most popular ones is that the flyway is shifting. We
hear that all the time, or at least I do,
(20:24):
but I want to know if there's any truth to it.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
There was a big paper came out a year or
so ago that looked at changes in distributions of band
recovery from nineteen sixty five I believe to like twenty
twenty and see a pretty good shift north and a
little bit to the west. But it's mostly just a
(20:50):
northward shift, and there's nothing that really really spells out
wholesale shift in ducks westward. It's more of ducks are
just staying a little further north. And there's a lot
of reasons potentially for that, weather principal among those. But
I got curious because to me, I find it's super
interesting to think about how things have changed since I
(21:14):
was a young duck hunter in the nineties and early
two thousands, when I was a kid and Ducks Unlimited
was keeping the ducks from coming down south and everything,
I was whole hauled into it, you know, because that's
what everybody older than me was telling me.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
You know, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And I think with social media, obviously things can spread faster.
But when you're shooting a ton of mallards in Arkansas,
and you know, it doesn't seem like the old days,
but it's still good. Unless you went over there to
Oklahoma or Kansas, I don't really know that you would
know anything about it, true, And unless you're in desperate
measures to shoot ducks, you know. So these pictures and
(21:54):
things on social media just pushed that narrative like, oh
my god, look how many ducks. I've never heard of
people shooting ducks in Oklahoma now there's these people shooting
them like crazy in Oklahoma and Kansas, and so total
mark Mallard harvest just kind of for Kansas from when
hip data was a thing, it looks like, you know,
in two thousand, they were shooting about the same number
(22:16):
of Mallards per hunter as they did in twenty twenty,
and now they're shooting less now than they had. The
hunter numbers have increased over that time period. And that's
why reason raw harvest data doesn't mean as much until
you put that effort in there, you know, right, you
have to have the like how many hunters were out there.
And so in Oklahoma again, same trend in hunter numbers.
(22:40):
Waterfowl hunters in Oklahoma has increased over the last twenty
five years, and their harvest shows no discernible trend as
far as total ducks over that twenty year period. And
actually Mallard's specific harvest seems to have declined over time.
And so I may be completely on, but at least
(23:00):
from the harvest data and looking at it from as
far as an average duck for hunter number per year
over time, nothing out of this data tells me they're
shooting more now than they were twenty years ago, and
Mallard's it says they're shooting less, at least in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So is the flyway shifting west? Who's to say? I
can say?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
According to James, there's not any data to support that
it's happening. And more interestingly is the fact that states
like Kansas and Oklahoma that often get brought up in
this conversation show that Mallard harvest has showed no change
or even slight declines in the past twenty five years.
The only thing that has increased is hunter numbers. See
y'all draw whatever conclusions you want to from that, But
(23:42):
me personally, that leads me to believe that the problem
lies elsewhere. So let's move on to another heavily discussed
theory on this topic about changes in the flyway. Some
suggest that Mallards simply aren't migrating as far south as
they used to, and this one comes with all kinds
of colorful ideas. Been hearing this for as long as
I can remember. The Duck's unlimited has heated ponds in
(24:04):
the north that completely halts the Mallard migration, or that
the number of flooded cornfields in the north has become
so vast that it is the sole reason that mallards
don't come down this far south anymore. Is there any
truth to all this? Hearsay, James, you got to help
us out with all this.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
I've been hearing the heated ponds things since the nineties.
I've been hearing that and heard it when I became
a state Duck biologist used to get that, you know,
the younger me was all.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Full in it.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Like I said before, I was like, I can't believe
they heat those ponds up there. That's just it's just ridiculous.
And now DU's headquarters is in Memphis. Their largest office
is near Jackson, Mississippi, in Ridgeland, and they have field
offices stretched across the southeast, and they consistently are some
(24:53):
of the most productive office as far as when you
talk about deliverables like acres you know, conserved in that
region and all that. So it doesn't line up with
why would you heap ponds up north when you're putting
all these acres of habitat on the ground on public
refuges and public WMA's doesn't make a lot of sense.
