Ep. 702 - From Surveys to Seasons: Previewing the 2025 Duck Numbers - Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Mike Brasher (00:42):
Hey folks, join us on today's exciting episode as
we preview what may be comingnext week with the US Fish and
Wildlife Service's release oftheir waterfowl population
status report and the harvestreports that come along with
that. We talk about what we kindof expect. We talk about how
that information is going toinform future harvest
regulations. And then we lookback on some of the historical

(01:03):
changes in adaptive harvestmanagement. Lots of great
information.

VO (01:06):
Stay with us. The following episode of the DU podcast
features a video component. Forthe full experience, visit the
Ducks Unlimited channel onYouTube, subscribe, and enjoy.

(01:29):
Can we do a mic check,Everybody, welcome back to the
Ducks Unlimited podcast.
I'm your host, doctor MikeBrazier. I'm your host, Katie
Burke. I'm your host, doctorJared Hemphill. And I'm your
host, Matt Harrison.
Welcome to the Ducks Unlimitedpodcast, the only podcast about

(01:51):
all things waterfowl. Fromhunting insights to science
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(02:12):
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Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I am Doctor. Mike
Brazier. I'm going to be, Iguess, one of three kind of co
hosts on this episode.
We're here recording on August19, and this is typically the
time of year when we are like,this is typically the week when
we're anticipating breedingpopulation survey results. We
don't have those this year.We're going to tell you a little

(02:55):
bit about that. Joining me herein studio is Nathan Ratchford.
Nathan, great to have you.

Nathan Ratchford (03:00):
Thanks, Mike. Good to be here.

And over here, Doctor. Jared Hinton. Jared,
great to be with you as well.

Jerad Henson (03:05):
Mike, great to be here.

We, as I said, this is typically the week of
the year when we are runningaround like chickens with our
heads cut off and doing allsorts of preparation for the
release of the US Fish andWildlife Service's waterfowl
population status report. That'snot happening this week, this
year. We're gonna tell you herein a moment when we think that's

(03:29):
gonna happen. You're probablylistening to this actually on
August 28, if all of our mathworks out right. So we don't
have the report by then eitherif you're listening to this.
And so give you a hint then asto when it's gonna come out.
But, yeah, this is an excitingtime. Jared, you're you're
probably eager to get thesenumbers.

I am. I'm excited. I think everybody too is still
riding a little high from, youknow, the expo we just had.
Yeah. That was a fantastic eventcoming off of that.
Everybody's got starting to getgeared up around duck season,
which is needed right nowbecause it's a 100 degrees
actual temp outside Memphis It'sright it's got us dreaming of of
cooler temperatures and and thatthat time of year getting here,

(04:12):
but the excitement starts tobuild, and we really wanna know
what to expect this year, andthat's kind of where we're
hoping these numbers are goingto get us to.

Nathan, you were deep into the conversation last
year. This time, I think itmight have been this very week.

I think so.

Again, we're recording this August 19, so
you're going to be listening tothis on August 28, so just kind
of We'll try to keep that We'lltry not to confuse you on those
dates. But nevertheless, midlate August is when we were deep
into numbers and paperwork andcommunication planning, and all
that stuff is still going onright now, but we don't
anticipate the results for,let's just say, another week.

(04:50):
But is it a little bit differentfor you this year? Do you feel
like we're I mean, we are havingto wait, but it's like we're
getting antsy.

Yeah. So last year was my first communication
side of things, so it was a bitof a learning curve for sure.
Feel more comfortable this year,but it's, yeah, it's all hands
on deck. It's, as you mentioned,it's a little crazy around the
office this time of year, but,yeah, we're moving towards
September. We're gonna doveopening, teal.

That's right.

It's great time of year.

That's kind of crazy to think. We're gonna have
well, I guess some folks alreadydo. There are some early goose
seasons already open.

Saw some of our friends from our partner
organizations that were gettingout in the field already over
the Dakotas and Yeah. Chasingsome of those early resident
geese. I mean, our residentgoose season opens in a couple
weeks here.

Yeah. Hard to believe when it's a 100 out
there

right It's it's yeah. It's pretty tough.

Yeah. I'm disappointed. I did a little bit
of sort of vegetation managementthere on our property. We have
16 acres, about eight or nine ofthat is actually sort of open
field. Last year or two yearsago, I had mowed it at just the
right time and it had grown upinto this I don't know if it's

(06:04):
Dallas grass or some sort ofseed producing grass that the
resident, you know, Canada geesecame in, were eating, and so,
yeah, I harvested a few of thoseand made some goose Well,
springs out there likely willnot be one forthcoming this year
because, as I was leading into,I'm kind of disappointed in the

(06:26):
response or the lack of responsefrom that kind of vegetation.
I didn't mow it this year, but Ithink I had to let all of the
other sort of more robustgoldenrod and other type of
thing take over, and it didn'treally Right. I think I have to
do some additional manipulationto kinda get it back to that
grass stage if that's what Iwant to do with it. So I don't
know if we're gonna get anyCanada yeast there on the
property this year.

But early, incredibly wet spring kinda set
the ecological succession, allthose different grasses. It it
it did some yeah.

Made things change. So anyway, Canada geese
around our house are probablysafe this year. Rebecca will be
kinda happy with that. She doesnot like me shooting out of the
smallest flock, you know, butthere's a larger flock that
sometimes comes by, and I havethe okay to shoot that one. So
we kinda go, you you gottacompromise, and so we sorta go

(07:17):
along with it.
But I don't expect them to be onthe property this year. So what
we wanted to do with thisepisode is sort of wet our
appetite for what will be, wehope, forthcoming next week,
September, is when we doanticipate the Fish and Wildlife
Service releasing the waterfowlpopulation status report, as

(07:41):
well as the adaptive harvestmanagement report, and several
other reports that lay out therecommendations for harvest
strategies, harvest regulationsfor the twenty sixth, twenty
seventh season. Nothing thatwe're going to get next week, as
you're listening to this, willchange the regulations for '25

(08:05):
for this coming So just kind ofkeep that in mind. And what we
wanted to do is just provide abit of a primer on some of the
things that you'll be hearing,make sure we have extra week to
sort of put things in context tohit on some interesting
reminders and look back a littlebit at what what some of the

(08:28):
things were last year. And so,yeah, I you're looking forward
to to kinda getting into this?

Yeah. Well, I mean, and, you know, this is a
thing we've been talking about alot over the past couple years.
It's been dry, and and soeveryone's interested to see
what those populations are gonnalook like, what's the habitat
look like, and that's that'sboth the two two things that
we're looking to get out ofthat, the BPOP report, right, is
that what is the breedingpopulation, what's it look like,
and then also how good's thehabitat, right? Can can ducks

(08:58):
make bank or not?

Well, we've kind of previewed that with Scott
Stevens, Steve Adair. We're notanticipating No. Highly
favorable numbers either from

the breeding

population, the duck numbers or the pond
numbers, but we'll know soonenough. Right. I'm

Scott always said one word, dry.

He did say that.

Yeah. I was at DUX, I was on a podcast.
Somebody asked me kind of what Ithought about it, and I was
like, well, it's been it was drytwo years ago. It was dry last
year. Early reports are it'spretty dry this year, and the
the b pop has been consistentover that same population.
So I would not expect anydrastic change, right, for the

(09:45):
better, for sure, based uponwhat we know right now.

Right. You know, one of the first things that we
wanted to do, we sort of alludedto this, but a specific mention,
and thank you to our federal,both US Fish and Wildlife
Service, Canadian WildlifeService, our provincial
partners, our state agencypartners, they are the ones that
conduct these surveys. Therewere a lot of questions going

(10:11):
into the spring on whether thesesurveys were even gonna happen.
Yeah. Hats off to every personinvolved in the discussions and
decisions that allowed this tohappen.
I don't have any insight onwhether they had to I mean,
there was some speculation earlyon that maybe they would because

(10:32):
budgets are getting squeezedevery budget

concern, right, yeah.

And there were some thought that maybe they
would have to reduce the numberof transects transects that they
fly or maybe even maybe even notfly some strata. I don't know
how all that ended up. We'll Ithink we'll probably hear about
that in the report or from someof our partners directly, but

(10:57):
they got it done, and kudos tothose folks for doing the hard
work to make sure that happened.

Yes. No small effort.

No, not at all, and that's I mean, we need that.
That data is so important for usto make informed decisions. And
when say us, I mean, ourpartners, the waterfowl science
community as a whole, to be ableto make informed decisions on
population management and how togo forth.

Yeah. One of the first things that we want to do,
I have a few slides here. Ifyou're listening to this, we're
going to be putting up someslides, some images to remind
folks, give some visualperspective to the type of
things that you'll be hearingabout next week. Some of this
may be old hat to a number offolks, but when we get the
report, we'll be talking about,and whenever you see the DUC

(11:41):
numbers come out on the DucksUnlimited social media or Ducks
Unlimited webpage, you will hearus talking about the traditional
survey area as well as theEastern survey area, and so
we're showing now a map of theareas that correspond to those
survey areas. There's a longhistory about how this came to
be.

