11-30-25 - Waterfowl Hunting

On tonight's show, Jim and Scott talk about the status of waterfowl hunting in the region. They discussed duck numbers, harvest trends and management objectives with their guest, Scott Vance, Regional Director with Delta Waterfowl. For further info, go to www.deltawaterfowl.org or contact Scott Vance at [e-mail].

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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(01:25):
Jim Straighter Outdoors right here on News Radio eight forty.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Whas good evening, everyone, Jim Straighter here, and we hope
everyone out there had a blessed Thanksgiving. It's one of
my favorite holidays because it's the way we get together
and thank the Lord for all of us providence and
good things he has in our lives. And we certainly

(01:49):
had a good one at our house. We got a
special program for you tonight. We got Scott Fans, who's
the Southeast director for Delta Waterfowl on with us and
we're going to talk water fowling tonight, what's wrong with
what's going on in a lot of parts of the country.
He's going to share information with us about the production reports,

(02:11):
how many ducks are estimated to be in the flyways
this coming winter, and obviously we're on the tales of
a Thanksgiving early duck season here in Kentucky, so Scott
Crohner has no surprise that it was mixed results. Some

(02:31):
folks had decent shooting, but others just came up.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Dry wigeons and gadwalls and mallards. Wood ducks were definitely there,
even a few folks getting out trying their luck on
some divers on the bigger lakes. But everybody's looking for
a good place to duck hunt, and a few folks
are wondering where the geese have gone over the years.

(02:56):
And I think tonight the program should be really good
for folks because I know more hunters that travel to
chase waterfowl around the state and out of the state
than I do hunters that are chasing any other game Jim.
And there's been a lot of talk and a lot
of chatter over the years where a lot of waterfowl

(03:18):
hunters have now kind of retired their favorite shotguns and
their waiters have dry rotted because they've not been able
to find the waterfowl to chase that they used to have.
And there's a lot of folks that would like to
see more management and better opportunity for hunting waterfowl in

(03:39):
the state of Kentucky on both private and public land.
So I'm interested to see what Scott Vance and the
folks over at Dealt the Waterfowl are doing, not just
to impact us here in Kentucky, but across the United States.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Well, you and I talk, there's some interesting things about
what is not happening waterfowling. There's some statistics with me
is one of the most sought after things by Kentucky
hunters and some surveys, yet there's not a whole lot happening.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
There seems to be more folks that are vocal about
reaching out to their commissioners about asking for improvement with
better food and resting areas when it comes to both
ducks and geese. I know that a lot of folks
have tried to figure out ways in which they can
advocate to get better resources available to them, even if

(04:35):
they have to go to more of a drawl or
quota type hunt. And I'm not sure if it's just
taking a lot more money than what's out there and available,
or if it's just taking time to put it together
or being ignored. But maybe Scott can give us some
feedback to from the Delta waterfowl side. I know that

(04:56):
there's been quite a few people that have been trying
to get some green timber management in the state of
Kentucky and a little bit more down in Tennessee, and
for whatever reasons, those projects have not been able to
find completion or really let the rubber meat road. And
when you look at Kentucky hunters, one thing that you

(05:18):
will always find common in conversation, no matter what part
of the state they live in, is that they're not
seeing the amount of waterfowl numbers that they used to see.
And we've got to remember, even the good things that
are going on today that we're going to celebrate, Kentucky
used to be known as the goose capital of the world.

(05:41):
I don't know if we're known for that much anymore.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
Demonstrator, No, we're certainly not. You know, I'm old enough.
I was there in the heyday.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
I was very close friends with Tommy Wilson, who, in
my estimation, was probably the best waterfowl manager we ever
had the state of Kentucky. And in those days, there
was birds piling in both ducks and geese. Tommy was
very good at balancing the habitat for both species, and

(06:12):
it wasn't too many years down the road that everything
shifted towards deer management and changing those refuge areas around
where the farming practices were not conducive to holding waterfoun
and without resting, feeding and loafing areas, you're just not
going to have large populations of ducks and reason I'm

(06:35):
speaking to that, and Scott, you're very familiar with this.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
Look what Missouri's doing and they got the ducks man.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
You know, to your point about people traveling, that's become
a real hotspot. And so we'll talk with Scott Vance
about that right here after the break. You got any
closing thoughts before we moved the break.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
I hope Scott can bring us some experience, knowledge and
wisdom that a lot of folks in my age group
in their late forties will be able to relate to.
And that is, it would be nice to have better
waterfowl hunting than what we currently have, especially for those
of us that don't want to resort to only having

(07:16):
a surface drive motor to get to the few spots
that are holding ducks consistently anymore. There's been a big
push and how folks get back into those areas. And
to be straight about it, Jim, for years, being a
die hard waterfowl hunter, we let those motors and those
boats rest so that we would hold birds. And what

(07:39):
I'm afraid of is those surface drive boats now are
getting into the places that our birds are roosting and
resting those sanctuaries, and I think it's starting to have
an impact. It's very severely on how some of the
younger waterfowl hunters are going about getting in on some
of the hot action and keeping their barrels hot.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
You can't blame them because it's only a game in town.
But by the same token, as you know, the bigger
problem is these birds don't have big refuge aerrys in
the state of Kentucky anymore. With the right habitat, the
right food, and the right water management, we'll definitely address
all that coming back with brother Vance.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
So I'm going to go to break.

Speaker 5 (08:23):
Here.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
This break is presented by SMI Marine. They've got all
kind of used boats for sale. They're eager to get
your boat ready for winter, and here it is. Here
it is so if you haven't already done, so get
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with all kind of great incentives. And remember you never

(08:44):
get soaked by my friends at sm I. Well, I'm
fortunate enough to have a pair of aces on with
me tonight. Both of them are named Scott, so I
guess to keep things where it makes sense to everybody,
Scott Vance, all refer to you as Scott vill if
that's okay, that's great, all right, buddy, Bob, welcome aboard.

(09:05):
We're delighted to have you, I guess, right out of
the box. One thing that I've been bombarded with is
questions about the duck forecast for this year. Which species
are you know, showing promise? And then we'll dive into
where in the world the ducks have been going, because

(09:26):
they sure hadn't been coming to Kentucky in any numbers
and quite some time. There's a lot of frustration out there, Scott,
you and I've talked about this a bunch. It's just
been somewhere there's well, there's just more people leaving the
state to hunt, and there has been staying local.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
They're leaving the sport. They're not just leaving the State's
there's revenue that comes in off of this boats. It's
very easy to find classified sections full of sixteen to
twenty foot John boats, and it's easy to see decoys
for selling. It's not because people are in a pension
hurting for money. There's less people turning out at blind

(10:10):
draws with several of the different states that are surrounding us.
And there's been some fraudulent stuff with how people get
in and what blinds they get drawn or from departments.
I mean, they've been audited, it's been proven that these
things have gone on. It's not just a couple people
that are being grouchy tonight with our waterfowl numbers, but

(10:33):
it's I want folks to listen for a second. When
you have to start your day at two am in
the morning and drive to the boat ramp or go
to the river or get into a spot at such
an early hour and put your life at risk, honestly,

