Ep. 723 - Bag Limits — The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown - Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Mike Brasher (01:42):
Hey, everyone. Join us for today's episode of
the Ducks Unlimited podcastwhere we welcome in doctor Mark
Vrtiska at the University ofNebraska Lincoln, doctor Brian
Davis at Mississippi StateUniversity, and doctor Scott
Stevens with Ducks Unlimited. Wetalk about bag limits and how
that affects your satisfactionas a hunter. We also talk about
sort of the interestinginterplay between that
satisfaction and what youactually expect as it may be

(02:03):
conveyed to you by what your baglimit is. We have a lot of fun
and four colleagues that spend alot of time together over the
years.
Stay tuned. Lots of stories,lots of great information.

VO (02:18):
Can we do a mic check, please? Everybody, welcome back
to the Ducks Unlimited podcast.I'm your host, doctor Mike
Brasher. I'm your host, KatieBurke. I'm your host, doctor
Jared Henson. And I'm your host,Matt Harrison. Welcome to the
Ducks Unlimited podcast, theonly podcast about all things

(02:40):
waterfowl. From hunting insightsto science based discussions
about ducks, geese, and issuesaffecting waterfowl and wetlands
conservation in North America.The DU podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan, the officialperformance dog food of Ducks
Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan,always advancing. Also proudly
sponsored by Birddog Whiskey andCocktails. Whether you're

(03:02):
winding down with your bestfriend or celebrating with
favorite crew, Bird Dog bringsaward winning flavor to every
moment. Enjoy responsibly.

Everyone, welcome back. I'm doctor Mike Brazier.
I'm gonna be your host ontoday's episode, and we have a
fun one for you. We are joinedremotely by three of my friends,
three of my colleagues. We'regonna be talking about bag
limits and what they mean to youas an individual, what they may
mean to your friends, and howthose interpretations and how

(03:45):
they influence our satisfactionof as as hunters likely differs
based on who you are, your pastexperiences.
And, also, we're gonna talkabout, like, why is this even
important? Why do we care asmanagers about satisfaction
levels, expectations, etcetera,of hunters? Joining me remote, I
am super excited to to welcomein three of my three of my my

(04:09):
former, I guess, partly formerinstructors, current colleagues,
and certainly friends. Firstoff, I'll go with doctor Mark
Vertiska, professor of practiceat the School of Natural
Resource at the University ofNebraska Lincoln. Mark, great to
have you on.

Mark Vrtiska (04:27):
Yeah. You forgot to throw on mentors there,
Bridger.

No. So

My memory sounds good.

Scott Stephens (04:32):
Yeah. Sounds like he's still practicing for
his role. Is that true? Yeah.

That's right. So more of this is what you'll get.
Alright. So next up is JohnBrian Davis. He is the James C
Kennedy endowed professor inwaterfowl and wetlands
conservation at MississippiState University.
Brian, great to have you be partof this as well.

Brian Davis (04:52):
This is great. Thank you.

And then a a familiar guest to all of you
that have tuned into the DucksUnlimited podcast before, doctor
Scott Stevens. He's our seniordirector of prairie and boreal
conservation strategy. Scott,thanks for taking time to join
us.

Yep. Happy to be here. So are are you gonna give
background on sort of how we allknow each other?

Did you wanna do that? That was gonna be my next
step. I'd let I'd let you dothat if you want

to. Sure.

Well, the four of us were all at Mississippi
State at the same time for a fewyears. Right? Fraser, I'm I'm
less clear on the years that youwere there. You were an
undergrad when we were all ingrad school?

I was there from '93 through, like, '99. Yeah.
And so I overlapped with each ofyou guys. I think y'all are all
grad students. And, yeah, Brian,I probably was there when you
were both a master's and PhDstudent.
Yep. But but I did wanna coverthat, Scott. So who was it yeah.
When were y'all there? Because II I could probably get it about

(05:50):
right.

Yeah. I got there in, let me think about
this, '93. So I think Mark wasalready there.

January. Yeah. I remember Mark. Think you do.
Yeah.
I yeah. Because he was alreadymaking trips to the Delta to
kill ducks. So and I was therefrom '91 to '95.

What, Mark? Was that for your PhD only? Where'd
you do your master's?

Yes. Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.

And so you came to Mississippi State for PhD and
then JBD, our our our initialsfor for Brian there?

I got here in 1878 when it opened. They left in
2001.

And then came

back I got here in 1994. Yep.

Yeah. And we all studied under the mentorship of
doctor Rick Kaminsky. And, yeah,it's it's great to connect with
the four of you guys. I'vecontinued to interact with you
as friends and colleagues in theprofession. We're all in this
waterfowl space.
People have heard from Scott onnumerous occasions about what he
does. Brian, I want I I can'tremember. I think you might have

(06:57):
been on an episode or maybe I'vejust tried and failed so many
times to to get you on anepisode that it feels like
you've been on one. So but forfolks that may not know who you
are, give a brief sort ofbackground on what you do there
at at Mississippi State.

Applied waterfowl wetlands research and other
projects as they come along.We've done coastal marsh
restoration, of course, with youand and Ducks Unlimited. Working
on some shorebird projects. Wegot some grant money to do WRE
evaluation, not only land andwater birds, but water quality,
kind of the natural capital ofthings. Worked on a golden eye

(07:34):
project in Alaska and stillworking on a bunch of backlog
stuff like our Mallard telemetrydata that we collected years
ago, but also working with JamesCalicut to kinda reinvigorate
some of that with with GPSradio.
So that's more of that to comeand and a lot of buzz in the
wind industry, you know, and howwind and other energy may

(07:57):
influence waterfowl and otherbirds. So we may we may engage
with some of that here in thenear future. Who knows? And then
the other big one, of course,with you and and and the big the
big buzz at DU is the Duck DNA.And I'm really fortunate to be
on a grant with Lovretsky andSchumer and Ariel at at in
Illinois and several otherslooking at Mallard genetics.

(08:20):
So that was really that's been alot of fun.

Yeah. That was the one as you were talking that I
remembered. We did make it downthere to Mississippi State and
join you in person for for thatepisode. So appreciate all of
that. You also did a lot of workon on wood ducks through the
years.
I don't know if you've mentionedthat when you're giving your
intro, but we wanna get you onto be a to do our our wood duck
species profile, and we have atentative date for that right

(08:42):
now. So we hope to to hook upwith you here again near future.
And, Mark, you have a you'vesorta done well, Brian, you used
to work for Ducks Unlimited fora number of years then came back
went back to Mississippi Stateas professor. And Mark is
another here that has sorta hadtwo two stints in his long

(09:03):
career. One was as a statewildlife agents agency,
waterfowl biologist, and but nowyou're at the at the university.
So a little bit of yourbackground, Mark.

Well, actually, my my first job was with Ducks
Unlimited in the southernregional office there in
Ridgeland, Mississippi. So ashout out to all the folks down
there in Ridgeland. I'd I'dthey're great folks to work
with. But that was my first jobright out of school and then
took the position of waterfowlprogram manager at Nebraska Gama

(09:33):
Parks for twenty one years. Andthen in 2020, I made the leap
into academia in the Ivory Towerwith Davis to get you know?
And so I've been here for fiveyears now going on six.

And you received some recognition earlier this
year. Right? Tell us about that.You're like and someone someone
recognized you as, like, theoldest new professional or new
academic. What was that?
What was that distinction?

I I got the early career award at the university,
which you never think aboutgetting any kind of award, but
the last one I thought I wouldever get would be the early
career award. But it made sensegiven I've only been here five
years, but it was it was kind ofodd to have received that, but

(10:23):
I'm I'm honored to get that.It's it's it's kind of a nice
tribute. So and it's been funhere at Nebraska.