(12:01):
They've evolved over time. We'renot gonna get into those
details, but these are the twobig survey areas across which
duck populations are estimatedseparately, and they'll be
reported separately in thatreport and in every other place
where you see them. So thetraditional survey area
encompasses important breedinghabitats in Alaska, the

(12:25):
Northwest Territories, nearNorthern Canada, the Prairie
Provinces Of Of Canada over toWestern Ontario, and then down
through Montana and North andSouth Dakota. That's your
traditional survey areaprimarily providing ducks to the
Pacific, Central, andMississippi flyaways. Of course,

(12:49):
they'll provide ducks toAtlantic Flyaway also, but then
you go over to the EasternSurvey Area which is you
essentially take Central Ontarioand go eastward through Canada
and into Maine, and thatcaptures Eastern Survey Area,
largely more stable wetlandsystem, boreal forest type of
community, and that's gonna be abig provider of the ducks that

(13:11):
the Atlantic Flyway gets.

And just just looking at that, a couple things
to to point out, especially inthat traditional survey area.
Well, I know we didn't wanna gotoo much in the history, but
that's really cool that thisyear's basically seventy years

You're right.

Of of that survey. So that's a that's an incredible
data set from an ecologicalstandpoint, and I think that's
important to point out. Itactually goes back further than
that, but it was standardized in'55, and so that's kind of a
really cool thing to talk aboutthat we have that dataset to
actually make informed decisionsoff of. And one of the other
things that I always findinteresting, people ask me when

(13:48):
they look at that traditionalsurvey map, was like, well, it's
a weird survey lines. Some ofthose areas are some of those,
you know, areas get way moreflight lines and some of them
get just a few, and that's anartifact of the habitat, right,
and the duct densities on thosehabitats.
Right? So the flight lines,those transect lines are are

(14:09):
laid out based upon estimated,you know, duct densities so they
can get better counts.

The statistically rigorous design. It's not just
willy nilly. It's like, oh,well, I don't care about this
area as much. We're only gonnaput one transect there. No.
It is based on the things thatyou talk about, Jared, what
we've learned from years ofcollecting data, as you
mentioned, they'll modify thisoccasionally. I know there was a
big revision of the survey in1995, think, or at least that's

(14:37):
when there was a publicationthat came out. I know there's
some ongoing work and ongoingdiscussion right now to consider
potential modifications to thesurvey. Those types of things
are in some way or anotheralways happening. Sometimes the
changes that are made are a bitmore substantial than others.

(14:59):
Sometimes they're just littleminor tweaks or changes in the
way they estimate samplingvariation or statistical sort of
changes. Right. But alwaysworking to get the best
estimates possible, the bestdata possible. Nathan, I know
last year you wrote an articlethat summarized all the state
surveys, and so when you werelooking at this map, there are a

(15:19):
number of states that havebreeding duck populations that
are not on here. You learned alittle bit about some of that
last year.

Yes, I did. You know, California being one,
Oregon and Washington, andBritish Columbia, a provincial
partner there, You know, thatdata is also used and we'll I
know we'll cover it later aspart of that larger dataset for
informed decisions on certainflyway regulations. And up in

(15:51):
the Great Lakes area, you know,Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
and am I missing anyone?

Those are the three big ones in the Great
Lakes. There may be some otherlocalized surveys. I don't know
if Ohio does a breeding ducksurvey. I don't think they do.
They might have at one time.
There are a few breeding ducksup in Ohio

Yeah. For

And it's the Northeastern States. They don't
show up in this one here, butthere are a number of There are
some formalized surveys,breeding duck surveys in the
Northeastern States, which wewill talk about a little

And how they later conduct it is a bit
different.

But in terms of what is captured by the
traditional survey area and theEastern survey area, It's pretty
well defined and it does notcapture all of those areas that
we know contain breeding ducks,although we'll get to some of
those surveys and how they'reimportant a little bit later on.
So let's see. One of the otherthings, I guess, just sort of to

(16:50):
point out is, Jared, you hit onit, seventy years of this
waterfowl breeding populationand habitat survey. We've talked
also recently about bandingprograms, we've talked about
harvest surveys, we've talkedabout the breeding population

(17:10):
survey that is conducted in thespring not only provides
estimates of breeding ducks, buthabitat estimates across the
prairies. Those datasets are atthe foundation of our informed
management for both populationmanagement and harvest
management, and the conservationthat Ducks Unlimited, our

(17:34):
partners, and otherorganizations deliver, they are
the datasets that have for somany years kept North American
waterfowl management sort of atthe top of the mountain of
science based wildlifemanagement, and we've had
conversations earlier this yearand people have heard about it
where we thought some of thoseprograms were at risk.

(18:00):
It is fair to say that thebudgets for those programs and
those activities have beenconstrained for many years. That
has not changed. If anything,it's kinda gotten worse over the
past number of years, and sothat's always a concern to us,
and so that's why we're alwayseager to point out the
importance of those datasets andthe defining nature that they

(18:21):
have for what we are as acommunity, as a waterfowl
management community, and whyit's important where every
chance we get to support thepeople that do it, to support
the programs that deliver that,but then also think about new
and exciting and innovative waysto collect that type of data,
but then additional data as wego forward. We have to always be

(18:43):
improving and adapting toenvironmental changes, social
changes, budgetary changes,those types Technology of
changes, Technology, absolutely.So there's a lot of stuff going
on right now, but we can neverlose sight of the importance of
these foundational datasets, soalways have to sort of make that
note.
Well,

and Mike, just kind of follow-up on that, as
you mentioned, some revisions tosome of this stuff, and some of
those things take time, right,for those revisions to be
adapted and kind of carried out.And one of the big things is to
make sure that the data, as it'scollected, it can be compared to
the old data, Right? So we needto make sure as we find new
technologies and we find newways of measuring these things
that they always take intoaccount how we've done things in

(19:26):
the past so that we can compareapples to apples instead of
apples to oranges, and I thinkthat's an important thing.
People ask all the time, whydon't you use this for looking
at these new technologies orsomething? Why do we not use
that?
I was like, well, we've got tomake sure that it's comparing
the same thing.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Thinking
about where I wanna go next inthis conversation, I have two
options. Think so, Chris, I'veI've brought up on the screen
here the results from lastyear's survey. Maybe we'll just
do that as a reminder forpeople.
One of the big things that wefolks might recall, the headline

(20:03):
from last year was an estimated8% increase in Mallard numbers,
an estimated 5% increase intotal DUC numbers for the
traditional survey area. Whatyou're looking at here would be
the numbers from last year as asDucks Unlimited put those out.
Again, this is last year's, notthis year's, it's 2024, but just
as a reminder of some of thenotable things. But if you look

(20:26):
out in that far right column,the percent change from the long
term average, Mallards werestill down 16% below the long
term average. Gadwal were up,Widgeon were up, Greenwing teal
still above the long termaverage, but then you had
species like Bluewing teal,which were below the long term
average by 10%.
Pintails still down 50% belowthe long term average last year,

(20:50):
and then you look at Canvasbackand SCOP and So this just gives
you reminder of where we werelast year. I think it is a safe
general characterization wouldbe to say that overall, duck
populations in the traditionalsurvey area were about average.

(21:10):
Some species were below that,some species were above that,
but overall, we're in thisperiod of average duck
populations, and when you have aperiod of average duck
population size that is aboutseven or eight years after
record highs, it feels like thatdrop is much steeper, you know?

(21:37):
Feels like where we are is somuch lower than what it actually
is when you look at it over theolder timeframe. It's like this,
what is your timeframe ofreference?
For a lot of young hunters, thetimeframe of reference is going
to be, I say, ten through 20 Imean, ten through now, and the

(22:01):
first part of that were veryhealthy duck populations and
record duck populations, and sonow when we're back down to an
overall average, then, yeah, itfeels like it's it's a it hurts.
It does.

It does. And and and kinda one of the things that
comes to mind too is not onlyare we getting these very
average, we're also gettingespecially the past two to three
years, had some weird climate,right, warm. Right? And so, you
know, people in my neck of thewoods, Arkansas, Mississippi,
you know, that area, like,you're not seeing as much as you

(22:40):
normally would because it's 80degrees in November.

Yeah. Right?

Yep. A duck doesn't doesn't need or want to
be in 80 degree weather.

Right. And last year, I don't think we had that
real cold weather until downhere until January.

It was. Right. Yeah. Right. And so that's, you
know, that's a wholeconversation in itself, but not
only is it, you know, averagenumbers, but you combine those
average numbers with some prettywarm winters, and you're just
you're not seeing the birdsfurther south like we did before
when we had cooler winters with,you know, a cool winter with a

(23:15):
healthy population of ducks.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's a great point though, Mike. I
mean, I'm looking at the thegraph here for Mallards in 2016,
11 nearly 11,800,000 Mallards.So, I mean, that's double.

