Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Chris Jennings: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Limit Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Jennings. Joining me in studio today is my co-host, Dr. Mike Brasher. What's up, Mike?

Mike Brasher: How you doing, Chris? On the other end of this shiny new table, it's, I don't know how to describe this shape, sort of a semi-hexagon right now. It's like half a circle. Well, it's not a circle though. It's more like, would it be? No, it'd be more like an octagon. It's like a quarter of a third of an octagon right now.

Chris Jennings: I'll take your word for that. So, we wanted to hop on here today and just bring a little bit of an update, you know, kind of a mid to late June update for, you know, just some topics of conversation that waterfowl hunters and waterfowl enthusiasts should probably be paying attention to this time of year. Mike, you know, one of the big things, a lot of chatter online and social media, Um, even our website is the Pentel change in regulations. Um, kind of a big deal that came out. Maybe not as a big deal as what some people are making it out to be. Um, but you know, I just wanted to have you kind of go through what these changes are and what should people be looking for, you know, in the near future or in seasons to come.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, Chris, this is a hot topic. It's been in the news here a little bit lately. And of course to our members, uh, waterfowl hunters. Any change in regulation is an important thing and we've put a bit of information out on this here lately. This is something that has been in the works for a number of years through the work of the Flyway Technical Committee's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey. and, you know, doing some of the heavy lifting on the analytics. Ducks Unlimited is not involved in any of the duck harvest regulation things. We stay up to date on it, of course, because it's… And you talk to some of the people who are involved. We do, to stay up to date. What happened, or the notable news item that happened was last… And late May, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Migratory Bird Regulations Committee approved an interim pintail harvest strategy, which will be a new strategy used to select harvest regulations for pintails. And so, importantly, right off the top, anything that I'm going to talk about here is not going to affect hunting regulations for the upcoming 24-25 season. All of this is not going to go into effect until the 25-26 season, so that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Make sure you check your regulations as you go out this year to make certain you're still up to date on those pintail bag limits. But there were a couple of notable, I guess, aspects of this, and that's why it received a little bit of publicity. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has even created a website to help communicate on this new strategy. And I guess one of the main reasons why this harvest strategy was so noteworthy is that it included the potential for there to be a three pintail bag limit if certain breeding population conditions for pintails were met. It also includes some provisions for under certain circumstances, a closed season, a one pintail bag limit, a two pintail bag limit. But it's that three pintail bag limit possibility that really got people's attention. The last time that hunters in the U.S. had an opportunity to harvest three pintails, legally had a three pintail bag limit, was 1997. We don't know the frequency with which that three pintail bag limit is going to occur in the future. This is all still new. It's going to be based on the data that are ultimately collected. And I guess I will highlight a few things, a few additional things here, but at some point in the future, we'll reach out to our state and federal colleagues that were directly involved in the development of this strategy and have them talk about some of the more details. But basically, the way this works, the Pacific, Central, and Mississippi flyways will be afforded either a one bird or one pintail, two pintail, or three pintail bag limit. depending on what the pintail population is for a given year. And then during any season when the pintail season… During any year when the pintail season is open, the Atlantic Flyway states will have the option for a three pintail bag limit. They harvest such a small percentage of the total pintails anyway, then that three pintail sort of flat three pintail limit is what they wanted there. Another important thing that people have been asking, are there any sex restrictions in this new pintail harvest strategy? The answer is no. There's no differentiation between males and females and the number that you can harvest. So, if it's a two pintail bag limit, you could harvest two males, two females or one male, one female. If it's a three pintail bag limit, any combination of up to three males or females is going to be possible. And again, the why and the background behind that is something that we can wait and talk with our federal and state partners about. Let's see, we will know more in August once the breeding population survey results for the current year come out. exactly what the recommended Pentel bag limit is going to be for next year. But for now, it's unchanged. So again, check your regulations. Let's see, I think those are kind of the highlights here. I guess I would just give a hat tip to our state federal partners that have continued to to look into updating harvest strategies for pintails as well as many other ducks using new data, expanded data sets and new methods and that's really what enabled the adoption of this interim pintail harvest strategy. I guess I will say the interim word there is important because we do have limited experience with that three pintail bag limit. One of the things that happened as a result of sort of the, or that was the adoption of this was sort of conditional upon there being an agreement that after three years of experience with a three pintail bag limit, our state and federal partners would evaluate the strategy. They'd look at the data. and then they would reassess and determine if there are any changes that need to be made to that strategy. So, that's why it's termed interim. How long it's going to take to get those three years of experience with the three pintail bag limit, we don't know. But, you know, we probably have at least a year, year and a half before the actual results of the implications of this new harvest strategy will be felt by hunters. We'll know in August what the 25-26 recommendations are going to be, but it will be, yeah, fall, winter of 2025 before we actually even can, as hunters, sort of benefit from any of the developments from this new strategy.

