Waterfowling:
Our Grandest Outdoor Tradition Must Be Saved Everywhere if it's to be Saved At All
By John Devney
Traveling across the U.S. and Canada and “has provided me a rare opportunity to experience waterfowling in some of the most storied locales, to touch and feel the grand and storied duck- and goose-hunting destinations I was visited through books and magazines as a youngster.
Those childhood readings took me to exotic, far-away places and exposed me to a world totally foreign to a kid from Minnesota. I read about body booting on the Susquehanna Flats, highballs ringing through the flooded pin oaks in Arkansas, flights of sprig in California’s Central Valley, caller ducks in the Illinois River, massive blinds and spreads at Reelfoot and mixed-bag shoots along the Louisiana coast.
I marveled at battery shooting on the St. Lawrence, gunning blacks and brant on New Jersey’s salt marshes, the stories of clouds of mallards descending on barley fields in the prairies, eider duck gunning in Maine and thousands of snow geese on the Texas rice country.
And these examples are just but a few glimpses of the uniqueness and diversity of our waterfowling culture. Each one has its own rich history, its own tapestry of people, decoys, methods, calling techniques and retrievers.
Each area is identified with a particular species. Mallard is the undisputed king in Arkansas, Illinois and most of the prairie; canvasbacks command the top position in the Chesapeake and the Great Lakes, where mallards are considered “marina ducks” by diver aficionados. Scaup garner top position in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, while pintail historically defined waterfowling in California.
While I may alienate some of my fellow hunters who revel in hunting deer or big game, turkeys or upland birds with same zeal I have for waterfowling, I don’t think it is too grand a stretch to say that waterfowling truly comprises more culture, more richness, more diversity and flat-out more tradition than any other sporting pursuit.
You may wonder why I have dedicated this column space to my musings on the topic, but after visiting with folks that represent these varied traditions, I have come to embrace the diversity and remain convinced that as waterfowlers we must be diligent in preserving the legacy of them all.
That means finding new solutions to provide more mallards for hunters in Missouri and Arkansas, finding away to break the downward spiral of pintails for hunter in California, and reversing the decline in scaup so the layout gunners on Lake Michigan can continue to enjoy squadrons of ‘bills ripping across their bow.
Can waterfowling truly survive if any one of the elements isn’t sustained? Can waterfowling be truly intact without redheads and pintail along the Texas Gulf Coast, black ducks on the salt marsh? Can the tradition continue if hunters lose access to stretches of Virginia’s James River or clubs in the Sacramento Valley?
I, for one, don’t believe it can.
The rich tradition waterfowler share must serve as our communal bond and our rallying cry. The task before us is a tall one. It will require standing tall when some try to chip away at our legacy by shutting down a marsh or erecting some obstacle to pursuing fowl.
The challenges ducks and duck hunters will face in the coming years and decades will seem insurmountable at times, but anyone who has hunkered along the ledges of the Atlantic, sculled in the Great Lakes, broken ice in a slough or peered over the gunwale of a layout boat is up to the challenge.
And God knows we will need all of you.
John Devney is Delta Waterfowl’s Senior Vice President.