It's

yeah. So if you're

thinking there's less ducks around or
speculating that we're missingducks in serving no. You're
they're just they're not outthere.

Right. You know, imagine imagine being perplexed
and and puzzled if the stockmarket went down 50% and you
looked at your four zero one kand says, doggone, why is my
four zero one ks down 50%? Well,it's down because the stock
market went down 50%. So that'sa pretty useful analogy to say

(23:59):
you can't look at one of yourexperiences and say, I'm not
seeing as many ducks right now,this has to be somebody's fault,
and also acknowledge and seethat at the continental level,
we are down close to 50% on oneof these species, and yeah,
checks out.

Had that conversation several times over
the past year as somebody wouldcome up to me, man, they're just
missing something on thesurface. They're missing it.
They're missing it. I'm just notseeing the ducks. I was like,
well, your frame of reference is2016, when we had fantastic
years, and you feel like you'reonly seeing maybe half the
number of ducks.
If you look at the reports, thesurvey, it shows there's half

(24:41):
the number of ducks, is that Soframe of keeping that in
perspective is really important.

And just how cyclical these things are.
Right? You go back ten yearsbefore in 02/2006, and we're
about mallard wise where we areright now. Mhmm. Right?
Yep. So that difference whenrain returns, how that, you
know, actually continues tobuild the population year after
year, and then you havesomething like 2016. If you

look at those, the Mallard population, right, or
overall duck population, youcould look at it and you see
those cyclical Sure. Peaks andtroughs that you would normally
see with a, you know, any typeof wildlife population.

And some people may think that we're looking at
this through rose coloredglasses, but I I think we're
just trying to be honest aboutit. And I to be on To that
point, if you look at the depthof the drought and the
widespread nature of the droughtacross that prairie region for
the past essentially sevenyears, and we still have total

(25:39):
duck populations in thetraditional survey area that are
right around the long termaverage, it's pretty darn good.
Yeah. It's pretty darn good.Now, you can look at some
species and see they are herdingmore than others, mallard,
pintail.
Looking at this blue wingedteal, that's a bit of a
surprise, you know, being 10%below the long term average

(26:02):
because we think that's one thatis generally highly resilient.
But then you look at specieslike green wings, wigeon,
they're more likely to inhabitthe Boreal Forest. Despite the
drought that's been going on inthe Boreal Forest, they've been
able to kind of hold their ownand they have helped prop up

(26:22):
that overall total duckpopulation. So to be right
around long term average speaksto the resilience. It's not rose
colored glasses, that's justsort of the reality of what it
is, especially whenever you lookat all of the other challenges
and changes and loss of habitatin that important prairie

(26:44):
region.
I mean, ducks are resilient, andwe're all eager to see what we
get next week.

And conservation is a long term
game.

Sure is.

Right? That is. Yeah.

The table needs to be set. There needs to
be habitat available for whenthe rain returns. And, you know,
the continental mission that wehave here at Ducks Unlimited,
Mike, you mentioned the Boreal,the Northwest Territory showed
up big last year.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right? Yep. We anticipate that to happen again.
We expect a big count out

of there. So the

Boreal, Alaska, these other landscapes
that we do work on that are alsoessential, it's just yeah. You
can't just be looking at itthrough a microscope, you know?
You need to be looking at thewhole picture, and that's what
Duxolitinib does.

Yeah. I've got a graph or a little table up now,
the 2024 Eastern survey area,and it was a bright spot last
year, has been the last severalyears. The habitat conditions in
that landscape are not asvariable as they are in the
prairies. They have not youknow, a lot of that landscape is

(27:50):
boreal forest, this matrix ofconiferous forest and wetlands
of various types. It has notsuffered the same level of
drought that the boreal forestin Western Canada has, and I
think it sort of appears that itbears that out where you've got
several duck populations abovelong term average, black ducks,

(28:13):
green winged teal, golden eye,mergansers, know, ring necked
ducks, right about long termaverage, wood ducks, long term
average, mallards only down 9%from long term average.
So, you know, this is one ofthose times when if you're an
Atlantic flyaway hunter, you'reyou know, it's you kinda even
keel. Your expectations areabout what they were last year,

(28:34):
and that's generally the case. Ithink other people have even
told us that. Maybe Mike Schumeror or or maybe it's Scott
Stevens, your best prediction ofwhat you're gonna get in the
Eastern Survey area this year isprobably what you had last year,
and that's not too far off. Soso anyway, that was these are
twenty twenty four numbers justto kinda orient folks before we

(28:54):
get the numbers next week.
Hopefully, will be the case. Andyeah. So what else we want to
talk about in terms of settingthe stage for for sort of our
population habitat estimates? Wehaven't really talked about May
ponds. I think we're probablyexpecting a drop?

I based on those early reports, I think that's
that's the realistic thing to todo. And it was seemed like it
was across the board. Yeah.Right? It wasn't there's a few
pockets here and there that hadaverage to good, it seemed like
from those reports.
I I think there were some goodreports out of the Missouri
Cotoo. Like, that area had somebetter habitat, but still not

(29:39):
not great or good. Yeah. Youknow, it it's still, like, it's
fair. That's kind of Yeah.
Yeah. So but if you get on upinto Saskatchewan, it seemed
like there was a lot of drywetlands up there.

Yeah. There definitely were. The the pilot
reports were not ideal. Therewas some rain that that arrived
on the prairies, but our our Ithink our read is that most of
that came after the surveys wereflown, so and and came after the
birds, many of the earlymigrants flew into that
landscape. That's why we'rewe're expecting the number out
of the Boreal to be high againthis year as that's where we

(30:15):
anticipate some of those birdshaving overflown and settled in.

And it was so, I mean, dry before those rains, a
lot of that report, those yeah.That ground soaked it quick.

For sure.

You know, from just an average hunter's
perspective, reading thosereports, it's always difficult
to find in a you know, getting apulse on what it's actually
gonna be. Yeah. I mean, lastyear, felt like the the reports
are mainly bleak as well, butthen you had a huge variability,
you know, across For sure. USponds were up substantially
where Canadian ponds were downYeah. You know, 19%.

(30:47):
US ponds were up 40 somepercent.

Think that's Yeah. It was up huge.

So it's the variability of that landscape
and also it's just, you know,yeah, I don't know what to
expect.

So the pawn numbers last year, yeah, I
didn't look at that. It was wasit up in well, I don't have that
in this graphic. You would belooking at it on the

9%.

Up on The US.

The US

US pawns are up 49%.

Dynamic. That's

not gonna happen this year. They may be down 50%.

You think so?

Well, maybe.

Maybe. No

rose colored glasses here. On US side of
things, I don't know. 30% downon The US? I don't

know. I think

it depends on what it was. If it goes back to what
it was the year prior, whatwould that percent change be? I
don't know, we'd have to look atthat data, but yeah, it could be
I I don't have any reason tobelieve that the pond count
coming out of the out of The USthis year is gonna be very close
to what it was last Now I didhear something the other day

(31:52):
that said maybe some of thoserains came right before they
flew some of those areas, butwhile that may help the pond
number, it doesn't help thesettling pattern No. For the
early migrants. It'll help it'llprovide some water for some of
the later nesters as well as forsome of the broods, but, know,

(32:14):
ducks will still be produced.
We've already heard reports ofducklings on the landscape in
various provinces and states, sowe know ducks are gonna be
produced. We know there'shabitat up there. We don't wanna
we don't wanna sound likethere's no production. Right.
Because there will be.

Ducks are resilient. Yep. They're
incredibly resilient, and theywill find habitat.

Yeah.

They will.

That's one of the the really, really impressive
things about about waterfowl.You know? Yeah. They might fly
over a dry prairie and end up inthe the boreal up there. And,
it's it's hard to estimate upthere.
Right? It's dense. It's treecovered.

It's Yeah.

Yeah. There were some good brood reports out
of North Dakota this year too.

The The brewed numbers out of North Dakota were
up. I always look at that with abit of caution, especially
during a year when it's so dry.I don't think they do visibility
correction factors associatedwith that survey, so it depends
on how dry it was. If it was sodry that by the time they

(33:14):
conducted the brood surveys,that a lot of the water had
receded out of the vegetation,then the broods aren't gonna
have much escape cover, and soyour detection rate on broods is
gonna be higher. So there's someof that variability It's
counting wildlife in theirnatural setting is difficult.

It is. It is.

They don't wanna be counted a lot of times, like
the ducklings especially.

That's one of those cases where some of that
new technology is really coolbeing able to to implement that
Yeah. Using

That's right. Well, we talked about that on
last week's episode.

And stuff. Yeah. Like,

that's seen that.

That's a cool thing. Point, Mike, I mean,
weather patterns at the time ofthe surveys, all those things
that factor in, you know, we sawthat with Widgeon last year.
Right? That big increase, youknow, you know, I think you kind
of pointed to the survey theprevious year, there was a there
was a weather, you know, patternthat may have influenced how

(34:07):
many Widgin were observed inthat Alaska Northwest Territory.