(25:13):
And when you raise probably most of your money in
the southeast too, I don't know that that's still at
the thing, but at one time I know it was
like kind of more their dollars, you know, reported are
kind of coming out of those so and they invest
heavily in the breeding grounds obviously just as much, you know,
and the southern states you know, have grant programs, do
you Canada? And du Canada does a tremendous work in Saskatchewan,
(25:35):
which is super important, Mississippi mallards and so yeah, all
those things together just kind of don't support the notion
that du itself is trying to ruin your duck on it.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
A lot of evidence to show that Ducks un Limited
is not keeping ducks up north.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
So the follow up question of that is what actually
is keeping them up north? I think the biggest driver
is the weather. Some of the farmers I grew up with,
and folks that I think would have never told you
that the climate's changing, are telling you the climate's changing.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
See, that was going to be my follow up question,
and you have to ask it these days when someone
talks about long term weather effects, the questions are we
talking climate change type weather scripts or we're talking like
year to year fluctuation.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Now it's the trend seems to be we're trending warmer,
and we do get so, you know, I think everybody
needs to step back and think about, Okay, in the
nineties and early two thousands, how many times were you
breaking ice through the season? And then now how many
times do you do it? And so we're trending milder.
And when we do get a weather event, it's super severe.
(26:47):
The last several years are good examples of that, super
severe cold events. And there are occurring at times where
you're like, okay, I got about eight to ten days
left in this duck season to hunt.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
What this gave us?
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yeah, And so unless you're out there in the field
on that thing, we may hit peak abundance of ducks
typical to an average year. But did we see it
in the blind No, probably not unless you're out there
taking advantage of it that whole time after that occurred,
and the question is, too, how long do those to
(27:19):
northern latitudes that would be holding birds waiting for that?
How long are those freezes? You've got to have consecutive
days of freeze. That's a pretty quick event, and that
falls quick. Sometimes those birds can ride it out, and
so there's a lot of things that play there. But yeah,
that's what I always go back to, and I think
about now, like every Halloween.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
I think about it.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Every kid's coming up to our doorstep, you know, in
their costumes and everything. And I think back to the
nineties when I used to get irritated because my mom
would make me wear a jacket over my Halloween costume.
He's like, man, nobody can seem like Halloween costume, you know.
And they know kids wearing jackets at Halloween these days.
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I told y'all earlier how much I hate when weather
is a contributing factor. Do you want to know what
I hate even more when you have to bring up
climate change on a podcast, or even worse, when you
have to label it as a contributing factor to Mallard declines.
So I humbly ask you to let go of any
of your predetermined thoughts that you might have when you
hear that term, or forget that I said it all
(28:21):
together if.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
You need to.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
But just think about some of the questions and examples
that James brought up. How much do you bust ice
during duck season compared to ten years ago? How often
do you see kids wearing jackets on Halloween these days,
you gotta admit the man has a point. Duck hunting
seems to be this is anecdotal, seems to be growing
(28:42):
popularity among the younger group of hunters. Right, the younger
group of hunters doesn't have quite the hindsight that someone
with a little bit more years on them. And not
that I'm an old sage, but I'm thirty three years old.
And when I was in high school and we were
hunting all public land in Ssissippi, we didn't have access
to any private ground type stuff, so we hudted all
(29:03):
private ground.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
It was definitely.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Colder, We dealt with sub freezing degrees much more often,
and they would stay for longer amounts of time. Yep,
we killed more ducks. And this is when I was
sixteen years old. We didn't kill more ducks because I
knew what I was doing, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. It had nothing
to do with my skill level there. They just seemed
to be more available.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
When you talk about climate change for a while now
in different topics where it would come up in the
wildlife space, I'm almost scared to say it. Sometimes because
you know, it's gotten so like charged as such, like
a loaded term. Yeah, but it's you gotta at some
point you have to address it when these things are
becoming more and more evident.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I have no idea what to do about it. I
just know that it's happening.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And so the way I think about it is we've
swapped on a lot of things because it is a
contentious topic, and it still is. I think most people
are going to say, yes, the climate's changing. It's the
why that's still contentious. So regardless of what the cause is,
or anybody's belief on the calls, or how much evidence
there is to anything for the cause, the fact that
(30:17):
it's happening, I think is pretty well established, you know.
And so that's why, you know, I had somebody asked
me about that on LinkedIn that had read the article,
and they said that feel nervous to say that most
farmers would agree with it, And I was like, I
feel like most farmers would agree with that the climate's changing.