(10:57):
not because you're not wearing a flotation device, but cause
of the temperatures of the water and the terrain that
you have to navigate yourself through with your boat or
you have to wade through. It's very disheartening for folks
week in and week out, and there's more weekend warriors in.
There are folks that get to take off during the

(11:19):
waterfowl season, but it's no ducks or two ducks, or
six ducks or seven ducks. But we're only getting in
on two to three good shoots a year. And the
only folks that are consistently having what I consider gentlemen
duckos are folks that have put a tremendous amount of

(11:41):
money and time, energy and effort into having something that
they have manipulated in a moist soil unit, or they've
gone in and they've flooded some green timber, they've planted
some things, they've done things for the ducks. But what
I'm running into, and what most of my friends that
I will fell hunter running into, is we get up

(12:03):
at these early hours of the morning. We put everything
into it. All the ducks are in the sky, and
before official you know, sunrise even hits on our clocks,
all of our shooting is done that first fifteen to
twenty thirty minutes of the day, and by eight o'clock
it's not about whether or not we're going to grind

(12:24):
it out and hunt till two or three. It's just
it's time to pack up and go home, because it's
that first little push of birds that come through. We're
seeing more and more where we're shooting wood ducks and gadwalls,
And to be frank too about it, it's just it's
harder to get into this mallard game. And a lot

(12:46):
of folks that are watching social media, there's a lot
of these birds that are actually being raised. They're domesticated mallards,
and a lot of folks are seeing pictures on social
media with a couple of guys, four or five guys
that throw on their mind together. They got twenty or
thirty green heads laying out there on a log, but
there was on Wild Ducks Jim. A lot of folks

(13:07):
have resorted to actually going in and shooting up domesticated mallards.
And I'd be interested to hear some of Scott's comments tonight,
Scott Vance's comments on this, because this is something I
don't approve of personally.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well I don't either, and that's all we can talk
a bit about that.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
Scott V.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
I think he spot on with everything he said there.
I mean, it's duck hunting's work and when there's no reward,
it drives people out of the sports. So let's talk
about how many ducks we got this year and then
move forward from that, if you would please.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Yeah, you bet.

Speaker 5 (13:47):
Yeah. I used to be one of those guys that
I think we would go out and sleep in the
boat to save our spot. But about the time I
turned forty up stopped doing that. So no, that's not
for old guys to do. That's for young guys that
either aren't married, or are newly weds, or don't have

(14:08):
a whole lot of responsibility or a whole lot of sense.
But we've all done it, I think everybody that's afflicted
with waterfowl. And yeah, it's definitely, definitely, especially for the
public land hunter and the person, like you said, this
guy that doesn't have deep pockets or private lands that hunt.
It's getting much much more difficult. And honestly, it's, uh,

(14:29):
it's a couple of different things. When I look at
when we look at the total duck numbers, you know,
this year's estimate is down just a tiny bit from
last year's estimate. It's estimated with the breeding population survey
that they do every spring in May, that there's thirty

(14:52):
three million, nine hundred thirty three million, nine and eighty
thousand ducks. Last year there were thirty three million.

Speaker 6 (14:58):
Nine ninety fou ducks estimated, so the.

Speaker 5 (15:03):
Overall population is almost identical to what it was in
twenty four.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
And by the way, these results are from where.

Speaker 6 (15:12):
This is from US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Speaker 5 (15:14):
They do what they call the bee pop, which is
a breeding bird population survey. They've been doing it since
nineteen fifty five, and essentially they fly across the Prairie
Pothole region and across eastern Canada and the Great Lakes
areas and they count how many breeding birds they have,
So essentially they're not counting the ducklings.

Speaker 6 (15:38):
Counting ducklings from the air would.

Speaker 5 (15:39):
Be impossible, and we can talk about some more and
more about the duckling research we're doing too, But what
they're counting is the holdover birds from last year. So essentially,
these are birds that were bred in twenty four that
made it through the winter and they were breeding in
the spring of twenty five, and so that's what you
really look at that, and it's a it's a it's

(16:02):
not a population census by any means. They're not counting
birds and saying this is how many we have. It
is an estimate, and it's based on long term data
and a whole bunch of different models, and you know
the area that they're looking at. But essentially the number
of birds didn't change. Even the number of mallards changed

(16:22):
about one hundred thousand birds, you know, from twenty five
from twenty four to twenty five. Some little bit of
good news, penntail numbers are up, you know, from from
year over year, and then the redhead and canvas back
numbers are.

Speaker 6 (16:36):
Up as well.

Speaker 5 (16:39):
So those two are those three species increased, which is
interesting within itself on how how that's happening. We've had
a long term drought in the Prairie Pothole region. This
year the Dakotas were extremely dry, which.

Speaker 6 (16:53):
Really hurt the teal population.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
We've had, you know, about a third of the national
population of blue wing till breed in the Dakotas, and
so dry Dakotas mean not many blue wings and so
blue wing numbers were down, as we're green wing till
numbers too.

Speaker 6 (17:12):
So when you look at.

Speaker 5 (17:13):
The long term drought, you look at long term decline
in the number of birds. Obviously you don't have as
many birds as we had back in the nineties and
the early two thousands. You look at it on a
bigger scale. We've been doing this survey since nineteen fifty five,
and the long term average of birds is only down
about five percent, and so we're just five percent under

(17:34):
the long term average.

Speaker 6 (17:35):
But everybody wants to compare, just like I do.

Speaker 5 (17:40):
What we're having now to the very best hunting we've
ever had, and so it's going to take some wet springs.
It's gonna take some big programs like Delta's doing with
our predator management and honestly, what we have in the southeast,
I'm pulling Kentucky Tennessee into that.

Speaker 6 (17:59):
We have a distribution issue a lot of these ducks.
If you look at this, we have six.

Speaker 5 (18:05):
Point five to five million Millard ducks right now. Last year,
right before Christmas, there was an estimate that said they
were close to three million millards on public lands in
the state of Missouri. You can see we have a
distribution problem. So the ducks are distributing to the places

(18:31):
which have great habitat Missouri. I used to work in Missouri.
I can brag on them a little bit. They do
a great job They're a well funded agency. They have
a lot of waterfowl hunters, and they put a premium
on waterfowl habitat the folks that manage those areas. When
I worked there, I managed an area, put a lot
of money and a lot of time in it, and

(18:52):
so they have great, great habitat.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Well.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
And it's no surprised they have some of the best
duty in the continental United States right now. So we'll
love flesh that out a little more right here after
the break. I'm especially interested in talking about programs that work,
and we'll flesh those out going through the program, and
then we'll talk about what hunters mean in the duck numbers.