Yeah. There was something weird

about that. Maybe it was kind of the reason
why there was that big increase,but all those things, yeah, it's
it's dynamic for sure.

Yeah. There are some wonky things that
occasionally it's a technicalterm, wonky.

Wonky. Yeah.

That that do show up in these surveys from time to
time, and and that'sunavoidable. Yep. It does not it
does not undermine the value ofthe survey. Does not Absolutely
not. It does not undermine thethe rigor with which this is
designed and implemented and thedata are analyzed is just

It's just nature.

Is a massive undertaking, and you're gonna
get a few of these areas wherethings are a little wonky

It's from year to a population estimate over time,
and one of the things that'sreally cool about a dataset that
long, if you do it the same wayover and over and over, no, you
may not be able to spell out tothe exact number, the number of
ducks, you know, right? Youknow, there's plus one or plus
two, that's the different scalefor the survey. But if something

(35:13):
happens with a population,

you're gonna pick it up.

A trend change

A true trend.

A true trend. You will find it in this kind of
data, and that's somethingthat's so important to our
ability to understand them forThat's the

a great point.

And is there really anything you could
compare it to? I mean, as far aswildlife surveys.

You know, I would have to look at some of the
fisheries datasets. I think theydo a really good job in some
instances. They probably havesome of the longest records of
others that have been out there.You know, the adaptive harvest
management that we use rightnow, it was taken from some of
the work that has been done infisheries stock management, and

(35:57):
sort of take management. So,yeah, I think some of the
fisheries disciplines groupshave comparable datasets and
decision, especially when youthink on the commercial
fisheries side of things, stockassessments and so forth.
They have some pretty rigorouslong term datasets. So, yeah,

(36:21):
that's probably where I wouldcompare it, but otherwise

But for a single survey.

Well, for a single survey and also for a species or
group of species that varies sowidely across a geographic area.
I think, yeah, you would have togo to the fisheries groups to
find anything comparable. Butgreat point. We want I think now
is a good time to take a break.We wanna come back and we wanna

(36:47):
preview how some of this mightinfluence harvest regulations
for the 2627 season.
That's the other big thing thatpeople will be looking to when
the reports come out next week.We will be looking at that the
same as you all, and we want tokind of get you prepared for
what to look for, remind you ofhow harvest regulations for duck

(37:10):
seasons are set across thedifferent flyways. And also,
we're going to take a look athow the adaptive harvest
management matrix formidcontinent mallards has
changed over time, and it mightsurprise some of the folks out
there that say isn't adaptive.It actually is. And we're going
to show you how.
So stay with us, we've lot gotmore to come back.

VO (37:37):
Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan and Bird DogWhiskey after these messages.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I am doctor Mike
Brazier, and here I have NathanRatchford, Doctor. Jared Henson.
We're going to pick up where weleft off and jump right into
sort of a primer on harvestregulations, how they are set,
how those processes differ fromone flyaway to the next.

(38:53):
And I think to start this off,Chris, if you could sort of show
the the image that we have uphere that that highlights
regulations are set differentlyby flyway. The the group of
ducks, we're going to talk aboutduck regulations here. Geese are
an entirely different thing. Thegroup of ducks that the US Fish

(39:16):
and Wildlife Service looks to toset regulations in your flyway
is likely likely different fromthe set of ducks that are used
to set it in another flyway,unless we're talking about the
Central And Mississippi. Thoseare set using the same group of
birds.
So let's just spell this outhere. If you're in the Pacific
Flyway, the group of birds thatis important for setting the

(39:39):
overall duck season framework,that being the number of days
and the bag limits, isdetermined by the status of
Alaska mallards and mallardsthat are estimated in British
Columbia, Washington, Oregon,and California. If you are a
hunter in the Central AndMississippi Flyway, then your

(40:03):
season length and bag limit forthat overall duck framework are
set based on the status ofmidcontinent mallards, which you
see the survey areas identifiedin green, plus the states of
Minnesota, Wisconsin, andMichigan sort of capture that
midcontinent mallard stock. Soit's the estimate for

(40:26):
midcontinent mallards plusnumber of May ponds in The US
and Canada. So that's whatdetermines your season
structure.
If you're in the AtlanticFlyway, your season length and
bag limit selection is based onthe combined status of four

(40:48):
species of ducks, ring neckducks, wood ducks, golden eyes,
and green winged teal. We're notgoing to get into the specifics
of every one of these. We'regoing to visit on the
Midcontinent Mallard, theCentral Mississippi Flyway
process because that's the onethat I think most people have
It's the one that's been aroundthe longest, it's the one that I
think most people are familiarwith, but yeah, this is an

(41:12):
important thing to know. Sowhenever that population status
report comes out, and if you'rea Pacific Flyway Hunter and you
look at the traditional surveyarea, there's really only a part
of that traditional survey areathat is of greatest importance
to you. Same thing if you're anAtlantic flyaway hunter.
Yeah. You'll look at the theEastern survey area, and what

(41:34):
happens in the traditionalsurvey area is important for the
number of birds that you see.But if you're really looking at
those numbers to try to figureout what your hunting season is
gonna be next year, then you'regonna be looking only at what's
happening in that sort ofEastern area.

And this, you know, and this kind of picks up
on what we talked about beforethe break, right, when we were
talking about bee pop, andthat's kind of what the whole
topic of today is. This is thedata from the the B POP and the
Maypawn count, all of thatsurvey that's gonna be used in
the report, right, to actuallypredict or or estimate our our
harvest for, not this year, butnext year.

That's right. Yeah.

So It really is incredible seeing, I mean,
how many states we're looking athere and that individual data
shared collectively Yeah. In thewaterfowl management community
and how efficiently andeffectively that's done across
so many different states. It'sit's just really impressive.

There in the Atlantic Flyway, you see all of
those states that arehighlighted. Now that relates to
data that is collected througheBird, I believe, and maybe the
maybe it's the breed maybe it'snot eBird, it's the Breeding
Bird Survey, I believe. I had tolook this up. I've been talking
about eBirds so much I'mconfusing myself, but they're

(42:51):
not actual breeding duckpopulation surveys that are
conducted in Georgia, SouthCarolina, North Carolina,
Virginia, West Virginia,etcetera. It's I think it's
breeding bird survey data thatare used to help inform that
wood duck estimate.
That is one of those fourspecies in the Atlantic Flyway.
So just to kinda clarify whythey're highlighted.

That's one of those southern states of theirs,
is locally produced wood ducks.

Yeah.

Because that's Which is that's opportunity for
for Atlantic flowey hunters.

That's right.

That's that makes up a big part of their bag
limits.

Yeah. Love a wood duck. Absolutely love a wood
duck on a slow day. Or a fastday. I it's

I love a duck. Any day.

I know.

They taste amazing.

They do.

So there's that.

Yeah. So I mentioned the regulatory
packages. That's what you wouldbe most familiar with as
restrictive, moderate, orliberal. The number of days that
are assigned to each of thoseoptions generally differs by
flyway, which you see here inthis table. You know, for
example, if you're in thePacific Flyway, the restrictive

(43:54):
season gives you sixty days, theliberal gives you one hundred
and seven.
If you're in the Mississippiflyaway, the liberal gives you
sixty days, the restrictivegives you thirty. So you can
kind of see how those thingswould change based on what that
optimal regulatory package thatwould be selected is. These are
fixed options that have been, atsome, in some periodic fashion,

(44:18):
been revisited. They're notrevisited very often at all.
These are pretty well fixed atthis point.

And a lot of that though is set by, and correct me
if I'm wrong, but that's byestimated harvest. Is that
correct? That's why they sayPacific

fly Why they differ? Yes. Oh, yeah. There's
some history there. It is goingto relate I mean, let's just
look at the extreme from thePacific to, let's say, the
Mississippi.
Yeah. There are I think the easyway to say it is that the ratio
of hunters to number of ducks islower than the ratio of hunters

(45:00):
to ducks in the MississippiFlyway. Right. Yeah. It's like
relative harvest pressure islower in And that's kind what

I was trying to make a point there is that
there's a reason those aredifferent. It's to account for
the amount of

That's right.

And what's the old adage? Days kill ducks.

Days kill ducks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So So the
other part of those sort ofbasic duck season framework is
the bag limit.
Those are also fixed under thesedifferent restrictive, moderate,
and liberal options, and theydiffer, generally speaking, by
flyway. Here in theMississippians, they actually

(45:36):
differ between the Mississippiand Atlantic flyway, and yeah,
guess they differ across everyone of these flyways, and the
reason why the Atlantic I'mtaking here on the fly, the
reason why the Atlantic okay, soI got to break this down here.
So what you're seeing here issort of three numbers in each of

(45:59):
these categories. First is totalducks, the second is total
mallards, and then you have henmallards. If you notice in the
Atlantic Flyway, there is nonumber associated with that
second or third spot for totalmallards or hen mallards.
That's because a few years ago,whenever they went to this multi
stock management model wherethey're basing it on those four
different species, they pulledout mallards, mallard bag limit

(46:21):
as part of this basic package,and now they set that mallard
bag limit separately based onthe status of eastern mallards.
So another one of those changesthat have been made through the
years.