I think it's just that why that's contentious now. So
I don't think we have to dance around it as
(30:39):
much as before. You know, the why is not as
important to me at this very moment, other than just
saying yes, it is, and we've got to figure out
how to adapt somewhat to it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I remember when I was a kid, not even in
the hunting space, but in grade school, learning that ducks
fly south for the winter. Some of you out there
probably got that same lesson. However, ducks don't just fly
south because our calendar says it's winter. We actually have
to have a winter to drive them to do.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
It, particularly a good proportion of the mallards. You know,
It's not just freezing temperatures. Snow has to occur up
north that covers food so they can't get to it.
So when their latitudes where they field feed, they know
snow on the ground. They can hang out on open
deep water and then go feed and they ain't got
(31:31):
to move, you know. So it's more than just freezing temps.
It's freezing temps plus snow cover to a certain latitude,
and then as you get more mid latitude, it's freezing,
but it's for duration long enough to push them. And
it's always been that just happened more frequently, you know,
And there's been some research with some of the GPS
transmitted ducks they've marked up there, like if a mallard
(31:53):
hasn't left North Dakota by winter solstice, they're probably not leaving.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Okay, let's do a quick view before we turn to
a different topic, big and broad contributing factors to this
lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley mallard decline One weather and or
climate change if you're find with using that terminology, and
two problems in the breeding grounds that lead to their
(32:18):
being simply less mallards overall. As I stated, start broad
and work our way inward. We've covered what's going on
on the outside, and now it's time that we focus
on what's going on in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley itself.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
One thing that we don't know as much about right
now is the landscape changes here. Anecdotally, I would say
it's obvious to me spending as much time in the
delta as I spend and my time flying aerial waterfowl
surveys in the delta, and you know, my father's family
(32:59):
farmers and tala Hashi County, and so I had made
a lot of trips driving through the delta, even from
a very very young kid and coming over to duck
hunt and I duck hunted public lands all over the
Delta for most of my young childhood through college and
grad school, and get research in the Delta in grad
school and all that and worked. So I've spent a
(33:19):
lot of time over there. And it's fairly evident to
me that two things. One we don't have near the
winter water we used to have. There were times I
could drive from Batesville to Tutwiler and as you were
getting closer to Marx on six, you would see flooded fields,
and then all down highway through you would see flooded fields.
(33:40):
I can make that same trip now in January, and
I can count on both hands how many flooded fields
I see. Probably on one hand.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, if you can make it the hand number two,
you're doing better than I do.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
And I haven't been up in the airplane.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
I think it would almost make me sick if I had,
because the last time I flew in area waterfowl survey
in the Delta was probably the fourteen fifteen winter. Even then,
I mean, you know, you'd fly over Boliver County and
be like, there's more rice in bar Ever County than
there is anywhere else. Sitting it's like finding there more
winter water here. Same thing kind of Washington County and
some others, but all across the delta it's just a
(34:14):
dry landscape. And historically that wasn't the case. There was
a lot more winter water, you know, And there's lots
of reasons behind that. You know, you probably think, you know,
farm families, you know, kids move off, they're not coming back,
and duck hunting, you know, farmers aging and that sort
of thing. And then you've got other people that are
you know, maybe that's just not what they do, that
(34:35):
are farming some of that ground now or whatever. But
you don't see people winter flood. Also, we plant crops
super early, you know, and probably in the nineties when
I was duck hunting, and remember my uncles still talking
about are they going to get their beans out by November?
And that's not a thing anymore. And every bit of
corn that's left is germinated well before you know, you
(35:00):
would flood it, and so there's a lot less food
out there if you do flood it. And too, we
do fall tillage now, you know, getting the fields ready
so you don't have to worry about the risks of
spring rains. And so there's a lot of things going
against the ducks of the delta, and a lot more
winter water would help, even if you're just flooding, you know,
a bean field that doesn't have much food left in it.
(35:22):
I think that would certainly help. And if you could
reduce some fall tillage in some areas, that would be
helpful too. But you know, you got to make that
work with producers because we don't. We can't do things
that are counter productive for them. But we have a
bad problem sometimes with looking into our own WMA, the
WMA that we hunt or whatever it is, and say,
nothing's changed. Well, nothing may have changed on your property.
