Ep. 702 - From Surveys to Seasons: Previewing the 2025 Duck Numbers
Hey folks, join us on today's exciting episode as we preview what may be coming next week with the US Fish and Wildlife Service's release of their waterfowl population status report and the harvest reports that come along with that. We talk about what we kind of expect. We talk about how that information is going to inform future harvest regulations. And then we look back on some of the historical changes in adaptive harvest management. Lots of great information.
VO:Stay with us. The following episode of the DU podcast features a video component. For the full experience, visit the Ducks Unlimited channel on YouTube, subscribe, and enjoy.
VO:Can we do a mic check, Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast.
VO:I'm your host, doctor Mike Brazier. I'm your host, Katie Burke. I'm your host, doctor Jared Hemphill. And I'm your host, Matt Harrison.
VO:Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, the only podcast about all things waterfowl. From hunting insights to science based discussions about ducks, geese, and issues affecting waterfowl and wetlands conservation in North America. The DU podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan, the official performance dog food of Ducks Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan, always advancing. Also proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails.
VO:Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
Mike Brasher:Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I am Doctor. Mike Brazier. I'm going to be, I guess, one of three kind of co hosts on this episode.
Mike Brasher:We're here recording on August 19, and this is typically the time of year when we are like, this is typically the week when we're anticipating breeding population survey results. We don't have those this year. We're going to tell you a little bit about that. Joining me here in studio is Nathan Ratchford. Nathan, great to have you.
Nathan Ratchford:Thanks, Mike. Good to be here.
Mike Brasher:And over here, Doctor. Jared Hinton. Jared, great to be with you as well.
Jerad Henson:Mike, great to be here.
Mike Brasher:We, as I said, this is typically the week of the year when we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off and doing all sorts of preparation for the release of the US Fish and Wildlife Service's waterfowl population status report. That's not happening this week, this year. We're gonna tell you here in a moment when we think that's gonna happen. You're probably listening to this actually on August 28, if all of our math works out right. So we don't have the report by then either if you're listening to this.
Mike Brasher:And so give you a hint then as to when it's gonna come out. But, yeah, this is an exciting time. Jared, you're you're probably eager to get these numbers.
Jerad Henson:I am. I'm excited. I think everybody too is still riding a little high from, you know, the expo we just had. Yeah. That was a fantastic event coming off of that.
Jerad Henson:Everybody's got starting to get geared up around duck season, which is needed right now because it's a 100 degrees actual temp outside Memphis It's right it's got us dreaming of of cooler temperatures and and that that time of year getting here, but the excitement starts to build, and we really wanna know what to expect this year, and that's kind of where we're hoping these numbers are going to get us to.
Mike Brasher:Nathan, you were deep into the conversation last year. This time, I think it might have been this very week.
Nathan Ratchford:I think so.
Mike Brasher:Again, we're recording this August 19, so you're going to be listening to this on August 28, so just kind of We'll try to keep that We'll try not to confuse you on those dates. But nevertheless, mid late August is when we were deep into numbers and paperwork and communication planning, and all that stuff is still going on right now, but we don't anticipate the results for, let's just say, another week. But is it a little bit different for you this year? Do you feel like we're I mean, we are having to wait, but it's like we're getting antsy.
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah. So last year was my first communication side of things, so it was a bit of a learning curve for sure. Feel more comfortable this year, but it's, yeah, it's all hands on deck. It's, as you mentioned, it's a little crazy around the office this time of year, but, yeah, we're moving towards September. We're gonna dove opening, teal.
Mike Brasher:That's right.
Nathan Ratchford:It's great time of year.
Mike Brasher:That's kind of crazy to think. We're gonna have well, I guess some folks already do. There are some early goose seasons already open.
Jerad Henson:Saw some of our friends from our partner organizations that were getting out in the field already over the Dakotas and Yeah. Chasing some of those early resident geese. I mean, our resident goose season opens in a couple weeks here.
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah. Hard to believe when it's a 100 out there
Jerad Henson:right It's it's yeah. It's pretty tough.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. I'm disappointed. I did a little bit of sort of vegetation management there on our property. We have 16 acres, about eight or nine of that is actually sort of open field. Last year or two years ago, I had mowed it at just the right time and it had grown up into this I don't know if it's Dallas grass or some sort of seed producing grass that the resident, you know, Canada geese came in, were eating, and so, yeah, I harvested a few of those and made some goose Well, springs out there likely will not be one forthcoming this year because, as I was leading into, I'm kind of disappointed in the response or the lack of response from that kind of vegetation.
Mike Brasher:I didn't mow it this year, but I think I had to let all of the other sort of more robust goldenrod and other type of thing take over, and it didn't really Right. I think I have to do some additional manipulation to kinda get it back to that grass stage if that's what I want to do with it. So I don't know if we're gonna get any Canada yeast there on the property this year.
Jerad Henson:But early, incredibly wet spring kinda set the ecological succession, all those different grasses. It it it did some yeah.
Mike Brasher:Made things change. So anyway, Canada geese around our house are probably safe this year. Rebecca will be kinda happy with that. She does not like me shooting out of the smallest flock, you know, but there's a larger flock that sometimes comes by, and I have the okay to shoot that one. So we kinda go, you you gotta compromise, and so we sorta go along with it.
Mike Brasher:But I don't expect them to be on the property this year. So what we wanted to do with this episode is sort of wet our appetite for what will be, we hope, forthcoming next week, September, is when we do anticipate the Fish and Wildlife Service releasing the waterfowl population status report, as well as the adaptive harvest management report, and several other reports that lay out the recommendations for harvest strategies, harvest regulations for the twenty sixth, twenty seventh season. Nothing that we're going to get next week, as you're listening to this, will change the regulations for '25 for this coming So just kind of keep that in mind. And what we wanted to do is just provide a bit of a primer on some of the things that you'll be hearing, make sure we have extra week to sort of put things in context to hit on some interesting reminders and look back a little bit at what what some of the things were last year. And so, yeah, I you're looking forward to to kinda getting into this?
Jerad Henson:Yeah. Well, I mean, and, you know, this is a thing we've been talking about a lot over the past couple years. It's been dry, and and so everyone's interested to see what those populations are gonna look like, what's the habitat look like, and that's that's both the two two things that we're looking to get out of that, the BPOP report, right, is that what is the breeding population, what's it look like, and then also how good's the habitat, right? Can can ducks make bank or not?
Mike Brasher:Well, we've kind of previewed that with Scott Stevens, Steve Adair. We're not anticipating No. Highly favorable numbers either from
Nathan Ratchford:the breeding
Mike Brasher:population, the duck numbers or the pond numbers, but we'll know soon enough. Right. I'm
Nathan Ratchford:Scott always said one word, dry.
Mike Brasher:He did say that.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. I was at DUX, I was on a podcast. Somebody asked me kind of what I thought about it, and I was like, well, it's been it was dry two years ago. It was dry last year. Early reports are it's pretty dry this year, and the the b pop has been consistent over that same population.
Jerad Henson:So I would not expect any drastic change, right, for the better, for sure, based upon what we know right now.
Mike Brasher:Right. You know, one of the first things that we wanted to do, we sort of alluded to this, but a specific mention, and thank you to our federal, both US Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service, our provincial partners, our state agency partners, they are the ones that conduct these surveys. There were a lot of questions going into the spring on whether these surveys were even gonna happen. Yeah. Hats off to every person involved in the discussions and decisions that allowed this to happen.
Mike Brasher:I don't have any insight on whether they had to I mean, there was some speculation early on that maybe they would because budgets are getting squeezed every budget
Jerad Henson:concern, right, yeah.
Mike Brasher:And there were some thought that maybe they would have to reduce the number of transects transects that they fly or maybe even maybe even not fly some strata. I don't know how all that ended up. We'll I think we'll probably hear about that in the report or from some of our partners directly, but they got it done, and kudos to those folks for doing the hard work to make sure that happened.
Nathan Ratchford:Yes. No small effort.
Jerad Henson:No, not at all, and that's I mean, we need that. That data is so important for us to make informed decisions. And when say us, I mean, our partners, the waterfowl science community as a whole, to be able to make informed decisions on population management and how to go forth.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. One of the first things that we want to do, I have a few slides here. If you're listening to this, we're going to be putting up some slides, some images to remind folks, give some visual perspective to the type of things that you'll be hearing about next week. Some of this may be old hat to a number of folks, but when we get the report, we'll be talking about, and whenever you see the DUC numbers come out on the Ducks Unlimited social media or Ducks Unlimited webpage, you will hear us talking about the traditional survey area as well as the Eastern survey area, and so we're showing now a map of the areas that correspond to those survey areas. There's a long history about how this came to be.
