Conversation Reboot (David Snowden & Perrin Partee)

Happy holidays to all the listeners of The Standard Sportsman podcast. For this week’s episode, we’ve pulled two conversations out of past episodes with David Snowden and Perrin Partee. David explains the rationale behind reducing the mallard hen limit to one while Perrin discusses habitat and the bounceback of the mallard population from Canada to Louisiana. 

Thanks for taking time to listen to the show during this time with family and friends and best of luck the rest of the season. 

As always, we appreciate our sponsors Tom Beckbe, Lile Real Estate, Sitka Gear, KC Laser, Purina Pro Plan, Greenhead: The Arkansas Duck Hunting Magazine, Perfect Limit Outdoors and Ducks Unlimited. 

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Transcript

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Welcome to The Standard Sportsman podcast. The show features trending topics, touching all aspects of duck and goose hunting, in an effort to motivate others to leave the resource better than they found it. Hosts, Cason Short and Brent Birch are lifelong Arkansas hunter conservationists, delivering thought-provoking discussions with engaging guests before, during, and after duck season. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now, let's jump into today's show with the guys.

Merry Christmas to all the listeners of The Standard Sportsman podcast. We appreciate you tuning in during this busy holiday schedule, and we think we've put together a pretty cool show for you. We've taken two snippets out of past episodes, with the first one featuring David Snowden, and Arkansan, a former Delta Waterfowl National Board member, and an advocate for One Hen and the Mowler Limit. Then we've got Perrin Partee of Wing Select Farms in southwest Arkansas. Perrin is a developer of habitat, conservationist, and really has some keen insights into managing and holding ducks. We hope you enjoy the show, and happy holidays.

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Okay. So yeah, I made a case to the Game and Fish Commission that I think it would be wise at this time to reduce the hen mallard limit to one hen. And to kind of walk you back through, I guess, my organized thoughts going into that meeting, I look at where the mallard population is today. And you guys have done a great job of making everybody aware of the decline that's taking place. But the mallard population from 2017 to 2022, based on the fish and wildlife estimates, has dropped from over 10 million to just over six. So that's a 42% decline in the last five years. We'll see what happens this year, but we all know the state of the prairies. It's not looking good. And I fully expect that six million will be an even lower number. So we may approach a 50% decline in six years. There has been forever a lot of arguing or differences in thinking of harvest impact on the overall mortality of ducks. You know, I'm a believer that there's always some impact. You know, the compensatory theory says, well, the excess ducks would die anyway. And the additive theory says every duck we kill is only dead because we shot it with a shotgun. And I don't think either one of them, you know, holds true all the time. You know, the truth is probably in my mind in the middle. But what I think is, when the Mallard population begins to slide like it's been sliding, I think we need to pay attention and we need to give the ducks every chance we can. And there's a lot of people that would argue, well, there's not enough habitat for them. I mean, that's the reason they're down to begin with. So, you know, people say, a lot of people say you can't stockpile ducks. And I disagree with that statement. I know the truth is somewhere in the middle. And if the hen mortality... Well, if a mallard lives, on average, to be five years, and that's what most of the data I can pull up says, and let's just say, even if it's two years, and we all probably would suspect that a hen's life expectancy is lower than a Drake's. So even if two years, there's some carry over there. And I would argue that you can stockpile ducks to a degree. And, you know, a hen that doesn't nest, so if a hen returns to the prairie and doesn't make an attempt to nest, her chances of survivability have to be higher because she's not sitting on a nest. You know, the ones on the nest are the most vulnerable. And we all know that the majority of hens get killed during that time. You know, a lot of what I have learned is, you know, that number may be as high as 30, 35% of hens die during the nesting season. But I still say you can stockpile ducks to a degree. And I just think that it's prudent when ducks are down like they are now and going lower that we protect the hens as best we can. A lot of those hens, I'll say excess hens, if you want to divide or section off the hens that we would save from not shooting them during the season, they will attempt to nest. There's enough habitat up there for them to make an attempt. Not all the habitat is going to be great, but there's still good habitat that's available. And so I think if nothing else, we just need to lay off the hens as much as possible and make sure there are plenty in the flock so that when mother nature does turn and give us a break with more moisture on the prairies, that we have more hens to take advantage of. So this isn't saying that it will turn it around in and of itself. But what I hope it will do is to shallow that trough, the decline. We'll have more hens available when the time is better, and we will see a rebound from the bottom more quickly with that. You know, if you think about it, we put hundreds of millions of dollars into ducks, really on an annual basis. There's a lot of time and effort that we spend talking about ducks. There's a lot of people contributing money to ducks, and there's a lot of public funding through congressional appropriation to ducks. So we have hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of that goes into habitat work. And I'm the first one to say we need it. We need to conserve all the habitat we can, because despite our efforts, it's shrinking. And that's a problem. You know, we've got urban sprawl, we have, you know, drainage going on in ag lands. You know, there's a lot of reasons why habitat is disappearing. And so, you know, I look at the amount of money, time and effort that's going into conserved ducks, yet the fish and wildlife still allows us to kill two hens. I mean, they are our baby producers. It just makes no sense to me. We can't shoot hen turkeys. We can't shoot hen pheasant. You know, there's other species of birds that we can't shoot. And it's a rhetorical question, but I say, why not? Why can't we? Well, we know the answer. And yet, we allow half a mallard harvest to be hens. And so, as somebody that participates in this conservation, that gives money to its betterment, I start scratching my head and thinking through, why are we allowed to kill two hens? I understand killing one. We make mistakes. I make mistakes. I try not to kill them. I try hard not to kill a hen. But I do make a mistake occasionally. And it's a flying bird. Conditions can be dark. You know, there's lots of reasons why. You can shoot a hen even when you're not trying to. But most of the time, if you put the effort in, you can be selective and take drakes. And, you know, some people argue, well, you know, early morning, you can't really see what you're shooting, etc. Well, you can.

