U.S. Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady was relating his ordeal on late-night television. He had been shot down over Bosnia. To avoid capture by enemy patrols, he mostly remained in place during daylight hours, hiding in dense vegetation while awaiting rescue. “What did you eat,” his talk-show host asked. “Ants,” he replied. “And you know what? They got harder to catch.”

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The words of Capt. Scott O’Grady come to mind frequently these days, especially when listening to waterfowl hunters complain about “pressure” – the current buzzword for all that ails today’s hunting.

All of us are familiar with “pressure.” Most hunters and biologists conversationally define it as excessive harassment. Historically, it was attributed to brief periods of voluminous gunfire that frightened away ducks. This was especially true during opening weekends on popular, public marshes where hordes of hunters caused ducks to abandon an area by firing incessantly, often at out-of-range birds.

But many today are taking a longer view. Pressure is characterized as the intense pursuit of ducks from the first day of hunting on the northern breeding grounds in September to the last day of gunning on the southern wintering grounds in late January. This relentless pressure the length of the continent is blamed for unprecedented changes in duck behavior and viewed as the primary cause of today’s poor gunning.

Is the intensification of hunting pressure a correct analysis? Is it the reason why waterfowlers increasingly express frustration and disappointment after a day in the blind?

Every veteran waterfowl hunter knows that pressure is not a new problem. In his 1939 classic, A Book on Duck Shooting, the late Van Campen Heilner stated his belief in no uncertain terms: “Ducks do not congregate in large numbers in places where they are heavily shot. No matter how much food there is they will not stand for hard shooting and no one can convince me otherwise.”

Heilner wrote of duck-hunting in the decades prior to World War II, a time when we had more ducks, more habitat and less hunting pressure. But over the past half century the pressure on ducks has steadily increased due to a combination of factors – primarily more money, more free time and greater mobility by the hunting community.

Four decades after Heilner wrote his words new pressure-related changes were becoming increasingly evident. Two examples stand out in my memory. One involves an acquaintance who had for years gunned in northern Saskatchewan, a region where hunting pressure was very light. In the early 1980s he reported that ducks in early autumn in this remote area for the first time suddenly began feeding at night – a trait the ducks must have learned on the heavily gunned wintering grounds.

At the same time, a Michigan diving-duck shooter described how he scouted lakes in his area daily beginning in mid-October to locate the first northern flights of bluebills, canvasbacks and redheads. In earlier times he had let the newly arrived ducks rest for three days to leisurely feed and establish a daily pattern. Then he anchored his layout boat off the flight lanes and steadily killed ducks for days without driving the birds out of the area. By the early ‘80s this strategy no longer worked. If a northern flight descended on an area lake, he hunted the next morning, knowing this would be his only chance because other hunters also would be on the water targeting the ducks. The newly arrived rafts of ducks no longer had a chance to rest and feed, and were quickly driven from the area.

These changes gradually occurred over time, and did not raise alarms. But today’s abrupt and extraordinarily loud hue and cry over increased “pressure” is fundamentally different. Nothing like it has occurred in the past half-century. It suggests something new is happening. North Dakota illustrates the problem.

We begin by looking at the recent increase in numbers of North Dakota waterfowl hunters. The year 1993 marks the last year of prairie drought. Water returned to North Dakota in 1994.

Figure 1. The number of duck hunters in North Dakota jumped from less 39,800 in 1993 to more than 65,000 in 2001, an increase of 62 percent. Source: North Dakota Fish and Game.

As you can see, the number of North Dakota waterfowl hunters steadily increased following the return of water in 1994. According to waterfowl biologist Mike Johnson, nonresident hunters account for the most of the increase. In the 1980s, the number of nonresident waterfowl hunters each autumn averaged between 8,000-9,000. By the late ‘90s nearly 30,000 nonresidents traveled to North Dakota gun waterfowl.

“We’ve just kind of been overrun,” Johnson said, reflecting a sentiment common to many resident waterfowl hunters.

Commercial hunting operations sprang up overnight. Two commercial operators today lease as much North Dakota land as the federal government has acquired with duck-stamp funds since 1960, Johnson said.

Unlike local hunters, who generally shoot on weekend mornings and an occasional weekday evening, nonresidents hunt every day of the week and generally stay in the field all day. Many utilize spinning-wing decoys in stubblefields, where the effectiveness of spinners is many times greater than over water.

How has this affected the kill?

Figure 2. North Dakota’s duck kill increased nearly fourfold from 1993-2002. State harvest data shows the kill jumped from 155,000 in 1993 to 550,000 in 2003. Source: North Dakota Fish and Game.

