Dan Dattilo prepares for the drive home after a successful day on the Mississippi River. Photo by Dan Small

Most hunters give little thought to ducks until the hunting season rolls around, but the quality of the hunt depends on what happened during the critical six months before the first gunshots echo in the marshes.

Most of the ducks harvested each fall were hatched that same year. State and federal biologists spend the spring and summer estimating populations of breeding ducks, monitoring brood success and then predicting fall flights from those figures. The season length, opening date and bag limit have all been determined by the time you read this, but getting there is a long, involved process.

LAST HUNTING SEASON
As of this writing, harvest estimates were available for 2003, but 2004 results were not yet tallied. Anecdotal reports, however, indicated that hunters across our state were not satisfied with their hunt.

"Last fall, it was pretty quiet across the north," said Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist Bruce Bacon of Mercer. "Conditions were dry, and some people thought it was a bad season. From what I heard and saw, hunting was slow."

DNR migratory game-bird ecologist Kent Van Horn heard the same complaints in southern Wisconsin, where he said there were plenty of ducks but many were inaccessible to hunters.

"Most hunters I talked to were not happy last fall," Van Horn said. "We had a warm fall. Local birds know where they want to be and don't move around much under those conditions. If they don't get moved around by weather, then there aren't a lot of birds to shoot at."

Van Horn reported seeing ducks on roadside ponds, where they know they are safe from hunters, frequently last fall. Hunters who went to large public hunting areas after opening weekend, however, found them practically devoid of ducks.

I hunted in the annual Crex Invitational Waterfowl Hunt in Burnett County again last October. This invitational event, organized by retired DNR research biologist Jim Evrard of Grantsburg, takes place on the Monday and Tuesday following opening weekend. Mild, calm weather greeted our group, and 17 hunters bagged a total of 21 ducks and two Canada geese in a day and a half of hunting. In 2003, 20 hunters bagged 32 ducks. In 2001 and 2002, 21 hunters bagged 53 and 52 ducks, respectively. This is one small group of hunters, but our experience serves as an index of hunting success in the northwestern part of the state.

Last year's bag was made up mainly of drake mallards, with four ring-necked ducks, two hen mallards and one each of blue-winged teal, green-winged teal and wigeon. Unlike some past years when we had major flowages to ourselves, there were other hunters to contend with at practically every spot we hunted. Still, that was a meager bag for a group of seasoned waterfowlers.

Interference from other hunters is something more and more duck hunters are reporting, according to Van Horn. He attended the Wisconsin Waterfowl Hunters Conference in March, organized by several waterfowl conservation groups, where he conducted a public input session and solicited responses to a series of questions regarding hunting opportunities. Hunters who answered his questionnaire expressed more dissatisfaction with the behavior of other hunters than with the availability of ducks.

"Most of those who talked about a negative hunting experience said things like, 'Other hunters were too close to me,' or 'Pressure was too intense and the birds were burned out,' " said Van Horn. "That should raise our eyebrows. The question becomes one of managing people, not managing ducks."