Again, you have to be supposed to, by law.

Yeah, yeah, and you're selective with your shots. I mean, you have or you pass on the shot. I mean, it takes a little bit of discipline. And, you know, one of the things I mentioned when I spoke the other day is, so does the three point rule on whitetail deer. And look how popular that is now. You know, when it first came out, people were against it. It took more discipline on the hunter to look at that deer, to size them up and decide, does he have three points or does he not? I mean, I can't just make a snapshot because I see antlers. Well, the same goes with ducks. And, you know, we've had to identify species and sex forever as duck hunters. We had the point system back in the 80s. I think a hen mallard got up to 100 points, or not 100, to 90 points. We had to know what a hen looked like no matter when she came in. So I don't really see that that holds a lot of water. I just feel like people, you know, some people that are in favor of it are just more concerned with killing a limit. And a hen helps them get there more quickly and easier than having to be just a little more selected. But I think for the, again, based on where we are today with the Mallard population, I just believe we need to be conservative at the moment. If the Mallards jump back up to 10 million ducks, then whatever the Game of Fish decides to do with the hens, I'm not going to be a very vocal case on that. But when the Mallards are down, then I think, at least I'm in favor of some conservatism. And let's take care of the species first. The rest of it will follow.

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Yeah, 5, 10 good weather days. Yeah.

We don't want to see that. Someday, something's going to happen and we're going to be there. It's just the way that works. But I don't know, it just seems like it needs another look and I definitely would support them at least doing that instead of saying, getting the rubber stamp out and going, oh, matrix says, and I know they adjust the matrix a little bit and it wiggles around a little bit, but I don't know. Data is the question to me.

Well, so I'm glad you said data, the segue here and we may come back and delete this whole thing I'm about to say. But I think it's a narrative issue as well. We see these posts or you see these studies and they come out and cherry pick a stat to support their narrative. Like the whole Ducks were up 80 percent in North Dakota this last year. What was it, Scott? It wasn't even Mallards. Let alone we didn't talk about how small a role that the US side of the border plays in the recruitment anyway. But it was that number got tossed around. Hey, we're going to have a great year. Look how much these birds are up in this little area of this state. And didn't even talk about the species, you know. And what was it we saw yesterday? I'm not going to call anybody out or say any specific numbers, but it was some some stat that was up like 150 percent over whatever number of years. But it was like short birds like I mean, I guess that's our problem is we cherry pick information to make people feel good. Why can't we just say what it is? I mean, we know the numbers. They're not it's not hard to find them. But I guess I don't know. I have a problem with that. Like don't don't sugarcoat something like let's just let's deal with facts. Let's deal with numbers and call it what it is.

Yeah. And you're a guy that's in the business. You know, I'm just doing it for personal pleasure. You know, it's whether you know, does money play a role in all this is are the conservation organizations afraid that donations will go way down if people, you know, so there's a lot of I'm not saying that's what they're doing. I'm not implying that, but that's got to be in the back of your mind a little bit. License sales will go down if we if we don't we don't keep this keep this up. It does make you wonder.