Man, it was just not that long ago that that
went from three to four.

Two to four.

Two to four. Yeah. Yeah. Two to four. That's
right.

Yeah. Yeah. You will notice here, there's
probably some things if youstare at this, a lot of folks
will be surprised when you gofrom a liberal to a moderate
season in the MississippiFlyway. I'm going to go back
here and look at this. Yeah, thenumber of days changes from
sixty to forty five.

(47:01):
The bag limit, total bag limitstays the same. Total mallard
stays the same, but you dropfrom two hens to one. I'll be
honest, I had forgotten that.When you go from a liberal to a
moderate season in theMississippi Flyway and the
Central Flyway, you lose one henmallard from your bag. But you

(47:21):
can still shoot four mallards orfive mallards in the Central or
in the Mississippi and Centralrespectively.
Pacific Flyway has a seven birdtotal bag. You can shoot seven
mallards in the Pacific Flywayunder liberal season. That might
surprise some people, but again,it relates to what you're
talking about, some differencesin relative harvest pressure.

Right. Yep.

So anything else there to take away? You could
stare at that and find a fewother interesting things. When
you go to restrictive, the baglimit drops to three in those in
the Atlantic, Mississippi, andCentral drops to four in the
Pacific. Only two Mallards inthe Mississippi Flyway, three in
the Central, and, yeah,interesting stuff. There are a

(48:04):
lot of people that have neverexperienced anything other than
that liberal season.
Yeah. So they have no reason topay attention to what those
others are. Interesting. Okay.So the other thing of note, I've
already mentioned this, is thereare some species, black ducks,
pintails, canvasbacks, redheads,blue winged teal, model ducks,
etcetera, that have their baglimits set separately outside

(48:27):
that duck season framework, andsometimes these species even
have some restrictions on thedays within a season when they
can be harvested, a seasonwithin a season.
All of these types of things aregoing be spelled out in the
report, the adaptive harvestmanagement report that comes
out, and we're not going go intothe details of how all those are

(48:48):
done. One of the importantchanges that folks will know as
we are here on the cusp of tealseason is that this year, we
only have a nine day tealseason, that was in response to
a drop in the breedingpopulation size for blue winged
teal, and we've kind of coveredthat, I think, little bit on a
previous episode. We may do itagain at some point in the

(49:09):
future. Don't want get into thatright now.

Yeah. But just in general, those additional
species specific regulationshave to do with either a
population concern, somethingdifferent in their annual cycle,
a specific habitat need, or somethat are more impacted by hunter
harvest than others.

Yeah. Right.

The data tells us, right, that I think in canvas
backs, right, like

They can be more sensitive to harvest.

That's right.

Hunter harvest can have an impact there, so we need
to be aware of that. And and thedata does, right, and the
regulations are aware of thatand are informed

by that. And those are specific guidelines
too, you know, with Blue Wingsthat was established 2014,
right, by US Fish and WildlifeService, that threshold. So
they're not, I think it's justimportant for our audience to
know that's not year to year,you know, these are specific
guidelines that these changesare made under.

And most of those have a working scientific group
that helps inform thosedecisions, right, around those
specific species. It's not froma big general model or for the
general estimates. So Yeah.

The other reminder here is that, you know, states
can always be more restrictivethan what those frameworks
allow. There have actually beensome discussions in recent year
I mean, this year about in somestates, considering a stronger
sort of hen restriction. Somestates I don't I know at least

(50:33):
one state that considered goingfrom two hen mallards to just
one hen mallard. I don't thinkthat was instituted. I don't
have as good of a read on whatsome of the other states on the
Atlantic Or Pacific Flyway maybe considering, but they always
have that option to, yeah, to tobe more restrictive if they if

(50:56):
they want to.
Right. And individual hunterscan certainly be more
restrictive

Well, that's than insane. Oh, I

mean, you when

we get into club

or whatever.

Especially into, you know, talking about mallards
and and and mallards. So that'sbeen a topic of

It is a topic.

Contention. The the data that has come out, I
don't know the exact numbers, sodon't quote me on this, but most
bag limits, if someone shoots alimit of Mallards in Arkansas, a
four duck limit, it's like 3.5or 3.8 or 3.8 of those four
ducks are Drakes. Right? Sopeople shoot more Drakes.

People like to shoot the Drakes.

Right? It's the pretty duck, it's the ones
coming in. There's generally aDrake bias, a male bias in those
populations, But, you know, bigold Greentop definitely catches
my eye first.

I know. There's a lot of reasons to do that. There
are yeah. A lot of reasons to dothat. If somebody wants to only
shoot drakes, I'm cool withthat.
Somebody wants to shoot twomallard hens, I mean,
personally, I'm okay with that,to each their own. If that hen

(52:08):
harvest becomes a driving factorin population growth

That's

then those types of things will be will be caught
at some at some point, know, andso, yeah, just to the point of
of it's a topic of discussionright now, and and that's great.
That's the other thing we'llalways say is that I think it's
wonderful that people like tonerd out That's it. On on on
what They care. They do.

They do. That's it. People care. And they the
thing is is the data tells usthat people self regulate. Yeah.
Right?

I only shoot for ganzers, so

There you go.

Shooting those lawn

darts as they fly Conservationist for the
dabblers. Dabblers' best bestfriend, Nathan Ratchard, right
here in the flesh. So I I thinkwhat we wanna do here is just
sort of step through an example.The optimal regulatory strategy
for the Central MississippiFlyway from last year. We've got

(53:08):
a a, brightly colored matrixhere.
Across the top, it says US andCanadian May ponds in millions.
Across the side, it saysMidcontinent mallard breeding
population. You'll recall thatmap we showed a little while ago
that highlighted the states thatcontribute to that population

(53:28):
estimate for the Mid Continentmallard stock, that being the
prairie states of prairieprovinces, prairie states in The
US, and then those three GreatLakes states, that would be that
midcontinent mallard breedingpopulation estimate there. US
and Canadian May ponds, well,that comes from the estimates
that are collected from NorthDakota, South Dakota, Montana,

(53:48):
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta,in those prairie strata. And
then this simplified decisionmatrix is an emergent property
of some very complex stochasticdynamic programming that
considers four alternativemodels for predicting population

(54:09):
size next year based onpopulation size this year,
breeding habitat conditions, andthen different regulatory
packages, and then inconsideration of adaptive
harvest management objectives,this stochastic dynamic
programming says here's a matrixthat will identify based on the

(54:29):
intersection of these two keyvariables what your optimal
harvest strategy for this yearis.
That's a mouthful, but that'sabout as simple as I can explain
it.

Mike, can you describe optimal?

No. I

mean, it's it's opportunity. Right? They're
trying to provide the mostopportunity in a way if if it's
there.

It's it's a number of things. It's But yeah. It's
the it is the decision thatmaximizes the return for a set
of objectives, not just oneobjective. It's a set of
objectives, and so that's kindof the way to think about it.
It's not best for any singleobjective, like harvest
regulations represent adecision.
That is a decision that is madeevery year. That decision has

(55:13):
some true outcome. What we tryto do or what the Fish and
Wildlife Service and theircolleagues try to do is predict
that outcome with the greatestThat certainty outcome has an
effect on our ability to achievemultiple objectives. One of

(55:35):
those objectives is long termsustainability of the
populations. Another objectiveis maximization of harvest
during every given year withoutcompromising our ability to
achieve that maximum harvestperpetually over time.

The next year. Right.

There are also some objectives related to
simplification of regulations,which may not be as explicitly
accounted for. And there's a fewother objectives as well. So you
have multiple objectives, and sooptimization tries to select
that regulatory package during agiven year, given the population

(56:15):
and habitat status, that is mostlikely to maximize the return
for all of those objectives.

Right, okay. Yeah. That's what I was trying to get
at, yes.

That's the best of Thank my

and I think that's really important to frame,
right, why this is used, whythis model, what this strategy
or the regulatory strategyactually is mapping out in front
of us. It's it's a balance ofall of the stakeholders in here
and trying to get the best, themost optimal decision and

(56:50):
framework for the next year'sseason to to meet all those
different objectives. And Ithink that's really important to
point out because that's in theweeds of the report. People
don't see that.

Oh, yeah.

They don't read that, and a lot of people don't
understand that. So that wassomething that I wanna I'm glad
you clarified because I thinkthat helps allow us to dive into
this and actually understand whythis is happening.

Anytime I try to explain that, it takes me back
to when I was at Ohio State formy PhD and I took some
behavioral ecology course andthere was a lab session where we
were, was a stochastic dynamicprogramming session. I ended up
not taking that lab sessionbecause I had some other
conflict and so I missed out onthe fun of stochastic dynamic
programming, but I neverthelesshad to do a bit of a term paper

(57:35):
that represented an example ofthis optimal modeling, trying to
make a decision that is going tosort of maximize the
contributions to a suite of sortof competing, interacting
objectives, and I chose MidContinent Mallard Adaptive
Harvest Management as my casestudy, and it's a really When

(57:57):
you take the time to dig intoit, it's actually really cool
how they framed it up and howthey would Yeah, how that
worked. I'd have to go back andread all of that. It just made
me even more impressed by thepeople, the mathematicians,
statisticians that do all ofthis work, and it makes a lot of
sense when you spend the time tothink about it, but it's been

(58:20):
probably two decades since Ithought about it that deeply.
So what we're going to do righthere is look at what we had for
last year. I think I've got thisanimated, and we do, so we have
this up here, and you will seethat those are the results from
the survey last year, from thecombined surveys last year,
6,610,000 mallards in the MidContinent population, it's a

(58:43):
subset of those TSA strata plusthose three Great Lakes states,
and then 5,160,000 US andCanadian ponds, and yeah, so
that's where you see where weended up there in the liberal.
You could probably say, well,that's a pretty far ways from
moderate or restrictive, butwhile that's true, the

(59:06):
appearance of this matrix, theterritory, if you will, occupied
by the liberal package and bythe restrictive package in this
sort of common domain, thiscommon space changes from year
to year. Sometimes it changesmore than others. So we don't
know.
Even if we could predictperfectly what May Ponds and the

(59:31):
Mid Continent Mallard breedingpopulation size is going to be
right now, We don't know withconfidence where we would end
up. We would have some veryinformed opinions, but we also
know that there's a goodlikelihood that where these Ls,
where these Ms, where these Rsfind themselves on this matrix
are gonna change a little bitbetween this year I mean, yeah,

(59:52):
with this with this next report.So we kinda have to wait and
see.

And that's based upon the performance of the
models from the years before andhow they're how those different
models are weighted.

Mike Brasher (01:00:03):
There was four competing models that capture
hypotheses about added tomortality, compensatory
mortality, and then stronglydensity dependent recruitment
and weakly density dependentrecruitment, which is about as
far as I want to go with thatright now.

Jerad Henson (01:00:17):
I think that's sufficient.

Other than to say each of those models will make a
prediction for what thepopulation size in next year is
going to be, and then wheneverthe data are collected, the
analysts have this formalprocess where they will compare,
they'll look at the predictedversus the observed, and the
model that did the best jobpredicting what next year's
population was going to be getsa little bit more weight. And

(01:00:41):
with each passing year,additional weight is assigned,
additional predictions andcomparisons are made, And the
model that what you would loveto see is these things trend in
a direction where there is onemodel that is consistently being
the best predictor, and amongthe four, I mean, you can only
compare among the four thatyou've designed. And so what you

(01:01:02):
would like to see is that thesethings move in the direction of
one consistently, moreconsistently being the better
predictor, and and it would bethe one that is receiving the
greatest weight, the greatestweight of evidence, belief that
it is representing thepopulation dynamics of the
continent mallards.

Yeah. And this is another way that the is
adaptive. Yeah. Right? Andrigorous.
It's rigorous. It's weightingthe performance of the model the
year before and the year beforeand

Nathan Ratchford (01:01:30):
Yeah.

And trying to get it Yeah. Think it's just

such an important point for your average
hunter like myself. Whatactually is considered, what the
amount of datasets, the amountof, you know, rigor, like I
said, that goes into thesedecisions is so much more than
just the numbers. I think that's

Not paper ducks. Yeah. Not

not It's an extremely important
underestimate. It's an extremelyimportant point. So Yeah.

We're gonna go forward here on our little
presentation, and I'm gonna showyou an an animation that we have
created with the assistance ofour conservation science
assistants here in house. It'ssomething I'd been wanting to do
for a while. It took a it took alot to do, and so what you're
gonna see is an animation, andit's gonna show this matrix. The

(01:02:21):
colors are a little bitdifferent. Red still corresponds
to restrictive, yellowcorresponds to the moderate, and
then the greenish willcorrespond to liberal.
There's some gray cells in here.These are ones which we didn't
really know exactly what theywere because the matrix, the
domain, you know, on this matrixhas changed a little bit through
time, and so what we did is wekinda created common domain

(01:02:43):
across every year, and then wesort of interpolated between
some of the that make any thatwouldn't make no sense to the
people that are listening tothat. I realize this. But
anyway, just trust me that, youknow, we did this the right way,
even had some of our Fish andWildlife Service and USGS folks
review it, they say, yep, youknow, that looks about right, so
this is going to give you areasonable representation of

(01:03:05):
actually how the matrix has infact changed over time based on
a variety of things. It's goingto be mostly related to new
knowledge that has been gainedthrough the years by comparing
those predictions to theobservations on population size
in the next year, and that'swhat you see.

(01:03:26):
Again, another way we're goingto depict this here momentarily,
but you'll see the amount ofgreen, the amount of red
changing from one year to thenext, and so it actually does
adapt in response to newinformation.

You see the you know, one of the things that's
really interesting is you seehow the the red shifts more.
Right? That restrictive seasoncan shift more. It's there's
there's more opportunity forthat dot to fall in there
depending upon the habitat andthe habitat and the bee pop from
the year before. So

That other little darker green box that you see
moving around in there, that wasthe optimal selection for that
given year. I think it's missingin one of those years. It's
missing in some of the earlyyears because I couldn't find
that or we couldn't find thatdata, but the other thing that
you notice is that as you gothrough time, the amount of the
of cells, the number of cells ina moderate package become very,

(01:04:19):
very small, and that is becausethat's just not the optimal.
It's not being identified as anyas that suite of models as the
as the optimal strategy forachieving one of those
objectives, primarily becausewhen you go from a it's
predicting that when you go froma liberal to a moderate season
framework, the harvest ratechanges very little. And when

(01:04:43):
you go from a also, when you gofrom a moderate to a
restrictive, that harvest ratewould change very little.
Now, when you go fromrestrictive to liberal, it
changes enough for it to tellyou that, okay, there's a
difference in the likely impactof one regulatory package versus

(01:05:03):
the other. But you can see, whatwas that, 02/2005? We got really
close to a moderate season. So,yeah, the other thing that I
want to point out is this, thatwhat you're seeing right now
goes from 1999 through 2021, Ibelieve, and across the top is
Canadian ponds. So keep that inmind because we're gonna show

(01:05:26):
you a matrix here a little bitlater on that's gonna include
The US ponds as part of this.
So alright. Next thing that I'mgonna show, I'm gonna let yeah.
I'll jump forward here. This isthe other way that we can
portray The matrix changesthrough time. This sort of takes
each of those matrix matrices?
I think either of those willwork. Right? They will right

(01:05:48):
now. You you can take those andjust express the the number of
those liberal, moderate, andrestrictive, and closed seasons
as a percentage of the totalnumber of sales in that common
domain, and you can see how thatchanges, and you can see how it
changed. There were some hardrules put in place around 2001

(01:06:10):
or so about what the closedseason threshold was going to
be.
That was changed, and then itwas changed again in 02/2007,
and so then what you in fact seehappening is this thing over the
past ten years or so, it beganto stabilize around sort of a
pretty consistent percentage ofeach of those regulatory

(01:06:31):
packages.

And that's the model learning from itself,
improving each year, right? Soit's optimizing, it's finding a
pattern, right, that seems to beconsistent, so that's why you're
getting a more consistentframework.

It is adaptive. It is.

Contrary to popular belief, man. It is. But
okay. So I told Nathan a littlewhile ago that I didn't think we
were gonna go past noon, but Ithink he probably knows me
better than I know myselfbecause he changed his his
meeting, and we're getting closeto the noon hour.

I think one of the things you'll point out too is
is around and it's somethingthat's not kind of on that
adaptive side. Right? It isadaptive, but it's not knee
jerk. It's not reactive.

Yeah.

Right? Knee jerk wise. Right?

It's based on

It's it's it's it's working in a time frame we
can actually operate at too.Right? So

And you can you can have questions about the
data. We all do. Everybody'salways looking at it. It's not
perfect. As many questions asthe average hunter or the
informed hunter or anybody outthere thinks they have about it,
I guarantee you, the scientificcommunity has that many and
more, and they're looking intothem.
Right. Are they looking intothem and addressing them fast

(01:07:47):
enough to satisfy the, quote,critics? No, that's never gonna
happen because of limitations,capacity, and resources, and you
know, but these questions arebeing examined. So I've got
another animation, just threeyears in this one, but this is
sort of a new matrix. This wassupposed to be something that

(01:08:10):
was supposed to be implemented,I believe, in like 2021, and
this may get a little detailed,but I'm going to go here because
I think it's important becausewhen people look, because I know
how people will go back tocertain pieces of information
and pull it up and try toscrutinize it and so forth and
so on, so I want to becompletely transparent.
I told you a minute ago thatwhen you look at that animated

(01:08:32):
graph for that longer time spanacross the top was Canadian
ponds.