So Good deal. Well, congratulations on that
award. I know you're deservingand have seen you interact with
young professionals, and youlove mentoring. And and so thank
you for that as well. And, yes,thanks to the three of you for
the role that you have played inin my career and and providing
that constant mentorship.
We're more colleagues now, butstill look to you for advice

(10:53):
every now and then. Although,we'll have to be careful about
how much advice I ask for youfrom the Yeah. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Remember, you you get what you pay for

too, and it's free. Yep.

Today's topic is or today's episode is sort of as
as a compliment to a well, it'sa it's a compliment to an
article that will will be out inthe Ducks Unlimited magazine by
the time this episode airs. Itwill be an understanding
waterfowl feature that isauthored by Mark, and the title
of it, at least the title that Ihave here in front of me is

(11:25):
what's your limit? A frankdiscussion about the influence
of bag limits on huntingsatisfaction. Mark, this is one
of those articles that just sortof came that you offered up to
us. Typically, every year we'llMatt Young and his staff will go
through and develop a lineup ofarticles that we want throughout
throughout, you know, eachepisode, and then occasionally

(11:46):
we welcome just sort of articlesthat are provided to us just
because someone has writtenthem, they think it might be a
good feature for the article,and that was the case with one
of these, and Matt shared itwith me, and I was like, well,
this is a this is an awesometopic, an awesome written
article.
So for those that may not haveread it yet, I encourage you to

(12:07):
do so. But tell us about whatled you to wanna write this
article, Mark, sort of give usthe high level overview of what
it is and the the topic and thenwhy you wanted to go down this
road.

Well, first of all, Mike, it's kinda funny how
your career goes, but I neverthought I would be as interested
in kind of what people are doingwith ducks as I would the ducks
themselves. And so I've kindagot into a lot of the the hunter
aspects of of waterfowlmanagement. And, of course, what
as soon as you get into thatworld, you know, bag limits,

(12:39):
season lengths, there's a wholeyou just get right into it from
that perspective. And werecently had been involved here
with a project done in actuallyNew Zealand, and it was from
another form former colleaguethat had moved down there, took
a position, and was doing asurvey with his duck hunters in

(13:03):
New Zealand. And and I don'thave a whole lot of background
about duck hunting in NewZealand, but he he had and and
for those that don't know, theyactually have a pretty very bag
limit across the New Zealand,which ranges from, if I remember
correctly, six ducks per day allthe way up to 50 ducks per day.

(13:24):
And so this was an opportunity.He was trying to get some
information, and and we me andChris Jasinski, who's also here
at UNL and Matt Gunteret, alsohere at the University of
Nebraska, realized that we kindahad this opportunity to kinda
survey individuals on thesedifferent bag limits. And so the
the real impetus was we wesurveyed hunters, and, you know,

(13:48):
it's and it's really difficultfor me or anybody else here in
The US and maybe even Canada tothink about a a 12 duck or 25
duck or even a 50 duck baglimit. I mean, it's almost
incomprehensible. And kind ofthe the our initial analysis of
that information was thathunters, when they get a 25 bird

(14:12):
bag or a 50 bird bag limit,that's what they expect to
shoot.
And their satisfaction if theydon't meet that that bag limit,
their satisfaction goes down.And to me, it's just amazing
that you would have thatopportunity to harvest that many
birds and still not necessarilybe satisfied. And and we knew

(14:32):
going into it from a couplestudies here in The US,
Mississippi for one actually,and then Wisconsin, that we knew
expectations were tied to baglimits. So but we're talking six
ducks. K?
So when you're getting thesehigh bag limits and it's still
that same expectation thathere's the bag limit. Man, I

(14:53):
need to achieve it to have asuccessful hunt was kind of a
really kind of a mind blowingthing that was like, wow. Since
then, we've done a little moreanalysis on that, and we'll be
we're trying to get that allkinda compiled and and get that
out. But it just kinda reallystruck us that, you you have an
opportunity to shoot 25 ducksand you're still not happy. Wow.

(15:15):
That that that's kind of prettyinteresting aspect of bag
limits, which then leads youinto this whole argument, if you
will, or discussion. Maybe it'sa better way of putting it. I
mean, what do you need? I mean,and that's kinda why the title
of the article, how how many doyou need? And as you mentioned,
there's a lot of factors that gointo that.

(15:37):
But as managers, we kinda setthe bar with bag limits right
from the beginning when we setwhatever bag limit we have, and
I think that's kinda sets thetone. And and so I think you
have to be a little it's justone of those things that when we
start messing around bag limits,we need to be really careful
because it's not so much whatwe're doing biologically as much

(15:59):
as sociologically what we'redoing with those bag limit
changes.

You know, Mark, I hear a lot of people say, well,
just set the bag limits set thebag limits to be whatever is
best for the ducks, but it's notthat simple, is it? Because the
bag limit is it's not for theducks. A bag limit is for the
people. A bag limit is well,it's to achieve some sort of
outcome for the hunters withoutsort of compromising the
integrity of a waterfowlpopulation or the health of a of

(16:26):
a population. Right?

Yeah. I mean and I think it there is some
biological underpinnings tothat. I mean, if you stop and
think we're not gonna have theability to shoot 10 canvasbacks
a day. Biologically, that'sprobably gonna impact that
population. But we couldprobably shoot 10 blue wings a
day, and that probably wouldn'thave any impact.

(16:49):
So there is there is abiological underpinning given
the species of duck. But, yeah,for the most part, we're trying
to, I think, cut that dealbetween opportunity and maybe
not having that risk ofoverharvest for some species.
And then you could throw thewrench in there about

(17:09):
consistency of of bag limitsbecause, theoretically, each
duck could have a totallydifferent bag limit. You know?
And and how many bag limits doyou wanna remember or, you know,
try to remember while you'resitting in the blind?
So there's a lot of nuances towhen you set up a bag limit.

Yeah. You know, so, Scott, your thoughts there
about what it is that like like,satisfaction is an interesting
concept that plays heavily intothis. Right? And that's, you
know, a lot of the harvestmanagement objectives. Even if
you go to adaptive harvestmanagement right now, the the at
the high level, you're talkingabout maximizing long term

(17:50):
cumulative harvest, so that'sone way to sort of measure
opportunity, and I Mark, you'vebeen in this space, but, you
know, it's like opportunity wethink sort of correlates with
satisfaction.
We want hunters to be satisfiedbecause we want hunters. I mean,
number one, we're managing theresource and making a lot of
these decisions to benefit thehunters. They are the ones that

(18:13):
help support the conservation.We need a strong healthy hunter
population to continue tocontinue doing the conservation
work and the management that wedo to to create situations for
sustaining duck populations. Soall these things kind of play
into one another.
So, Scott, your thoughts kind ofon that that sort of
psychological concept tosatisfaction and the role that

(18:33):
it plays and the complexitiesthat it brings into something as
simple or as as fundamental toour hunting here in North
America as bag limits.

Yeah. Well, as as Mark was talking, like, what
struck me, you know, was, oh, sothere's a trade off between
satisfaction and opportunity isreally, I think, what what
you're kinda saying, Mark. Youknow? It's like in places where
you can have larger bags, maybeyou create more opportunity, but
that may lead to decreasedsatisfaction. It's like, oh,

(19:03):
dang.
I only killed 22 ducks todaybecause I I didn't get 25. That
was a crappy day. You know?Whereas, like, if the limit was
20, they'd say, hey. You know?
I did I did great. You know? So,yeah, it it is interesting. I'm
I think as we were preparing forthis, you know, I think
satisfaction is is is kind oflike beauty. You know?