(19:19):
You know what a duck hunting numbers do to impact
the population, which is, thank goodness, very surprisingly low. So
we'll discuss that more after the break. The break is
presented by Massio Properties Aren't Realty. Paul Thomas is the
broker there checking his listings out at mop HRT real

(19:39):
t dot com. Now, folks, if you've got questions for
Scott Vance tonight, he'll be glad to answer them for you.
Betty Ken the numbers are called or five oh two,
five seven, one eighty four eighty four or one eight
hundred four four four eighty four eighty four toll free. Scott,

(20:02):
I want to return to your conversation. There's got to
be about the duck numbers and what it seems to purtend.
And I'd love for you to talk about hunter of
mortality because it's really not a part of the picture,
especially when it comes to ducklings, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (20:21):
Sure, sure, yeah, So you know, we're kind of in
a perfect storm right now. We have fewer ducks long
term drought, so production is down. Ducks are kind of
holding their own, you know, they sort of stabilized at
this low thirty million population number population estimate that we have,

(20:43):
and I don't think that's gonna change until we see
some rain on the prairies and you know, some snow,
some heavy snowfall, which right now, I just looked at
the snowfall amounts and Canada has quite a bit of
snow that Da Codas do. So we're getting some snow.
It's a little more typical year this year, So keep
your fingers that we've got a good future breeding season

(21:03):
ahead of us, because we need three or four of
those in a row. Yeah, the bottom line on hunters.
You know, a lot of the folks that I hear are, hey,
we're shooting too many birds. You need to cut the season.

Speaker 6 (21:15):
I'd be fine with not hunting.

Speaker 5 (21:16):
Them for a couple of years. That's not gonna do anything.
And that's the bottom line is it's not going to
do a thing. We could stop shooting ducks for several
years and it wouldn't have any population you know, emphasis
or impact at all, because over ninety percent of your
mortality in a typical year happens during the breeding season,

(21:38):
not by a hunter's gun. And so you know, while
when you shoot a duck, that's a dead duck. Obviously,
when you look at the long term population, when you
look at the big emphasis on population numbers, ducks only
live for four years, so you can you can completely
and totally cycle all of your generation in four years.

(22:01):
You know that duck's only going to produce offspring for
three breeding seasons and then it's probably going to die
either of natural causes or hunter mortality. And so what
you've got is a situation where you have to produce
duck links in order to have a growing population. And

(22:23):
you know that's where we're at. That's the reason Delta
we focus about ninety percent of our efforts, ninety percent
of all of our funds, which we raised two hundred
and eighty three million dollars for the million Duck campaign,
which is amazing. We'll be producing about a million ducks
a year off the prairies, and we put all of

(22:45):
our emphasis on those prairie potholes, which produce eighty percent
eighty five percent of our ducks year over year. So
if you really want to make a difference for duck populations,
you go to the breeding grounds, You protect those really
critical wetlands, You pray for rain because it takes takes
rain to have those small wetlands, and then you do
your best to protect those duck nests from predation and

(23:08):
the ducklings from predators as well. And that's that's really
the bottom line for the long term number. Now, the
distribution issue is that's a bigger issue, and it's something
that that Delta had been talking about for several years.
We got a lot of feedback last year from folks
who were going, Man, I've hunted Arkansas my whole life.

(23:28):
I've hunted Louisiana, West Tennessee, West Kentucky, you know, even
areas in the Carolinas and Georgia, and they're saying, we
don't have any ducks anymore. I mean, we just don't
get any ducks. All the ducks are shortstopping, they're not
getting down here. And of course that leads to all
kinds of different myths and theories and hate mail. And

(23:51):
these guys are planting corn and pouring corn out. The
bottom line, bottom line, and I can we can look
at data. If you want to see the data, go
to our website, the Delta website and look at a
recent article that we did talking about the National Wildlife Refuges.
And if you look at the refuge system across the board,

(24:11):
you're gonna see that on the National Wildlife refuges and
on a lot of the state wildlife waterfowl areas, the
maintenance and the management just is not there anymore. You know.
In twenty twenty, we did a survey and found that
there were two hundred and fifty million dollars in deferred

(24:34):
maintenance on priority waterfowl areas in the National Wildlife Refuge system.
And what that means is the pumps aren't working, the
water structures aren't working, The levees are broke, the dykes
don't work, and because of that, not only are we
not managing those areas for ducks, we don't even have
any water. And that's the one thing you've got to

(24:56):
have for ducks. You've got to have water. Now, go
have any ducks if you don't have water. And if
you look across some of these states that have historically
been really good in some of the areas in states
like West Kentucky that have historically held a lot of ducks,
you don't have to go very far to figure out
what the problem is. If you go out on those
National Wildlife refuges or on the state wildlife areas, they

(25:19):
don't have a water. Great deer habitat, wonderful place for
a deer bed, and they'll killed some big bucks on
those properties right now, but it's.

Speaker 6 (25:27):
Not duck habitat anymore. And until we can do.

Speaker 5 (25:30):
Something about the funding and about the priority of those
agencies in managing waterfowl, it's not going to change. We're
just not going to have the ducks that we once
had in those areas until we get more management and
more water across that landscape. And when you couple that
in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi where they had

(25:52):
massive rice production and that has declined fifty sixty seventy percent.
Where you don't have that rice and don't have that
water on the landscape either, it's no surprise they don't
have as many ducks.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Well in our egg here, Scott Croning, I mean, the
cornfields don't yield the waste grain they used to. They're
turned over for you know, winter weed or other things
that really don't bode well for the ducks.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
And I harken back to.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
The days when I was heavily involved down there at
Ballard with Tommy Wilson, a lot of those managers down there,
And the one thing you can say is when you
got waterfowl refuges, I'm talking about, you know, really significant
areas that are intensively managed for waterfowl. The old saying

(26:44):
all boats float with a rising tide. Where that applies
to Dutch and geese is if they have those areas,
they filter out of them and then they come back
and without those you're just not going to hold ducks.
And Missouri, I mean, uh, it's the best testing ground
that I could point to.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
And if I'm on, Mace, tell me.

Speaker 5 (27:10):
Not at all.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
Right Now, it's cool to look like a duck hunter.
And I think we've got more young people involved with
with duck hunting than we do with deer hunting or
turkey hunting than ever before. But I scratched my head,
and I wonder because when it when it boils down

(27:32):
to it the Ohio River, and then you could go
down through Borlow Ballard, you could get into West Tennessee.
We used to be able to take our boat or
our enclosed trailer when I was in my twenties, and
it wasn't just a heyday year. We've duck hunted every

(27:56):
day of the season that we could. And we were
just moving with the ducks. We were moving with where
the water was open. We were moving to sandbars on
the rivers. We were working with precipitation and how snow
was falling on areas and impacts. I'm talking like areas
in Henderson. You have areas that were up and around,

(28:18):
you know, like the Lagrange, Kentucky, right outside of where
I grew up. Tim Wakefield, Kevin Metzger, myself and Mike
Gollett and so many guys. We would we would hunt
at home in Odham County and have is good or
better of hunts than places that I've traveled outside of
the country to waterfowl hunt. And that o'hallo River would

(28:40):
produce ducks. A gentleman could go out there with a
couple guys from work or his father, his grandfather, they
had they had ducks to hunt. Mississippi River, walbash, little wabashed,
getting in and around real foot lake and stuff. So
so I'm not I'm not coming at this conversation shooting