Yeah, man. Yeah, especially with state agencies. Like I look there are people at state agencies that don't want to avoid their opinion because of who they work for and what their job is. And that's understandable. That's not super secret squirrel information there. It just that's the way it is. And there are people that that's why the guys that retire tend to come out and say, hey, this is what's going on because they're not worried anymore about their job.

So, yeah, and I think, well, Dave Rave is a retired biologist, right? And he came on and pretty much said, there's not as many Mallards as, we have less Mallards now, he thinks, than we ever have. And now, I don't know if he was saying that during his career, but I imagine he feels a lot more comfortable saying that now.

Yeah, we heard from another one that heard that episode, and he came. He's also former retired federal refuge manager that now does private consulting, and he echoes everything he said. Now that he doesn't work anymore for the feds, he's able to cut loose with what he really thinks, and he's in the same camp.

And I'll throw this caveat out there, it doesn't make, you know, it's their opinion-based, doesn't make it any more right than someone who says everything is fine. But I guess it's, I don't want to say it's refreshing, but I think we need to hear some other opinions. You know, we need to hear all sides of the argument before we can say, oh, yeah, we're good, or, oh, the sky is falling. I guess that's the big thing. You know, how do we make AHM better? How do we avoid situations in the future? We hear out all opinions. We weigh all the evidence and then we try to make adjustments.

That'd be optimal. Just like I said, let's take another look at it and make sure we're right so we don't have to go to 30-day season. Maybe we can cut something off at the pass. You know, low population year, does hunter mortality matter versus just go in this blanket statement that it doesn't, because it probably didn't when we had 10 million mallards, but we don't have 10 million mallards. We've almost cut that in half. So just let's take a fresh look at things. It's due, long overdue.

Well, as someone put it to me the other day, the whole thing is an experiment and we have a whole new data set now. You know, we have the data harvest and B-Pop and Maypond. We have more data now than we had when we started. So if the whole thing is an experiment, why don't we look at it and maybe consider looking back through the pass and say, okay, at what point could we have moved to a moderate season and potentially course corrected this before we got to exactly where we're at? Now, I think that's, I mean, I know that's at least my standpoint. You know, if this is an experiment, what are we learning from it? And I think you've got some like Dr. Osborne and Dave Rave and there's some others that I won't name that they're thinking the same thing. You know, why, what are we learning from this? What can we do better the next time? Not screaming and crying that we need to shut the season down because nobody wants that.

No, no, no. And I think there's more people sitting in the room at those technical council meetings that want to say more than they think they can. And it's just going to take, somebody's going to have to really step out there on a limb and say, hey guys, let's just take another look. I'm not standing up here saying everything's wrong. We got to cut season back or we got to change, you know, all that. But let's take another look. Let's get serious about this instead of just kind of doing the same thing. While our hunters, for the first time in a very long time, you probably have a majority of duck hunters saying what's going on. I'm not seeing it and I'm not feeling it like I have. So, I mean, you're not going to get a bunch of upset people on the hunting side if you take another look. They're already wondering what's going on.

Yeah. Well, you know, even I'm hesitant to come out publicly and say, you know, I think we're killing too many ducks and, you know, it's kind of scary, you know, saying that because you get a lot of backlash. And I think there's a lot of people that would agree with us and agree with me on the idea that we're killing too many ducks. I just, you know, kind of say closeted about it, you know, and don't necessarily speak up about it. And I was a little afraid to come on here and, you know, say that, you know, I think hunter-harvest matters, and especially as populations decline. And with the dry prairie, and it made me a little more comfortable to come on here and say after I heard, you know, Dr. Osborne say that, you know, we could be possibly impacting populations by killing hens, you know, right now. But yeah, I guess, you know, just the more of us that kind of speak up and say, hey, you know, you know, what can we change? Because something's not right. It's, you know, we had, in a, you know, a year like this where it was so dry. And, you know, because I didn't have the ducks that I normally have this year. But I think that was just, I think the ducks know when the bottoms are flooded, you know, and they definitely come to that water. But it's kind of compared apples to oranges this year. But still, we know that bee pops are declining. And it's been several years now where we've had a dry prairie. You know, and I'm not, like you said, I'm not in the business of it. So I'm not worried about making money off of ducks or anything like that. I've pretty much turned my place into a rest area as a result of my concerns. And, you know, my whole objective here is just, you know, can we send as many breeding pairs as possible back and see what happens? But, but yeah, it's, it's kind of scary going out on a limb and, you know, speaking your mind on it, so.