(19:24):
It's in the eye of the beholder.And what are what are you
looking for when you go outthere in the field? And, you
know, I think many of us wouldsay, well, I wanna see lots of
ducks. I want a nice setting,but I wanna harvest quite a few
too. And if you can shoot alimit, that's even better.
So, yeah, I I hearken back todays when we were in grad
school, and there's at least oneguy on this podcast that not

(19:46):
only did he have to shoot theright ducks and the limit, but
he had to shoot them in theright order Yeah. Where he
wouldn't shoot Greenwing tealwhen

they were

flying first thing in the morning.

So He

wanted to wait till he had shot his mallard.
So, you know, it gets even morecomplex than that.

Yeah. Yeah. And we spent hours hours waiting for
that last duck. So when we couldhave been taking naps or
watching football grades yourpenis.

When they were abundant at No.

And and when he could've They

shot one at Sunrise.

Yeah. Like He could've tagged one out right
there, but no.

For clarity, it was not this person either.

Oh. No.

It was Jay Bryan who was like, no. Shoot our
mallards first and then

shoot

a

bunch of guys. Yeah. Chipbug sitting next to
me. Yeah. I didn't know Brazierwas that selective.
No. I

did not

that's all I no.

Oh, no.

I've been on one of those hunts with you two
where we had four four greenheads and two two Drake green
wings each, but it was a it wasnot a good hunt because we had
to shoot them in the rearbecause they were landing away
from us.

Yeah. That's

So it's all messed up.

That's right.

You know, I I anytime I have one of these
discussions, I think aboutsomething that I believe I heard
Larry Reynolds say, and, ofcourse, Mark, you know Larry
very well. He said, you know,satisfaction and there's a lot
of truth to this. Larry isfamous for a lot of tongue in
cheek and smart aleck remarksand things, but there's a lot of
he also has a lot of poignantcomments is that, you know,

(21:08):
satisfaction, as I mentioned, isa psychological concept or
something that we think about,something that that is sort of
innate to us as as humans.Satisfaction is determined by
the degree to which experienceintersects expectations. That's
kind of why we say so manytimes, well, set your
expectations appropriately, andso that I think is something

(21:30):
that carries through all of thisthis conversation.
There are articles, we'llreference that, when thinking
about satisfaction, view itthrough the lens of what
expectations are so forth. Butwe'll come back to that here in
a minute, and, you know, Brian,as as the other academic here on
this on this this episode, Markmentioned that he that he he

(21:53):
studies and thinks about now, ormaybe he never thought that he
would think as much about thehumans and their interaction
with the resource as he doesnow, and he always thought, and
we all, I think, fall into thiscategory of believing that when
we got into this profession, wewould study the animals
themselves, but more times thannot, we end up thinking about

(22:17):
studying the the the humansthemselves, the way we think
about it, the way we makecontributions to conservation,
the way we interact with theresource and so forth. How much
do you talk to your studentsabout that, Brian? It's not just
about the animals themselves.It's also about humans.

Oh, yeah. You know, and especially of course, they
don't the experiences that theyhave aren't like ours because
they weren't, I don't know,maybe Vertica. Do you guys
remember dime ducks? That's howold I am.

Yeah. Yeah. So I

grew up on dime ducks, but I still didn't that
means we could shoot 10 of somespecies a day, like, wooden
steel gabbaw. That was mostly mydad. Pinsails. Because I was so
young, but I was learning kindathrough my dad. I never really
remember that, but I rememberhim saying, you know, they would
they'd go out to places inKansas, which will remain

(23:08):
nameless, but they're like,okay.
Today, we're gonna shoot 10green wings. Tomorrow, we're
gonna shoot 10 pintel dricks. Imean, I can't even I mean, I can
fathom that, but that's justthat's incredible. You know?
We'll we'll never see thatagain.
And so frequently, I'll havesome of my students say, doc, if
duck hunters are declining, whyare there 10 people at the boat

(23:28):
ramp the next day after I shoota limit of Mallards? I'm like,
well, that's a complicatedanswer. But one, if you guys
don't do this on Facebook, theymay not know. Two, they probably
heard you shooting, and andpeople just it's like the
information transfer really getsout there. You know?
And and so the the whole thing,and I've said this before, you

(23:53):
know, I think sometimes we'resending a message to the hunter
that, hey. There's enough birdsout there for you to shoot six
for sixty days. And when thetruth be told, the average hunt
you know, bag per hunter perseason is like, what, 1.1 or 1.4
ducks per hunter per per day orwhatever. And so I think there's
that psychological message thatif you don't if you don't

(24:17):
achieve at least maybe three orfour, you know, maybe you're not
that good of a hunter, but itit's so complex. I guess the way
I was gonna start my answer whenyou asked me was, have you ever
seen the the wildlife model ofconservation and all the terms
that go into that?
You know, people, conservation,population ecology, harvest, the

(24:38):
list is a mile long. And I thinkthe same I kinda view hunting
and hunter satisfaction as thesame thing. It depends on so
many things. The family you grewup in, the place you grew up in.
I remember Mark Pierce tellingme his interactions between
scoff hunters in the North andmallard hunters in the South.
Totally night and daydifference. Depends on culture.

(24:58):
Depends on your age. My dad,I've always considered one of
the best waterfowl hunters onthe planet, literally. And now
he's 81 years old.
And, man, he'll shoot one or twoducks, but he won't go past two.
He doesn't care. So I think whenwe look at hunter satisfaction,
I think age the age cohort is abig one. The experience cohort

(25:18):
is a big one. I think novicehunters, when they go for the
first time or two, it's likekind of a new world to them.
They're just there to, like,experience. It's kinda like a
fond hitting the ground, and,hey. This is a whole new world.
But as you go and go and go, youknow, you kind of expect more
and more and more because youget better at it. You learn.
I mean, it's so complex. And,anyway, there's there's the

(25:42):
cognitive, you know, theheuristic and the analytic side.
I mean, the cognitiveliterature, the medical
literature, psychologyliterature uses a lot of the
heuristic analytic brain wavesthat we operate on. And I don't
know, Mark, in your work, ifyou've approached that part of
the the psychology of peoplefrom that standpoint, but to me,

(26:03):
it's really complex. And I'veheard people a lot of people
say, hey.
Just let's just shoot fourducks. That's fine. You know?
Why don't we just shoot fourducks? And that's a complex
answer.
But

So, Mark, any any brainwave research up there at
University of Nebraska Lincolnyou're involved in?

Only only on Friday nights

when we get home and

get near a bottle of bourbon, and then then
there's a lot of brainwaveaction going on then. But, but I
think there is I think therewould be some merit to kinda
looking at some of that in termsof of Be careful who you've
thinking. Oh, I know. I know. Idon't think I'm gonna lead that
charge, but, you know, there asBrian says, I think it is

(26:44):
complicated and and try to getto the bottom of it.
But, again, when you there'ssome simple things that you can
ask hunters, and and they'llkinda give you an indication of
satisfaction. And and maybe wedon't do a really good degree of
narrowing it just we kinda givethem some limited answers, or
you kinda give them a scale, butthere's no place for them to put

(27:07):
a caveat. Well, I would havebeen more satisfied if or had I
had done this, it would havebeen you know? So there there's
there's a little bit more to itthat we have not kinda delved
into.

I I think at the core, if you read all the
publications at the core andthis is basic human thought
processes. Right? Like, if at atthe core of of waterfowl
satisfaction, it's at leastseeing birds on x number of
trips, at least. Right? If youshow up and expect to see or do
something and it doesn't happenone time, it's like, okay.