(29:01):
bullets towards delta. I'm coming into it with like what
has changed so much? Like besides the spreadsheet and the
data and the numbers, like how can we get it back?
What can we do besides just the summer counts and
the predators and all that. Because it used to be

(29:23):
that duck hunters were hardcore men that could put up
with the elements. We can still put up with the elements,
but we don't have the ducks to chase and hunt
and and I mean it takes a small fortune now
in gas and boats and decoys. I mean, shells are better.
We can get over the lead debate because we've got

(29:45):
TSS decoys are as good as they've ever been. We've
been through the debates of motion, the wing spinning decoys.
But Scott Vance, I'm scared right now when I see
thirty five boats taking off like the Indianapolis five hundred,
or a dirt bike track in Arkansas that just recently
had their opener, and it's all a bunch of twenty

(30:08):
year old kids and in boats, and it's dangerous. We've
got one hell of a problem.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yes, well, the guys, let me let me go to
break because those are some great questions and we'll we'll
tell them to address them after the break if you
don't mind, so let me close.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
Break here is presented by a SMI marine. Go see them.
It will take great care of your all of your
boating needs. Remember you never get soaked by my friends
at SMI.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
H Scott Cronin, I know you got a burning question
for brother Vanspired out there.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
It was coming from that burn that I had in
my voice before we went to break, and that is
how how do we bring waterfowl hunting back to Kentucky
and do so in a way that not only the
state agency gets involved, but Delta and the landowners. I mean,

(31:07):
there's there's a lot of pieces to solve this, and
some of those pieces sometimes require money, sometimes it requires labor,
and sometimes it just requires the hunters themselves. So flesh
out where we're at with bringing us back into the
rim of actually being able to go out with a

(31:28):
fighting chance and shoot up a few ducks and a
few geese.

Speaker 6 (31:32):
Yeah, well, you know.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
I don't.

Speaker 5 (31:35):
I don't have all the players lined up. Obviously, I
don't work in that realm and kentuck you very much,
but I will tell you my opinion on that, and
I can tell you what Delta you know, what Delta's
park could be in it. As I mentioned, Delta recognizes
that we have a distribution issue.

Speaker 6 (31:54):
And the one thing that you'll find.

Speaker 5 (31:56):
About Delta Waterfowl is we don't just go out and
new habitat where we don't just go out and do
duck research or surveys. When we do something, we do
it with one intent in mind, and that is the
duck hunter. There's no mistakes that we are the duck
hunters organization, and every single thing that Delta does is

(32:20):
targeted at putting more ducks over your decoys. And that's
not your decoys. If you hunt Missouri or you hunt
in North Dakota. That's your decoys. If you want to
be a DELTA member and you hunt in the United States,
we want you to have the very best hunting that
your area, your state, your region can provide it. Obviously,

(32:40):
you know, just by the nature of a migratory species,
you're obviously going to have better hunting along the big rivers.
You're obviously going to have better hunting where you have
lots of water and waterfowl management being done. But DELTA
has seen that there's a significant problem, and that is
ducks are not distributing themselves across the landscape like they

(33:03):
once did.

Speaker 6 (33:05):
And some of it is the fact that we don't
have as many ducks.

Speaker 5 (33:08):
You know, when you have half as many ducks, it
takes half as many places to be obviously, but the
bigger issue is we don't have the waterfowl habitat we
used to have. And some of that has to do
with the way that these National Wildlife refuges are being

(33:29):
managed and the state waterfowl areas are being managed.

Speaker 6 (33:32):
And what DELTA.

Speaker 5 (33:33):
Would like to do is be a policy partner, be
a driver in policy to get more emphasis put on
waterfowl on National Wildlife Refuges.

Speaker 6 (33:46):
And state WA's.

Speaker 5 (33:48):
In addition to that, we want to drive more funding
because obviously, I mean we're looking at back in twenty twenty,
it was a two hundred and fifty million dollar deficit
just on what areas. The estimate was two point five
billion dollars across the entire National Wildlife Refuge system. That's
a backlog in infrastructure. Two point five billion dollars that

(34:12):
they're backlogged stuff that's not getting fixed roads, levees. Like
I said, water structures, pumps. If you don't have pumps,
you can't pump water. If you don't have water structures,
you can't hold water. You don't have levees.

Speaker 6 (34:25):
Obviously you can't manage water.

Speaker 5 (34:28):
And so what DELTA wants to do is drive policy
and drive funding to that. The other piece of the puzzle,
and you just said it is the private landowner. And
what we have to realize is if you want to
have ducks in western Kentucky, then refuges like Ballard have.

Speaker 6 (34:45):
To hold more ducks. And that's going to help everybody.

Speaker 5 (34:49):
When Ballard was holding fifty sixty seventy one hundred thousand ducks,
a year. The duck hunting around that area was fantastic,
fantastic for everybody, the the public and the private land hunters.
When Ballard's only holding ten, fifteen, twenty thousand ducks, then
you know there's just not as many ducks to go around.

(35:11):
And those ducks don't have to move around either. You know,
those ducks can go to the areas where they're not
being hunted, and that's something Jim and I talked about
earlier today before the show. Ducks basically need three things.
They need water, they need food, and they need a
lack of disturbance. And that disturbance can be anything from
people running short drive motors through the habitat and flushing

(35:33):
them every day to going in and shooting at them.
If you disturb those birds in an area, they will leave,
They won't be in that area.

Speaker 6 (35:40):
They don't feel safe.

Speaker 5 (35:42):
And so what we're trying to do is across the landscape,
across the especially the southeast and Midwest, we're trying to
emphasize waterfowl habitat and funding and these private public partnerships
that are going to help every everybody well.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
In those private public partnerships are going to be necessary
and unfortunately a lot of the agency people have not
been recepted to that, and that's a real problem. And
I'm gonna make a statement I made on early program.
A lot of these agencies got too damn lazy, and
they're riding deer like a bard mural to the detriment

(36:24):
of waterfound small game hunters. And we'll have a little
more to say that after the break. The break is
presented by SMI Marine. Go see Timmy Eddington any staff.
You'll find new friends over there. Remember you never get
soaked from my friends at SMI.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Scott Van So, I want to ask you a question
coming from the common duck hunter who really depends on
bike water. As we talk about how bird numbers are
up or down and habitat, it used to be that
no matter how much leftover grain was in the fields

(37:03):
from combines and harvest, and no matter what the weather was,
by the time that we got back water. Of course,
those big northerly fronts that would push birds to us
were always helpful, and when water stayed open and it
was really cold, that was really helpful. But we have

(37:24):
sheets and acres, thousands of acres, and I'll give you
an example close to my house an Ton Road off
eighty five through the Pond River bottoms, thousands of acres
of flooded timber and flooded crop ground doesn't have hardly
a huntable population of any species of duck. But then

(37:48):
February rows around and I know that there's not hunting
pressure and they've been able to relax. But those same
acres of water you can't stuck ducks in any tighter
in the afternoon. So why are these ducks hitting habitat
in areas that a lot of us through the seventies, eighties,

(38:08):
nineties and up to today used to really be able
to beat and bang on our ducks pretty hard, and
we still had plenty for the next year. We didn't
have all the innovation technologies and nowhere near as much
money sitting in pools of accounts with agencies or whatever.
What's happened? Why are these ducks here when season's out?