Mike Brasher:They've evolved over time. We're not gonna get into those details, but these are the two big survey areas across which duck populations are estimated separately, and they'll be reported separately in that report and in every other place where you see them. So the traditional survey area encompasses important breeding habitats in Alaska, the Northwest Territories, near Northern Canada, the Prairie Provinces Of Of Canada over to Western Ontario, and then down through Montana and North and South Dakota. That's your traditional survey area primarily providing ducks to the Pacific, Central, and Mississippi flyaways. Of course, they'll provide ducks to Atlantic Flyaway also, but then you go over to the Eastern Survey Area which is you essentially take Central Ontario and go eastward through Canada and into Maine, and that captures Eastern Survey Area, largely more stable wetland system, boreal forest type of community, and that's gonna be a big provider of the ducks that the Atlantic Flyway gets.
Jerad Henson:And just just looking at that, a couple things to to point out, especially in that traditional survey area. Well, I know we didn't wanna go too much in the history, but that's really cool that this year's basically seventy years
Mike Brasher:You're right.
Jerad Henson:Of of that survey. So that's a that's an incredible data set from an ecological standpoint, and I think that's important to point out. It actually goes back further than that, but it was standardized in '55, and so that's kind of a really cool thing to talk about that we have that dataset to actually make informed decisions off of. And one of the other things that I always find interesting, people ask me when they look at that traditional survey map, was like, well, it's a weird survey lines. Some of those areas are some of those, you know, areas get way more flight lines and some of them get just a few, and that's an artifact of the habitat, right, and the duct densities on those habitats.
Jerad Henson:Right? So the flight lines, those transect lines are are laid out based upon estimated, you know, duct densities so they can get better counts.
Mike Brasher:The statistically rigorous design. It's not just willy nilly. It's like, oh, well, I don't care about this area as much. We're only gonna put one transect there. No.
Mike Brasher:It is based on the things that you talk about, Jared, what we've learned from years of collecting data, as you mentioned, they'll modify this occasionally. I know there was a big revision of the survey in 1995, think, or at least that's when there was a publication that came out. I know there's some ongoing work and ongoing discussion right now to consider potential modifications to the survey. Those types of things are in some way or another always happening. Sometimes the changes that are made are a bit more substantial than others.
Mike Brasher:Sometimes they're just little minor tweaks or changes in the way they estimate sampling variation or statistical sort of changes. Right. But always working to get the best estimates possible, the best data possible. Nathan, I know last year you wrote an article that summarized all the state surveys, and so when you were looking at this map, there are a number of states that have breeding duck populations that are not on here. You learned a little bit about some of that last year.
Nathan Ratchford:Yes, I did. You know, California being one, Oregon and Washington, and British Columbia, a provincial partner there, You know, that data is also used and we'll I know we'll cover it later as part of that larger dataset for informed decisions on certain flyway regulations. And up in the Great Lakes area, you know, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and am I missing anyone?
Mike Brasher:Those are the three big ones in the Great Lakes. There may be some other localized surveys. I don't know if Ohio does a breeding duck survey. I don't think they do. They might have at one time.
Mike Brasher:There are a few breeding ducks up in Ohio
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah. For
Mike Brasher:And it's the Northeastern States. They don't show up in this one here, but there are a number of There are some formalized surveys, breeding duck surveys in the Northeastern States, which we will talk about a little
Nathan Ratchford:And how they later conduct it is a bit different.
Mike Brasher:But in terms of what is captured by the traditional survey area and the Eastern survey area, It's pretty well defined and it does not capture all of those areas that we know contain breeding ducks, although we'll get to some of those surveys and how they're important a little bit later on. So let's see. One of the other things, I guess, just sort of to point out is, Jared, you hit on it, seventy years of this waterfowl breeding population and habitat survey. We've talked also recently about banding programs, we've talked about harvest surveys, we've talked about the breeding population survey that is conducted in the spring not only provides estimates of breeding ducks, but habitat estimates across the prairies. Those datasets are at the foundation of our informed management for both population management and harvest management, and the conservation that Ducks Unlimited, our partners, and other organizations deliver, they are the datasets that have for so many years kept North American waterfowl management sort of at the top of the mountain of science based wildlife management, and we've had conversations earlier this year and people have heard about it where we thought some of those programs were at risk.
Mike Brasher:It is fair to say that the budgets for those programs and those activities have been constrained for many years. That has not changed. If anything, it's kinda gotten worse over the past number of years, and so that's always a concern to us, and so that's why we're always eager to point out the importance of those datasets and the defining nature that they have for what we are as a community, as a waterfowl management community, and why it's important where every chance we get to support the people that do it, to support the programs that deliver that, but then also think about new and exciting and innovative ways to collect that type of data, but then additional data as we go forward. We have to always be improving and adapting to environmental changes, social changes, budgetary changes, those types Technology of changes, Technology, absolutely. So there's a lot of stuff going on right now, but we can never lose sight of the importance of these foundational datasets, so always have to sort of make that note.
Mike Brasher:Well,
Jerad Henson:and Mike, just kind of follow-up on that, as you mentioned, some revisions to some of this stuff, and some of those things take time, right, for those revisions to be adapted and kind of carried out. And one of the big things is to make sure that the data, as it's collected, it can be compared to the old data, Right? So we need to make sure as we find new technologies and we find new ways of measuring these things that they always take into account how we've done things in the past so that we can compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges, and I think that's an important thing. People ask all the time, why don't you use this for looking at these new technologies or something? Why do we not use that?
Jerad Henson:I was like, well, we've got to make sure that it's comparing the same thing.
Mike Brasher:Yeah, that's right. That's right. Thinking about where I wanna go next in this conversation, I have two options. Think so, Chris, I've I've brought up on the screen here the results from last year's survey. Maybe we'll just do that as a reminder for people.
Mike Brasher:One of the big things that we folks might recall, the headline from last year was an estimated 8% increase in Mallard numbers, an estimated 5% increase in total DUC numbers for the traditional survey area. What you're looking at here would be the numbers from last year as as Ducks Unlimited put those out. Again, this is last year's, not this year's, it's 2024, but just as a reminder of some of the notable things. But if you look out in that far right column, the percent change from the long term average, Mallards were still down 16% below the long term average. Gadwal were up, Widgeon were up, Greenwing teal still above the long term average, but then you had species like Bluewing teal, which were below the long term average by 10%.
Mike Brasher:Pintails still down 50% below the long term average last year, and then you look at Canvasback and SCOP and So this just gives you reminder of where we were last year. I think it is a safe general characterization would be to say that overall, duck populations in the traditional survey area were about average. Some species were below that, some species were above that, but overall, we're in this period of average duck populations, and when you have a period of average duck population size that is about seven or eight years after record highs, it feels like that drop is much steeper, you know? Feels like where we are is so much lower than what it actually is when you look at it over the older timeframe. It's like this, what is your timeframe of reference?
Mike Brasher:For a lot of young hunters, the timeframe of reference is going to be, I say, ten through 20 I mean, ten through now, and the first part of that were very healthy duck populations and record duck populations, and so now when we're back down to an overall average, then, yeah, it feels like it's it's a it hurts. It does.
Jerad Henson:It does. And and and kinda one of the things that comes to mind too is not only are we getting these very average, we're also getting especially the past two to three years, had some weird climate, right, warm. Right? And so, you know, people in my neck of the woods, Arkansas, Mississippi, you know, that area, like, you're not seeing as much as you normally would because it's 80 degrees in November.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Right?
Jerad Henson:Yep. A duck doesn't doesn't need or want to be in 80 degree weather.
Mike Brasher:Right. And last year, I don't think we had that real cold weather until down here until January.
Jerad Henson:It was. Right. Yeah. Right. And so that's, you know, that's a whole conversation in itself, but not only is it, you know, average numbers, but you combine those average numbers with some pretty warm winters, and you're just you're not seeing the birds further south like we did before when we had cooler winters with, you know, a cool winter with a healthy population of ducks.
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah. That's a great point though, Mike. I mean, I'm looking at the the graph here for Mallards in 2016, 11 nearly 11,800,000 Mallards. So, I mean, that's double.
Mike Brasher:It's
Jerad Henson:yeah. So if you're
Nathan Ratchford:thinking there's less ducks around or speculating that we're missing ducks in serving no. You're they're just they're not out there.
