The two most important lessons my father taught me when he introduced me to hunting sixty-two years ago were, first, never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to eat. His second hunting lesson, and one that has become more significant with each passing decade, is that outings are more fun when you see lots of birds and get to shoot a few, rather than shoot the only few you see.

Wherever California waterfowlers gathered during the 2008-09 season, and thereafter at various dinners or on the sporting clay course, one or more hunters generally would make a point of decrying the seven-bird mallard limit as completely out of keeping with the perceived local population. Usually, no one present expressed dissent.

What percentage of the fall mallard flight do we kill? It is a critical issue, striking at the heart of whether hunting is responsible for declining numbers of greenheads winging southward each autumn and subpar breeding populations in the spring. In five of the past six years, the Midcontinent mallard breeding population has fallen below the 8.2 million goal set by the North American Waterfowl Management Plan.    

I’ve wasted a lot of time recently puzzling over some of the latest federal waterfowl statistics.

More than 20 years ago the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the adoption of “The North American Waterfowl Management Plan,” a joint American-Canadian effort designed to guide waterfowl management. Its purpose was to maintain an abundance of waterfowl well into the 21st Century. The 1986 plan has been periodically tweaked and remains in effect today.

A couple of days ago I received a report about a study by Southern Illinois University professor Michael W. Eichholz. The subject of his study involves the drop in duck productivity in the prairie pothole region -- from the northern United States upward into southern Canada.

Prof. Eicholz focuses, in part, on raccoons and skunks, two predators blamed for increasingly high rates of nest predation. Anytime there is a discussion concerning poor duck production, predators are high on the list of culprits causing our problems.

The morning dawned warm and still. Only a few clouds hung like tattered gauze curtains in the grey light of the coming day.  My friend, who I will call Gregg for the sake of this piece, had invited me to share a hunt on his large ranch in an area that he had developed as wetland habitat. That was in mid-season, the time when Gregg generally enjoys fine shooting.

The road stretched ahead dead straight as I peddled along, heading for the hunting grounds on my bike. Early fall in Northern Illinois on the margins of Chicago’s far northern suburbs, where cornfields and woodlots clearly defined the boundary between town and country, with oak, maple and sumac resplendent in autumn color lining the county road.

An early fall tour of the marsh provides a wonderful respite for many of us. We find escape from the travails of everyday life by immersing ourselves in nature.  For a few hours the insanity of the world is left behind. On my most recent visit, I needed a break from the anger I felt toward those responsible for our economic crisis. The financial week had just ended after a tumultuous ride on Wall Street that would have left a fighter pilot nauseous. Out in the marsh I saw some ducks, far fewer egrets and herons than normal along with the usual denizens of the waterways.

A friend stopped by the other evening with a packet of photos for a show-and-tell about his recent waterfowl hunting trip to North Dakota.  His journey to the northern prairies, the great breeding grounds of our migrant flocks, has become for him an annual event.  Each year on his return I look forward to his sporting tales.