Speaker 5 (38:32):
Yeah, I'll just tell you personal experience.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
I went.

Speaker 6 (38:37):
I had a guy in Tennessee that.

Speaker 5 (38:39):
Invited me to go snow goose hunting, which I'm not
a huge snow goose hunter, but duck season was going
to be over, and I thought, why not so we
went to Stuttgart, Arkansas to shoot snowgee's two weeks after
the duck season had closed in Arkansas, and you literally

(39:00):
could not find a mudhole, a pond, anything, a slew,
especially any of your managed wetlands or shallow water wetlands
flooded corn that didn't have a ton of Milard ducks
in it. And so I was asking the guide. I

(39:21):
was like, okay, you know, I heard nothing but bad
reports about Stuttgart this year, that the duck hunting, except
on the very very most premium private properties, the duck
hunting at Stuttgart was not good overall. And he said
it wasn't it was terrible. We didn't shoot any ducks.
And I said, okay, I'm riding around. I'm seeing ducks everywhere.

(39:42):
Literally they won't even hardly fly when we go by.

Speaker 6 (39:44):
In the truck.

Speaker 5 (39:45):
And he goes the differences the season's closed, and I said, well,
obviously these ducks don't have a calendar. They're not that smart.

Speaker 6 (39:53):
He goes, nobody's shooting at them.

Speaker 5 (39:56):
And I honestly believe that it is a It is
an aspect of disturbance. Nobody's out there running boats. You
mentioned earlier, the short drive motors, and man, I've hunted
short drive motors. I've been back in some places where
there's no way we'd have got back in there without
short drive. I've hunted air boats, you know, down in Texas.

(40:17):
That's the way they get to the ducks is to
run air boats. But I truly believe that we have
just like you said, we have the ability to get
back into places that we've never gotten before. And I
think that the place where ducks are are getting more
and more concentrated. And even though we have much a

(40:39):
lot fewer waterfowl hunters. You know, we had two point
five million waterfowl hunters at the apex of waterfowl hunting,
and I think the last survey number, and I could
be a little bit off on this one, I think
it's down below one point three million now waterfowl hunters.
And so, just like you said, we don't have as
many waterfowl hunters. Water folks are starting to not hunt,

(40:59):
you know, so a lot of them are aging out
and they don't want to get out there at two
o'clock in the morning. They don't want to have to
save their spot, and they absously don't want to go
out there and just watch the sky and not shoot
any birds after working that hard. You know, waterfowl hunting
is not easy. You know, you've got to put in
some time and you've got to put in some effort
unless you're hunting, you know, in private blinds. And so

(41:23):
I really do think that it is a aspect of disturbance,
and I think that's the reason those ducks. I'm sure
that people aren't in there. You know, after the season,
nobody cares anymore. Nobody's in there scouting, nobody's in there hunting,
nobody's in there looking. And those birds, you know, they
come back in because they're not getting ran out, you know,

(41:43):
every fiftime minutes, every hour.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
Guys.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
This goes back to I think the major problem that
needs to being dressed, and that is refuge areas that
have to be intensively managed for Dutch.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
Those ducks do have rest areas.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Those ducks do imprint on those places. For example, if
on the refuges they hold water into green timber and
allow those ducks to know that was a safe place
and do all that loafing, then they'll come back. But
it has to be a continuum year after year and

(42:23):
that takes an investment of time and resources, and for
some weird reason, a lot of these upper level management
people don't see that it's the shoe and the horse.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
It's like you got to bite the bullet and make
a commitment or you're never going to get anywhere. And
they've turned away from it thinking that the hunters aren't there,
and all that isn't the case.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
The ducks ain't there.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
If the ducks are there, we'll have plenty of hunters,
I think, Scott Carnin that's what you're getting at, really
in a basic way, because without management, without loafing areas,
without refuges where they're not molested, they can't filter out.
My goodness, we got the Ohio River. Missouri's thriving on
the Missouri River. Let's see the comparison. The Ohio River

(43:15):
borders almost every portion of the state of Kentucky in
the northern sector, and eastern Kentucky's loaded with areas.

Speaker 4 (43:24):
It needs to be a management strategy.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Without it, we're gonna stay where we are and we're
stuck and it's not good.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
But if you look at those Missouri WMA's, you know
they regulate hunting pressure they don't. They don't hunt those
wm as every day, and they really regulate how many
people get in and where they hunt, and so that
allows those ducks to rest, you know, it gives them
a rest area, and it makes them stay home bottom line.

(43:52):
You know, if you just open it up and you're
hunting every day and you have unrestricted hunting, even on
the very best private lands where they have refuges and
they have plenty of ducks, if you shoot it every day,
you'll blow your ducks out. You know, the best places
that I know, and I've been very blessed and fortunate
to hunt a bunch of those places. They never hunt

(44:14):
more than two days a week, never ever.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
Yes, sir, Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Well, here's a clue that I would hope the folks
at the upper end would key on. You do duck
habitat and you've got deer habitat. You grow corn, and
before you flooded, the deer feasted on it. It's there
afterwards when you do the timber management. That's not detrimental

(44:41):
to the deer. I mean, come on, it's a priority situation.
And I think they're short selling themselves because I will tell.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
You Scott Corning.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
And you know this, back in the heyday of waterfound
in this state, buddy, there was hotel rooms full, there
was restaurants thriving, you know all the above it. You know,
I was there, Herald Knight was there, David Hill was there.
You were there at the temp end of it.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, we'll get into it after break. But I would
like to see where a lot of just our WMA's
are managed to where water is kept open during the
times in which we get, you know, the weather, to
push waterfowl over the top of us. It's really hard
to go out there with a group of young kids
on some of these mentor hunts or whatever it is.

(45:31):
If you load folks up and you try to expose them.
Let's this use Ballard for example, Ballard, Kentucky. It's it's
really tough when you're out there trying to deal with
a bag of yard cell decoys and four inches of ice, right,
and we need we need pumps that are pushing water

(45:52):
to keep those holes open. You have enough ducks, the
ducks will keep the water open. Don't don't think that
this is my rodeo. But at the same time, these
holes in which aren't that that are not holding these
big numbers of ducks. Please listen, buy the pumps, get
them fixed, run the water so that folks can go

(46:14):
out there and sit in a blind and shoot a
few mallards or pintails or what. It doesn't matter if
our pintail numbers are up or not if we don't
have a place to go kill them or hunt them
in Kentucky. And so what I'm getting at here and
I want to hammer on this after the break, I
want to look at what we need to do, what

(46:36):
hunters want to see as far as the opportunity and
in the land being managed so that we have more
private and public access and habitat and and good experiences
for duck hunters moving forward.

Speaker 4 (46:51):
Okay, got to go to break here.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
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Speaker 4 (46:57):
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Speaker 2 (46:59):
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Speaker 3 (47:12):
Scott Vance, Earlier in the program, you had talked about
where hunters aren't having an impact on duck numbers to
be alarmed and concerned about and as soon as you
said that, it threw off all these lights, flags and
my switchboard overheated. I want you to know that because

(47:35):
I am one of those people who have watched our
veteran and youth waterfowl duck season dates bounced around and change.
And I have been in this game long enough, maybe
not to be in the heyday of when the sp
ten was beaten and banging on more ducks and geese

(47:57):
than any other.