(27:40):
But if you go back five timesand 10 times, you start asking
yourself, what am I doing?Right? Total waste of time. I'm
going down the wrong rabbithole. Something isn't right.
So I think, you know, with withwith waterfowl hunters, some of
the literature at the core, Ithink, suggest I wanna at least
see birds and know they're thereand I saw them, and I didn't

(28:00):
have too many peopleinterrupting my, you know, my
mood and all that. But as youreally get into it, I think the
novice hunters, because theyknow that can't go very often,
they wanna be able to killbirds. The people that hunt
forty, fifty, sixty days a year,they can go and have a two or
three bad days like, oh, it'sjust the weather. Oh, they're
sitting. You know?
They're they're spooked. No bigdeal, but I'll get them

(28:22):
tomorrow. You know? So it's kindof this cumulative success, and
that seems to be what some ofthe literature suggests. But
again, I mean, there's there'sage variables, experience.
I think one of the things I'mfascinated by and have no data,
but you talk to people like ourdads and grandpas. You know, my
dad grew up in the St. CharlesRiver Bottoms. I mean, he walked

(28:44):
the bottoms and hunted farmponds in the river. There were
ducks everywhere and no people.
You know, you didn't need todrive to Canada to go shoot
ducks. People didn't havevehicles. They didn't have
money, but there were birds allover the place because we didn't
have all these intentionallyintension intensively managed
areas like we do now, and that'snot a bad thing. But I think

(29:06):
it's it's population density ofpeople. It's land more and more
land has become privatized andmanaged.
It forces the other cohorts ofpeople to go to places that are
more and more managed andattractive, and and I think that
really plays into huntersatisfaction. Like, all these I
show up and there's, you know,25 out of state license plates

(29:28):
at my place. That's not a happyexperience. Right? And and so,
you know, what do you do aboutthat?
And I'm not saying those 25 outof staters shouldn't be there
because I go out of state. Youknow, we've all gone out of
state to hunt. So I think withtime and maybe the diminishment
of resources, the privateprivatization of it has taken

(29:49):
the the the cohort of hunters wehave left, and it's become a a
density dependent issue. I'mconvinced of it. And and and the
ducks react to that.
They become more nocturnal. Theyavoid hunting. The list goes on.
And and I think that leads into,you know, some of the the
fallacies that people believethat we shortstop birds or we do

(30:11):
things to keep them up north andthings like that. I think some
of that has died down over theyears, but especially in the
early mid two thousands when theprairies got dry again, but we
were still able to shoot sixducks per day.
Hunters did there was a mismatchin the psychology. Right? They
didn't understand that. Well,it's been the mid the the late
nineties were great. I broughtall these people in the hunt.

(30:32):
We all killed ducks. Well, itdoesn't last. Right? And so so I
think there's that psychologicalelement with us telling them,
hey. You can legally shoot sixbirds a day, but then if, you
know, mallard populations drop30% or whatever it might be,
hunting may not be that good.

How about 50? We're at about half of where we
were in

the peak of Yeah.

Last peak. And, Brian, some of that relates to
this bag limit issue. You'vetouched on some of that, and
some of it relates to even someof the biology of how the birds
respond, and and we'll get tothat here in here in a second. I
you you said you mentioned sortof at the outset there, Brian,
that at at the most basic level,people expect to see ducks
whenever they go hunting, and itreminds me of last year whenever
I took a couple of myassistants, new hunters out into

(31:14):
the field down to some propertyin North Central Mississippi in
one of those river bottoms thatprobably the three of you have
hunted, and it hasn't beenreally good the last few years
for a number of reasons, some ofwhich is landscape change in
that area, and I was Irepeatedly told them, I was
like, hey, we're probably notgonna shoot a whole lot of
ducks, hadn't been that great,but I want you get out, I want

(31:34):
you to experience this, and wemight not even see ducks. And
what I was doing all along,every time I was making those
comments, I was trying to managetheir expectations so that they
wouldn't go down there thinking,oh, we're going because they had
just come off a fantastic hunt,just their first hunt ever,
birds were everywhere, and I waslike, y'all, this doesn't happen
every time you go out, let'smake sure we manage these

(31:56):
expectations because I want themto be satisfied, I want them to
enjoy the experience, and so ifthey go hunting again thinking
that's what they're going seeevery time, they're not going to
be satisfied, and so we did kindof have fun with that leading up
to it and said, we may not evensee a duck.
I think we saw two way off inthe distance. We put our decoys
out, left them out for about anhour and a half, and then just

(32:17):
said, let's take them up, and wejust walked around. And they had
a ball just doing that, seeingsome of the areas and getting
those new experiences. But Ithink the fact that I kind of
tried to manage thoseexpectations probably played a
role in what they took away fromthat. I also wondered, Scott,
I'm going to get your thoughtson this.
Brian, I think, also alluded tosocial media and people posting

(32:41):
photos of their successes, and Iand when he said that, I wonder
if over time expectations,especially of new hunters, have
changed. You think about whatour expectations may have been
as young hunters twenty, thirtyyears ago, and then what the
expectation of new hunters todaymay be if they're excited about

(33:01):
going hunting because of allthese photos that they see on
social media from all of theirfriends. You ever thought about
that, Scott?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, social media is
interesting because, you know,there's a sort of success or
confirmation bias associatedwith it. Right? It's like Yeah.
Only the good days show up onthere where it's like, yeah,
like, strapfuls of ducks. Thedays that you get skunked or you
hunt all day and get three orfour birds, it's like, usually,
that's not a big highlight, youknow, on your Instagram or

(33:30):
anything. So, yeah, I I thinkthat colors people's
expectations for sure. Yeah. Howhow can it not?
Right? And, Mike, we we'vetalked about this too. You know,
Brian said, oh, well, you know,liberal season again, six ducks,
sixty days. We spend a lot oftime saying, yeah. Liberal
season, good news on that front.

(33:51):
But like Brian said, mismatch.Like, prairies are dry. There
are gonna be a ton of adultbirds in the population. You're
not gonna like how they respondto the decoys in the call
because it's gonna be mostlyadults this fall. So I I think
we try and give people a headsup on that, but you you gotta be
an optimist to be in this game.
Right? You know? You gottathink, well, next time it's

(34:12):
gonna be different. Yeah.

So Scott, you and I have thought about this a lot
through the lens of DucksUnlimited as a non as a
nonprofit organization. We wantour members to be perennially
engaged. We want them to supportour mission. We we need that,
you know, in order to do thegood work that we do, in order
to achieve the support that wewe get, whether it be in the
political halls all across thecapitals of of individual states

(34:35):
or in DC. We need that strongmember base.
A lot of times people willaccuse us of only telling the
rosy story of, oh, it's going beanother great year, and we trump
at these things because we're weneed people to to engage and get
excited, but the reality isthere's a downside if you're not

(34:57):
representing things accuratelybecause then you could be
falsely sort of elevating thoseexpectations, and so I know you
and I are kind of on the samepage in that regard, and we're
like, we try to always tell thatstory through the factual basis
of what the data say, and like,yeah, and it's six ducks in

(35:17):
sixty days, that doesn'tnecessarily mean that you're
going to do as well during thisyear as you did in the late 90s
when you had that same bag limitand season length. So there is
that sort of double edged sword,right, or or you you're trying
to find that that happy medium.

Yeah. I I I just try and represent it like what I
expect when I'm out there. Youknow? It's like, hey. You know,
even when populations are low,you can have good days if you're
in the right spot and have theright conditions and
everything's right.
Right? Yep. So, yeah, there is acorrelation between population
size and, like, overall success,but, you know, individual people

(35:56):
in an individual location canhave great days even if
populations are low. So, youknow, that's another reality out
there.