It is, it is for sure. But but you know, you see what you see.

Yep.

And that's, that's where it comes from. We're obviously not immersed in all the data. We don't do the, we don't get in the airplane and do the surveys and things like that. And we totally appreciate the people that do. Just as from a hunter perspective, are we, are we making sound decisions based on quality data, a quality model that is the game has changed since HM came out. And like I said, I know they tweak it. But in a situation like this, where we got a model that's geared towards hunter opportunity, is a time to take a step back and think resource first and make some adjustments to get it back to this magical 10 million mile point, which is, you know, we're a long ways from that. And I don't know if a couple of wet springs gets us back to 10 million right now. I mean, there's not as many ponds. And even if we get all kinds of crazy snow melt and rain on the Prairie Pothole region, a lot of those potholes that existed the last time it really rained are gone. They've been farmed. Yeah, that's right. So it's just a different circumstance. And we've got to really think through all that. So we can avoid taking this drastic measure to a 30-day season and all these other things that come along with that. So let's just take another look. I think that's what most hunters are asking. Like I said, those that say 30, they want 30 days and three ducks again to get it right. I don't know that they really mean that. They're just looking for waste. They just know they're not seeing what they want to see. And to them, in the way we grew up, that's what happened. There was no AHM. The season's bounced all over the place. Very reactionary. And AHM was meant to solve that and be more data-driven versus reactionary to, well, it's dry on the prairies, okay, 40-day season. Kind of went on the season, okay, 45-day season. So we got a model now. Let's just make sure the model's working like we needed to, to get the population back up. And hopefully, we can hang on to some habitat. We can get some snowfall melt and some rain up there, and have a good productive year and get the numbers back how we like it.

And so I'll add this to, Brent, for the people out there who want to argue with us that harvest doesn't matter. I don't think 3 in 30 would fix our situation. I think maybe having pulled the nose up a few years ago, we could have avoided being a rat today. But I think we need habitat, plain and simple. You cut harvest in half, days and a half, whatever you want to do, it's not going to fix the situation right now. It could have had an impact potentially 4 years ago, when we started seeing this trend, but I don't think it's the savior now.

Yeah, I think it's going to be a long way back to 10 million. It's not going to happen overnight. Even if we do have a wet prairie year, it's not going to bounce back. I think a lot of the damage has been done as far as the season lasts until the end of January. We've had so many dry years and poor reproduction years. Even if it gets wet, I just don't think we have the numbers of birds to really cause a huge surge in the population. I may be wrong, but at least that's the way I see it. But yes, talking about habitat, if I didn't manage for food on my place, I wouldn't hold the number of birds that I hold if I didn't have the moist soil and the millet. You see what's happening with agriculture in our state, with fall tillage and less waste grain. That's where I think just a huge overhaul with more programs like the rice program are really going to be crucial just for the state holding birds and getting them to display phylopatry for the state to want to come back because they know the foods there. I think that's just not excluding the harvest aspect of it. It's just the habitat equation. How do we get more landowner incentives for farmers to not fall till and to flood their fields? How do we get more programs like that to incentivize private landowners to put more duck energy use days on the landscape?

Well, I think that's something we can do as hunters. You control your vote. You can control who you vote for and what they're pushing because conservation dollars, the farm bill, and you hit the nail on the head there. We've got to incentivize farmers to do these things. You can't blame a farmer for trying to be profitable. What we've got to do is incentivize them in a way that makes them profitable and benefits the land. We throw away tax dollars on a lot of things that don't matter, but these are issues that do, especially when you look at migratory birds in general. The impact it has globally, it's significant. Our politicians drive that ship with funding. That's something that Canada needs to... I wish we could get more funding in Canada to incentivize these farmers to stop tile draining, because that's probably the biggest thing we've got working against us right now. So that's one of the things that we can all work on and hopefully agree on anyway. KC Laser Company is a family owned and operated small business that specializes in creating one-of-a-kind laser engraved items for your hunting lodge, business or brand. At KC Laser Company, they love creating, engraving, designing, stitching and working to create unique one-of-a-kind items. They use premium full grain leather for all of their leather patches. They take your logo, engrave it and hand stitch it on the hats of your choice. Making a one-of-a-kind leather patch hat that you can share with those you know. They guarantee you'll love their work. Visit kclasercompany.com to check them out. The listeners of our show will have the opportunity to win some of their hats with our logo on them over the coming weeks. So stay tuned for details.

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