(35:44):
You look in within a duck's you know, movement patterns
surrounding your property lots change, and so is the delta
as sticky for ducks, you know, as it used to be.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
I don't know if it is.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
There's a lot there, some hard scientific data, some anecdotal evidence,
but what's clear is the landscape has changed. And honestly,
this is something that we kind of already know. We
already referenced doctor Mark McConnell as one of the authors
of this main article that we've been referencing, and we
referred back to his Bob whack Quill episode, which was
the second episode ever of Backwoods University, and if you remember,
(36:21):
in that episode, we learned how much large scale agriculture
and agricultural practices made changes to the landscape. The Mississippi Delta,
in the whole Mississippi Alluvial Valley simply does not have
as much or as high of quality waterfowl habitat as
it once did. It's a sad fact, but it is
(36:41):
a fact and one that folks like James Callicut are
working to be able to quantify. I want to round
this conversation with James off by simply asking him where
do we go from here? What do we do with
this information? Is there any silver lining or hope that
we Mallard enthusiast can hold on to To summarize all
of it best I can, it's much. It's much like
(37:03):
anything else in terms of wildlife, especially when there's a
problem with it, people tend to want to find like
one large smoking gun.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
While there may be one, you know, a couple of
predominant factors, there's several that's making the state of the
Mallard sound here in the Mississippi alluvial Valley the way
that it is.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yeah, and it's that you want an easy answer to
a complex question. And I totally get that when you're passionate,
because every one of these individuals that is whole sale
on flyway shifts or standing corn. How should I put it.
It's like anger or it's love disguised as anger. Yeah,
because I get it. Waterfowling is a part of.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Who we are.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
And when something that is to that level of passion
for you and you seem to be losing it, you know,
it's scary and you're you get upset.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Matt.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
You know we've all long talked about, like in wildlife,
what's the fascination with silver bullets? I didn't take any
psychology in college, so I'm probably off base here, but
I've got to think that there's in human nature that
the solution to your problem about something that you care
immensely about needs to be something I can change. You
(38:23):
want it to be something that's quick, instant kind of gratification,
a regulation change or a law outlawing something that if
we can make that happen, that does it. But things
like we need to make our landscape back, what it
used to be a long time ago, and we need
to make the prairies look like they looked like, you know,
ten years ago. Takes That takes time, and that's not
(38:47):
a quick fix either. And you know, all these folks,
I totally get where they're coming from, and I don't
want to discount them at all. That's why we're looking
into the corn things. Try to quantify that so we
can say, Okay, if it's impacting something, let's do something.
But if it's not, then we really need to focus
on these other things. You know, I don't think because
of the weather factor. I don't think unless that changes somehow,
(39:10):
I don't think we're ever going to be back to
us having mallards to the numbers we did twenty thirty
years ago, but we certainly could have.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
More than we have now.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I think if we work on the issues and at
the prairies, and we look into these other things and
figure out one way or the other do we need
to be focused on that, and we work on our
own landscape, I think we certainly could be in better shape.
Like it's not lost, All hope is not lost. It's
just that when we say adapt to new normals in
(39:43):
that article. I think what we mean is that even
if we figure out all the answers that, you know,
the weather's the one thing we can't change, and there's
going to be some level of new normal, you know,
and we don't kill a million mallards and in one state.
You know, maybe it's just we're going to have to
settle with what the weather will push to us after
(40:03):
we've solved the habitat issue, because that's always what it
is most often the time when somebody complains about something
with the wildlife issue, the answers habitat and for right now,
I'd say that that's habitat here, but most certainly habitat
to the north. I think right now we've got the
evidence on the flyway shifting portion. At least it produce
(40:24):
that uncertainty enough to feel like that's not one of
the things driving this. But we're looking into the other.
We're not just dismissing folks arguments. We're going to look
at it and we're going to figure out what it
means to us, and we're going to make actionable items
out of that, like we do with any other conservation
issue that we have.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
If there's one part of this I want you to
hang on to It's that all hope is not lost.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
We'll likely have to adjust, but there is hope. My friends.
Hold on to it because it's there.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
And if there's any action items that you can walk
away with, it's waterfowl conservation organizations or a high importance.
For instance, if you're wondering how someone who hunts down
south can help the breeding grounds up north, then join
a conservation organization like Ducks Unlimited or Delta Waterfowl or both,
and donate and get involved.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
I want to thank all of.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
You for listening to Backwoods University as well as Bear
Grease in this country life. I can't tell you how
much I appreciate it. If you liked this episode, share
it with someone this week, a friend, a family member,
a buddy who's no good at blowing a duck call,
take your pick and stick around, because if this podcast
was a duck hunt, we've scratched out a few, but
there's a group of mallards working up top, and I
(41:42):
think they're going to do it on this next pass.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
There's a whole lot more on the way.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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