We're gonna take a break right now, and we're gonna
we're gonna come back. Mark, Iwanna go to you. You had because
you covered some other things inthis article that I thought were
were quite interesting. Brianhas already alluded to those,
and that is, like, in in theory,how can a bag limit influence
the behavior of the birds? A lotof people, when you get into
duck blind, you'll have theseconversations, so we wanna go

(36:24):
there.
But first, we're gonna take abreak, so y'all stay with us.
We'll be right back.

VO (36:35):
Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan and Bird DogWhiskey after these messages.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Ducks
Unlimited podcast. I am doctorMike Brazier, and I am joined
again by doctor Mark Ratiska,doctor Scott Stephens, and
doctor Brian Davis, and we'retalking about bag limits and
what makes a perfect perfect baglimit and how it and how and why
it may differ based on who we'retalking to, where you are, time

(38:53):
of the year, etcetera, how oldyou are, what your past
experiences are. It's not thesame for everyone, and and and
so while we've talked thus farabout sort of how it influences
satisfaction from a sort ofhuman psychological standpoint,
there's also a potential way inwhich bag limits can influence
bird behaviors, which are not,and how it influences bird

(39:15):
behavior is not in itselfindependent of our subsequent
satisfaction, so these thingsare all connected. Mark,
specifically, you mentioned thisidea that higher bag limits, and
this can be for individualspecies or just ducks in
aggregate, when you have ahigher bag limit, it stands to
reason that on average you'regoing to be hunting and shooting

(39:38):
more than if you had a lower baglimit, and that in itself can
influence birds and theirbehavior and how they respond to
that and and some of what theydo, going nocturnal, using
sanctuary, etcetera.
You incorporated that into thisarticle. Speak about that a
little bit and whether you'vedone any research and what you
may be involved in to help sortof flesh that out a little bit
more.

Well, I wish I was involved in some of that. Well,
I I kinda am involved in some ofthat research with the study we
have going on at Kansas, but Iwish I was involved in it a
little bit more to the point ofan experiment with that. And the
reason I mentioned that in thatarticle is just because,
anecdotally, I remember when wewent from four blue winged teal

(40:22):
to six, and I it it was a votein the central flyaway and
stuff, and I really wasn't infavor of increasing the bag
limit. And primarily it'sbecause none of my hunters were
really calling forward orringing my phone off the hook or
sending me emails that we needtwo more blue wings. But for me,
that's the way it had been.

(40:43):
People were used to it. Theywould go out, shoot their four
blue wings, and be out of thatmarsh sometimes within forty
five minutes. And then thatmarsh would be empty, and there
it sits. And the blue wings andeverything gets back together,
and you could probably go outthe next day and shoot four more
again in forty five minutes.When we went to six, it just

(41:03):
seemed like there you are outthere for another fifteen,
twenty minutes or more, again,banging away at these birds that
it just seemed like the qualityof teal hunting went down as we
just slightly increased that baglimit.
And, I think that was due justto extra hunting pressure on
those marshes. And, again,that's totally anecdotal, but I

(41:27):
often wonder, you know, what wedo with hunting pressure and and
with these bag limits. Andprobably a better example, Mike,
would be goose hunting. You havea refuge full of Canada geese.
The bag limit's two.
You shoot two Canada geese. Youcan probably shoot that roost

(41:48):
all season long. You up that toeight, whatever, you know, the
bag limit is. I don't know howlong that that before all the
geese start figuring out, okay,somebody's shooting at us. Let's
let's go here, do this, or dosomething different.
I would really love to do anexperiment, and I could the

(42:11):
place I would wanna do it,Brian, is in Missouri because
they have, you know, the systemset up where the hunters have to
check-in, check out. I wouldlike to drop the bag limit on
some of those areas in Missourior some days, and then increase
the bag limit and just see ifyou had birds marked or just
actually just huntersatisfaction, the whole bit

(42:32):
about what would happen if youdrop that bag limit back on some
of these public areas and whatwould be the reaction of those
birds. Because we don't know. Wewe do know they respond to
hunting pressure pretty quickly.Once you start banging away at
them, they figure out a way togo places or come at different

(42:52):
times, like you're saying,nocturnal.
They figure it out really quick.

Brian, your thoughts? Do think Missouri
would go along for that?

How much time do we have?

Oh,

lord. First of all, yeah, in in defense of Missouri,
I think, I mean, given theirheritage of waterfowl research
and conservation, they wouldprobably they could probably do
enough of a front end a frontend job on in terms of human
dimensions, like alerting thehunters. Like, hey. We wanna do
this really cool science. And Iwould I I think it'd be really

(43:25):
cool, and I think it'ddefinitely be informative.
And I think they would they'rethe kind of agency that I think
could get the buy in from theconstituents and and wanna do
something like that. Yeah. Ijust and growing up there and
hunting all those places, I justdon't know how much I wanna say,
but, I mean, it it things havechanged. And and and and you can

(43:51):
have areas that are managedhunters like there in some of
the WMAs. I think the numbersare a hunting party gets, like,
40 acres to themselves.
I think that's, give or take,pretty close. And there's some
other areas that aren'tregulated. It's just, you know,
lots of people. And and I thinkthere's a distance effect. And
what I mean by that is even on Ithink some of these areas that

(44:14):
we hunt so intensively, it shutsdown a larger landscape around
there than just that area thathas, like, unlimited access.
So even if you're on thecontrolled side where there's
only two or three parties in ahuge pool, it's like all of the
ducks in that local region havebeen shut down. I've seen it
with my own eyes. My dad hasseen it with his own eyes, and

(44:38):
it's changed over time. I'm notsaying that you can't go out
there at 10:00 in the morningand have a flock of of of 50
come in on you and decoy, butthat used to be a lot more
common because I've been thereand done it. And I don't have
the data to say why or or what'shappened, but things like that
have changed.
And the only thing I can thinkis just it's just hunter

(44:59):
density. And again, populationschange, so we get an older
cohort cohort of adult birds inthe population. We don't have
the the young naive birds.There's all kind of things. But
but, yeah, those kind ofexperiments would be great.
I think MDC is the agency thatwould would love to do that kind

(45:20):
of experimental work just giventheir legacy conservation.

They have a brand new state waterfowl biologist up
there, Reed Vigoot. And so Ithink it'd be a wonderful way
for Reed to make a name forhimself early on in his career
at Missouri Public Parks andConservation. Reed, Reach out to
us. We'd be happy to walk youthrough that conversation. We
have tons of ideas.

But I think you I was gonna say the other thing
about regulations, you know, Ithink no matter what we do as
biologists and, of course, thethe you know, Larry Reynolds can
talk circles around me on thisissue. Mark, you can too because
you guys have been statebiologists. You're living the
human dimension populationharvest side every day of your
lives. That's basically yourjobs. Right?

(46:02):
I don't live in in that world asmuch, but I think just from a
human component, you know, it'slike like the book Who Moved My
Cheese. Right? Nobody likeschange. But if somebody says,
hey.

I

didn't see that coming up in this. I didn't see
that coming up

in this. I haven't read that one. But we but it's
like I'm a bingo.

