Victory Garden for Ducks - Delta’s Duck Production Program Gets Thumbs Up from Duebbert

I’ve never been accused of having a green thumb, but some of my neighbors do, and every summer they brighten my kitchen with tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, corn and an assortsment of fresh herbs and spices.

These folks are hardcore gardeners who aren’t afraid to get a little dirt under their fingernails. They fertilize, spray for insects, fence out the rabbits, pick weeds, and water when necessary. If an early frost threatens their garden they’ll cover every last plant before going to bed. And year after year they are rewarded with a bountiful harvest.

It occurs to me that growing a garden is a lot like raising ducks.

Gardeners who put a handful of seeds in the ground and hope for the best might be disappointed with the results come harvest time. What the weeds don’t get, the grasshoppers, bugs and rabbits will.

It’s the same with waterfowl managers who secure habitat plots and hope for the best. Habitat is the first and most basic ingredient in the recipe for producing ducks, but like a garden, waterfowl must be nutured if it’s to be bountiful.

It’s just common sense. That’s what Delta’s Duck Production Program is all about—a great big dose of common sense, but in this case it’s common sense spawned by 70 years of scienctific research.

Anyone who’s read many of the countless studies on ducks conducted during those 70 years is familiar with Harold Duebbert, the retired US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist profiled this issue’s Bulletin Board section. Now retired and living in Fergus Falls, MN, Duebbert conducted much of the significant research of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

“We’ve known what it takes to produce ducks since the 1960s and ‘70s,” he’s often told me. “The question is ‘when are we going to take what we know and put it to work raising ducks?’”

The answer is right now. Delta’s Duck Production Program takes what Harold and his cohorts learned and puts it to work raising ducks.

Duebbert says predation is the No. 1 factor inhibiting duck production. In fact, he believes waterfowl management should devote 20 to 25 percent of its annual budget to predator management.

“It’s your choice,” he explains, “do you want ducks or do you want skunks and raccoons?

“Given the number of predators on the breeding grounds, it’s miraculous a hen ever hatches a nest.”

Calling Ron Reynolds “a waterfowl researcher without equal”, Duebbert praised Reynolds’ study showing that 40 percent of the landscape must be in grassy nesting cover if ducks are to produce at population-expanding levels. He also acknowledged that in areas that don’t achieve that habitat threshold, the application of management tools like predator management is necessary.

Of Hen Houses, Duebbert says, “Mallards use ‘em, and they work.”

Duebbert will be 74 years young when he embarks on his 64th consecutive duck-hunting season this fall. Most of those seasons were spent around Jamestown, ND, where he worked as a biologist and now rents a farmhouse for the entire duck season. Friends know that come fall, they’ll find him there, setting hand-carved decoys, paddling a homemade boat and shooting a 1917 LC Smith side-by-side.

“I love that gun,” he told me. He loves ducks, too. And after 25 years of coming home every night with duck poop on his books, the man who checked 10,000 nests during his career will be happy to know that Delta is finally taking what he and others of his generation learned and putting it to work producing ducks.

That’s Delta’s Duck Production Program, and we’re pleased that the one of the grand old men of waterfowl approves.