Speaker 5 (47:57):
Gun, but.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
I do see where a lot of hunters have asked.
They've asked their commissioners that set at the table that
are supposed to be our voice. They've emailed people who
work for departments about asking on date changes. And so
here's my point. We have ducks later on in the season.

(48:23):
We've asked for split seasons. We've asked for people to
listen to where we won our season at. We've adapted
higher bag limits on pintails and canvas backs, and we've
seen the growth of certain duck numbers. And you've said
that we've lost duck hunter numbers. So why can we
not beat in bang on the ducks a little bit

(48:45):
harder like duck season and duck conservation is really cool,
and I'm all about it, but there is a point
in time where I do want to fill up my
straps with some green heads and some widgeons and pintails,
and and I want to eat them, and I want
to pass the sport onto people.

Speaker 5 (49:03):
But I can't just.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Go out there and take a selfie next to a
bob cypress tree and look look real cool and my
latest and greatest duck hunting outfit, those days are those
days are not in in in in my planning for
for getting out there and making memorable duck hunts. My
days of making memorable duck hunts is where there's ducks
in the timber, there's ducks on the rivers, there's ducks

(49:26):
in the creeks, there's ducks in the backwater. There's ducks
to hunt, and we have them later in the season,
but we don't have them during our dates that are
set right now. So could we extend our dates and
make up a later duck season?

Speaker 4 (49:40):
I think are the big issue there. But Scott vas.

Speaker 5 (49:45):
No, it's it's the structure from the Migratory Bird Act.
You know, they have a set structure that's based on
the bee pop and it's based on may pond counts,
and so you know every year Fish and Wildlife Service
does that serve.

Speaker 6 (50:00):
They've been doing it since nineteen fifty five.

Speaker 5 (50:03):
And based on the estimate, primarily mallards is what they're
looking at. Then they give the season limit, and that
season limit is gonna be thirty sixty ninety days. It
can be very liberal, it can be very conservative, and
it's all based on Mallard numbers and it's all based
on that may pond data. And there's a chart.

Speaker 6 (50:25):
I don't have it right here in front of me,
but you can.

Speaker 5 (50:27):
Go to the Fish and Wildlife Service and you look
at that Adaptive Harvest Management chart and it's going to
show you.

Speaker 6 (50:36):
And then they have sideboards.

Speaker 5 (50:38):
You can't have a duck season after January thirtieth, and
then I believe they don't allow you to open duck
season before some date in September, and I don't remember
exactly what it is, as it's not as prevalent as
the January thirtieth number. A lot of states have moved
it all the way back to January thirtieth. So they're

(50:58):
giving you the latest date that the Fish and Wildlife
Service adaptive harvest management will allow and in my opinion,
in my opinion, the adaptive harvest management tool that we
have in place right now is probably a very very
good tool for conserving duck numbers and making certain that

(51:18):
we don't.

Speaker 6 (51:19):
Over harvest and that we don't harvest ducks at the
wrong time of the year.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
And so what you're getting even in January, you know,
I always adapt my decoy spreads. I start putting paired
ducks out about mid January, because a lot of your
ducks are going to start pairing up in January, and
then by February and certainly by March they're paired up.
They're ready to go back north. They're ready to breed.
They've got nothing but breeding, you know, going back north

(51:47):
and to the prairie pothole region and breeding on their
minds and disturbing ducks during that time period would be
a lot more detrimental than doing it in the winter.
And that's the reason they limit.

Speaker 4 (51:59):
The bottom block.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
I guess the bottom line is most of us would
like to see go as late as we can without
doing some negative I got some collars on hold here. Hey,
Josh's calling from Logan County. Hey, Josh, welcome board.

Speaker 7 (52:15):
Hey guys, how are y'all doing this afternoon?

Speaker 4 (52:18):
Great? Sir, how are you?

Speaker 7 (52:20):
I'm doing great, just sitting here listen. A lot of
a lot of good ideas, and it seems like there's
a lot of concern uh that I share the same
values and the same concerns as you guys. You know
that if we don't continue to strive to better our

(52:40):
waterfowl hunting in Kentucky, then the future of us We've
already seen what that's caused. Of the numbers that we've
got that are declining of people that are hunting. Our
kids are not enjoying hunting. They're not They do not
enjoy waiting out there and getting it and not getting
to shoot. And it's all because of all these things

(53:04):
that you gots.

Speaker 4 (53:05):
Have talked about.

Speaker 7 (53:06):
One thing I don't know, I joined in a little
bit late that I struggle with and am furious over
is that our state allows us to drain wetlands and
tile them and places that I've been in Kentucky twenty
two years and been waterfowl hunting here since the day
I moved here. So many places I used to get

(53:28):
to go and shoot green heads and geese and places
off of you know sixty five, you know, fly Away
all the way up to Peabody, and they've allowed us
to drain those places and make them where they won't
never hold water again. I think that that's a huge problem.
I think that them are allowing farmers or whoever it

(53:49):
may be, to drain wetlands. I think that that's criminal,
and I think that something ought to be done by
I think something can be done about it.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Yeah, there are government programs that are supposed to prevent
a lot of that.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
I I'm with you.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
I put it that way.

Speaker 7 (54:08):
Yeah, hoping the truck with me. I man, I could
take you and show you places. I've got pictures of
me holding limits and limits of geese and ducks over
top of the you know, hoods of jeeps and trucks,
and and those places are gone.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Now, yes, sir? All right, Well I understand, and we'll
try to dress that as best we can. All Right, folks,
gotta go break here. This pray is presented by this
to my marine. Go see them gonna take great care
of you. Remember it never gets soaked at SMI all right,
we got Mark, who's coming from Taylor County. Hey, Mark,

(54:44):
what have you got for us.

Speaker 8 (54:47):
Falling in and say, hey, like ten fifteen years ago,
I'm you know, I'm not in the duck mecha of Kentucky.
But ten fifteen years ago we could go out and
you know any day and kill five ten ducks. You know,
by any time we went out hunting. Well, it's completely
changed now, like Honor the Green River WM, a fishing

(55:08):
wallet does nothing. I hate coucle bears, and I know
the ducks don't like cuckle bears. So anything that managed
for waterfowl.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
That's what it is now.

Speaker 8 (55:19):
You know, they don't bush all it, they don't burn it,
they don't plan anything.

Speaker 7 (55:22):
That's all it is is cuckle burs.