You know, for whatever it

is in life, it's like, hey. We need to we need to
drive the speed limit. We needto only let this many people in
this building, right, for firecodes. There's always rules and
there's always limits, butsometimes those change. And so
usually after a change likethat, people are all dismayed.
You know, it's like, oh, well,we used to be able to do it this

(46:43):
way. Well, now you can't. Right?But I think and and if you think
about waterfowl limits, baglimits, I think whatever we tell
people, they may be disgruntledfor a year or two, but
eventually, it's like, okay. Thebiologists are giving us their
best guess.
This is why we gotta do this,and it'll be fine. You know? But
initially, I don't think peoplelike change. They don't wanna go
from six ducks to four ducks orfour ducks to two ducks. But

(47:08):
eventually, if if weintelligently and convincingly
tell them this is better for theresource, I think they're gonna
do it.
Right? So

Scott, you're Scott, you were gonna offer
something, then to go.

Yeah. When when Mark was talking about that
experiment, it made me thinkback to, you know, kind of when
when I got to Mississippi, and Ithink about the hours in the day
of hunting pressure there thenwhen it was, like, two mallards.
Right? Like, in places likeArkansas too. You know, it's
like, it was three ducks and twomallards, and the time that it

(47:42):
would take in most places to getthose was pretty short.
Right? So, you know, there was abunch of the day, you know, many
afternoons where there was nopressure even on public areas.
And you contrast that to todaywhere it's like, oh, you know,
now it's five Mallards and sixducks total, and takes a lot
longer to to fill out a partywith a limit like that. So just

(48:04):
the man hours of time in thosehabitats that you're causing
that disturbance from huntinghas has to have increased and,
you know, changed behavior ofthe birds.

Yep. And so just to clarify, when you say five
five Mallards, Central Flyway orPacific Flyway, you can do that.
Mississippi or Atlantic, youknow, you're you're stuck.

Yeah. Five, baby.

That's right. But yeah. So you hit on the issue on
the word, Scott, pressure.That's what we're talking about
managing here. You can do it alot of different ways.
Bag limit is one of the waysthat you can do it, but it's not
really been explored a whole lotas it marked, at least not on a
formal approach. Now there maybe some clubs that implement
something of their own at thebut then there's also ways that

(48:52):
you can manage pressure byhunting only on certain days or
not hunting past certain hours,but this is another one in
theory that well, I think the Imean, just logically makes
sense. The the lower the baglimit, the quicker you're gonna
get out of there, the lessyou're gonna be shooting at
those birds.

Yeah. And I I would I I know I think the
Canadian Wildlife Service backin the late eighties did some
work where they're observinghunters and gathered some of
that information like shots perduck and, you know, how many
times they missed and all thatsort of thing, and and we don't
have even that information. Andso when a guy or a party, say a

(49:32):
party of four, six ducks perguy, you know, that's a lot of
birds to shoot. Well, how manyshots does that take to get that
limit? That that's all gonna bea lot of shooting.
And, again, the more you shoot,the longer you stay in there,
that's gonna affect it. And andBrian does bring up a good point
about scale on that. How fardoes that go? That's that's

(49:55):
another good question. And andthe thing too, if if you stop
and think, if we we if the bagon this reduced by two ducks,
it's four, and we're doing it tosee what the birds do, How the
hunter's gonna respond to that?
And I I still when you look atagain, I'll point back to
Missouri because I think AndyRadikey, the past biologist

(50:16):
there at Missouri, collectedinformation that the level of
satisfaction after you shootfour ducks is you've kinda peak
out. It's not the sameincrement. So if you shoot four
ducks, you're walking out ofthat marsh happy. You've
achieved your bag limit. Thenext day, you can probably go
back in there and shoot fourmore ducks.

(50:37):
Again, the daily and maybe theseasonal satisfaction of those
areas goes up. I I don't know.

Mark, but it's but it's interesting. This it's
interesting that when Imentioned five Mallards, you
were like

Go ahead. See? See? That. You know?
And so that's that's and that'sthat's kinda part of the problem
is that and what Brian wasalluding to, that you get those
things established and peoplewant them. And, Brian, you don't
know how prophetic those wordsare about change. If if I wanted
my phone to ring off the hook orget a whole pile of emails, I

(51:13):
would propose a change insomething in regulations, and
the phone would just be sittingthere vibrating, you know, all
day. And people don't like that,but they do get used to it. They
do get used to it.
And and that's the thing is ifyou can kind of weather that
storm, then I think you can dosome of this stuff. And Mike,

(51:34):
the other thing too, we don'tknow when you look back through
the history of bag limits, therehas not really been a good a lot
of information about justchanging bag limits, and and
most of the changes with baglimits also come with changes in
season length. We really don'thave a good grasp of when we

(51:55):
ramp it up to six or eight orwhatever it may be, what that
has an impact on populationsbecause we typically have moved
that with season length. Andthen the last twenty six years,
we've been pretty much standardseasons that we've not been able
to evaluate it. And it would beand maybe there's some species
you could look at, but we maynot have the banding information

(52:18):
to do those species.
It'd be interesting, I think, anexperiment there too just to see
with bag limits and keeping theseason length just just to get
an idea of what we're doing withbag limits.

Yeah. There's so much social science embedded in
this. You know, I'm thinkingabout you you mentioned we don't
have a whole lot of experienceor opportunity to experiment
with different bag limits. We dohave the two tier license system
Yeah. How we do?
Central Flyway. Right. So whatcan you tell and I I have a
number of thoughts here in mymind, you know, you could there
are a lot of challenges thatthere would a lot of reasons why

(52:50):
people wouldn't wanna do this,but if you even like, if you
were a club or something of thatnature or a family and you
wanted to challenge yourself,say, this year, let's all just
agree to do the three tier I'msorry, the the the three bird
three bird splash. I thinkthat's probably the way you
referred to it, And let's justsee, especially if you own your
own property and manage your ownproperty and that's the only

(53:11):
place you hunt I mean, even ifyou're it's not the only place
you hunt, but if it's the onlyplace where you hunt, then you
could evaluate its effect on thebirds on that property. There is
a drawback that once you selectthat license, that's the license
that you have to use throughoutthe entire hunting season.
So anyway, kinda going down arabbit trail there. But anything
to be learned from that, Mark,and any of the data that have

(53:32):
been collected, are you stillclose enough to that?

Yeah. We actually just finished the final report
here not long ago, so we'restill kind of going through
that. But one interesting thingwe found out with that tier two,
and it goes back again tosomething Brian said about age,
Guys, you know, as old as Brianand I or a little bit older than
Brian and I, and there's notmany, but there's

a few 100. Yeah.

But we've something I did not expect with
tier two was that we had anumber of older individuals that
were 70, probably getting closeto going out of the sport, sign
up for tier two. And part of itwas they actually couldn't
identify ducks because of theireyesight, and they've hit a
point in their life. They'veshot enough birds. They're just

(54:22):
kind of out there, and just tobe able to go out, shoot three
birds, and not have to worryabout what they're shooting at
saved we had repeated commentsabout that extended my duck
hunting, you know, a coupleyears or more years than I
thought I was going to. And thatwas Do you have data

on, like, what proportion of the hunters across
all the places that did that areselecting that option? You know,
is it 10%, or is it What is it?

Oh. Like, I know I

know it's an option here in South Dakota for
me. I have not selected that oneyet.

You should. It's I think you should. Your
eyesight's getting going bad.

Yeah. Or it will next year

That's right.

Or a couple years later here as you're hearing
everything else. I'm I'm tryingto remember, Scott, what we
have. I think it's it's a littlebit different in South Dakota.
Oh, man.

I forget

what that is 10% or less. Okay. 10% or less.
Okay. Yeah.
So it's not a big group ofpeople.

Have you done surveys to evaluate their
satisfaction?

Yep. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We have that
information in that report, andthat's Mike, we probably need to
do a podcast on that againbecause once we there's a lot of
information in that.

You're not gonna tell me right now, are you?
You're gonna hold that back?