When you

look back through history of this breeding
population and habitat survey,there were a number of years,
maybe twenty years or so, Icould be awful a bit on that,
when US ponds were not counted.It was only Canadian ponds that
were counted. So when it came tolike to the mid nineties for
them to develop these populationmodels to try to predict
recruitment from habitatconditions, I. E. Number of
ponds, they looked at twodifferent things.

(01:09:02):
They looked at models thatincluded just Canadian ponds
because you can go back to themid-50s, a longer dataset, and
then they looked at a set ofmodels that included ponds from
US and Canada, and for that, youcould only start in the 1970s,
let's say, because you can'treally include the years prior

(01:09:23):
to that in that model becauseyou didn't have US pawn numbers.
So you had a shorter dataseries, and for the longest
time, the best performing modelswere those that included only
Canadian pawns. So they'reinterested in achieving the
highest predictive powerpossible because they're trying

(01:09:44):
to make decisions, and even ifyou don't have all the
mechanisms right, as long as youhave a strong predictive power
for a decision making process,that's what's important at that
point So in they had Canadianponds being the only pawn
variable for the longest time,but then you get to the
mid-twenty teens, early 2020s,that dataset that includes US

(01:10:09):
ponds becomes long enough thatmodels that include it begin to
outperform. This is myunderstanding of it. Anybody of
our state, federal, USGSpartners that are listening to
this, if I'm saying this wrong,feel free to let me know, we'll
do a correction.
But eventually, the models, whenthey compared the models with US

(01:10:31):
plus Canadian ponds to thosewith only Canadian ponds, The US
and Canadian ponds model beganto outperform the Canadian
ponds. So they made the changebecause, again, always looking
to make improvements and ensurethe highest predictive power or
predictive potential. When theydid that, and now we can look at
this matrix here that's rotatingfrom 23, 24, 25, there is a lot

(01:10:58):
more green on this matrix. Thiswas noticed by all of

our

Flyway Council tech rep partners. I remember
having some conversations withthem, and then we were like,
woah, that's a big change. Yeah.Now it's based on data, it's
based on the best predictivemodels, but it does represent a
big change. What I have notdone, and you'd have to go back
and sort of parse this out,you'd have to separate out US or

(01:11:23):
you had to separate out Canadianponds.
Where would we be if we werestill using Canadian ponds only?
I don't know. I don't know. Idon't know that any of that is
actually out there. I guess youcould probably get at that.
Anyway, it'd take a little bitof work to figure that out, but
I haven't seen that, I haven'tdone that, and I think that

(01:11:45):
matrix would still change fromfrom year to year. So anyway,
this again, just beingtransparent, this is a change
that has happened, and so it isstill changing from one year to
the next.

It is. It is. And if even if you look at last
year's the the twenty twentyfive one, you know, when you
look at that

And I can't stop this information. So But

where you fall where the optimal strategy is,
you know, if you took a a 20%hit in either pawn count or
Yeah. Population, the themodel's gonna put you in a
restrictive right? A morerestrictive season.

Yeah.

And so it it it is there in a way where you can see
where if the population took ahit or habitat takes a drastic
hit, it's gonna it's gonna putyou in a season that's more
restrictive.

Right. I'm going back here to that matrix for our
current year. It's a little bitdifferent, at least in terms of
the domain, you know, the extentof the domain, pawn numbers and
breeding pawn, because I kind ofwanted to make this where we
could read it, you know, sodon't be confused by any of
that, but this part of it is allthe same, you know, the main

(01:12:57):
part that you see as as what wasjust in that animated graphic.
But, yeah, the kinda to yourpoint, Jared, what was that?
6.5, you know, 20%, if you do aa or 6.6, 20% of that is what,
like 1.3, so somewhere in there.
So then that would drop thisdown to 5.3 ish. Right? Mhmm.

(01:13:24):
Then that gets you there. Yeah.
What about ponds? 5.16, if itdrops 20%, now you're looking at
four point something. Mean,yeah, you're Yeah. Yep. So it's
going to be interesting in Butabout a week when we get

it's one of those, you you don't see I take that I
mean, you generally don't seegiant swings like that in a
population, but it can happen,and it has happened,

but it's not the norm. Yep. And again, this
includes Mallards from thetraditional from a portion of
that traditional survey area,plus Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota. I have not looked atthe Mallard numbers from those
three states. They will havesome bearing on this.
Yes. But yeah. So lots to lookforward to there. And then
pintails, there have beenabsolutely no questions directed

(01:14:11):
at me this year about pintails,people are absolutely happy. No,
I'm just kidding.
I have had tons of questionsabout

Had somebody asked me this morning?

About pintail harvest strategy, and we did
have a full length episode withBrandon Reisches and Mike
Zemanski detailing how that cameabout, what the safeguards are,
how it's going to operate. Thereis no shortage of opinion among
hunters on whether this is agood thing or a bad thing. The

(01:14:41):
one good thing is is that we'regonna have data to evaluate what
happened. The other good thingis that we're not going to shoot
pintails into extinction,guarantee you that. The people
We're

comfortable enough in the data that harvest has
that little of an impact.

If the people that are out there saying that we're
going to over harvest pintailsin one year are true, or if
they're correct, then we'll seethat in the harvest numbers,
this harvest strategy willadjust. It'll push it back to a
one pintail season or it'll pushit to a closed season. But the

(01:15:21):
one thing that will havehappened is that we will have
learned, and we will that willwe are confident that once
habitat conditions improve inthe important areas for
pintails, they will recover.Even in the in the idea of a of
a this presumed fearedoverharvest by some people, then

(01:15:47):
there will be an opportunity forpintails to recover, and we will
have learned a lot, and we willcontinue to let the harvest
strategy work, and if it pushesit back to a three bird limit,
we'll try it again, you'llcollect another data point, and
that's how learning occurs, andyou have to be willing to do
that. Feels like, and by allother sort of superficial

(01:16:11):
accounts, and what we've beensort of geared to believe
through a one or two pintellimit over the past fifteen or
so years, this feels like a morerisky feels.
An emotional thing. Feels like amore risky proposition. From a
data standpoint, the models saywe can do this. So that's the

(01:16:32):
value of or that's thedifference between emotion and
data.

That's

it. So from a scientist standpoint, I'm, like,
super excited about what wemodel.

You know? Right? You actually get into Yeah. The
Yeah. But but, yeah, the kneejerk reaction is, oh my gosh.
And then the story with pintailsis like, it's the haves and have
nots when you're at pintail. Ifyou're someone who is hunting
pintails, right, there are someareas that just are loaded up
with them, but the average duckhunter might see one or two.

(01:17:03):
Right? You're not they're notmaking up a significant portion
of anyone's bag limits

Yeah.

I mean

of of a large portion. There are some places
where yeah.

If I see that flock of birds right there, I'm
gonna try to shoot three drakes.You know? No doubt about it.
Gonna let the hen go justbecause that's the way I am. I
mean, that's that's okay.
It's cool. There are no henrestrictions. A lot of people
were very puzzled by that. Wetalked about that with Mike and
Brandon. They they they alsobelieve and the evidence shows

(01:17:35):
that hunters are going to favordrakes, just as you said,
especially on pintails,especially down, you know, late
in the season.
Yeah. You got

a big old bull sprig coming in.

He's And got a

target on his head.

So Mike's sort of their state's philosophy is, why
regulate something that peopleare going to do anyway? They're
going to do on their own. Again,simplify all Vast majority of of
people are going do that, and ifyou are uneasy about you or your
club or uneasy about the henrestriction, then self impose

(01:18:10):
one. That's how harvestregulations got started in the
first place, was by a lot ofthose historic duck clubs being
concerned and saying, we'regoing to do our part. If that's
what you believe, then do it.
But if other people say, I'mgoing to lean on the science and
the data and what these aretelling me and I'm gonna shoot

(01:18:34):
three pintails, might shoot twohens, might shoot one hen, might
shoot three hens someday. Imean, I don't think we should
begrudge those those people. I Ithink that's kinda that's part
of the learning process inevaluating what's happening
here.

And a lot of that's opportunity. Right? If
you've got the opportunities toshoot three Drakes, most people
are gonna do that. But if yougot one of those days, one of
those seasons where you're justhappy to take home three ducks,
then that's a different story.

Yeah. You know? Okay. I think I had one more,
yeah, one more graph, one morematrix. That's a little bit
small.
You might have to lean in realclose on your screen. This is
the pintail matrix, and so theharvest strategy for pintails
spits out something similar towhat the Mid Continent Mallard

(01:19:26):
model does where you've got amatrix that simplifies that
optimal decision makingframework across the top for
pintails is mean latitude ofsettling of the pintails that
are counted during the survey.When they're flying these
surveys, they're flying along,they'll observe a pintail,

(01:19:49):
they'll count it, they'll logit, they have a georeferenced
location, they know where thatis. So for all of these
pintails, this is how I thinkthey do it. I don't think they I
think this is almost how theyhave to do it.
I don't think they do it at thestrata or transect level. I
mean, they could, they couldestimate at the transect level
and then kind of extrapolatethat, that might actually be
what they do. Anyway, thespecifics of that I don't know,

(01:20:11):
so sort of caveat there, butgenerally stated, they will for
the pintails that they eithercount or that they estimate at
some certain small spatialscale, they will have a location
tied to those, and then theywill calculate my guess is it's
a weighted average of theaverage location of all of those

(01:20:35):
estimated or counted pintails,and so what they're looking for
is what's that average latitudewhere they counted or estimated
all those pintails. Was it downin the Prairies or was it up in
the Boreal Forest? Where wouldyou expect it to be this year?
Boreal. Yeah. Because a lot ofthe birds flew. You expect most
of the penthouse to be to becounted or estimated this year

(01:20:56):
to occur in the Boreal, so it'sgonna be a higher mean latitude
of of observed Why

does that get factored, Mike? That's why I was
asking that factor?

