Pump action and auto-loading shotguns have been around for a long time. Lately though, it seems as though the great majority of waterfowl hunters go afield with one of the new autos, one of the three “B’s”, Browning. Benelli, Beretta done in marsh grass camo from buttplate to bore. (Remington and Winchester have new entries in this product line, but I rarely see them being used as of yet).

I have argued that we should put the birds first in the order of our concerns – and that the true ethical hunter approaches the sport with great respect for the game. Indeed, I contend that the hunting urge cannot be divorced from that respect without loss of the very essence it possessed when mankind first appeared on this earth, the very essence that gives the hunting imperative value even today.

In the first two parts of this series, I concentrated on avoiding cripple loss by better and more careful shooting and the use of the best available ammo. We could spend a lot more time on avoidance issues – learning to hide and call more effectively, for example. Indeed, the whole range of waterfowling skill applies to that issue. Highly skilled hunters bring down few crips and do a better job recovering those few.

But let’s now turn our attention to the recovery issue. You’ve scratched one down and it’s on the move. What now?

I have been campaigning against the mechanical, battery-powered, spinning wing decoys known variously as motoducks or roboducks since they first appeared on the scene in November of 1998. I have condemned them as skill-nullifying gadgets that profane the traditions of waterfowling. I believe they should be outlawed on fair-chase grounds and also because of their impact on ducks populations. I won’t repeat all the arguments. By now, they are well known. I have touched on some of them in earlier pieces in this series and I am likely to revisit the subject in later ones.

When steel represented the only non-toxic option, we had to use it, despite its gross ballistic inferiority to lead shot. Manufacturers attempted to minimize steel’s shortcomings in weight by increasing muzzle velocities by as much as 25%, the idea being that greater speed would compensate for lighter weight and produce equal or greater hitting power. That concept works – but only at short ranges.

“Show me how a guy deals with cripples and I’ll tell you what kind of a hunter he is – or maybe even what kind of man he is.” I heard those words at dinner on the night before the first duck hunt of my life. They were spoken by the neighbor who had invited me. It was late November of 1948. I was fourteen years old at the time and had no idea what he was talking about. I’ve got a pretty fair idea now.

Aldo Leopold had a name for those things that "remind us of our distinctive national origins and evolution.” He called them “split-rail values.” He stressed their importance in "Wildlife in American Culture," a thought-provoking essay that appeared in A Sand County Almanac. “There is value in any experience that reminds us of our dependency on the soil--plant-animal-man food chain," he wrote, and in "any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called sportsmanship."

Why do we hunt?

Only a tiny fraction of us would go hungry without the rewards of the chase. Only a tiny fraction who kill game to sell at market would face starvation without the proceeds of such sales. Thus, we do not hunt to survive. We hunt because it holds a mysterious attraction for us. What is the source of that allure? What primal thirst do we slake when we engage in the pursuit of game birds, animals, fish?

The advent of spinning-wing mechanical decoys served at least one useful purpose. It focused attention on how far the waterfowling community had become fixated on the notion of hunter success measured by the weight of the strap rather than the quality of the outing; how far the health of our resource had sunk on the scale of our concern.

You can’t legislate ethics.” I have heard that one often during the debate over electronic, spinning wing decoys (“spinners”). It is a favorite of self-styled libertarians who contend that use of the devices should not be banned until we can prove that they cause long-term injury to waterfowl populations. As our science cannot conclusively prove such a link without controlling a host of uncontrollable variables, that slogan both defines and ends the debate for those who utter it.