No. I'm not gonna no. We we ain't got another
hour. So but even the the newindividuals into the sport,
again, three birds per day,that's to them, it's awesome.
They get their birds.
And so we're seeing and andwe're actually seeing a
transition from individuals thatthat started in tier two, get

(56:03):
that experience, and thenthey're starting to go back to
tier one where they're going tothe full six bird bag.

So And they and they're less and they're less
satisfied as hunters.

We we're still we're still looking at that, and
that's actually something we'vebeen talking about is continuing
some survey work and trying tofollow-up on that Yeah. Just to
see what happens with thoseindividuals. But

Well, in in some locations, it's a really good
option to have, especially foryouth seasons. Like, I know when
I was in North Dakota, it'slike, okay. If I'm gonna take a
youth, I gotta avoid places withmallards and pintails. It's like
I gotta look for either a tealor a gadwall hole. Right?

Yeah.

Like Yep. Because yeah. So having that
tier two where it's like, nope.Splash three is is a nice option
for youth seasons.

Oh, it just takes the pressure off immediately.

Yeah. And you can measure that satisfaction over
different time scales. You cando it at the individual hunt
level and then, of course,across the entire season. And I
can imagine a situation where ifyou do that three bird splash
license, you are you're probablygonna

Probably gonna achieve a limit more of the
days. Yeah. That would be myhypothesis. Yeah.

But then then if you encountered a couple of
those days where the birds werejust raining in and you had to
stop at three, does thatoverwhelm your season long
satisfaction? Those days you maybe dissatisfied because, golly,
I couldn't shoot six ducks. Youknow? Again, a lot of social
science going into this. You canimagine any number of ways.

I think even within a season, some people change I
mean, I know for me I mean,we've all hunted a lot of a lot
of decades. Right? And even forme, you know, I'm not, as we
like to say, as mad at them as Iused to be, believe it or not,
Vertiska and Stevens. But evenwithin a year, our attitude I

(57:54):
know mine can really change.It's like if I have three or
four or five really jam uphunts, I almost feel like I'm
almost done.
Like, I'm not, but I want I'dlike to have some more of those,
but it's like, man. You know?The pressure's off. Yeah. The
pressure it's like, wow.
Okay. We had some remarkablehunts. Those are great memories

(58:14):
for this year. They may only bethree or four or five. Let's
hope for more.
But and and I find myself, like,myself, you know, if I'm hunting
with other people, it's like, Idon't even wanna shoot. It's
like, you shoot. You know? I'vehad I've had my fill sort. You
know?
So depending on who you are,even within a season, your
attitudes can change. I knowmine do. You know? If it's

(58:35):
relatively poor, the next time Igo by God, I'm like, man, I
wanna get some birds for thefreezer. You know?
I'm not a I'm not a trophyhunter, but a meat hunter. And
it's like, if it's pretty slow,I'm gonna be pretty eager to go.
Right? But if you have a

You might shoot a green wing teal early in the
morning,

though. Exactly.

Nah. Man, that's stretching

it there. But you

know what I mean? I mean, it's like the pressure's

all You know that ain't happening.

It is. The the social side is is pretty
remarkably complicated.

Yeah. I'd I'd like to go along where you'd
treat a buzzer duck at dawn,Davis.

Yeah. I I'll I'll can we get a do you video crew
on that? Let me see this becauseI'm pretty evidence.

About duck awareness. So on opening day in
Arkansas, when the shovelers areskirting the decoys, you know
there's an issue.

Yeah. Yeah. Man, I And and that happens frequently.

I I had a flashback to that that wonderful
year, Brian. Late nineties, youand I were going up to the
Schooner River Bottoms andhunting multiple times, and I I
think it was after that huntwhere you were so frustrated
when we came out of there, wherethere were four greenheads and
two Drake Greenwings, but wedidn't shoot them right, I'd
shoot them in the rear end, andyou were just f bomb this and,

(59:50):
you know, just man. It's allmessed day and the next day, we
were gonna go hunting with mydad, and I remember having to
tell you, he's like, Brian,let's let's try not to cuss as
much, you know, when we're outmy

Brian Davis (01:00:03):
I feel horrible, man.

Mike Brasher (01:00:06):
But, hey. To your credit, you you didn't, but
maybe just a couple of times, Iwas

Mark Vrtiska (01:00:10):
like, Brian.

I'm a much better man. Actually, it was because of
First

Scott Stephens (01:00:13):
first time I hunted with him, I thought he
cut his finger off or something.Like, I thought he was injured
physically, and it's like, no.He was just mad because the
birds weren't doing right.

Yeah. It was a bad Mexican food the night before.
That's why I was

Yeah. You've I've seen that

before too. Yeah.

Repeat that. Let's not go

through air. Now.

Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So
we're gonna start wrapping thisup here in a minute, but, you
know, we've each had our ownexperiences when we're out
hunting.
I I do wonder, and this happenedto me last year, if I'm out
there it kinda relates, Brian,to you were talking about, once
you have a good experience orsomething like that, and it may
be over the course of theseason, or it may be a
particular hunt where you're outthere and you get your four

(01:00:53):
draped green heads real earlyand then you're not seeing a
whole lot of other birds, oreven if you are seeing other
birds, you might say, you knowwhat? This is good. I'm walking
out. I have done I did that lastyear because it actually wasn't
a situation where there were alot of other birds flying, but
there were because the otherbirds, the sort of off species,
if you will, were few and farbetween, and I'm like, I'm gonna

(01:01:15):
go ahead and get out of here.I'm just gonna you know, go
ahead and call it good becausethe the irony working through my
mind was like, here within aboutan hour and fifteen minutes,
I've got my four drapedgreenheads.
If I had to stay out hereanother hour and a half to get
two more ducks, all of a suddenI become not as happy and not as
this doesn't become as memorableof a hunt. So all sorts of those
things kind of go on in yourmind as well. Scott, you were

(01:01:38):
sharing in the email leading upto this that you you played some
of those games, if you will,when you were up in Canada,
being very selective about whatyou were shooting, and I think
that's sort of that samemindset. So tell us about some
of those.

But he wanted to get his eight ducks. I I did,
but he wanted to get the eightof them.

We shot eight ducks every day, but, yeah,
like, there are enough birdsthat you know? And and when I'm
there, I don't have I don't huntmany other places where there
that many opportunities forpintails. So I was like, yep.
You guys can shoot greenheads. Iwill shoot.
You know, if I can find a nicewhite bellied drake pintail
floating around, I will shootthat. And and I think it was the

(01:02:16):
the second day we hunted ducks,I ended up with five drake
pintails and three mallards.Nice. And and in that location,
if we wanted to shoot Widgin,like, there were like, we
could've shot 200 Widgin. It'slike Widgin were everywhere.
And so, yeah, I mean, you youadjust at least I do, you adjust

(01:02:36):
your selectivity and yourexpectations based on what
you're seeing. Yep. You know? Soit's interesting.

Mark, any other thing that we wanna point out
here on this article? There's aton of research that's gone into
this, and that's one of theexciting things about our field
is that we've studied waterfowlecology so much, one of the most
studied groups of animals on theplanet. Now we're studying
hunter behavior, hunterexpectations, hunter

(01:03:03):
satisfaction, all those things,as you mentioned, sort of
intertwine, you're involved in alot of that research. We haven't
really even talked about ducksversus days. There are a lot of
people that say they would giveup a couple of ducks, but they
don't want to give up the numberof days that they hunt, and yet
we know when you're looking atharvest and sort of the harvest

(01:03:24):
rate and the impact on whetherwe're talking about ducks versus
bag limits versus days, it'sultimately days that make the
big difference, So you pointthat out little bit or allude to
it in one way or another.
What else in this article didyou really want to try to
convey, you wanna make sure wetouch on?