Chris Jennings: Yeah, and you kind of, you hinted on it a little bit, you mentioned it, but I think our next topic is, you know, the current survey that it has been completed, the BPOP survey. They are collecting that data and putting it in. Obviously, we won't get the results of that until U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service releases it in August. But, you know, I think, you know, just this week they released the pilot biologists, you know, their blogs, which have always been really popular with some people in our audience, just to give everyone an idea of what it kind of looks like up there. And we are watching you know, rain just smashing across the prairies. It seems like every day there's something either in the U.S. side or the Canadian side. I'm checking the weather and there's rain up there. I'm looking at it. Man, it seems like it rains over there every day right now. But, you know, what were those conditions? What did you kind of pull from those pilot biologist reports and kind of just explain how that survey went along and how the weather either, well, kind of didn't really cooperate?

Mike Brasher: I have not read through all of those reports yet, I'll just be honest. But the rain that we've seen, so we got to remember that the survey was conducted beginning in mid-May and kind of ran through like last week. I was talking to a friend of mine down in Louisiana a couple of days ago, and he was keeping track of one of the planes that he knows that flies the survey. And as of, I think it was Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday of last week, that plane had concluded its last strata. It was way up in Alaska. And so, the survey was still going on until last week, but the surveys in the Dakotas happened in May. And it's my understanding that there was all this rain that we've been getting for the past, gosh, I don't know, two months. The survey was conducted before a lot of this most recent rain. I think they got about four to six, maybe eight weeks of rain. or maybe it's about four weeks of rain prior to the survey. So, all the rain that we've seen from spring till now is not going to be captured in the results of the survey.

Chris Jennings: And that's pretty much what the pilot biologist blogs really kind of explain. Some of them even talk about the rain kind of slowing them down as they're halfway through. Some of them had to stop, you know, but I think that You know, that's one thing that we kind of talk about. The survey is not going to reflect that. But any amount of moisture that we get up there, and we've known from years past, is a positive.

Mike Brasher: I think the take-home message is that the rain is good. The rain that we've seen over the past two months is definitely a good thing. Some of it came too late to influence duck settling patterns. Mallards, pintails, early nesters were already on their way through and the Dakotas were still pretty dry whenever they were making their migration north and it wasn't until they got into that area and some migrated on through before the rain started. The rain came a little late to benefit some of the early nesters. It's going to be great for re-nesting. It's going to be great for brood survival, those birds that do hatch. And so that's a very good thing. Any of the birds that did settle in those areas that started getting a lot of that rain and have continued to get rain should be in pretty good shape. The grass will be growing and will be lush and they should have lots of of good, you know, at least in some of the hayland and grassland areas should have some good healthy grass to nest in in a lot of those places. Now there are still some areas across the prairies where it's still pretty dry. You can look at those reports too from my understanding and find that it's still dry in some areas. But we're definitely trending in the right direction, precipitation-wise. But we just need to, as we always say, we'll take a little bit more between now and fall, and then we'll still have a few months to go before we figure out what it's going to be like next spring.

Chris Jennings: Yeah, we'll go ahead and transition there to our next topic. This is something that people are seeing all across the news, mainstream news now, and I wanted you to be able to provide an update to our audience on this topic that I know you and several others within DU are staying very much on top of. But the highly pathogenic avian influenza, it is, you know, you're starting to see it in social media a little more. You're starting to see some people talk about it in some different ways. Can you provide any update on what you're hearing from, really from a waterfowl perspective, as much as, you know, how it's impacting some other ways?

Mike Brasher: You know, that's interesting you phrase it that way. I have not heard anything new on the waterfowl front in terms of the highly pathogenic avian influenza being of elevated concern this year over the past few months from a waterfowl standpoint. This is the time of year when its prevalence or our ability to detect it, you know, kind of… prevalence of live virus in waterfowl begins to fade, because by this time, all the birds that are out there have been alive for over a year or roughly so, and so if they were going to encounter it and be affected by it, that's typically already happened, and so that's why we're not seeing a lot of mortality or a lot of illness. And a lot of the birds are spread out. Wild waterfowl, that's right, this time of year. Where we have been seeing it and what has caused it to reemerge in the news is its detection in dairy cattle. Several months ago we heard of the first ever documented infection of dairy cattle by highly pathogenic avian influenza. That was in Texas, some of the early states were Texas, New Mexico and maybe Kansas. And from there then we began to hear about its presence, infections in dairy cattle, dairy farms, in other states. I don't know what the total count is right now but it's in the dozens of dairy facilities where it's been detected. The transmission… You know, from dairy farm to dairy farm has primarily been linked to movement of cattle between those farms. I don't really understand how all that happens or why it happens, how frequently it happens, but I do know they move dairy cattle from farm to farm. and there were some initial infections that kind of started this movement of the HPAI and dairy catalog across these different farms and states. There's a lot of attention being paid to that right now. I don't want to position myself or sort of put myself in a position of sounding like I'm an expert in this field, because I'm not. In the past we've had some… We have had some partners from the wildlife disease ecology space and government partners come on and talk with us and I have been in communication with those folks. We're going to have them join us again sometime in the future to give us an update on sort of what are the implications of the new infections in dairy cattle for us as waterfowl hunters, as waterfowl managers. What do we need to be aware of? Do we have any heightened concern? From a human health standpoint what you hear is that the risk of transmission to humans is still low and the severity of disease in humans if we get it is still pretty mild, but the longer the disease is out there circulating in other animals that we come in contact with, the greater the risk of something, of there being some type of change that does increase its transmissibility and severity to humans and so that's why there's so much attention being paid to this right now in all sorts of different disease ecology spaces. So just stay tuned to I guess to the news, to our channels, We're gonna, I think we're gonna have an article coming out in an upcoming issue with a magazine and given a bit of an overview about avian influenza and what we know about it and what hunters need to be aware of in terms of limiting our risk of moving and transmitting this virus into backyard poultry flocks because it's still affecting poultry, commercial and backyard poultry. in substantial ways, and so we still need to be aware of that. We need to be aware of, especially once the hunting season rolls around, any risk that we would pose to transmission into dairy cattle operations, kind of given what all we're learning now, and it's still out there, and it's still a topic of concern and conversation, and we'll be touching base with some of those partners again here in the future to get that message to folks.