Speaker 8 (55:25):
And uh we've mentioned that to them before and you
know they say they really don't have time. It's you know,
waterfowl in Kentucky doesn't bring that much revenue in, especially
for our county. So you know, it's kind of one
of those deals where you know, hope you got a
good private ground. And I'm fortunate enough to have a

(55:45):
good private ground. My neighbor has like three hundred acres
and we manage it. You know, we've got about fifteen
acres in wetlands we plant you know, corn and jack millet,
and one hunt one to two days a week max.
And you know, lucky enough to scratch out a few ducks.
But you know we can go to Kansas and hunt
for three days and we'll kill more ducks there in

(56:07):
three days and we will hear all season. You know,
if we had to hunt public, well, Mark.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
I'm with you one hundred percent. If you if you
look at Ballard, you look at green whatever, WMA, you
look at yellow Bank up this way, if those were
managed for waterfowl, we would have what I would call
distribution centers. They would keep the ducks in the area,
let them overwinter here, let them feel comfortable going into
the time when they migrate in the spring, and we

(56:35):
have our best shot at return this to the glory day.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
So appreciate your call. Brother.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Let's go to campus call them for nasal and hey, Cam, Hey,
how are you all doing fine?

Speaker 4 (56:47):
So what do you got for us?

Speaker 8 (56:49):
My first one of the.

Speaker 9 (56:50):
Things I was gonna hit on.

Speaker 5 (56:54):
Things smiths advance?

Speaker 7 (56:55):
Is that correct?

Speaker 4 (56:55):
From Yes? Yeah?

Speaker 10 (56:59):
What I was gonna say is I heard them. I
heard them mentioned something about you know, there's less waterfowl
hunters now than there used to be what I would
I would want to ask, is do you think that's
actually true or.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Or not?

Speaker 9 (57:16):
Because I mean back in the eighties, heck, even in
the nineties and the late seventies, you know, you taught
you hear all this hearsay about how many people used.

Speaker 10 (57:27):
To buy duck stamps just to buy duck stamps, Like
they didn't they didn't hunt or nothing like that. It
was just people collecting duck stamps. I mean, I feel
like that number is a little skewed.

Speaker 6 (57:39):
Yeah, A lot of that number is based on actual
you know, duck permits.

Speaker 5 (57:43):
In most states now Canada, you actually have to buy permit,
you know, a migratory bird permit for that particular state,
and then you're also supposed to register for your harvest
play in.

Speaker 6 (58:00):
So they're basing that number on.

Speaker 5 (58:03):
How many people by migratory bird permits, not just the
duck stamp. Of course, they you know, they obviously are
looking at duck stamp cells as well, but then they're
also looking at the hip surveys. You know, how many
people mark on their hip survey that they actually duck
hunted and how many ducks did they harvest, And so
that you know, I feel like that number is going

(58:23):
down now. I will tell you this, when you hunt
public ground, doesn't seem like there's any shortage of the
number of duck hunters out there. But I think we're
what we're seeing is we're just jamming more and more
people into a smaller space. Because where you used to
have five or six thousand acres that were managed for waterfowl,
now you might have a thousand.

Speaker 10 (58:43):
And that is all I do is hunt. All I
do is hunt public and I travel. I travel a lot,
just the different states to hunt Arkansas a lot. I mean,
there's no there's really not a lot of opportunities here
in Kentucky. All I live on the Ohio River and
I hunted the Ohio River, and I mean it can

(59:07):
be decent at best. But you know, you got your
last three weeks of season, and I feel like for
the last I don't know, i'd probably say six seven,
eight years. I mean that's that's when you are gonna
be able to scratch out a few I mean used
to you could be able to, you know, scratch out
a few limits, you know, from opening day all the

(59:28):
way to the clothes and now it's like, you know,
you got your last two three weeks of season and
that's it.

Speaker 4 (59:35):
Well, it's an easy equation, guys.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
I hate to say this, but if we don't manage
for waterfowl here, you ain't gonna kill them here. And
we're not managing for waterfowl here. On that note, I
gotta go to the break. The break is presented by
mall seal Properties. Aren't Realty checking them out at m
O P h A r T Realty dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
Scott V.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Let's talk about what help the kid do for the
duck hunters and what you are doing, and talk a
little bit about those private and agency sponsorship opportunities that
you all are pushing for.

Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
Sure, do you bet that is a big push right now.
You know, we saw that there's a distribution issue, there's
a need. Like I said, we we want to make
sure that we're looking out for the duck hunter. We
don't want to just produce more ducks. We want to
have them in places where we can hunt them and
you know, make sure that the distribution of ducks is

(01:00:36):
the way that it's supposed to be. And so we
are working really hard with the National Wildlife Refuges. We're
working hard with the state wildlife agencies, and we're trying
to push as much policy and as much funding as
we can towards those areas. And I think, you know,
the first step is awareness, the second step is putting
together a plan, and the third step is figuring out

(01:00:57):
how much it's going to cost and who's going to
pay for us. And of course we'll drive some federal
and state funds to those areas, but it's also going
to take some private, uh private money and uh, you know,
that's one thing that that's one of my jobs is
getting private donors, uh you know, to donate money towards
uh duck projects and duck management. And we're really good

(01:01:20):
at that. So I think Delta is going to play
a big role in making sure that we have better
duck distribution across the Southeast and the Midwest in the future.
And uh, I would tell everybody to be looking out
for opportunities, you know, if there's an opportunity to go
and uh testify or uh fill out a survey or

(01:01:41):
make your voice heard about a national wildlife refuge or
state w A and how they're managing make sure you
speak up and tell them, Hey, I'm a waterfowl hunter.
I want you guys to manage this. I'm a constituent,
I'm a taxpayer, and uh, you know my voice is
important and and uh and I want you to hear
what I have to say. And so you know, of
course Delta is going to continue to do our duck

(01:02:04):
production programs.

Speaker 4 (01:02:06):
We are.

Speaker 5 (01:02:09):
Yesmbarking upon the Yeah, it's it's the largest most visionary
thing for the future of ducks and duck hunters in history.

Speaker 6 (01:02:21):
And I have no problem saying that.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
That's not just a promotional uh saying or you know,
promotional slang. That is the absolute truth. Nobody has ever
embarked upon a management aspect or a management project to
produce a million ducks a year, year over year into
the flyway. That's not just catching a million ducks, that's

(01:02:45):
actually them fledgingbing and flying south. And so the way
we're going to do that is we're going to deployed
over one hundred thousand of our henhouses, which protect Mallard
hens from predation. And then we're gonna almost triple our
trapping contracts, which will produce seven hundred and fifty thousand

(01:03:06):
ducks every single year.

Speaker 6 (01:03:09):
Those trapping efforts on three thousand acres.

Speaker 5 (01:03:12):
We can produce a little over seven thousand ducks on
three thousand acres year over year, year after year with
just one trapping contract. And we'll have one hundred and
fifty trapping contracts, and like I said, one hundred and
ten thousand hen houses deployed across the pre pothole. So
we're pretty excited about that. It's gonna take us about

(01:03:33):
three or four years to get to that point where
we are consistently producing a million ducks, but like I said,
that's visionary and it'll have more impact than anything any
duck organization or or any organization's ever had on waterfowl
and waterfowl manage.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
Well explaining people how that works, because it goes back to,
you know, predator control, because it's great to have ducks,
but DUTs got to produce eggs, got to produced ducklings.
Without that, the rest of this is kind of a
scrambled eggs situation.