I assume

that's reproduction in each of those
habitats. I

don't want to get too deep into that because I
don't know other than the onlything I know from talking to
some of the folks involved inthe modeling is that it relates
partly, and I don't know if it'sexclusively, but it relates
partly to the fact that priordatasets, prior years of

(01:21:28):
information have indicated thatwhen pintails overfly the
prairies, higher mean latitudewhere they settle, they are more
likely to settle in areas thatare either unsurveyed, not
covered by the aerial surveys,or they're settling in areas

(01:21:51):
that are poorly surveyed wherejust random location of where
they settle may result in thembeing missed or not estimated as
representatively as, let's say,an area where they would settle
where

they have

a higher density of transects and and so forth.

Generates an underestimate.

That's right. So the higher their mean latitude
of settling, the more of anunderestimate we believe that
number that comes back from thesurvey actually is. So it's a
little counter to what theproduction thing Again, this is
my understanding, state, federalpartners, you're listening to

(01:22:30):
this, and if I've got thiswrong, send me an email, we'll
go on and we'll correct it. ButI checked with folks before we
When we first saw this come outlast year, Matt Young said, hey,
Mike, what's going on here? Thisseems backwards.
We thought they made a mistakein the matrix. We thought they'd
flipped it because we werethinking on production side of
things. We thought higher thesettling latitude, production
would be lower, and we thoughtthe higher the settling

(01:22:52):
latitude, the more likely itshould be for a restrictive
season. But if you look at this,farther out to the right you go,
the more likely you are to havea liberal season. And so
although there is, in the borealforest anyway, productivity is
likely to be a little bit lower.

(01:23:12):
I still don't think we have agreat handle on But a lot of
these pintails are going tooverfly even the boreal and
they'll nest in the coastalplain, the Arctic coastal plain
where productivity may be quitehigh. Maybe they'll fly to
Alaska where in some yearsproductivity is quite high, but
this is trying to capture thefact that when they are settling
in those more northernlandscapes, they're not We're

(01:23:35):
likely to be underestimating thetrue number that are there, and
so then what you have on otherside here is the breeding
population size for pintails inthat traditional survey area.
Right. Okay. Clear?
Clear as mud?

Clear as mud.

Oh, and that's always really interesting with
pintails just because they are,from a breeding ecology
standpoint, they're different.Yeah. They have some specific
habitat requirements. Yeah.Yeah.
You know, short grass prairies,we got a specialist.

One of the things I'm gonna be most interested to
see this year is how does thismatrix change from year one to
year two? How does it change?

As the model's learning from a very early
standpoint, that'll be really

interesting You to can see there's only four cells
in this domain area where itwould be a two pintail limit. It
would oscillate between a threeand a one most of the time.
That's partly real it's relatedto a couple of things, but
partly it's just related to lowpredicted difference in harvest
rate between a three bird and aand a two bird bag, you know, so

(01:24:38):
that's what we got going onthere. Yeah. I you know, there's
also the the blue wing tealconversation that we've got nine
days this year.
Who knows what it's gonna be?I'm gonna be interested to see
what that number is. Are wegonna stay at nine days in '26?
Are we gonna jump back up to tosixteen days? I think most
people would probably handicapit and say, yeah, we're probably
still gonna be at a nine daynext year, but we'll see.

(01:25:00):
We'll learn soon enough.

And it was so close. I mean, was just under
the threshold last year that itvery easily could, you know

Yeah. And blue winged teal are one of those
species that I mean, like mostwaterfowl, but they're
especially one that you get somewet conditions and, man, they
can have a population explosion.

So I do think I saw something, maybe Minnesota
though, numbers. Was itMinnesota or Wisconsin where
blue wing teal numbers were downsurprisingly, to surprisingly
low levels. But, we're workingon that on that on summarizing
some of that information. We'lllook for an opportunity to try
to bring that to folks, but thishas been a fun conversation. I

(01:25:45):
didn't we we have never donethis.
We didn't really know what we'regonna be getting into. Just
trying to give people somethingto, yeah, to get excited about
and Excited.

Better understand what's kind of going on. You
went for a ride with us as faras our thought process on here.

I will again say the numbers that are going to
come out next week, as you'relistening to this, are not Ducks
Unlimited's numbers. Yes, we'regoing to put them out there.
Yes, we're going to put them onour website. We're trying to
help communicate these numbersand their implications kind of
on behalf of our federal statepartners, try to get them in the

(01:26:23):
hands of the people that arepassionate about these numbers,
that care about theirimplications. They're not DU's
numbers.
Now, despite me saying that,there will still be people that
say, DU just put out theirnumbers. Okay, so go on
believing that. They're notDucks Unlimited's numbers. We
never will take It's not becausewe aren't proud of them, but we

(01:26:44):
don't want to take the creditaway from the people that
actually are doing this work.Wishing Wildlife Service,
Canadian Wildlife Service,provincial agencies, state
agencies, and a number of otherpeople.
I think some of our DU Canadastaff, at least in the past,
have gotten out and helped withsome of the ground surveys, and
yeah, it's it's a tremendousamount of work. It is. And we
wanna make sure they get thecredit for this. We're just

(01:27:05):
fortunate to be in a positionwhere we can help communicate
that. And that's

the thing is that we have the the team and the the
ability, right, as a partner inthat group. Yeah. To disseminate
that information better than USFish and Wildlife, they don't
have a big marketing department.Right? Or Yeah.
Or anything like that.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. It certainly it it gives you
appreciation going through thethings that we covered today and
and what goes into thesedecisions both from the survey
and the amount of work that goesin. What is it? 50 over 50,000
linear miles that are flown inthe course of that or something.
I mean, just incredible what ourour partners go through in order

(01:27:45):
to gather these datasets, andthen going through what actually
is involved in that in thoseframeworks.
It's just yeah. Hats off to thepeople who are putting the work
in. Yeah.

Send us any questions or send us any
corrections. Send us any

I put

them all my That's right. Dupodcast@ducks.org.
Attention Chris Isaac. And wewould love to hear from folks.
If you have any questions, letus know.
Give us great material tofollow-up on. And y'all stay
tuned next week. Again, asyou're listening to this, it

(01:28:26):
should be a big week. Stay tunedto all DU platforms, social
media, web, might get someemails from us. I think we're
going to try to do our waterfowlseason outlook livestream again.
We're kind of working on that.We don't know the day of that
because that's going to be donelike the day that the report our

(01:28:47):
goal is to do that differentfrom years past. We're gonna do
that the night that the reportis released. We do not know when
that report is going to bereleased. Our understanding is
that it is going to be theSeptember.
Monday is Labor Day, we don'texpect it to be that day, that
leaves four days. Keep your eyespeeled, folks. And of course,

(01:29:12):
could be totally wrong, and inwhich case, that's that's all
me, but, you know, whatever. Wedo we do the best we can, and we
appreciate y'all joining us forthe ride. Jared, great to have
you here.
Thanks for

for all the

the great info.

I I really enjoyed just talking about this, and and
this is a a conversation that Ihave with with my friends, you
know, and people that I see allthe time, so it's really nice to
be able to kinda talk to some ofthese points and get kinda down
into the not into the nittygritty, but at the base level,
like, how this stuff works.

You know, I think it's okay to get into the weeds.
The ducks live in the weeds. Wecan get in the weeds. We

can too.

You know, proverbial weeds. They're actual
weeds. Nathan, great having yoube a part of this. Also, you had
this is your year two now whereyou'll be working on all this
stuff with us. So one more trip,let's

Thanks, do Mike. I've always believed in
being in rooms with peoplesmarter than me, so.

Good to let us know when you figure that out.
Right, well, thanks to all ofyou for joining us. Thanks to my
colleagues here in studio.Thanks to Chris Isaac and Rachel
Jared for the incredible workthat they do with all these
video and audio podcasts. Welook forward to y'all spending a
lot of time with us next weekand in the coming months as we
launch headlong into thewaterfowl hunting season.

(01:30:29):
Have a good one, y'all.

VO (01:30:33):
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Ep. 702 - From Surveys to Seasons: Previewing the 2025 Duck Numbers

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 702 - From Surveys to Seasons: Previewing the 2025 Duck Numbers