Mike Brasher:Right. You know, imagine imagine being perplexed and and puzzled if the stock market went down 50% and you looked at your four zero one k and says, doggone, why is my four zero one ks down 50%? Well, it's down because the stock market went down 50%. So that's a pretty useful analogy to say you can't look at one of your experiences and say, I'm not seeing as many ducks right now, this has to be somebody's fault, and also acknowledge and see that at the continental level, we are down close to 50% on one of these species, and yeah, checks out.
Jerad Henson:Had that conversation several times over the past year as somebody would come up to me, man, they're just missing something on the surface. They're missing it. They're missing it. I'm just not seeing the ducks. I was like, well, your frame of reference is 2016, when we had fantastic years, and you feel like you're only seeing maybe half the number of ducks.
Jerad Henson:If you look at the reports, the survey, it shows there's half the number of ducks, is that So frame of keeping that in perspective is really important.
Nathan Ratchford:And just how cyclical these things are. Right? You go back ten years before in 02/2006, and we're about mallard wise where we are right now. Mhmm. Right?
Nathan Ratchford:Yep. So that difference when rain returns, how that, you know, actually continues to build the population year after year, and then you have something like 2016. If you
Jerad Henson:look at those, the Mallard population, right, or overall duck population, you could look at it and you see those cyclical Sure. Peaks and troughs that you would normally see with a, you know, any type of wildlife population.
Mike Brasher:And some people may think that we're looking at this through rose colored glasses, but I I think we're just trying to be honest about it. And I to be on To that point, if you look at the depth of the drought and the widespread nature of the drought across that prairie region for the past essentially seven years, and we still have total duck populations in the traditional survey area that are right around the long term average, it's pretty darn good. Yeah. It's pretty darn good. Now, you can look at some species and see they are herding more than others, mallard, pintail.
Mike Brasher:Looking at this blue winged teal, that's a bit of a surprise, you know, being 10% below the long term average because we think that's one that is generally highly resilient. But then you look at species like green wings, wigeon, they're more likely to inhabit the Boreal Forest. Despite the drought that's been going on in the Boreal Forest, they've been able to kind of hold their own and they have helped prop up that overall total duck population. So to be right around long term average speaks to the resilience. It's not rose colored glasses, that's just sort of the reality of what it is, especially whenever you look at all of the other challenges and changes and loss of habitat in that important prairie region.
Mike Brasher:I mean, ducks are resilient, and we're all eager to see what we get next week.
Nathan Ratchford:And conservation is a long term game.
Mike Brasher:Sure is.
Jerad Henson:Right? That is. Yeah.
Nathan Ratchford:The table needs to be set. There needs to be habitat available for when the rain returns. And, you know, the continental mission that we have here at Ducks Unlimited, Mike, you mentioned the Boreal, the Northwest Territory showed up big last year.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Right? Yep. We anticipate that to happen again. We expect a big count out
Jerad Henson:of there. So the
Nathan Ratchford:Boreal, Alaska, these other landscapes that we do work on that are also essential, it's just yeah. You can't just be looking at it through a microscope, you know? You need to be looking at the whole picture, and that's what Duxolitinib does.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. I've got a graph or a little table up now, the 2024 Eastern survey area, and it was a bright spot last year, has been the last several years. The habitat conditions in that landscape are not as variable as they are in the prairies. They have not you know, a lot of that landscape is boreal forest, this matrix of coniferous forest and wetlands of various types. It has not suffered the same level of drought that the boreal forest in Western Canada has, and I think it sort of appears that it bears that out where you've got several duck populations above long term average, black ducks, green winged teal, golden eye, mergansers, know, ring necked ducks, right about long term average, wood ducks, long term average, mallards only down 9% from long term average.
Mike Brasher:So, you know, this is one of those times when if you're an Atlantic flyaway hunter, you're you know, it's you kinda even keel. Your expectations are about what they were last year, and that's generally the case. I think other people have even told us that. Maybe Mike Schumer or or or maybe it's Scott Stevens, your best prediction of what you're gonna get in the Eastern Survey area this year is probably what you had last year, and that's not too far off. So so anyway, that was these are twenty twenty four numbers just to kinda orient folks before we get the numbers next week.
Mike Brasher:Hopefully, will be the case. And yeah. So what else we want to talk about in terms of setting the stage for for sort of our population habitat estimates? We haven't really talked about May ponds. I think we're probably expecting a drop?
Jerad Henson:I based on those early reports, I think that's that's the realistic thing to to do. And it was seemed like it was across the board. Yeah. Right? It wasn't there's a few pockets here and there that had average to good, it seemed like from those reports.
Jerad Henson:I I think there were some good reports out of the Missouri Cotoo. Like, that area had some better habitat, but still not not great or good. Yeah. You know, it it's still, like, it's fair. That's kind of Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. So but if you get on up into Saskatchewan, it seemed like there was a lot of dry wetlands up there.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. There definitely were. The the pilot reports were not ideal. There was some rain that that arrived on the prairies, but our our I think our read is that most of that came after the surveys were flown, so and and came after the birds, many of the early migrants flew into that landscape. That's why we're we're expecting the number out of the Boreal to be high again this year as that's where we anticipate some of those birds having overflown and settled in.
Jerad Henson:And it was so, I mean, dry before those rains, a lot of that report, those yeah. That ground soaked it quick.
Mike Brasher:For sure.
Nathan Ratchford:You know, from just an average hunter's perspective, reading those reports, it's always difficult to find in a you know, getting a pulse on what it's actually gonna be. Yeah. I mean, last year, felt like the the reports are mainly bleak as well, but then you had a huge variability, you know, across For sure. US ponds were up substantially where Canadian ponds were down Yeah. You know, 19%.
Nathan Ratchford:US ponds were up 40 some percent.
Mike Brasher:Think that's Yeah. It was up huge.
Nathan Ratchford:So it's the variability of that landscape and also it's just, you know, yeah, I don't know what to expect.
Mike Brasher:So the pawn numbers last year, yeah, I didn't look at that. It was was it up in well, I don't have that in this graphic. You would be looking at it on the
Nathan Ratchford:9%.
Mike Brasher:Up on The US.
Nathan Ratchford:The US
Mike Brasher:US pawns are up 49%.
Nathan Ratchford:Dynamic. That's
Mike Brasher:not gonna happen this year. They may be down 50%.
Nathan Ratchford:You think so?
Mike Brasher:Well, maybe.
Nathan Ratchford:Maybe. No
Mike Brasher:rose colored glasses here. On US side of things, I don't know. 30% down on The US? I don't
Jerad Henson:know. I think
Mike Brasher:it depends on what it was. If it goes back to what it was the year prior, what would that percent change be? I don't know, we'd have to look at that data, but yeah, it could be I I don't have any reason to believe that the pond count coming out of the out of The US this year is gonna be very close to what it was last Now I did hear something the other day that said maybe some of those rains came right before they flew some of those areas, but while that may help the pond number, it doesn't help the settling pattern No. For the early migrants. It'll help it'll provide some water for some of the later nesters as well as for some of the broods, but, know, ducks will still be produced.
Mike Brasher:We've already heard reports of ducklings on the landscape in various provinces and states, so we know ducks are gonna be produced. We know there's habitat up there. We don't wanna we don't wanna sound like there's no production. Right. Because there will be.
Jerad Henson:Ducks are resilient. Yep. They're incredibly resilient, and they will find habitat.
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah.
Mike Brasher:They will.
Jerad Henson:That's one of the the really, really impressive things about about waterfowl. You know? Yeah. They might fly over a dry prairie and end up in the the boreal up there. And, it's it's hard to estimate up there.
Jerad Henson:Right? It's dense. It's tree covered.
Mike Brasher:It's Yeah.
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah. There were some good brood reports out of North Dakota this year too.
Mike Brasher:The The brewed numbers out of North Dakota were up. I always look at that with a bit of caution, especially during a year when it's so dry. I don't think they do visibility correction factors associated with that survey, so it depends on how dry it was. If it was so dry that by the time they conducted the brood surveys, that a lot of the water had receded out of the vegetation, then the broods aren't gonna have much escape cover, and so your detection rate on broods is gonna be higher. So there's some of that variability It's counting wildlife in their natural setting is difficult.
Jerad Henson:It is. It is.
Mike Brasher:They don't wanna be counted a lot of times, like the ducklings especially.
Jerad Henson:That's one of those cases where some of that new technology is really cool being able to to implement that Yeah. Using
Mike Brasher:That's right. Well, we talked about that on last week's episode.
Jerad Henson:And stuff. Yeah. Like,
Mike Brasher:that's seen that.
Nathan Ratchford:That's a cool thing. Point, Mike, I mean, weather patterns at the time of the surveys, all those things that factor in, you know, we saw that with Widgeon last year. Right? That big increase, you know, you know, I think you kind of pointed to the survey the previous year, there was a there was a weather, you know, pattern that may have influenced how many Widgin were observed in that Alaska Northwest Territory.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. There was something weird
Nathan Ratchford:about that. Maybe it was kind of the reason why there was that big increase, but all those things, yeah, it's it's dynamic for sure.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. There are some wonky things that occasionally it's a technical term, wonky.
Jerad Henson:Wonky. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:That that do show up in these surveys from time to time, and and that's unavoidable. Yep. It does not it does not undermine the value of the survey. Does not Absolutely not. It does not undermine the the rigor with which this is designed and implemented and the data are analyzed is just
Nathan Ratchford:It's just nature.
Mike Brasher:Is a massive undertaking, and you're gonna get a few of these areas where things are a little wonky
Jerad Henson:It's from year to a population estimate over time, and one of the things that's really cool about a dataset that long, if you do it the same way over and over and over, no, you may not be able to spell out to the exact number, the number of ducks, you know, right? You know, there's plus one or plus two, that's the different scale for the survey. But if something happens with a population,
Mike Brasher:you're gonna pick it up.
Jerad Henson:A trend change
Mike Brasher:A true trend.
Jerad Henson:A true trend. You will find it in this kind of data, and that's something that's so important to our ability to understand them for That's the
Mike Brasher:a great point.
Nathan Ratchford:And is there really anything you could compare it to? I mean, as far as wildlife surveys.
Mike Brasher:You know, I would have to look at some of the fisheries datasets. I think they do a really good job in some instances. They probably have some of the longest records of others that have been out there. You know, the adaptive harvest management that we use right now, it was taken from some of the work that has been done in fisheries stock management, and sort of take management. So, yeah, I think some of the fisheries disciplines groups have comparable datasets and decision, especially when you think on the commercial fisheries side of things, stock assessments and so forth.
Mike Brasher:They have some pretty rigorous long term datasets. So, yeah, that's probably where I would compare it, but otherwise
Nathan Ratchford:But for a single survey.
Mike Brasher:Well, for a single survey and also for a species or group of species that varies so widely across a geographic area. I think, yeah, you would have to go to the fisheries groups to find anything comparable. But great point. We want I think now is a good time to take a break. We wanna come back and we wanna preview how some of this might influence harvest regulations for the 2627 season.
Mike Brasher:That's the other big thing that people will be looking to when the reports come out next week. We will be looking at that the same as you all, and we want to kind of get you prepared for what to look for, remind you of how harvest regulations for duck seasons are set across the different flyways. And also, we're going to take a look at how the adaptive harvest management matrix for midcontinent mallards has changed over time, and it might surprise some of the folks out there that say isn't adaptive. It actually is. And we're going to show you how.
Mike Brasher:So stay with us, we've lot got more to come back.
VO:Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
Mike Brasher:Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I am doctor Mike Brazier, and here I have Nathan Ratchford, Doctor. Jared Henson. We're going to pick up where we left off and jump right into sort of a primer on harvest regulations, how they are set, how those processes differ from one flyaway to the next.
Mike Brasher:And I think to start this off, Chris, if you could sort of show the the image that we have up here that that highlights regulations are set differently by flyway. The the group of ducks, we're going to talk about duck regulations here. Geese are an entirely different thing. The group of ducks that the US Fish and Wildlife Service looks to to set regulations in your flyway is likely likely different from the set of ducks that are used to set it in another flyway, unless we're talking about the Central And Mississippi. Those are set using the same group of birds.
Mike Brasher:So let's just spell this out here. If you're in the Pacific Flyway, the group of birds that is important for setting the overall duck season framework, that being the number of days and the bag limits, is determined by the status of Alaska mallards and mallards that are estimated in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. If you are a hunter in the Central And Mississippi Flyway, then your season length and bag limit for that overall duck framework are set based on the status of midcontinent mallards, which you see the survey areas identified in green, plus the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan sort of capture that midcontinent mallard stock. So it's the estimate for midcontinent mallards plus number of May ponds in The US and Canada. So that's what determines your season structure.
Mike Brasher:If you're in the Atlantic Flyway, your season length and bag limit selection is based on the combined status of four species of ducks, ring neck ducks, wood ducks, golden eyes, and green winged teal. We're not going to get into the specifics of every one of these. We're going to visit on the Midcontinent Mallard, the Central Mississippi Flyway process because that's the one that I think most people have It's the one that's been around the longest, it's the one that I think most people are familiar with, but yeah, this is an important thing to know. So whenever that population status report comes out, and if you're a Pacific Flyway Hunter and you look at the traditional survey area, there's really only a part of that traditional survey area that is of greatest importance to you. Same thing if you're an Atlantic flyaway hunter.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. You'll look at the the Eastern survey area, and what happens in the traditional survey area is important for the number of birds that you see. But if you're really looking at those numbers to try to figure out what your hunting season is gonna be next year, then you're gonna be looking only at what's happening in that sort of Eastern area.
Jerad Henson:And this, you know, and this kind of picks up on what we talked about before the break, right, when we were talking about bee pop, and that's kind of what the whole topic of today is. This is the data from the the B POP and the Maypawn count, all of that survey that's gonna be used in the report, right, to actually predict or or estimate our our harvest for, not this year, but next year.
Mike Brasher:That's right. Yeah.
Nathan Ratchford:So It really is incredible seeing, I mean, how many states we're looking at here and that individual data shared collectively Yeah. In the waterfowl management community and how efficiently and effectively that's done across so many different states. It's it's just really impressive.
Mike Brasher:There in the Atlantic Flyway, you see all of those states that are highlighted. Now that relates to data that is collected through eBird, I believe, and maybe the maybe it's the breed maybe it's not eBird, it's the Breeding Bird Survey, I believe. I had to look this up. I've been talking about eBirds so much I'm confusing myself, but they're not actual breeding duck population surveys that are conducted in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, etcetera. It's I think it's breeding bird survey data that are used to help inform that wood duck estimate.
Mike Brasher:That is one of those four species in the Atlantic Flyway. So just to kinda clarify why they're highlighted.
Jerad Henson:That's one of those southern states of theirs, is locally produced wood ducks.
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Because that's Which is that's opportunity for for Atlantic flowey hunters.
Mike Brasher:That's right.
Jerad Henson:That's that makes up a big part of their bag limits.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Love a wood duck. Absolutely love a wood duck on a slow day. Or a fast day. I it's
Nathan Ratchford:I love a duck. Any day.
Mike Brasher:I know.
Jerad Henson:They taste amazing.
Mike Brasher:They do.
Jerad Henson:So there's that.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. So I mentioned the regulatory packages. That's what you would be most familiar with as restrictive, moderate, or liberal. The number of days that are assigned to each of those options generally differs by flyway, which you see here in this table. You know, for example, if you're in the Pacific Flyway, the restrictive season gives you sixty days, the liberal gives you one hundred and seven.
Mike Brasher:If you're in the Mississippi flyaway, the liberal gives you sixty days, the restrictive gives you thirty. So you can kind of see how those things would change based on what that optimal regulatory package that would be selected is. These are fixed options that have been, at some, in some periodic fashion, been revisited. They're not revisited very often at all. These are pretty well fixed at this point.
Jerad Henson:And a lot of that though is set by, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that's by estimated harvest. Is that correct? That's why they say Pacific
Mike Brasher:fly Why they differ? Yes. Oh, yeah. There's some history there. It is going to relate I mean, let's just look at the extreme from the Pacific to, let's say, the Mississippi.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. There are I think the easy way to say it is that the ratio of hunters to number of ducks is lower than the ratio of hunters to ducks in the Mississippi Flyway. Right. Yeah. It's like relative harvest pressure is lower in And that's kind what
Jerad Henson:I was trying to make a point there is that there's a reason those are different. It's to account for the amount of
Mike Brasher:That's right.
Jerad Henson:And what's the old adage? Days kill ducks.
Mike Brasher:Days kill ducks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So So the other part of those sort of basic duck season framework is the bag limit.
Mike Brasher:Those are also fixed under these different restrictive, moderate, and liberal options, and they differ, generally speaking, by flyway. Here in the Mississippians, they actually differ between the Mississippi and Atlantic flyway, and yeah, guess they differ across every one of these flyways, and the reason why the Atlantic I'm taking here on the fly, the reason why the Atlantic okay, so I got to break this down here. So what you're seeing here is sort of three numbers in each of these categories. First is total ducks, the second is total mallards, and then you have hen mallards. If you notice in the Atlantic Flyway, there is no number associated with that second or third spot for total mallards or hen mallards.
Mike Brasher:That's because a few years ago, whenever they went to this multi stock management model where they're basing it on those four different species, they pulled out mallards, mallard bag limit as part of this basic package, and now they set that mallard bag limit separately based on the status of eastern mallards. So another one of those changes that have been made through the years.
Nathan Ratchford:Man, it was just not that long ago that that went from three to four.
Mike Brasher:Two to four.
Nathan Ratchford:Two to four. Yeah. Yeah. Two to four. That's right.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Yeah. You will notice here, there's probably some things if you stare at this, a lot of folks will be surprised when you go from a liberal to a moderate season in the Mississippi Flyway. I'm going to go back here and look at this. Yeah, the number of days changes from sixty to forty five.
Mike Brasher:The bag limit, total bag limit stays the same. Total mallard stays the same, but you drop from two hens to one. I'll be honest, I had forgotten that. When you go from a liberal to a moderate season in the Mississippi Flyway and the Central Flyway, you lose one hen mallard from your bag. But you can still shoot four mallards or five mallards in the Central or in the Mississippi and Central respectively.
Mike Brasher:Pacific Flyway has a seven bird total bag. You can shoot seven mallards in the Pacific Flyway under liberal season. That might surprise some people, but again, it relates to what you're talking about, some differences in relative harvest pressure.
Jerad Henson:Right. Yep.
Mike Brasher:So anything else there to take away? You could stare at that and find a few other interesting things. When you go to restrictive, the bag limit drops to three in those in the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Central drops to four in the Pacific. Only two Mallards in the Mississippi Flyway, three in the Central, and, yeah, interesting stuff. There are a lot of people that have never experienced anything other than that liberal season.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. So they have no reason to pay attention to what those others are. Interesting. Okay. So the other thing of note, I've already mentioned this, is there are some species, black ducks, pintails, canvasbacks, redheads, blue winged teal, model ducks, etcetera, that have their bag limits set separately outside that duck season framework, and sometimes these species even have some restrictions on the days within a season when they can be harvested, a season within a season.
Mike Brasher:All of these types of things are going be spelled out in the report, the adaptive harvest management report that comes out, and we're not going go into the details of how all those are done. One of the important changes that folks will know as we are here on the cusp of teal season is that this year, we only have a nine day teal season, that was in response to a drop in the breeding population size for blue winged teal, and we've kind of covered that, I think, little bit on a previous episode. We may do it again at some point in the future. Don't want get into that right now.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. But just in general, those additional species specific regulations have to do with either a population concern, something different in their annual cycle, a specific habitat need, or some that are more impacted by hunter harvest than others.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Right.
Jerad Henson:The data tells us, right, that I think in canvas backs, right, like
Mike Brasher:They can be more sensitive to harvest.
Nathan Ratchford:That's right.
Jerad Henson:Hunter harvest can have an impact there, so we need to be aware of that. And and the data does, right, and the regulations are aware of that and are informed
Nathan Ratchford:by that. And those are specific guidelines too, you know, with Blue Wings that was established 2014, right, by US Fish and Wildlife Service, that threshold. So they're not, I think it's just important for our audience to know that's not year to year, you know, these are specific guidelines that these changes are made under.
Jerad Henson:And most of those have a working scientific group that helps inform those decisions, right, around those specific species. It's not from a big general model or for the general estimates. So Yeah.
Mike Brasher:The other reminder here is that, you know, states can always be more restrictive than what those frameworks allow. There have actually been some discussions in recent year I mean, this year about in some states, considering a stronger sort of hen restriction. Some states I don't I know at least one state that considered going from two hen mallards to just one hen mallard. I don't think that was instituted. I don't have as good of a read on what some of the other states on the Atlantic Or Pacific Flyway may be considering, but they always have that option to, yeah, to to be more restrictive if they if they want to.
Mike Brasher:Right. And individual hunters can certainly be more restrictive
Nathan Ratchford:Well, that's than insane. Oh, I
Mike Brasher:mean, you when
Jerad Henson:we get into club
Mike Brasher:or whatever.
Jerad Henson:Especially into, you know, talking about mallards and and and mallards. So that's been a topic of
Mike Brasher:It is a topic.
Jerad Henson:Contention. The the data that has come out, I don't know the exact numbers, so don't quote me on this, but most bag limits, if someone shoots a limit of Mallards in Arkansas, a four duck limit, it's like 3.5 or 3.8 or 3.8 of those four ducks are Drakes. Right? So people shoot more Drakes.
Mike Brasher:People like to shoot the Drakes.
Jerad Henson:Right? It's the pretty duck, it's the ones coming in. There's generally a Drake bias, a male bias in those populations, But, you know, big old Greentop definitely catches my eye first.
Mike Brasher:I know. There's a lot of reasons to do that. There are yeah. A lot of reasons to do that. If somebody wants to only shoot drakes, I'm cool with that.
Mike Brasher:Somebody wants to shoot two mallard hens, I mean, personally, I'm okay with that, to each their own. If that hen harvest becomes a driving factor in population growth
Jerad Henson:That's
Mike Brasher:then those types of things will be will be caught at some at some point, know, and so, yeah, just to the point of of it's a topic of discussion right now, and and that's great. That's the other thing we'll always say is that I think it's wonderful that people like to nerd out That's it. On on on what They care. They do.
Jerad Henson:They do. That's it. People care. And they the thing is is the data tells us that people self regulate. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Right?
Nathan Ratchford:I only shoot for ganzers, so
Mike Brasher:There you go.
Jerad Henson:Shooting those lawn
Mike Brasher:darts as they fly Conservationist for the dabblers. Dabblers' best best friend, Nathan Ratchard, right here in the flesh. So I I think what we wanna do here is just sort of step through an example. The optimal regulatory strategy for the Central Mississippi Flyway from last year. We've got a a, brightly colored matrix here.
Mike Brasher:Across the top, it says US and Canadian May ponds in millions. Across the side, it says Midcontinent mallard breeding population. You'll recall that map we showed a little while ago that highlighted the states that contribute to that population estimate for the Mid Continent mallard stock, that being the prairie states of prairie provinces, prairie states in The US, and then those three Great Lakes states, that would be that midcontinent mallard breeding population estimate there. US and Canadian May ponds, well, that comes from the estimates that are collected from North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, in those prairie strata. And then this simplified decision matrix is an emergent property of some very complex stochastic dynamic programming that considers four alternative models for predicting population size next year based on population size this year, breeding habitat conditions, and then different regulatory packages, and then in consideration of adaptive harvest management objectives, this stochastic dynamic programming says here's a matrix that will identify based on the intersection of these two key variables what your optimal harvest strategy for this year is.
Mike Brasher:That's a mouthful, but that's about as simple as I can explain it.
Jerad Henson:Mike, can you describe optimal?
Mike Brasher:No. I
Jerad Henson:mean, it's it's opportunity. Right? They're trying to provide the most opportunity in a way if if it's there.
Mike Brasher:It's it's a number of things. It's But yeah. It's the it is the decision that maximizes the return for a set of objectives, not just one objective. It's a set of objectives, and so that's kind of the way to think about it. It's not best for any single objective, like harvest regulations represent a decision.
Mike Brasher:That is a decision that is made every year. That decision has some true outcome. What we try to do or what the Fish and Wildlife Service and their colleagues try to do is predict that outcome with the greatest That certainty outcome has an effect on our ability to achieve multiple objectives. One of those objectives is long term sustainability of the populations. Another objective is maximization of harvest during every given year without compromising our ability to achieve that maximum harvest perpetually over time.
Jerad Henson:The next year. Right.
Mike Brasher:There are also some objectives related to simplification of regulations, which may not be as explicitly accounted for. And there's a few other objectives as well. So you have multiple objectives, and so optimization tries to select that regulatory package during a given year, given the population and habitat status, that is most likely to maximize the return for all of those objectives.
Jerad Henson:Right, okay. Yeah. That's what I was trying to get at, yes.
Mike Brasher:That's the best of Thank my
Jerad Henson:and I think that's really important to frame, right, why this is used, why this model, what this strategy or the regulatory strategy actually is mapping out in front of us. It's it's a balance of all of the stakeholders in here and trying to get the best, the most optimal decision and framework for the next year's season to to meet all those different objectives. And I think that's really important to point out because that's in the weeds of the report. People don't see that.
Mike Brasher:Oh, yeah.
Jerad Henson:They don't read that, and a lot of people don't understand that. So that was something that I wanna I'm glad you clarified because I think that helps allow us to dive into this and actually understand why this is happening.
Mike Brasher:Anytime I try to explain that, it takes me back to when I was at Ohio State for my PhD and I took some behavioral ecology course and there was a lab session where we were, was a stochastic dynamic programming session. I ended up not taking that lab session because I had some other conflict and so I missed out on the fun of stochastic dynamic programming, but I nevertheless had to do a bit of a term paper that represented an example of this optimal modeling, trying to make a decision that is going to sort of maximize the contributions to a suite of sort of competing, interacting objectives, and I chose Mid Continent Mallard Adaptive Harvest Management as my case study, and it's a really When you take the time to dig into it, it's actually really cool how they framed it up and how they would Yeah, how that worked. I'd have to go back and read all of that. It just made me even more impressed by the people, the mathematicians, statisticians that do all of this work, and it makes a lot of sense when you spend the time to think about it, but it's been probably two decades since I thought about it that deeply.
Mike Brasher:So what we're going to do right here is look at what we had for last year. I think I've got this animated, and we do, so we have this up here, and you will see that those are the results from the survey last year, from the combined surveys last year, 6,610,000 mallards in the Mid Continent population, it's a subset of those TSA strata plus those three Great Lakes states, and then 5,160,000 US and Canadian ponds, and yeah, so that's where you see where we ended up there in the liberal. You could probably say, well, that's a pretty far ways from moderate or restrictive, but while that's true, the appearance of this matrix, the territory, if you will, occupied by the liberal package and by the restrictive package in this sort of common domain, this common space changes from year to year. Sometimes it changes more than others. So we don't know.
Mike Brasher:Even if we could predict perfectly what May Ponds and the Mid Continent Mallard breeding population size is going to be right now, We don't know with confidence where we would end up. We would have some very informed opinions, but we also know that there's a good likelihood that where these Ls, where these Ms, where these Rs find themselves on this matrix are gonna change a little bit between this year I mean, yeah, with this with this next report. So we kinda have to wait and see.
Jerad Henson:And that's based upon the performance of the models from the years before and how they're how those different models are weighted.
Mike Brasher:There was four competing models that capture hypotheses about added to mortality, compensatory mortality, and then strongly density dependent recruitment and weakly density dependent recruitment, which is about as far as I want to go with that right now.
Jerad Henson:I think that's sufficient.
Mike Brasher:Other than to say each of those models will make a prediction for what the population size in next year is going to be, and then whenever the data are collected, the analysts have this formal process where they will compare, they'll look at the predicted versus the observed, and the model that did the best job predicting what next year's population was going to be gets a little bit more weight. And with each passing year, additional weight is assigned, additional predictions and comparisons are made, And the model that what you would love to see is these things trend in a direction where there is one model that is consistently being the best predictor, and among the four, I mean, you can only compare among the four that you've designed. And so what you would like to see is that these things move in the direction of one consistently, more consistently being the better predictor, and and it would be the one that is receiving the greatest weight, the greatest weight of evidence, belief that it is representing the population dynamics of the continent mallards.
Jerad Henson:Yeah. And this is another way that the is adaptive. Yeah. Right? And rigorous.
Jerad Henson:It's rigorous. It's weighting the performance of the model the year before and the year before and
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah.
Jerad Henson:And trying to get it Yeah. Think it's just
Nathan Ratchford:such an important point for your average hunter like myself. What actually is considered, what the amount of datasets, the amount of, you know, rigor, like I said, that goes into these decisions is so much more than just the numbers. I think that's
Mike Brasher:Not paper ducks. Yeah. Not
Nathan Ratchford:not It's an extremely important underestimate. It's an extremely important point. So Yeah.
Mike Brasher:We're gonna go forward here on our little presentation, and I'm gonna show you an an animation that we have created with the assistance of our conservation science assistants here in house. It's something I'd been wanting to do for a while. It took a it took a lot to do, and so what you're gonna see is an animation, and it's gonna show this matrix. The colors are a little bit different. Red still corresponds to restrictive, yellow corresponds to the moderate, and then the greenish will correspond to liberal.
Mike Brasher:There's some gray cells in here. These are ones which we didn't really know exactly what they were because the matrix, the domain, you know, on this matrix has changed a little bit through time, and so what we did is we kinda created common domain across every year, and then we sort of interpolated between some of the that make any that wouldn't make no sense to the people that are listening to that. I realize this. But anyway, just trust me that, you know, we did this the right way, even had some of our Fish and Wildlife Service and USGS folks review it, they say, yep, you know, that looks about right, so this is going to give you a reasonable representation of actually how the matrix has in fact changed over time based on a variety of things. It's going to be mostly related to new knowledge that has been gained through the years by comparing those predictions to the observations on population size in the next year, and that's what you see.
Mike Brasher:Again, another way we're going to depict this here momentarily, but you'll see the amount of green, the amount of red changing from one year to the next, and so it actually does adapt in response to new information.
Jerad Henson:You see the you know, one of the things that's really interesting is you see how the the red shifts more. Right? That restrictive season can shift more. It's there's there's more opportunity for that dot to fall in there depending upon the habitat and the habitat and the bee pop from the year before. So
Mike Brasher:That other little darker green box that you see moving around in there, that was the optimal selection for that given year. I think it's missing in one of those years. It's missing in some of the early years because I couldn't find that or we couldn't find that data, but the other thing that you notice is that as you go through time, the amount of the of cells, the number of cells in a moderate package become very, very small, and that is because that's just not the optimal. It's not being identified as any as that suite of models as the as the optimal strategy for achieving one of those objectives, primarily because when you go from a it's predicting that when you go from a liberal to a moderate season framework, the harvest rate changes very little. And when you go from a also, when you go from a moderate to a restrictive, that harvest rate would change very little.
Mike Brasher:Now, when you go from restrictive to liberal, it changes enough for it to tell you that, okay, there's a difference in the likely impact of one regulatory package versus the other. But you can see, what was that, 02/2005? We got really close to a moderate season. So, yeah, the other thing that I want to point out is this, that what you're seeing right now goes from 1999 through 2021, I believe, and across the top is Canadian ponds. So keep that in mind because we're gonna show you a matrix here a little bit later on that's gonna include The US ponds as part of this.
Mike Brasher:So alright. Next thing that I'm gonna show, I'm gonna let yeah. I'll jump forward here. This is the other way that we can portray The matrix changes through time. This sort of takes each of those matrix matrices?
Mike Brasher:I think either of those will work. Right? They will right now. You you can take those and just express the the number of those liberal, moderate, and restrictive, and closed seasons as a percentage of the total number of sales in that common domain, and you can see how that changes, and you can see how it changed. There were some hard rules put in place around 2001 or so about what the closed season threshold was going to be.
Mike Brasher:That was changed, and then it was changed again in 02/2007, and so then what you in fact see happening is this thing over the past ten years or so, it began to stabilize around sort of a pretty consistent percentage of each of those regulatory packages.
Jerad Henson:And that's the model learning from itself, improving each year, right? So it's optimizing, it's finding a pattern, right, that seems to be consistent, so that's why you're getting a more consistent framework.
Nathan Ratchford:It is adaptive. It is.
Mike Brasher:Contrary to popular belief, man. It is. But okay. So I told Nathan a little while ago that I didn't think we were gonna go past noon, but I think he probably knows me better than I know myself because he changed his his meeting, and we're getting close to the noon hour.
Jerad Henson:I think one of the things you'll point out too is is around and it's something that's not kind of on that adaptive side. Right? It is adaptive, but it's not knee jerk. It's not reactive.
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Right? Knee jerk wise. Right?
Mike Brasher:It's based on
Jerad Henson:It's it's it's it's working in a time frame we can actually operate at too. Right? So
Mike Brasher:And you can you can have questions about the data. We all do. Everybody's always looking at it. It's not perfect. As many questions as the average hunter or the informed hunter or anybody out there thinks they have about it, I guarantee you, the scientific community has that many and more, and they're looking into them.
Mike Brasher:Right. Are they looking into them and addressing them fast enough to satisfy the, quote, critics? No, that's never gonna happen because of limitations, capacity, and resources, and you know, but these questions are being examined. So I've got another animation, just three years in this one, but this is sort of a new matrix. This was supposed to be something that was supposed to be implemented, I believe, in like 2021, and this may get a little detailed, but I'm going to go here because I think it's important because when people look, because I know how people will go back to certain pieces of information and pull it up and try to scrutinize it and so forth and so on, so I want to be completely transparent.
Mike Brasher:I told you a minute ago that when you look at that animated graph for that longer time span across the top was Canadian ponds.
Jerad Henson:When you
Mike Brasher:look back through history of this breeding population and habitat survey, there were a number of years, maybe twenty years or so, I could be awful a bit on that, when US ponds were not counted. It was only Canadian ponds that were counted. So when it came to like to the mid nineties for them to develop these population models to try to predict recruitment from habitat conditions, I. E. Number of ponds, they looked at two different things.
Mike Brasher:They looked at models that included just Canadian ponds because you can go back to the mid-50s, a longer dataset, and then they looked at a set of models that included ponds from US and Canada, and for that, you could only start in the 1970s, let's say, because you can't really include the years prior to that in that model because you didn't have US pawn numbers. So you had a shorter data series, and for the longest time, the best performing models were those that included only Canadian pawns. So they're interested in achieving the highest predictive power possible because they're trying to make decisions, and even if you don't have all the mechanisms right, as long as you have a strong predictive power for a decision making process, that's what's important at that point So in they had Canadian ponds being the only pawn variable for the longest time, but then you get to the mid-twenty teens, early 2020s, that dataset that includes US ponds becomes long enough that models that include it begin to outperform. This is my understanding of it. Anybody of our state, federal, USGS partners that are listening to this, if I'm saying this wrong, feel free to let me know, we'll do a correction.
Mike Brasher:But eventually, the models, when they compared the models with US plus Canadian ponds to those with only Canadian ponds, The US and Canadian ponds model began to outperform the Canadian ponds. So they made the change because, again, always looking to make improvements and ensure the highest predictive power or predictive potential. When they did that, and now we can look at this matrix here that's rotating from 23, 24, 25, there is a lot more green on this matrix. This was noticed by all of
Nathan Ratchford:our
Mike Brasher:Flyway Council tech rep partners. I remember having some conversations with them, and then we were like, woah, that's a big change. Yeah. Now it's based on data, it's based on the best predictive models, but it does represent a big change. What I have not done, and you'd have to go back and sort of parse this out, you'd have to separate out US or you had to separate out Canadian ponds.
Mike Brasher:Where would we be if we were still using Canadian ponds only? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that any of that is actually out there. I guess you could probably get at that.
Mike Brasher:Anyway, it'd take a little bit of work to figure that out, but I haven't seen that, I haven't done that, and I think that matrix would still change from from year to year. So anyway, this again, just being transparent, this is a change that has happened, and so it is still changing from one year to the next.
Jerad Henson:It is. It is. And if even if you look at last year's the the twenty twenty five one, you know, when you look at that
Mike Brasher:And I can't stop this information. So But
Jerad Henson:where you fall where the optimal strategy is, you know, if you took a a 20% hit in either pawn count or Yeah. Population, the the model's gonna put you in a restrictive right? A more restrictive season.
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Jerad Henson:And so it it it is there in a way where you can see where if the population took a hit or habitat takes a drastic hit, it's gonna it's gonna put you in a season that's more restrictive.
Mike Brasher:Right. I'm going back here to that matrix for our current year. It's a little bit different, at least in terms of the domain, you know, the extent of the domain, pawn numbers and breeding pawn, because I kind of wanted to make this where we could read it, you know, so don't be confused by any of that, but this part of it is all the same, you know, the main part that you see as as what was just in that animated graphic. But, yeah, the kinda to your point, Jared, what was that? 6.5, you know, 20%, if you do a a or 6.6, 20% of that is what, like 1.3, so somewhere in there.
Mike Brasher:So then that would drop this down to 5.3 ish. Right? Mhmm. Then that gets you there. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:What about ponds? 5.16, if it drops 20%, now you're looking at four point something. Mean, yeah, you're Yeah. Yep. So it's going to be interesting in But about a week when we get
Jerad Henson:it's one of those, you you don't see I take that I mean, you generally don't see giant swings like that in a population, but it can happen, and it has happened,
Mike Brasher:but it's not the norm. Yep. And again, this includes Mallards from the traditional from a portion of that traditional survey area, plus Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. I have not looked at the Mallard numbers from those three states. They will have some bearing on this.
Mike Brasher:Yes. But yeah. So lots to look forward to there. And then pintails, there have been absolutely no questions directed at me this year about pintails, people are absolutely happy. No, I'm just kidding.
Mike Brasher:I have had tons of questions about
Jerad Henson:Had somebody asked me this morning?
Mike Brasher:About pintail harvest strategy, and we did have a full length episode with Brandon Reisches and Mike Zemanski detailing how that came about, what the safeguards are, how it's going to operate. There is no shortage of opinion among hunters on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. The one good thing is is that we're gonna have data to evaluate what happened. The other good thing is that we're not going to shoot pintails into extinction, guarantee you that. The people We're
Jerad Henson:comfortable enough in the data that harvest has that little of an impact.
Mike Brasher:If the people that are out there saying that we're going to over harvest pintails in one year are true, or if they're correct, then we'll see that in the harvest numbers, this harvest strategy will adjust. It'll push it back to a one pintail season or it'll push it to a closed season. But the one thing that will have happened is that we will have learned, and we will that will we are confident that once habitat conditions improve in the important areas for pintails, they will recover. Even in the in the idea of a of a this presumed feared overharvest by some people, then there will be an opportunity for pintails to recover, and we will have learned a lot, and we will continue to let the harvest strategy work, and if it pushes it back to a three bird limit, we'll try it again, you'll collect another data point, and that's how learning occurs, and you have to be willing to do that. Feels like, and by all other sort of superficial accounts, and what we've been sort of geared to believe through a one or two pintel limit over the past fifteen or so years, this feels like a more risky feels.
Mike Brasher:An emotional thing. Feels like a more risky proposition. From a data standpoint, the models say we can do this. So that's the value of or that's the difference between emotion and data.
Jerad Henson:That's
Mike Brasher:it. So from a scientist standpoint, I'm, like, super excited about what we model.
Jerad Henson:You know? Right? You actually get into Yeah. The Yeah. But but, yeah, the knee jerk reaction is, oh my gosh.
Jerad Henson:And then the story with pintails is like, it's the haves and have nots when you're at pintail. If you're someone who is hunting pintails, right, there are some areas that just are loaded up with them, but the average duck hunter might see one or two. Right? You're not they're not making up a significant portion of anyone's bag limits
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah.
Mike Brasher:I mean
Jerad Henson:of of a large portion. There are some places where yeah.
Mike Brasher:If I see that flock of birds right there, I'm gonna try to shoot three drakes. You know? No doubt about it. Gonna let the hen go just because that's the way I am. I mean, that's that's okay.
Mike Brasher:It's cool. There are no hen restrictions. A lot of people were very puzzled by that. We talked about that with Mike and Brandon. They they they also believe and the evidence shows that hunters are going to favor drakes, just as you said, especially on pintails, especially down, you know, late in the season.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. You got
Jerad Henson:a big old bull sprig coming in.
Mike Brasher:He's And got a
Jerad Henson:target on his head.
Mike Brasher:So Mike's sort of their state's philosophy is, why regulate something that people are going to do anyway? They're going to do on their own. Again, simplify all Vast majority of of people are going do that, and if you are uneasy about you or your club or uneasy about the hen restriction, then self impose one. That's how harvest regulations got started in the first place, was by a lot of those historic duck clubs being concerned and saying, we're going to do our part. If that's what you believe, then do it.
Mike Brasher:But if other people say, I'm going to lean on the science and the data and what these are telling me and I'm gonna shoot three pintails, might shoot two hens, might shoot one hen, might shoot three hens someday. I mean, I don't think we should begrudge those those people. I I think that's kinda that's part of the learning process in evaluating what's happening here.
Jerad Henson:And a lot of that's opportunity. Right? If you've got the opportunities to shoot three Drakes, most people are gonna do that. But if you got one of those days, one of those seasons where you're just happy to take home three ducks, then that's a different story.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. You know? Okay. I think I had one more, yeah, one more graph, one more matrix. That's a little bit small.
Mike Brasher:You might have to lean in real close on your screen. This is the pintail matrix, and so the harvest strategy for pintails spits out something similar to what the Mid Continent Mallard model does where you've got a matrix that simplifies that optimal decision making framework across the top for pintails is mean latitude of settling of the pintails that are counted during the survey. When they're flying these surveys, they're flying along, they'll observe a pintail, they'll count it, they'll log it, they have a georeferenced location, they know where that is. So for all of these pintails, this is how I think they do it. I don't think they I think this is almost how they have to do it.
Mike Brasher:I don't think they do it at the strata or transect level. I mean, they could, they could estimate at the transect level and then kind of extrapolate that, that might actually be what they do. Anyway, the specifics of that I don't know, so sort of caveat there, but generally stated, they will for the pintails that they either count or that they estimate at some certain small spatial scale, they will have a location tied to those, and then they will calculate my guess is it's a weighted average of the average location of all of those estimated or counted pintails, and so what they're looking for is what's that average latitude where they counted or estimated all those pintails. Was it down in the Prairies or was it up in the Boreal Forest? Where would you expect it to be this year?
Mike Brasher:Boreal. Yeah. Because a lot of the birds flew. You expect most of the penthouse to be to be counted or estimated this year to occur in the Boreal, so it's gonna be a higher mean latitude of of observed Why
Jerad Henson:does that get factored, Mike? That's why I was asking that factor?
Mike Brasher:I assume
Jerad Henson:that's reproduction in each of those habitats. I
Mike Brasher:don't want to get too deep into that because I don't know other than the only thing I know from talking to some of the folks involved in the modeling is that it relates partly, and I don't know if it's exclusively, but it relates partly to the fact that prior datasets, prior years of information have indicated that when pintails overfly the prairies, higher mean latitude where they settle, they are more likely to settle in areas that are either unsurveyed, not covered by the aerial surveys, or they're settling in areas that are poorly surveyed where just random location of where they settle may result in them being missed or not estimated as representatively as, let's say, an area where they would settle where
Nathan Ratchford:they have
Mike Brasher:a higher density of transects and and so forth.
Jerad Henson:Generates an underestimate.
Mike Brasher:That's right. So the higher their mean latitude of settling, the more of an underestimate we believe that number that comes back from the survey actually is. So it's a little counter to what the production thing Again, this is my understanding, state, federal partners, you're listening to this, and if I've got this wrong, send me an email, we'll go on and we'll correct it. But I checked with folks before we When we first saw this come out last year, Matt Young said, hey, Mike, what's going on here? This seems backwards.
Mike Brasher:We thought they made a mistake in the matrix. We thought they'd flipped it because we were thinking on production side of things. We thought higher the settling latitude, production would be lower, and we thought the higher the settling latitude, the more likely it should be for a restrictive season. But if you look at this, farther out to the right you go, the more likely you are to have a liberal season. And so although there is, in the boreal forest anyway, productivity is likely to be a little bit lower.
Mike Brasher:I still don't think we have a great handle on But a lot of these pintails are going to overfly even the boreal and they'll nest in the coastal plain, the Arctic coastal plain where productivity may be quite high. Maybe they'll fly to Alaska where in some years productivity is quite high, but this is trying to capture the fact that when they are settling in those more northern landscapes, they're not We're likely to be underestimating the true number that are there, and so then what you have on other side here is the breeding population size for pintails in that traditional survey area. Right. Okay. Clear?
Mike Brasher:Clear as mud?
Nathan Ratchford:Clear as mud.
Jerad Henson:Oh, and that's always really interesting with pintails just because they are, from a breeding ecology standpoint, they're different. Yeah. They have some specific habitat requirements. Yeah. Yeah.
Jerad Henson:You know, short grass prairies, we got a specialist.
Mike Brasher:One of the things I'm gonna be most interested to see this year is how does this matrix change from year one to year two? How does it change?
Jerad Henson:As the model's learning from a very early standpoint, that'll be really
Mike Brasher:interesting You to can see there's only four cells in this domain area where it would be a two pintail limit. It would oscillate between a three and a one most of the time. That's partly real it's related to a couple of things, but partly it's just related to low predicted difference in harvest rate between a three bird and a and a two bird bag, you know, so that's what we got going on there. Yeah. I you know, there's also the the blue wing teal conversation that we've got nine days this year.
Mike Brasher:Who knows what it's gonna be? I'm gonna be interested to see what that number is. Are we gonna stay at nine days in '26? Are we gonna jump back up to to sixteen days? I think most people would probably handicap it and say, yeah, we're probably still gonna be at a nine day next year, but we'll see.
Mike Brasher:We'll learn soon enough.
Nathan Ratchford:And it was so close. I mean, was just under the threshold last year that it very easily could, you know
Jerad Henson:Yeah. And blue winged teal are one of those species that I mean, like most waterfowl, but they're especially one that you get some wet conditions and, man, they can have a population explosion.
Mike Brasher:So I do think I saw something, maybe Minnesota though, numbers. Was it Minnesota or Wisconsin where blue wing teal numbers were down surprisingly, to surprisingly low levels. But, we're working on that on that on summarizing some of that information. We'll look for an opportunity to try to bring that to folks, but this has been a fun conversation. I didn't we we have never done this.
Mike Brasher:We didn't really know what we're gonna be getting into. Just trying to give people something to, yeah, to get excited about and Excited.
Jerad Henson:Better understand what's kind of going on. You went for a ride with us as far as our thought process on here.
Mike Brasher:I will again say the numbers that are going to come out next week, as you're listening to this, are not Ducks Unlimited's numbers. Yes, we're going to put them out there. Yes, we're going to put them on our website. We're trying to help communicate these numbers and their implications kind of on behalf of our federal state partners, try to get them in the hands of the people that are passionate about these numbers, that care about their implications. They're not DU's numbers.
Mike Brasher:Now, despite me saying that, there will still be people that say, DU just put out their numbers. Okay, so go on believing that. They're not Ducks Unlimited's numbers. We never will take It's not because we aren't proud of them, but we don't want to take the credit away from the people that actually are doing this work. Wishing Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service, provincial agencies, state agencies, and a number of other people.
Mike Brasher:I think some of our DU Canada staff, at least in the past, have gotten out and helped with some of the ground surveys, and yeah, it's it's a tremendous amount of work. It is. And we wanna make sure they get the credit for this. We're just fortunate to be in a position where we can help communicate that. And that's
Jerad Henson:the thing is that we have the the team and the the ability, right, as a partner in that group. Yeah. To disseminate that information better than US Fish and Wildlife, they don't have a big marketing department. Right? Or Yeah.
Jerad Henson:Or anything like that.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Right.
Nathan Ratchford:Yeah. It certainly it it gives you appreciation going through the things that we covered today and and what goes into these decisions both from the survey and the amount of work that goes in. What is it? 50 over 50,000 linear miles that are flown in the course of that or something. I mean, just incredible what our our partners go through in order to gather these datasets, and then going through what actually is involved in that in those frameworks.
Nathan Ratchford:It's just yeah. Hats off to the people who are putting the work in. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Send us any questions or send us any corrections. Send us any
Jerad Henson:I put
Mike Brasher:them all my That's right. Dupodcast@ducks.org. Attention Chris Isaac. And we would love to hear from folks. If you have any questions, let us know.
Mike Brasher:Give us great material to follow-up on. And y'all stay tuned next week. Again, as you're listening to this, it should be a big week. Stay tuned to all DU platforms, social media, web, might get some emails from us. I think we're going to try to do our waterfowl season outlook livestream again.
Mike Brasher:We're kind of working on that. We don't know the day of that because that's going to be done like the day that the report our goal is to do that different from years past. We're gonna do that the night that the report is released. We do not know when that report is going to be released. Our understanding is that it is going to be the September.
Mike Brasher:Monday is Labor Day, we don't expect it to be that day, that leaves four days. Keep your eyes peeled, folks. And of course, could be totally wrong, and in which case, that's that's all me, but, you know, whatever. We do we do the best we can, and we appreciate y'all joining us for the ride. Jared, great to have you here.
Mike Brasher:Thanks for
Nathan Ratchford:for all the
Mike Brasher:the great info.
Jerad Henson:I I really enjoyed just talking about this, and and this is a a conversation that I have with with my friends, you know, and people that I see all the time, so it's really nice to be able to kinda talk to some of these points and get kinda down into the not into the nitty gritty, but at the base level, like, how this stuff works.
Mike Brasher:You know, I think it's okay to get into the weeds. The ducks live in the weeds. We can get in the weeds. We
Jerad Henson:can too.
Mike Brasher:You know, proverbial weeds. They're actual weeds. Nathan, great having you be a part of this. Also, you had this is your year two now where you'll be working on all this stuff with us. So one more trip, let's
Nathan Ratchford:Thanks, do Mike. I've always believed in being in rooms with people smarter than me, so.
Mike Brasher:Good to let us know when you figure that out. Right, well, thanks to all of you for joining us. Thanks to my colleagues here in studio. Thanks to Chris Isaac and Rachel Jared for the incredible work that they do with all these video and audio podcasts. We look forward to y'all spending a lot of time with us next week and in the coming months as we launch headlong into the waterfowl hunting season.
Mike Brasher:Have a good one, y'all.
VO:Thank you for listening to the DU podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan, the official performance dog food of Ducks Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan, always advancing. Also proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
VO:Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited. Until next time, stay tuned to the Ducks.