Speaker 5 (01:04:08):
That's a mute point. Well, we have a situation with
predators in the Prairie Hoole region that's unnatural. Predators didn't
literally nest. Predators did not exist in any you know,
sufficient numbers to cause any impact until recently. And you know,

(01:04:29):
when you know, men started going up there and farming,
We started building structures, We produced a food source that
allows them to overwinter. There's no ducks and no duck
eggs up there in the winter because they've all moved south,
and so those predators didn't have anything to sustain them
through the winter. Well now they do. They have grain,
and they have waste grain, They have grainaries. They also

(01:04:51):
have culverts, they have old cellars, they have old barns,
and so they can get in out of the weather,
you know, the severe weather and the cold weather, which
honestly is not as cold as it used to be.
So they also have it a little easier in the winter.
And we have an unnatural predator situation. And so even
with fantastic duck habitat, we're only seeing six seven eight

(01:05:13):
percent nest success. That means six to eight out of
one hundred hens that nest in a particular area are
successful in bringing off a nest. And it takes fifteen
to twenty percent just for the population to break even.
And so what we found when we put in hen houses,
when we put predator management through trapping at play, we

(01:05:36):
increase that nest success into the fifties, sixties and even
the eighty percent realm with our hen houses. And so
without doing that predator management and without protecting those malledge
from predation, obviously we're going in the wrong direction with
the predators.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Well, and the cool thing I like about your program
is with the predator control mixed stin with the nesting
houses for the mallards, the gab balls and the other
ducks that share those pitholes with the mallards benefit as
well because now those critters out aren't out there rubbing

(01:06:14):
their nests and eating their eggs.

Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
Absolutely absolutely, and it increases duckling survival as well.

Speaker 4 (01:06:23):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Explain a little bit about how that prob works and
how people can get involved.

Speaker 6 (01:06:30):
You know, the big thing that we're doing.

Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
We just finished up a three year campaign. Our goal
was to raise two hundred and seventy million dollars and
be able to endow this program for perpetuity. And you know,
perpetuity I help put people all the time. Perpetuity is
a long time, that means forever, and so essentially what
Delta is able to do is take the endowment that

(01:06:53):
we raised. We actually ended up raising two hundred and
eighty four million, so we exceeded our goal for fundraising.
We will take the interest off of that, and we'll
be able to sustain the predator management and predator control
year over year forever. To produce at least and obviously
everybody knows how numbers compound at least a million ducks

(01:07:16):
into the flyway every single year, and so to be
able to say that, it almost sounds like it's impossible,
but that's exactly what we just did. And if people
want to get involved with that, you can obviously make
a donation to Delta. The more money that we have
to spend on the Prairie Pot whole region, the more
ducks we can produce, the more trappers we can contract,

(01:07:39):
the more ducks are going to be in the flyway,
and hopefully the more ducks in front of your blind
And obviously that's the reason that second step for Delta
is to make sure that we have habitat in all
the areas so that we can distribute those ducks out
so everybody can enjoy that. You know, if we're producing
fifty million ducks, but they're all going to Missouri, they're

(01:08:00):
all going to northern Illinois, or Kansas and nobody in
the South gets to enjoy them. Then we've only done
part of the work.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
Well for the folks in Kentucky and the areas here
in the Southeast, tell them about the role you expect
to play going forward and realistically what they can do.

Speaker 5 (01:08:24):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:08:24):
Well, we've already started working.

Speaker 5 (01:08:27):
Our policy team and our conservation team has already started
working in identifying areas national wildlife refuges and state areas
that have high potential and have the opportunity to come
in and really make a difference in the number of
ducks that they hold, and not just ducks they hold,

(01:08:49):
but also hunting opportunities. And so we have a list
of those identified. Our policy team is going to be
going out and working you know, with Fish and Wildlife Service,
working with local agencies, state agencies, and like I said before,
you know we're going to be doing e blasts from Delta.
If you're not getting on our email list, you don't

(01:09:10):
get our distribution. I can put you on that, no problem.
And you know I can put my email address out there,
you can get it to me, or you can go
on the website and find me or anybody else in
your state and we can get you on that distribution list,
and when we start doing those projects, we're going to
be doing e blasts and we're gonna make sure that
all the duck hunters know about them. And we want

(01:09:32):
you to get out and be vocal. We want you
to talk about how important those projects are in your
area and realize just what you said. You know, rising
waters raise all the boats, and that's one of the
things everybody's like, well, I don't want there to be
more refuge just because that's just going to keep the
birds from my place. That's absolutely not true. The more
birds you can have in an area, the more birds

(01:09:53):
everybody's gonna shoot. And the problem with western Kentucky and
especially Central Kentucky in parts of Tennessee is we just
don't have the number of birds holding on those refuges
or WMAs anymore, and nobody's shooting any birds public or
private land.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Yes, sir, well give us the ways people can get
in that loop so they can be educated and know
what you're doing and join in if they care too.

Speaker 5 (01:10:22):
Yeah, go to www. Dot Deltawaterfowl dot org. Uh and
my you know, I'll give you my email. It's as
vance at Delta Waterfowl dot Org. Uh, feel free to
shoot me an email and I'll give you more information
and I'll get you on those mail mailing lists and uh,
you know you get my newsletter, Jim. I do a

(01:10:44):
newsletter about every two weeks. Try to keep everybody informed
of about what's going on. And I even do a
little duck report if you want to know what the
ducks are doing.

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
Well, those are all helpful.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
And I I've been a fan of Delta for a
long long time because I'm real big on predator management.
Number one and number two of you are doing it
in the pothole region where most of our ducks come from,
so it certainly strikes a cord in my heart. And
it's a program that I fully support. And we're all

(01:11:15):
kind of pulling, but we got to get some Dagon
cooperation from these state agencies. Without it, Missouri and Kansas
and others are going to be getting the line's share
of the ducks. And if that continues to happen, I
buy hunters. I mean it's that simple.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
It's a great sport, it's great heritage.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
And Scott Corner, I think you pibly it on me
on this there ain't no more better way to spend
a day than in a duck buying when the ducks are.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
Found, I don't think I don't think there's any better
way to bring revenue into the state of Kentucky, Indiana,
or Tennessee than to have duck hunters back in these cafes, hotels,
full shotgun being bought, shells being purchased. Ducks are big business, period,

(01:12:06):
and they can be a big business whether it's people
trying to beat a drum to round up money, or
it's actually people you know, beating the doors down trying
to get into this for that WMA or hunt club.
And I'm going to close on this before you all
close out the show. I would actually like to be
able to do a Google search on the Internet and

(01:12:29):
start seeing where there's outfitters in Kentucky that you could
go to to duck hunt. That tells you just how
bad our waterfowl hunting is in Kentucky that you can't
even find a waterfowl outfitter to host a man that
wants to take his grandchildren or his immediate employees out
to a duck blind. Now that's I feel, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
I think it'll be an EMT answer unfortunately. All Right, folks,
that's a wrap for tonight. Scott Vance, thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:12:57):
For being on with us.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
It's been very educational as always, folks, be careful out there.

Speaker 4 (01:13:02):
God bless everybody.