Chris Jennings: Yeah, and I'm sure before we get into the fall, we'll probably have another update or, you know, may even add this to almost every one of these little updates that we have. Definitely, just because people are hearing about it a little more.

Mike Brasher: So, yes, we're aware. We're still in communication with our partners in those spaces and we will continue to bring information to our listeners and to others within the Ducks Unlimited family and waterfowl hunting community.

Chris Jennings: Alright, well, you know, the next thing we have is, it's really just an update for what's to come in the Ducks Unlimited magazine. July-August issue is to the press. It is heading out to mailboxes, hopefully right around that July 1 timeframe, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later, depending on where you live. The new guns and gear, it's a big issue for me, and this one especially. You know, this is probably the biggest gear issue we've ever done, so people should be excited to see that. Uh, well over a hundred products. We just got our first printed finalized issue here at the office. So that was kind of cool to see it done. Um, definitely a relief for me, a big project, but you know, a lot of great products. And if everyone's listened to the podcast that we did would be last week, um, with Jim Ronquist, he kind of went through, you know, several new products from Drake Waterfowl that are new out for 2024. Most of them are out now, you can see them on their website, but it's a great list. You've got jackets, bags, shotgunning essentials. Of course, you've got the new guns and the new ammo, which is always exciting from several of our partners and key advertisers. Man, it's just a great roundup, and I think people should be excited to get it. You know, we always discuss that right around the 4th of July, you know, maybe just a week after the 4th. That's when duck and goose hunters kind of turn around and start looking at the calendar, and they're like, uh-oh, it's time to start getting ready. So, you know, there's a reason for the timing of that piece, and hopefully everyone gets excited about it. And so, yeah, I mean, that's the only thing I got. Do you got anything else?

Mike Brasher: Well, I was going to ask you, I want to say there were lot of different new wader, waders in there, right?

Chris Jennings: There were. Yeah, I mean, several different pairs from Drake, you know, we've got, um, and, and just several other advertisers and partners that, that have provided them for this feature. Um, you know, QU, you've got Dive Bomb, you know, new Bandit has some really cool new waders out. Um, lots of things for duck and goose hunters to be excited about, that's for sure.

Mike Brasher: You can find nowhere else, but the DU Magazine, the Guns N' Gears.

Chris Jennings: Some of those products you cannot. Some of them are not even really available quite yet. Most of them will be available by the middle of July, late July. So some of them will be, it'll definitely be the first time a lot of people have seen these new products.

Mike Brasher: New, I think a few new 28 gauge gun offerings, right?

Chris Jennings: New loads from Winchester. Do you have your 28 gauge yet? I do not. I need to put that, I've got a bunch of ammo for it. I know. I need to get one. I need to get a 28 gauge too. Put it on my list. Put it on your list. It is. It's already on my list. All right. Would you have anything else before we wrap this up?

Mike Brasher: Well, probably not. It seems like I'm forgetting something. You know, it seems like the one thing that I've told everybody today is it feels good to kind of be back in the office. I've been traveling so much lately, but now I've got like two months with maybe only two or three days where I'm like on work travel, so I'm looking forward to getting some things done. Maybe even record a few more podcasts about like species profiles or something like that. I think we made some promises earlier in the year that we were gonna do a few of those, and I don't think we've done those yet, so we need to get on them. So yeah, it's good to be around. We've got, like I said, this fancy new table, some changes coming to the podcast studio, and so other people will be seeing maybe, maybe seeing some of that in the near future, and I don't know, it's a good time.

Chris Jennings: Yeah, that'd be great. Mike, this has been awesome. Thanks. Thanks a lot for doing it. I'd like to thank my co-host, Dr. Mike Brasher for jumping on this little update here and providing some really important information on habitat conditions, HPAI, you know, and, and the BPOP survey, just things that really this time of year, you know, duck and goose hunters should probably be paying attention to. I'd like to thank Chris Isaac, our producer, for putting the show together and getting it out to you. And I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us on DU Podcast and supporting wetlands conservation.