Commentary: Three-bird duck proposal doesn’t address Minnesota’s bigger waterfowling issues

Commentary by Dave Rave and Ray Norrgard / Duck Summit Work Group

The Minnesota DNR is proposing a new, optional three-duck bag limit that would allow hunters to harvest three ducks of any species daily. The Duck Summit Group has discussed this proposal, and most of our members oppose this option.

The goal of the Duck Summit (DS) back in March was to have waterfowl professionals discuss regulations, and then participants were surveyed on their support of possible regulation changes. The overwhelming majority of DS participants supported eliminating September duck seasons, moving the regular opener to October 1, and reducing the hen mallard bag to one. This three-duck bag proposal does none of these, while increasing the hen mallard bag from two to three.

At the DS there was a talk about Adaptive Harvest Management. AHM uses complicated mathematical models based on duck breeding populations and other biologic variables to determine annual waterfowl regulations. This is how restrictive bags on hen mallards, canvasbacks, redheads, and scaup are determined.

After 27 years of AHM, the DNR is offering a “new” bag limit – three ducks including any of these restricted birds. What happened to the models, and why is it now “OK” for some hunters to shoot a limit of three restricted birds while everyone else is limited to two?

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Nate Huck, DNR migratory game-bird consultant, said, “Duck identification can be difficult and could prevent potential hunters from getting into waterfowl hunting.”

The DNR is thus proposing this three-bird bag as an attempt to recruit new hunters. This is a worthy goal, but where is the science behind this proposal, when we have been told for years that AHM’s models scientifically keep populations healthy by restricting harvest?

This is particularly troubling in Minnesota, where our duck populations are at all-time lows. We believe this proposal does nothing to maintain local duck populations and may actually hurt them. Very few Minnesota hunters shoot more than three ducks in a hunt, so decreasing the bag from six to three will not save ducks.

However, this regulation might encourage hunters to shoot hens, as there will be no consequence to shooting hen mallards, and thus could increase hen harvest.

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We also believe this new proposal may remove much of the history and skill from the sport of duck hunting. By reducing the limit to a straight three-bird “splash” limit, duck identification skills would no longer be needed.

Hunters would not need to identify ducks in hand – never mind in the air. This proposal turns ducks into nothing more than targets, in part because there would be no consequences to shooting ducks in darkness or fog, when many hunters might otherwise pass ducks because they cannot identify them.

Additionally, some hunters might use a combination of three-bird and six-bird limits to increase their daily bag on restricted species. For example, a four-hunter group – two with three-bird limits and two with regular limits – could shoot 10 hen mallards, or 8 scaup (even when scaup limits are 1), or go to Thief Lake and take 10 redheads, plus another 8 additional ducks.

Technically, every hunter is supposed to shoot their own birds, but we all know this is not reality. Further, when hunters do not need to know what they are shooting, non-game birds like grebes and loons will be shot.

We believe this proposal is an attempt, and not an effective one, to increase duck hunter numbers – with no science backing it. It won’t work. The only way to increase duck hunter numbers is to increase duck numbers in the fall. Regulations that allow or encourage more hens to be shot won’t accomplish that goal, which should be the DNR’s primary concern.

This piece represents the views of the Duck Summit Work Group, including the authors.