The harvest data tells us the kill has nearly increased four-fold since 1993. According to Johnson, nonresidents account for 70 to 75 percent of the state’s duck kill.

The result is predictable.

Local hunters today complain about disappearing “backflights.” In years past, these hunters drove about the countryside at dusk to find a slough crammed with roosting fowl. They did not disturb the ducks. The following dawn they watched from a distance as the ducks flew out undisturbed to feed in the stubble. The hunters then walked down to the slough, set out their decoys and awaited a procession of small flocks returning to water – the so-called “backflight.” But today the backflight often is scant or nonexistent. One biologist reported witnessing mallards so chary of returning to water after their morning feed that they spent the day resting in stubble – the only place the ducks apparently could find sanctuary. Others report flushing ducks from sloughs at first light without firing – and having none return.

Keep in mind this is on the breeding grounds, a place where ducks once found relative security and fattened up for the flight south. Today’s pressure is so intense that South Dakota reports report a major influx of ducks soon after the North Dakota season opens – an escape flight triggered by heavy shooting.

Must we wonder why hunters lower down the Mississippi Flyway find reason to complain? Not only are ducks “educated” before leaving the breeding grounds, the same intensification of hunting is repeated. Arkansas hunters complain about a horrendous increase in commercial hunting operations. They cite the growing use of mud motors and ATVs by everyday hunters who disturb ducks in remote areas. They argue that today there are not only fewer ducks on the wintering grounds, but the diminished numbers increasingly concentrate during the day on waterfowl sanctuaries, waiting until the end of shooting hours to fly out to feed. The result is that many individual hunters kill fewer ducks than in past seasons, and on many days do nothing but stare at empty skies.

These changes are driven by the liberalization of regulations – early season openers, late-season closures, longer seasons and higher bag limits, coupled with new technologies such as spinning-wing decoys. All were designed primarily to increase the kill. A secondary purpose was to prevent a further loss in numbers of hunters.

We were assured by authorities that the regulatory protocol known as Adaptive Harvest would prevent over-shooting and maintain our breeding stocks. But it only focuses on births (the hatch) and deaths (the harvest). It fails to take into account duck behavior.

More importantly, it is misguided for Adaptive Harvest proponents to dismiss hunters’ complaints today as mere manifestations of what we traditionally have viewed as hunting pressure – the incessant boom of shotguns and human disturbance. We know that ducks are not inherently afraid of loud noises, as evidenced by farmers who try to protect swathed grain crops by placing carbide cannons in fields and having them detonate at regular intervals. Ducks still swarm to the fields to feed, ignoring the loud booms. As for human disturbance, all of us know that a week after the season closes ducks emerge from their hiding places. They loaf and preen in flooded, open fields where they have not been seen for weeks, ignoring nearby humans provided the latter remain at a reasonable distance. The sight of a human no longer causes them to erupt in flight.

This strongly suggests pressure reflects the effect of a larger problem.

Charles Darwin first observed that virtually all animals “produce more young than can possibly survive.” This suggests that all animals, including ducks, have been genetically programmed or conditioned over the eons to accept an as yet undetermined level of loss before changing behavior to emerge triumphant in the struggle for survival.

This acceptance of loss forms the foundation for consistent success at duck clubs where shooting is strictly regulated. As Heilner put it so many years ago, “A pond which you may have leased or which is on your own or your club’s property should never be shot more than twice a week. Never shoot into a flock larger than seven or eight. You can’t possibly hope to kill them all and you will only frighten away the others for a long time.”

Killing a few ducks here and a few ducks there will not alarm ducks and cause radical behavioral changes. But this inherent acceptance of loss is ignored by waterfowl management that today seeks to optimize the kill far beyond what the ducks view as “acceptable.” This suggests today’s record harvests are causing today’s behavioral changes.

This argues waterfowl management must focus on more than a ducks-in, ducks-out management model. It must manage for duck behavior as well as breeding population preservation.

Will waterfowl management come to its senses and realize that recent record kills resulting from early opening dates, later closing dates, longer seasons, higher bag limits and technological innovations such as spinning-wing decoys have not alleviated hunter dissatisfaction? Will management realize these changes have had the opposite effect and increased the level of dissatisfaction? Will management abandon its goal of optimizing the kill and impose the necessary restrictions to reduce the harvest?

Or will ducks, like Capt. Scott O’Grady’s ants, become fewer and more elusive?

Only time will tell.