The only thing I think we covered it most for the
most part, Mike. The one thing Iwanted to convey, and actually
maybe going back to your firstquestion, the impetus behind
this article was the fact that Ihad shot five Mallards, had a
Drake Adwall come in, and thisis January in Nebraska. A Drake
Adwall in January is is is likea diamond, and I missed it. Just

(01:04:06):
whiffed it. And I wasn't so madabout not getting my bag limit
as much as I was gettingbragging rights over Brad Sites,
who's the guy I hunt with a lotdown here.
Man. I really miss that. Andthen Brad, we get back to the
truck, and he he well, I missedthe Gadwall pickup. We're
picking up decoys, and he looksat me and goes, you know, I

(01:04:28):
can't say that I'm really madthat you missed that Drake
Gadwall. So he knows he knewthat I had I had him, and then
we get back to the truck, thenhe finds out that he had
actually shot a Drake Gadwall,and he had stopped hunting
because he thought he had fivemallards.
And so we both got each other onthat one. But so hopefully,

(01:04:49):
Brad, I'll make sure he listensto this podcast so he can hear
that.

That says a little bit about in hand duck
identification there. Somebody

Well, in Brad's defense, it was the first two
ducks in the morning. He doublesup, and and we had other birds
circling. So he's the dog'sbringing him. He's just grabbing
up, putting him down, and helooks down two brow ducks. Okay?
And then he was really careful.That was the other thing. Then
he's careful about shootinganother hen mallard, so to
speak. And to you know, he henever we had birds working. It

(01:05:20):
was one of those days and thatyou hope for.
And so he's careful. He shootsthese three green heads, and
he's just like, yeah. I'm done.You know? Yahoo.
And I didn't and I didn't lookat him either. And I would have
told him that he had a gabbleprobably if I'd seen it, but I
shouldn't have fessed up to thatone. Brad will he'll he'll get

(01:05:41):
mad at me at that. But but itwas a great day, and but it's
just funny how you kinda throughthat day, it's like, man, just
that one bored duck would havejust Yeah. It icing on the cake.

Yep. Scott, final thoughts from you.

Yeah. I I think it is about expectations, and
those change, you know,throughout the season. Like
Brian said, as you age, theychange. You know? Like, I know
we had a situation when I was inSaskatchewan where we did an
afternoon hunt, sun at yourback.
You can see all the colors onthe bird birds, and that's the
ideal for me. It's like, youknow, I'd have been happy

(01:06:20):
shooting two ducks in thatsituation because you knew
exactly what you were shooting.So, yeah, it's in the eye of the
beholder, as we said earlier.

And, Brian, thoughts from you?

Yeah. As I commonly say, I would rather hunt two
ducks than shoot six. And andit's those kind of days

believe that. Not not one of us believe that.
Yeah. As

long as they come in in the right order.

He said he's it, but he didn't live it.

Actually, if you

wanna Yeah. Again, get the get the video Actually,

if wanna really confound it even more, my my
quest for the ducks has kindadone this, but the
Specklebellies well, theSpecklebellies have been doing
that. It's like, hey, if I go toArkansas and shoot a duck,
that's fine, but if I don't, nobig deal. But we gotta get on
those specs. But no. So goingback to the science of this,
y'all think I'm crazy, but I Ithink one of the cool ultimate

(01:07:13):
experience experiments would be,and it would take a lot of
colleagues.
It would take state and federalareas and private landowners.
But if we could do going back towhat Mark was saying about
Missouri, if we could takeseveral regions and really kinda
manage or control high and lowfood quantities and quality and

(01:07:34):
high and low hunting pressureand do that over a period of a
few years and rotate those, man,you talk about a great
experiment to really get at, youknow, how does food and hunting
pressure influence harvest,things like that. That would be
awesome.

Yeah. The challenge is nobody wants to be
assigned to the low food and low

bag limit. Just treatment. Yeah.

The political challenges of doing that, but,
man, you talk about a reallycool experiment to kinda get at
this some more. But, yeah, Imean, it's complicated, so
that's why we need podcasts.Right?

That's right. That's right. Talk about all
this stuff and help help peelback the onion. I appreciate the
three of you joining me here,appreciate everything that
you've done for the resource andyour professions, and is we're
lucky. We're lucky to be in aprofession where there is so
much passion, so much energy, somuch interest in these birds.
That interest is shared, ofcourse, across our professional

(01:08:28):
colleagues. It's also shared byour constituents and those for
whom we we manage this resourceand we dedicate our careers to,
and and I I think that'sprobably the fascinating thing
here. We've very easily sat hereand had a more than an hour long
conversation about sort of onetopic, bag limits, and how it
interacts and affects oursatisfaction, and how our

(01:08:52):
satisfaction can also beinfluenced by our expectations
going in, is influenced by whatregulations say we ought to be,
quote, ought to be able to toshoot, if that's how we
interpret it. We can have thatconversation for an hour, and
then then other hunters outthere have the same conversation
at length in the blind in theclubhouse, and and we'll

(01:09:14):
continue to have thoseconversations, and the managers
out there that are that arecharged with make making these
decisions will continue to hearthose discussions, conduct these
surveys. A lot of the data thatwe've talked about come from
surveys that state agencies,federal agencies have conducted,
and that hunters have providedthe data for.
It's another example. We say itmany, many times how hunters are

(01:09:37):
the ones that that make thisprofession make waterfowl
management in North America theenvy of the world. It's not just
bands, it's not just partscollection, it's also your
participation in these opinionsurveys, these satisfaction
surveys. So encourage you tocontinue to do that and continue
to make make those phones buzzwhenever you are whenever you
have something to to say becauseat the end of the day, that

(01:10:01):
shows that you care, that's howpeople know that the decisions
they make are important to youand this resource, and so just
keep playing your part in thiswonderful community. We're here
now in hunting season, and thisis our time to get out there and
enjoy the resource.
Scott, you've already been doingsome of it. Brian, you're about
to get out there. Mark, is yourhunting season open yet?

Yeah. We opened up two weekends ago, so, yep, I've
been out a little bit. Shot someblue wings.

Alright. Well, I'll be I've I've not been out
duck hunting yet. I was out dovehunting in New Mexico last week,
but getting excited about tryingto find a place to go out and
shoot some duck here in thecoming probably in a few weeks,
I'll be doing that, and I thinkwe all will live by doctor Scott
Stevens' immortal words, life isshort. You better hunt. Mark,

(01:10:48):
Scott, Brian, thank you all somuch for joining us.

Right here. Thank you.

Special thanks to our guests on today's episode,
doctor Mark Vertisco with theUniversity of Nebraska Lincoln,
Scott Stephens with DucksUnlimited, doctor Brian Davis at
Mississippi State University. Weappreciate their insight and
their dedication to thisresource and and sort of
committing their career tohelping us do better in
everything that we do forwaterfowl and waterfowl hunters.
We thank our producers, RachelJarrett and Chris Isaac for the
great job that they do withevery one of these episodes, and

(01:11:14):
to you, the listener, we thankyou for your support of the
podcast. We thank you for yourfor your time. Most importantly,
we thank you for your support,passion, and commitment to
waterfowl and wetlandsconservation.

VO (01:11:26):
Thank you for listening to the DU podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan, the officialperformance dog food of Ducks
Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan,always advancing. Also proudly
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(01:11:48):
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Ep. 723 - Bag Limits — The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown

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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. 723 - Bag Limits — The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown