Ep. 723 - Bag Limits — The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown
Hey, everyone. Join us for today's episode of the Ducks Unlimited podcast where we welcome in doctor Mark Vrtiska at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, doctor Brian Davis at Mississippi State University, and doctor Scott Stevens with Ducks Unlimited. We talk about bag limits and how that affects your satisfaction as a hunter. We also talk about sort of the interesting interplay between that satisfaction and what you actually expect as it may be conveyed to you by what your bag limit is. We have a lot of fun and four colleagues that spend a lot of time together over the years.
Mike Brasher:Stay tuned. Lots of stories, lots of great information.
VO:Can we do a mic check, please? Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, doctor Mike Brasher. I'm your host, Katie Burke. I'm your host, doctor Jared Henson. And I'm your host, Matt Harrison. 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 Birddog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
Mike Brasher:Everyone, welcome back. I'm doctor Mike Brazier. I'm gonna be your host on today's episode, and we have a fun one for you. We are joined remotely by three of my friends, three of my colleagues. We're gonna be talking about bag limits and what they mean to you as an individual, what they may mean to your friends, and how those interpretations and how they influence our satisfaction of as as hunters likely differs based on who you are, your past experiences.
Mike Brasher:And, also, we're gonna talk about, like, why is this even important? Why do we care as managers about satisfaction levels, expectations, etcetera, of hunters? Joining me remote, I am super excited to to welcome in three of my three of my my former, I guess, partly former instructors, current colleagues, and certainly friends. First off, I'll go with doctor Mark Vertiska, professor of practice at the School of Natural Resource at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Mark, great to have you on.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. You forgot to throw on mentors there, Bridger.
Mike Brasher:No. So
Mark Vrtiska:My memory sounds good.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. Sounds like he's still practicing for his role. Is that true? Yeah.
Mike Brasher:That's right. So more of this is what you'll get. Alright. So next up is John Brian Davis. He is the James C Kennedy endowed professor in waterfowl and wetlands conservation at Mississippi State University.
Mike Brasher:Brian, great to have you be part of this as well.
Brian Davis:This is great. Thank you.
Mike Brasher:And then a a familiar guest to all of you that have tuned into the Ducks Unlimited podcast before, doctor Scott Stevens. He's our senior director of prairie and boreal conservation strategy. Scott, thanks for taking time to join us.
Scott Stephens:Yep. Happy to be here. So are are you gonna give background on sort of how we all know each other?
Mike Brasher:Did you wanna do that? That was gonna be my next step. I'd let I'd let you do that if you want
Mark Vrtiska:to. Sure.
Scott Stephens:Well, the four of us were all at Mississippi State at the same time for a few years. Right? Fraser, I'm I'm less clear on the years that you were there. You were an undergrad when we were all in grad school?
Mike Brasher:I was there from '93 through, like, '99. Yeah. And so I overlapped with each of you guys. I think y'all are all grad students. And, yeah, Brian, I probably was there when you were both a master's and PhD student.
Mike Brasher:Yep. But but I did wanna cover that, Scott. So who was it yeah. When were y'all there? Because I I I could probably get it about right.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I got there in, let me think about this, '93. So I think Mark was already there.
Mark Vrtiska:January. Yeah. I remember Mark. Think you do. Yeah.
Mark Vrtiska:I yeah. Because he was already making trips to the Delta to kill ducks. So and I was there from '91 to '95.
Mike Brasher:What, Mark? Was that for your PhD only? Where'd you do your master's?
Mark Vrtiska:Yes. Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.
Mike Brasher:And so you came to Mississippi State for PhD and then JBD, our our our initials for for Brian there?
Brian Davis:I got here in 1878 when it opened. They left in 2001.
Mike Brasher:And then came
Brian Davis:back I got here in 1994. Yep.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. And we all studied under the mentorship of doctor Rick Kaminsky. And, yeah, it's it's great to connect with the four of you guys. I've continued to interact with you as friends and colleagues in the profession. We're all in this waterfowl space.
Mike Brasher:People have heard from Scott on numerous occasions about what he does. Brian, I want I I can't remember. I think you might have been on an episode or maybe I've just tried and failed so many times to to get you on an episode that it feels like you've been on one. So but for folks that may not know who you are, give a brief sort of background on what you do there at at Mississippi State.
Brian Davis:Applied waterfowl wetlands research and other projects as they come along. We've done coastal marsh restoration, of course, with you and and Ducks Unlimited. Working on some shorebird projects. We got some grant money to do WRE evaluation, not only land and water birds, but water quality, kind of the natural capital of things. Worked on a golden eye project in Alaska and still working on a bunch of backlog stuff like our Mallard telemetry data that we collected years ago, but also working with James Calicut to kinda reinvigorate some of that with with GPS radio.
Brian Davis:So that's more of that to come and and a lot of buzz in the wind industry, you know, and how wind and other energy may influence waterfowl and other birds. So we may we may engage with some of that here in the near future. Who knows? And then the other big one, of course, with you and and and the big the big buzz at DU is the Duck DNA. And I'm really fortunate to be on a grant with Lovretsky and Schumer and Ariel at at in Illinois and several others looking at Mallard genetics.
Brian Davis:So that was really that's been a lot of fun.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. That was the one as you were talking that I remembered. We did make it down there to Mississippi State and join you in person for for that episode. So appreciate all of that. You also did a lot of work on on wood ducks through the years.
Mike Brasher:I don't know if you've mentioned that when you're giving your intro, but we wanna get you on to be a to do our our wood duck species profile, and we have a tentative date for that right now. So we hope to to hook up with you here again near future. And, Mark, you have a you've sorta done well, Brian, you used to work for Ducks Unlimited for a number of years then came back went back to Mississippi State as professor. And Mark is another here that has sorta had two two stints in his long career. One was as a state wildlife agents agency, waterfowl biologist, and but now you're at the at the university.
Mike Brasher:So a little bit of your background, Mark.
Mark Vrtiska:Well, actually, my my first job was with Ducks Unlimited in the southern regional office there in Ridgeland, Mississippi. So a shout out to all the folks down there in Ridgeland. I'd I'd they're great folks to work with. But that was my first job right out of school and then took the position of waterfowl program manager at Nebraska Gama Parks for twenty one years. And then in 2020, I made the leap into academia in the Ivory Tower with Davis to get you know?
Mark Vrtiska:And so I've been here for five years now going on six.
Mike Brasher:And you received some recognition earlier this year. Right? Tell us about that. You're like and someone someone recognized you as, like, the oldest new professional or new academic. What was that?
Mike Brasher:What was that distinction?
Mark Vrtiska:I I got the early career award at the university, which you never think about getting any kind of award, but the last one I thought I would ever get would be the early career award. But it made sense given I've only been here five years, but it was it was kind of odd to have received that, but I'm I'm honored to get that. It's it's it's kind of a nice tribute. So and it's been fun here at Nebraska.
Mike Brasher:So Good deal. Well, congratulations on that award. I know you're deserving and have seen you interact with young professionals, and you love mentoring. And and so thank you for that as well. And, yes, thanks to the three of you for the role that you have played in in my career and and providing that constant mentorship.
Mike Brasher:We're more colleagues now, but still look to you for advice every now and then. Although, we'll have to be careful about how much advice I ask for you from the Yeah. That's right.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Stephens:Remember, you you get what you pay for
Mark Vrtiska:too, and it's free. Yep.
Mike Brasher:Today's topic is or today's episode is sort of as as a compliment to a well, it's a it's a compliment to an article that will will be out in the Ducks Unlimited magazine by the time this episode airs. It will be an understanding waterfowl feature that is authored by Mark, and the title of it, at least the title that I have here in front of me is what's your limit? A frank discussion about the influence of bag limits on hunting satisfaction. Mark, this is one of those articles that just sort of came that you offered up to us. Typically, every year we'll Matt Young and his staff will go through and develop a lineup of articles that we want throughout throughout, you know, each episode, and then occasionally we welcome just sort of articles that are provided to us just because someone has written them, they think it might be a good feature for the article, and that was the case with one of these, and Matt shared it with me, and I was like, well, this is a this is an awesome topic, an awesome written article.
Mike Brasher:So for those that may not have read it yet, I encourage you to do so. But tell us about what led you to wanna write this article, Mark, sort of give us the high level overview of what it is and the the topic and then why you wanted to go down this road.
Mark Vrtiska:Well, first of all, Mike, it's kinda funny how your career goes, but I never thought I would be as interested in kind of what people are doing with ducks as I would the ducks themselves. And so I've kinda got into a lot of the the hunter aspects of of waterfowl management. And, of course, what as soon as you get into that world, you know, bag limits, season lengths, there's a whole you just get right into it from that perspective. And we recently had been involved here with a project done in actually New Zealand, and it was from another form former colleague that had moved down there, took a position, and was doing a survey with his duck hunters in New Zealand. And and I don't have a whole lot of background about duck hunting in New Zealand, but he he had and and for those that don't know, they actually have a pretty very bag limit across the New Zealand, which ranges from, if I remember correctly, six ducks per day all the way up to 50 ducks per day.
Mark Vrtiska:And so this was an opportunity. He was trying to get some information, and and we me and Chris Jasinski, who's also here at UNL and Matt Gunteret, also here at the University of Nebraska, realized that we kinda had this opportunity to kinda survey individuals on these different bag limits. And so the the real impetus was we we surveyed hunters, and, you know, it's and it's really difficult for me or anybody else here in The US and maybe even Canada to think about a a 12 duck or 25 duck or even a 50 duck bag limit. I mean, it's almost incomprehensible. And kind of the the our initial analysis of that information was that hunters, when they get a 25 bird bag or a 50 bird bag limit, that's what they expect to shoot.
Mark Vrtiska:And their satisfaction if they don't meet that that bag limit, their satisfaction goes down. And to me, it's just amazing that you would have that opportunity to harvest that many birds and still not necessarily be satisfied. And and we knew going into it from a couple studies here in The US, Mississippi for one actually, and then Wisconsin, that we knew expectations were tied to bag limits. So but we're talking six ducks. K?
Mark Vrtiska:So when you're getting these high bag limits and it's still that same expectation that here's the bag limit. Man, I need to achieve it to have a successful hunt was kind of a really kind of a mind blowing thing that was like, wow. Since then, we've done a little more analysis on that, and we'll be we're trying to get that all kinda compiled and and get that out. But it just kinda really struck us that, you you have an opportunity to shoot 25 ducks and you're still not happy. Wow.
Mark Vrtiska:That that that's kind of pretty interesting aspect of bag limits, which then leads you into this whole argument, if you will, or discussion. Maybe it's a better way of putting it. I mean, what do you need? I mean, and that's kinda why the title of the article, how how many do you need? And as you mentioned, there's a lot of factors that go into that.
Mark Vrtiska:But as managers, we kinda set the bar with bag limits right from the beginning when we set whatever bag limit we have, and I think that's kinda sets the tone. And and so I think you have to be a little it's just one of those things that when we start messing around bag limits, we need to be really careful because it's not so much what we're doing biologically as much as sociologically what we're doing with those bag limit changes.
Mike Brasher:You know, Mark, I hear a lot of people say, well, just set the bag limits set the bag limits to be whatever is best for the ducks, but it's not that simple, is it? Because the bag limit is it's not for the ducks. A bag limit is for the people. A bag limit is well, it's to achieve some sort of outcome for the hunters without sort of compromising the integrity of a waterfowl population or the health of a of a population. Right?
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. I mean and I think it there is some biological underpinnings to that. I mean, if you stop and think we're not gonna have the ability to shoot 10 canvasbacks a day. Biologically, that's probably gonna impact that population. But we could probably shoot 10 blue wings a day, and that probably wouldn't have any impact.
Mark Vrtiska:So there is there is a biological underpinning given the species of duck. But, yeah, for the most part, we're trying to, I think, cut that deal between opportunity and maybe not having that risk of overharvest for some species. And then you could throw the wrench in there about consistency of of bag limits because, theoretically, each duck could have a totally different bag limit. You know? And and how many bag limits do you wanna remember or, you know, try to remember while you're sitting in the blind?
Mark Vrtiska:So there's a lot of nuances to when you set up a bag limit.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. You know, so, Scott, your thoughts there about what it is that like like, satisfaction is an interesting concept that plays heavily into this. Right? And that's, you know, a lot of the harvest management objectives. Even if you go to adaptive harvest management right now, the the at the high level, you're talking about maximizing long term cumulative harvest, so that's one way to sort of measure opportunity, and I Mark, you've been in this space, but, you know, it's like opportunity we think sort of correlates with satisfaction.
Mike Brasher:We want hunters to be satisfied because we want hunters. I mean, number one, we're managing the resource and making a lot of these decisions to benefit the hunters. They are the ones that help support the conservation. We need a strong healthy hunter population to continue to continue doing the conservation work and the management that we do to to create situations for sustaining duck populations. So all these things kind of play into one another.
Mike Brasher:So, Scott, your thoughts kind of on that that sort of psychological concept to satisfaction and the role that it plays and the complexities that it brings into something as simple or as as fundamental to our hunting here in North America as bag limits.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. Well, as as Mark was talking, like, what struck me, you know, was, oh, so there's a trade off between satisfaction and opportunity is really, I think, what what you're kinda saying, Mark. You know? It's like in places where you can have larger bags, maybe you create more opportunity, but that may lead to decreased satisfaction. It's like, oh, dang.
Scott Stephens:I only killed 22 ducks today because I I didn't get 25. That was a crappy day. You know? Whereas, like, if the limit was 20, they'd say, hey. You know?
Scott Stephens:I did I did great. You know? So, yeah, it it is interesting. I'm I think as we were preparing for this, you know, I think satisfaction is is is kind of like beauty. You know?
Scott Stephens:It's in the eye of the beholder. And what are what are you looking for when you go out there in the field? And, you know, I think many of us would say, well, I wanna see lots of ducks. I want a nice setting, but I wanna harvest quite a few too. And if you can shoot a limit, that's even better.
Scott Stephens:So, yeah, I I hearken back to days when we were in grad school, and there's at least one guy on this podcast that not only did he have to shoot the right ducks and the limit, but he had to shoot them in the right order Yeah. Where he wouldn't shoot Greenwing teal when
Brian Davis:they were
Scott Stephens:flying first thing in the morning.
Mike Brasher:So He
Scott Stephens:wanted to wait till he had shot his mallard. So, you know, it gets even more complex than that.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. Yeah. And we spent hours hours waiting for that last duck. So when we could have been taking naps or watching football grades your penis.
Scott Stephens:When they were abundant at No.
Mark Vrtiska:And and when he could've They
Scott Stephens:shot one at Sunrise.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. Like He could've tagged one out right there, but no.
Mike Brasher:For clarity, it was not this person either.
Mark Vrtiska:Oh. No.
Scott Stephens:It was Jay Bryan who was like, no. Shoot our mallards first and then
Brian Davis:shoot
Scott Stephens:a
Brian Davis:bunch of guys. Yeah. Chipbug sitting next to me. Yeah. I didn't know Brazier was that selective.
Brian Davis:No. I
Mark Vrtiska:did not
Mike Brasher:that's all I no.
Mark Vrtiska:Oh, no.
Mike Brasher:I've been on one of those hunts with you two where we had four four green heads and two two Drake green wings each, but it was a it was not a good hunt because we had to shoot them in the rear because they were landing away from us.
Brian Davis:Yeah. That's
Mike Brasher:So it's all messed up.
Mark Vrtiska:That's right.
Mike Brasher:You know, I I anytime I have one of these discussions, I think about something that I believe I heard Larry Reynolds say, and, of course, Mark, you know Larry very well. He said, you know, satisfaction and there's a lot of truth to this. Larry is famous for a lot of tongue in cheek and smart aleck remarks and things, but there's a lot of he also has a lot of poignant comments is that, you know, satisfaction, as I mentioned, is a psychological concept or something that we think about, something that that is sort of innate to us as as humans. Satisfaction is determined by the degree to which experience intersects expectations. That's kind of why we say so many times, well, set your expectations appropriately, and so that I think is something that carries through all of this this conversation.
Mike Brasher:There are articles, we'll reference that, when thinking about satisfaction, view it through the lens of what expectations are so forth. But we'll come back to that here in a minute, and, you know, Brian, as as the other academic here on this on this this episode, Mark mentioned that he that he he studies and thinks about now, or maybe he never thought that he would think as much about the humans and their interaction with the resource as he does now, and he always thought, and we all, I think, fall into this category of believing that when we got into this profession, we would study the animals themselves, but more times than not, we end up thinking about studying the the the humans themselves, the way we think about it, the way we make contributions to conservation, the way we interact with the resource and so forth. How much do you talk to your students about that, Brian? It's not just about the animals themselves. It's also about humans.
Brian Davis:Oh, yeah. You know, and especially of course, they don't the experiences that they have aren't like ours because they weren't, I don't know, maybe Vertica. Do you guys remember dime ducks? That's how old I am.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Yeah. So I
Brian Davis:grew up on dime ducks, but I still didn't that means we could shoot 10 of some species a day, like, wooden steel gabbaw. That was mostly my dad. Pinsails. Because I was so young, but I was learning kinda through my dad. I never really remember that, but I remember him saying, you know, they would they'd go out to places in Kansas, which will remain nameless, but they're like, okay.
Brian Davis:Today, we're gonna shoot 10 green wings. Tomorrow, we're gonna shoot 10 pintel dricks. I mean, I can't even I mean, I can fathom that, but that's just that's incredible. You know? We'll we'll never see that again.
Brian Davis:And so frequently, I'll have some of my students say, doc, if duck hunters are declining, why are there 10 people at the boat ramp the next day after I shoot a limit of Mallards? I'm like, well, that's a complicated answer. But one, if you guys don't do this on Facebook, they may not know. Two, they probably heard you shooting, and and people just it's like the information transfer really gets out there. You know?
Brian Davis:And and so the the whole thing, and I've said this before, you know, I think sometimes we're sending a message to the hunter that, hey. There's enough birds out there for you to shoot six for sixty days. And when the truth be told, the average hunt you know, bag per hunter per season is like, what, 1.1 or 1.4 ducks per hunter per per day or whatever. And so I think there's that psychological message that if you don't if you don't achieve at least maybe three or four, you know, maybe you're not that good of a hunter, but it it's so complex. I guess the way I was gonna start my answer when you asked me was, have you ever seen the the wildlife model of conservation and all the terms that go into that?
Brian Davis:You know, people, conservation, population ecology, harvest, the list is a mile long. And I think the same I kinda view hunting and hunter satisfaction as the same thing. It depends on so many things. The family you grew up in, the place you grew up in. I remember Mark Pierce telling me his interactions between scoff hunters in the North and mallard hunters in the South.
Brian Davis:Totally night and day difference. Depends on culture. Depends on your age. My dad, I've always considered one of the best waterfowl hunters on the planet, literally. And now he's 81 years old.
Brian Davis:And, man, he'll shoot one or two ducks, but he won't go past two. He doesn't care. So I think when we look at hunter satisfaction, I think age the age cohort is a big one. The experience cohort is a big one. I think novice hunters, when they go for the first time or two, it's like kind of a new world to them.
Brian Davis:They're just there to, like, experience. It's kinda like a fond hitting the ground, and, hey. This is a whole new world. But as you go and go and go, you know, you kind of expect more and more and more because you get better at it. You learn.
Brian Davis:I mean, it's so complex. And, anyway, there's there's the cognitive, you know, the heuristic and the analytic side. I mean, the cognitive literature, the medical literature, psychology literature uses a lot of the heuristic analytic brain waves that we operate on. And I don't know, Mark, in your work, if you've approached that part of the the psychology of people from that standpoint, but to me, it's really complex. And I've heard people a lot of people say, hey.
Brian Davis:Just let's just shoot four ducks. That's fine. You know? Why don't we just shoot four ducks? And that's a complex answer.
Brian Davis:But
Mike Brasher:So, Mark, any any brainwave research up there at University of Nebraska Lincoln you're involved in?
Mark Vrtiska:Only only on Friday nights
Scott Stephens:when we get home and
Mark Vrtiska:get near a bottle of bourbon, and then then there's a lot of brainwave action going on then. But, but I think there is I think there would be some merit to kinda looking at some of that in terms of of Be careful who you've thinking. Oh, I know. I know. I don't think I'm gonna lead that charge, but, you know, there as Brian says, I think it is complicated and and try to get to the bottom of it.
Mark Vrtiska:But, again, when you there's some simple things that you can ask hunters, and and they'll kinda give you an indication of satisfaction. And and maybe we don't do a really good degree of narrowing it just we kinda give them some limited answers, or you kinda give them a scale, but there's no place for them to put a caveat. Well, I would have been more satisfied if or had I had done this, it would have been you know? So there there's there's a little bit more to it that we have not kinda delved into.
Brian Davis:I I think at the core, if you read all the publications at the core and this is basic human thought processes. Right? Like, if at at the core of of waterfowl satisfaction, it's at least seeing birds on x number of trips, at least. Right? If you show up and expect to see or do something and it doesn't happen one time, it's like, okay.
Brian Davis:But if you go back five times and 10 times, you start asking yourself, what am I doing? Right? Total waste of time. I'm going down the wrong rabbit hole. Something isn't right.
Brian Davis:So I think, you know, with with with waterfowl hunters, some of the literature at the core, I think, suggest I wanna at least see birds and know they're there and I saw them, and I didn't have too many people interrupting my, you know, my mood and all that. But as you really get into it, I think the novice hunters, because they know that can't go very often, they wanna be able to kill birds. The people that hunt forty, fifty, sixty days a year, they can go and have a two or three bad days like, oh, it's just the weather. Oh, they're sitting. You know?
Brian Davis:They're they're spooked. No big deal, but I'll get them tomorrow. You know? So it's kind of this cumulative success, and that seems to be what some of the literature suggests. But again, I mean, there's there's age variables, experience.
Brian Davis:I think one of the things I'm fascinated by and have no data, but you talk to people like our dads and grandpas. You know, my dad grew up in the St. Charles River Bottoms. I mean, he walked the bottoms and hunted farm ponds in the river. There were ducks everywhere and no people.
Brian Davis:You know, you didn't need to drive to Canada to go shoot ducks. People didn't have vehicles. They didn't have money, but there were birds all over the place because we didn't have all these intentionally intension intensively managed areas like we do now, and that's not a bad thing. But I think it's it's population density of people. It's land more and more land has become privatized and managed.
Brian Davis:It forces the other cohorts of people to go to places that are more and more managed and attractive, and and I think that really plays into hunter satisfaction. Like, all these I show up and there's, you know, 25 out of state license plates at my place. That's not a happy experience. Right? And and so, you know, what do you do about that?
Brian Davis:And I'm not saying those 25 out of staters shouldn't be there because I go out of state. You know, we've all gone out of state to hunt. So I think with time and maybe the diminishment of resources, the private privatization of it has taken the the the cohort of hunters we have left, and it's become a a density dependent issue. I'm convinced of it. And and and the ducks react to that.
Brian Davis:They become more nocturnal. They avoid hunting. The list goes on. And and I think that leads into, you know, some of the the fallacies that people believe that we shortstop birds or we do things to keep them up north and things like that. I think some of that has died down over the years, but especially in the early mid two thousands when the prairies got dry again, but we were still able to shoot six ducks per day.
Brian Davis:Hunters did there was a mismatch in the psychology. Right? They didn't understand that. Well, it's been the mid the the late nineties were great. I brought all these people in the hunt.
Brian Davis:We all killed ducks. Well, it doesn't last. Right? And so so I think there's that psychological element with us telling them, hey. You can legally shoot six birds a day, but then if, you know, mallard populations drop 30% or whatever it might be, hunting may not be that good.
Scott Stephens:How about 50? We're at about half of where we were in
Mark Vrtiska:the peak of Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Last peak. And, Brian, some of that relates to this bag limit issue. You've touched on some of that, and some of it relates to even some of the biology of how the birds respond, and and we'll get to that here in here in a second. I you you said you mentioned sort of at the outset there, Brian, that at at the most basic level, people expect to see ducks whenever they go hunting, and it reminds me of last year whenever I took a couple of my assistants, new hunters out into the field down to some property in North Central Mississippi in one of those river bottoms that probably the three of you have hunted, and it hasn't been really good the last few years for a number of reasons, some of which is landscape change in that area, and I was I repeatedly told them, I was like, hey, we're probably not gonna shoot a whole lot of ducks, hadn't been that great, but I want you get out, I want you to experience this, and we might not even see ducks. And what I was doing all along, every time I was making those comments, I was trying to manage their expectations so that they wouldn't go down there thinking, oh, we're going because they had just come off a fantastic hunt, just their first hunt ever, birds were everywhere, and I was like, y'all, this doesn't happen every time you go out, let's make sure we manage these expectations because I want them to be satisfied, I want them to enjoy the experience, and so if they go hunting again thinking that's what they're going see every time, they're not going to be satisfied, and so we did kind of have fun with that leading up to it and said, we may not even see a duck.
Mike Brasher:I think we saw two way off in the distance. We put our decoys out, left them out for about an hour and a half, and then just said, let's take them up, and we just walked around. And they had a ball just doing that, seeing some of the areas and getting those new experiences. But I think the fact that I kind of tried to manage those expectations probably played a role in what they took away from that. I also wondered, Scott, I'm going to get your thoughts on this.
Mike Brasher:Brian, I think, also alluded to social media and people posting photos of their successes, and I and when he said that, I wonder if over time expectations, especially of new hunters, have changed. You think about what our expectations may have been as young hunters twenty, thirty years ago, and then what the expectation of new hunters today may be if they're excited about going hunting because of all these photos that they see on social media from all of their friends. You ever thought about that, Scott?
Scott Stephens:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, social media is interesting because, you know, there's a sort of success or confirmation bias associated with it. Right? It's like Yeah.
Scott Stephens:Only the good days show up on there where it's like, yeah, like, strapfuls of ducks. The days that you get skunked or you hunt all day and get three or four birds, it's like, usually, that's not a big highlight, you know, on your Instagram or anything. So, yeah, I I think that colors people's expectations for sure. Yeah. How how can it not?
Scott Stephens:Right? And, Mike, we we've talked about this too. You know, Brian said, oh, well, you know, liberal season again, six ducks, sixty days. We spend a lot of time saying, yeah. Liberal season, good news on that front.
Scott Stephens:But like Brian said, mismatch. Like, prairies are dry. There are gonna be a ton of adult birds in the population. You're not gonna like how they respond to the decoys in the call because it's gonna be mostly adults this fall. So I I think we try and give people a heads up on that, but you you gotta be an optimist to be in this game.
Scott Stephens:Right? You know? You gotta think, well, next time it's gonna be different. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:So Scott, you and I have thought about this a lot through the lens of Ducks Unlimited as a non as a nonprofit organization. We want our members to be perennially engaged. We want them to support our mission. We we need that, you know, in order to do the good work that we do, in order to achieve the support that we we get, whether it be in the political halls all across the capitals of of individual states or in DC. We need that strong member base.
Mike Brasher:A lot of times people will accuse us of only telling the rosy story of, oh, it's going be another great year, and we trump at these things because we're we need people to to engage and get excited, but the reality is there's a downside if you're not representing things accurately because then you could be falsely sort of elevating those expectations, and so I know you and I are kind of on the same page in that regard, and we're like, we try to always tell that story through the factual basis of what the data say, and like, yeah, and it's six ducks in sixty days, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to do as well during this year as you did in the late 90s when you had that same bag limit and season length. So there is that sort of double edged sword, right, or or you you're trying to find that that happy medium.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I I I just try and represent it like what I expect when I'm out there. You know? It's like, hey. You know, even when populations are low, you can have good days if you're in the right spot and have the right conditions and everything's right.
Scott Stephens:Right? Yep. So, yeah, there is a correlation between population size and, like, overall success, but, you know, individual people in an individual location can have great days even if populations are low. So, you know, that's another reality out there.
Mike Brasher:We're gonna take a break right now, and we're gonna we're gonna come back. Mark, I wanna go to you. You had because you covered some other things in this article that I thought were were quite interesting. Brian has already alluded to those, and that is, like, in in theory, how can a bag limit influence the behavior of the birds? A lot of people, when you get into duck blind, you'll have these conversations, so we wanna go there.
Mike Brasher:But first, we're gonna take a break, so y'all stay with us. We'll be right 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 to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I am doctor Mike Brazier, and I am joined again by doctor Mark Ratiska, doctor Scott Stephens, and doctor Brian Davis, and we're talking about bag limits and what makes a perfect perfect bag limit and how it and how and why it may differ based on who we're talking to, where you are, time of the year, etcetera, how old you are, what your past experiences are. It's not the same for everyone, and and and so while we've talked thus far about sort of how it influences satisfaction from a sort of human psychological standpoint, there's also a potential way in which bag limits can influence bird behaviors, which are not, and how it influences bird behavior is not in itself independent of our subsequent satisfaction, so these things are all connected. Mark, specifically, you mentioned this idea that higher bag limits, and this can be for individual species or just ducks in aggregate, when you have a higher bag limit, it stands to reason that on average you're going to be hunting and shooting more than if you had a lower bag limit, and that in itself can influence birds and their behavior and how they respond to that and and some of what they do, going nocturnal, using sanctuary, etcetera.
Mike Brasher:You incorporated that into this article. Speak about that a little bit and whether you've done any research and what you may be involved in to help sort of flesh that out a little bit more.
Mark Vrtiska:Well, I wish I was involved in some of that. Well, I I kinda am involved in some of that research with the study we have going on at Kansas, but I wish I was involved in it a little bit more to the point of an experiment with that. And the reason I mentioned that in that article is just because, anecdotally, I remember when we went from four blue winged teal to six, and I it it was a vote in the central flyaway and stuff, and I really wasn't in favor of increasing the bag limit. And primarily it's because none of my hunters were really calling forward or ringing my phone off the hook or sending me emails that we need two more blue wings. But for me, that's the way it had been.
Mark Vrtiska:People were used to it. They would go out, shoot their four blue wings, and be out of that marsh sometimes within forty five minutes. And then that marsh would be empty, and there it sits. And the blue wings and everything gets back together, and you could probably go out the next day and shoot four more again in forty five minutes. When we went to six, it just seemed like there you are out there for another fifteen, twenty minutes or more, again, banging away at these birds that it just seemed like the quality of teal hunting went down as we just slightly increased that bag limit.
Mark Vrtiska:And, I think that was due just to extra hunting pressure on those marshes. And, again, that's totally anecdotal, but I often wonder, you know, what we do with hunting pressure and and with these bag limits. And probably a better example, Mike, would be goose hunting. You have a refuge full of Canada geese. The bag limit's two.
Mark Vrtiska:You shoot two Canada geese. You can probably shoot that roost all season long. You up that to eight, whatever, you know, the bag limit is. I don't know how long that that before all the geese start figuring out, okay, somebody's shooting at us. Let's let's go here, do this, or do something different.
Mark Vrtiska:I would really love to do an experiment, and I could the place I would wanna do it, Brian, is in Missouri because they have, you know, the system set up where the hunters have to check-in, check out. I would like to drop the bag limit on some of those areas in Missouri or some days, and then increase the bag limit and just see if you had birds marked or just actually just hunter satisfaction, the whole bit about what would happen if you drop that bag limit back on some of these public areas and what would be the reaction of those birds. Because we don't know. We we do know they respond to hunting pressure pretty quickly. Once you start banging away at them, they figure out a way to go places or come at different times, like you're saying, nocturnal.
Mark Vrtiska:They figure it out really quick.
Mike Brasher:Brian, your thoughts? Do think Missouri would go along for that?
Brian Davis:How much time do we have?
Mike Brasher:Oh,
Brian Davis:lord. First of all, yeah, in in defense of Missouri, I think, I mean, given their heritage of waterfowl research and conservation, they would probably they could probably do enough of a front end a front end job on in terms of human dimensions, like alerting the hunters. Like, hey. We wanna do this really cool science. And I would I I think it'd be really cool, and I think it'd definitely be informative.
Brian Davis:And I think they would they're the kind of agency that I think could get the buy in from the constituents and and wanna do something like that. Yeah. I just and growing up there and hunting all those places, I just don't know how much I wanna say, but, I mean, it it things have changed. And and and and you can have areas that are managed hunters like there in some of the WMAs. I think the numbers are a hunting party gets, like, 40 acres to themselves.
Brian Davis:I think that's, give or take, pretty close. And there's some other areas that aren't regulated. It's just, you know, lots of people. And and I think there's a distance effect. And what I mean by that is even on I think some of these areas that we hunt so intensively, it shuts down a larger landscape around there than just that area that has, like, unlimited access.
Brian Davis:So even if you're on the controlled side where there's only two or three parties in a huge pool, it's like all of the ducks in that local region have been shut down. I've seen it with my own eyes. My dad has seen it with his own eyes, and it's changed over time. I'm not saying that you can't go out there at 10:00 in the morning and have a flock of of of 50 come in on you and decoy, but that used to be a lot more common because I've been there and done it. And I don't have the data to say why or or what's happened, but things like that have changed.
Brian Davis:And the only thing I can think is just it's just hunter density. And again, populations change, so we get an older cohort cohort of adult birds in the population. We don't have the the young naive birds. There's all kind of things. But but, yeah, those kind of experiments would be great.
Brian Davis:I think MDC is the agency that would would love to do that kind of experimental work just given their legacy conservation.
Mike Brasher:They have a brand new state waterfowl biologist up there, Reed Vigoot. And so I think it'd be a wonderful way for Reed to make a name for himself early on in his career at Missouri Public Parks and Conservation. Reed, Reach out to us. We'd be happy to walk you through that conversation. We have tons of ideas.
Brian Davis:But I think you I was gonna say the other thing about regulations, you know, I think no matter what we do as biologists and, of course, the the you know, Larry Reynolds can talk circles around me on this issue. Mark, you can too because you guys have been state biologists. You're living the human dimension population harvest side every day of your lives. That's basically your jobs. Right?
Brian Davis:I don't live in in that world as much, but I think just from a human component, you know, it's like like the book Who Moved My Cheese. Right? Nobody likes change. But if somebody says, hey.
Scott Stephens:I
Mike Brasher:didn't see that coming up in this. I didn't see that coming up
Mark Vrtiska:in this. I haven't read that one. But we but it's like I'm a bingo.
Scott Stephens:You know, for whatever it
Brian Davis:is in life, it's like, hey. We need to we need to drive the speed limit. We need to only let this many people in this building, right, for fire codes. There's always rules and there's always limits, but sometimes those change. And so usually after a change like that, people are all dismayed.
Brian Davis:You know, it's like, oh, well, we used to be able to do it this way. Well, now you can't. Right? But I think and and if you think about waterfowl limits, bag limits, I think whatever we tell people, they may be disgruntled for a year or two, but eventually, it's like, okay. The biologists are giving us their best guess.
Brian Davis:This is why we gotta do this, and it'll be fine. You know? But initially, I don't think people like change. They don't wanna go from six ducks to four ducks or four ducks to two ducks. But eventually, if if we intelligently and convincingly tell them this is better for the resource, I think they're gonna do it.
Brian Davis:Right? So
Mike Brasher:Scott, you're Scott, you were gonna offer something, then to go.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. When when Mark was talking about that experiment, it made me think back to, you know, kind of when when I got to Mississippi, and I think about the hours in the day of hunting pressure there then when it was, like, two mallards. Right? Like, in places like Arkansas too. You know, it's like, it was three ducks and two mallards, and the time that it would take in most places to get those was pretty short.
Scott Stephens:Right? So, you know, there was a bunch of the day, you know, many afternoons where there was no pressure even on public areas. And you contrast that to today where it's like, oh, you know, now it's five Mallards and six ducks total, and takes a lot longer to to fill out a party with a limit like that. So just the man hours of time in those habitats that you're causing that disturbance from hunting has has to have increased and, you know, changed behavior of the birds.
Mike Brasher:Yep. And so just to clarify, when you say five five Mallards, Central Flyway or Pacific Flyway, you can do that. Mississippi or Atlantic, you know, you're you're stuck.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. Five, baby.
Mike Brasher:That's right. But yeah. So you hit on the issue on the word, Scott, pressure. That's what we're talking about managing here. You can do it a lot of different ways.
Mike Brasher:Bag limit is one of the ways that you can do it, but it's not really been explored a whole lot as it marked, at least not on a formal approach. Now there may be some clubs that implement something of their own at the but then there's also ways that you can manage pressure by hunting only on certain days or not hunting past certain hours, but this is another one in theory that well, I think the I mean, just logically makes sense. The the lower the bag limit, the quicker you're gonna get out of there, the less you're gonna be shooting at those birds.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. And I I would I I know I think the Canadian Wildlife Service back in the late eighties did some work where they're observing hunters and gathered some of that information like shots per duck and, you know, how many times they missed and all that sort of thing, and and we don't have even that information. And so when a guy or a party, say a party of four, six ducks per guy, you know, that's a lot of birds to shoot. Well, how many shots does that take to get that limit? That that's all gonna be a lot of shooting.
Mark Vrtiska:And, again, the more you shoot, the longer you stay in there, that's gonna affect it. And and Brian does bring up a good point about scale on that. How far does that go? That's that's another good question. And and the thing too, if if you stop and think, if we we if the bag on this reduced by two ducks, it's four, and we're doing it to see what the birds do, How the hunter's gonna respond to that?
Mark Vrtiska:And I I still when you look at again, I'll point back to Missouri because I think Andy Radikey, the past biologist there at Missouri, collected information that the level of satisfaction after you shoot four ducks is you've kinda peak out. It's not the same increment. So if you shoot four ducks, you're walking out of that marsh happy. You've achieved your bag limit. The next day, you can probably go back in there and shoot four more ducks.
Mark Vrtiska:Again, the daily and maybe the seasonal satisfaction of those areas goes up. I I don't know.
Mike Brasher:Mark, but it's but it's interesting. This it's interesting that when I mentioned five Mallards, you were like
Mark Vrtiska:Go ahead. See? See? That. You know?
Mark Vrtiska:And so that's that's and that's that's kinda part of the problem is that and what Brian was alluding to, that you get those things established and people want them. And, Brian, you don't know how prophetic those words are about change. If if I wanted my phone to ring off the hook or get a whole pile of emails, I would propose a change in something in regulations, and the phone would just be sitting there vibrating, you know, all day. And people don't like that, but they do get used to it. They do get used to it.
Mark Vrtiska:And and that's the thing is if you can kind of weather that storm, then I think you can do some of this stuff. And Mike, the other thing too, we don't know when you look back through the history of bag limits, there has not really been a good a lot of information about just changing bag limits, and and most of the changes with bag limits also come with changes in season length. We really don't have a good grasp of when we ramp it up to six or eight or whatever it may be, what that has an impact on populations because we typically have moved that with season length. And then the last twenty six years, we've been pretty much standard seasons that we've not been able to evaluate it. And it would be and maybe there's some species you could look at, but we may not have the banding information to do those species.
Mark Vrtiska:It'd be interesting, I think, an experiment there too just to see with bag limits and keeping the season length just just to get an idea of what we're doing with bag limits.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. There's so much social science embedded in this. You know, I'm thinking about you you mentioned we don't have a whole lot of experience or opportunity to experiment with different bag limits. We do have the two tier license system Yeah. How we do?
Mike Brasher:Central Flyway. Right. So what can you tell and I I have a number of thoughts here in my mind, you know, you could there are a lot of challenges that there would a lot of reasons why people wouldn't wanna do this, but if you even like, if you were a club or something of that nature or a family and you wanted to challenge yourself, say, this year, let's all just agree to do the three tier I'm sorry, the the the three bird three bird splash. I think that's probably the way you referred to it, And let's just see, especially if you own your own property and manage your own property and that's the only place you hunt I mean, even if you're it's not the only place you hunt, but if it's the only place where you hunt, then you could evaluate its effect on the birds on that property. There is a drawback that once you select that license, that's the license that you have to use throughout the entire hunting season.
Mike Brasher:So anyway, kinda going down a rabbit trail there. But anything to be learned from that, Mark, and any of the data that have been collected, are you still close enough to that?
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. We actually just finished the final report here not long ago, so we're still kind of going through that. But one interesting thing we found out with that tier two, and it goes back again to something Brian said about age, Guys, you know, as old as Brian and I or a little bit older than Brian and I, and there's not many, but there's
Scott Stephens:a few 100. Yeah.
Mark Vrtiska:But we've something I did not expect with tier two was that we had a number of older individuals that were 70, probably getting close to going out of the sport, sign up for tier two. And part of it was they actually couldn't identify ducks because of their eyesight, and they've hit a point in their life. They've shot enough birds. They're just kind of out there, and just to be able to go out, shoot three birds, and not have to worry about what they're shooting at saved we had repeated comments about that extended my duck hunting, you know, a couple years or more years than I thought I was going to. And that was Do you have data
Scott Stephens:on, like, what proportion of the hunters across all the places that did that are selecting that option? You know, is it 10%, or is it What is it?
Mark Vrtiska:Oh. Like, I know I
Scott Stephens:know it's an option here in South Dakota for me. I have not selected that one yet.
Mike Brasher:You should. It's I think you should. Your eyesight's getting going bad.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. Or it will next year
Mike Brasher:That's right.
Mark Vrtiska:Or a couple years later here as you're hearing everything else. I'm I'm trying to remember, Scott, what we have. I think it's it's a little bit different in South Dakota. Oh, man.
Mike Brasher:I forget
Mark Vrtiska:what that is 10% or less. Okay. 10% or less. Okay. Yeah.
Mark Vrtiska:So it's not a big group of people.
Mike Brasher:Have you done surveys to evaluate their satisfaction?
Mark Vrtiska:Yep. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We have that information in that report, and that's Mike, we probably need to do a podcast on that again because once we there's a lot of information in that.
Mike Brasher:You're not gonna tell me right now, are you? You're gonna hold that back?
Mark Vrtiska:No. I'm not gonna no. We we ain't got another hour. So but even the the new individuals into the sport, again, three birds per day, that's to them, it's awesome. They get their birds.
Mark Vrtiska:And so we're seeing and and we're actually seeing a transition from individuals that that started in tier two, get that experience, and then they're starting to go back to tier one where they're going to the full six bird bag.
Mike Brasher:So And they and they're less and they're less satisfied as hunters.
Mark Vrtiska:We we're still we're still looking at that, and that's actually something we've been talking about is continuing some survey work and trying to follow-up on that Yeah. Just to see what happens with those individuals. But
Scott Stephens:Well, in in some locations, it's a really good option to have, especially for youth seasons. Like, I know when I was in North Dakota, it's like, okay. If I'm gonna take a youth, I gotta avoid places with mallards and pintails. It's like I gotta look for either a teal or a gadwall hole. Right?
Brian Davis:Yeah.
Scott Stephens:Like Yep. Because yeah. So having that tier two where it's like, nope. Splash three is is a nice option for youth seasons.
Mark Vrtiska:Oh, it just takes the pressure off immediately.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. And you can measure that satisfaction over different time scales. You can do it at the individual hunt level and then, of course, across the entire season. And I can imagine a situation where if you do that three bird splash license, you are you're probably gonna
Scott Stephens:Probably gonna achieve a limit more of the days. Yeah. That would be my hypothesis. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:But then then if you encountered a couple of those days where the birds were just raining in and you had to stop at three, does that overwhelm your season long satisfaction? Those days you may be dissatisfied because, golly, I couldn't shoot six ducks. You know? Again, a lot of social science going into this. You can imagine any number of ways.
Brian Davis:I think even within a season, some people change I mean, I know for me I mean, we've all hunted a lot of a lot of decades. Right? And even for me, you know, I'm not, as we like to say, as mad at them as I used to be, believe it or not, Vertiska and Stevens. But even within a year, our attitude I know mine can really change. It's like if I have three or four or five really jam up hunts, I almost feel like I'm almost done.
Brian Davis:Like, I'm not, but I want I'd like to have some more of those, but it's like, man. You know? The pressure's off. Yeah. The pressure it's like, wow.
Brian Davis:Okay. We had some remarkable hunts. Those are great memories for this year. They may only be three or four or five. Let's hope for more.
Brian Davis:But and and I find myself, like, myself, you know, if I'm hunting with other people, it's like, I don't even wanna shoot. It's like, you shoot. You know? I've had I've had my fill sort. You know?
Brian Davis:So depending on who you are, even within a season, your attitudes can change. I know mine do. You know? If it's relatively poor, the next time I go by God, I'm like, man, I wanna get some birds for the freezer. You know?
Brian Davis:I'm not a I'm not a trophy hunter, but a meat hunter. And it's like, if it's pretty slow, I'm gonna be pretty eager to go. Right? But if you have a
Scott Stephens:You might shoot a green wing teal early in the morning,
Brian Davis:though. Exactly.
Mark Vrtiska:Nah. Man, that's stretching
Scott Stephens:it there. But you
Brian Davis:know what I mean? I mean, it's like the pressure's
Mark Vrtiska:all You know that ain't happening.
Brian Davis:It is. The the social side is is pretty remarkably complicated.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I'd I'd like to go along where you'd treat a buzzer duck at dawn, Davis.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. I I'll I'll can we get a do you video crew on that? Let me see this because I'm pretty evidence.
Brian Davis:About duck awareness. So on opening day in Arkansas, when the shovelers are skirting the decoys, you know there's an issue.
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. Yeah. Man, I And and that happens frequently.
Mike Brasher:I I had a flashback to that that wonderful year, Brian. Late nineties, you and I were going up to the Schooner River Bottoms and hunting multiple times, and I I think it was after that hunt where you were so frustrated when we came out of there, where there were four greenheads and two Drake Greenwings, but we didn't shoot them right, I'd shoot them in the rear end, and you were just f bomb this and, you know, just man. It's all messed day and the next day, we were gonna go hunting with my dad, and I remember having to tell you, he's like, Brian, let's let's try not to cuss as much, you know, when we're out my
Brian Davis:I feel horrible, man.
Mike Brasher:But, hey. To your credit, you you didn't, but maybe just a couple of times, I was
Mark Vrtiska:like, Brian.
Brian Davis:I'm a much better man. Actually, it was because of First
Scott Stephens:first time I hunted with him, I thought he cut his finger off or something. Like, I thought he was injured physically, and it's like, no. He was just mad because the birds weren't doing right.
Brian Davis:Yeah. It was a bad Mexican food the night before. That's why I was
Mike Brasher:Yeah. You've I've seen that
Mark Vrtiska:before too. Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Repeat that. Let's not go
Mark Vrtiska:through air. Now.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So we're gonna start wrapping this up here in a minute, but, you know, we've each had our own experiences when we're out hunting.
Mike Brasher:I I do wonder, and this happened to me last year, if I'm out there it kinda relates, Brian, to you were talking about, once you have a good experience or something like that, and it may be over the course of the season, or it may be a particular hunt where you're out there and you get your four draped green heads real early and then you're not seeing a whole lot of other birds, or even if you are seeing other birds, you might say, you know what? This is good. I'm walking out. I have done I did that last year because it actually wasn't a situation where there were a lot of other birds flying, but there were because the other birds, the sort of off species, if you will, were few and far between, and I'm like, I'm gonna go ahead and get out of here. I'm just gonna you know, go ahead and call it good because the the irony working through my mind was like, here within about an hour and fifteen minutes, I've got my four draped greenheads.
Mike Brasher:If I had to stay out here another hour and a half to get two more ducks, all of a sudden I become not as happy and not as this doesn't become as memorable of a hunt. So all sorts of those things kind of go on in your mind as well. Scott, you were sharing in the email leading up to this that you you played some of those games, if you will, when you were up in Canada, being very selective about what you were shooting, and I think that's sort of that same mindset. So tell us about some of those.
Mark Vrtiska:But he wanted to get his eight ducks. I I did, but he wanted to get the eight of them.
Scott Stephens:We shot eight ducks every day, but, yeah, like, there are enough birds that you know? And and when I'm there, I don't have I don't hunt many other places where there that many opportunities for pintails. So I was like, yep. You guys can shoot greenheads. I will shoot.
Scott Stephens:You know, if I can find a nice white bellied drake pintail floating around, I will shoot that. And and I think it was the the second day we hunted ducks, I ended up with five drake pintails and three mallards. Nice. And and in that location, if we wanted to shoot Widgin, like, there were like, we could've shot 200 Widgin. It's like Widgin were everywhere.
Scott Stephens:And so, yeah, I mean, you you adjust at least I do, you adjust your selectivity and your expectations based on what you're seeing. Yep. You know? So it's interesting.
Mike Brasher:Mark, any other thing that we wanna point out here on this article? There's a ton of research that's gone into this, and that's one of the exciting things about our field is that we've studied waterfowl ecology so much, one of the most studied groups of animals on the planet. Now we're studying hunter behavior, hunter expectations, hunter satisfaction, all those things, as you mentioned, sort of intertwine, you're involved in a lot of that research. We haven't really even talked about ducks versus days. There are a lot of people that say they would give up a couple of ducks, but they don't want to give up the number of days that they hunt, and yet we know when you're looking at harvest and sort of the harvest rate and the impact on whether we're talking about ducks versus bag limits versus days, it's ultimately days that make the big difference, So you point that out little bit or allude to it in one way or another.
Mike Brasher:What else in this article did you really want to try to convey, you wanna make sure we touch on?
Mark Vrtiska:The only thing I think we covered it most for the most part, Mike. The one thing I wanted to convey, and actually maybe going back to your first question, the impetus behind this article was the fact that I had shot five Mallards, had a Drake Adwall come in, and this is January in Nebraska. A Drake Adwall in January is is is like a diamond, and I missed it. Just whiffed it. And I wasn't so mad about not getting my bag limit as much as I was getting bragging rights over Brad Sites, who's the guy I hunt with a lot down here.
Mark Vrtiska:Man. I really miss that. And then Brad, we get back to the truck, and he he well, I missed the Gadwall pickup. We're picking up decoys, and he looks at me and goes, you know, I can't say that I'm really mad that you missed that Drake Gadwall. So he knows he knew that I had I had him, and then we get back to the truck, then he finds out that he had actually shot a Drake Gadwall, and he had stopped hunting because he thought he had five mallards.
Mark Vrtiska:And so we both got each other on that one. But so hopefully, Brad, I'll make sure he listens to this podcast so he can hear that.
Mike Brasher:That says a little bit about in hand duck identification there. Somebody
Mark Vrtiska:Well, in Brad's defense, it was the first two ducks in the morning. He doubles up, and and we had other birds circling. So he's the dog's bringing him. He's just grabbing up, putting him down, and he looks down two brow ducks. Okay?
Mark Vrtiska:And then he was really careful. That was the other thing. Then he's careful about shooting another hen mallard, so to speak. And to you know, he he never we had birds working. It was one of those days and that you hope for.
Mark Vrtiska:And so he's careful. He shoots these three green heads, and he's just like, yeah. I'm done. You know? Yahoo.
Mark Vrtiska:And I didn't and I didn't look at him either. And I would have told him that he had a gabble probably if I'd seen it, but I shouldn't have fessed up to that one. Brad will he'll he'll get mad at me at that. But but it was a great day, and but it's just funny how you kinda through that day, it's like, man, just that one bored duck would have just Yeah. It icing on the cake.
Mike Brasher:Yep. Scott, final thoughts from you.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. I I think it is about expectations, and those change, you know, throughout the season. Like Brian said, as you age, they change. You know? Like, I know we had a situation when I was in Saskatchewan where we did an afternoon hunt, sun at your back.
Scott Stephens:You can see all the colors on the bird birds, and that's the ideal for me. It's like, you know, I'd have been happy shooting two ducks in that situation because you knew exactly what you were shooting. So, yeah, it's in the eye of the beholder, as we said earlier.
Mike Brasher:And, Brian, thoughts from you?
Brian Davis:Yeah. As I commonly say, I would rather hunt two ducks than shoot six. And and it's those kind of days
Mike Brasher:believe that. Not not one of us believe that. Yeah. As
Scott Stephens:long as they come in in the right order.
Mike Brasher:He said he's it, but he didn't live it.
Brian Davis:Actually, if you
Mark Vrtiska:wanna Yeah. Again, get the get the video Actually,
Brian Davis:if wanna really confound it even more, my my quest for the ducks has kinda done this, but the Specklebellies well, the Specklebellies have been doing that. It's like, hey, if I go to Arkansas and shoot a duck, that's fine, but if I don't, no big deal. But we gotta get on those specs. But no. So going back to the science of this, y'all think I'm crazy, but I I think one of the cool ultimate experience experiments would be, and it would take a lot of colleagues.
Brian Davis:It would take state and federal areas and private landowners. But if we could do going back to what Mark was saying about Missouri, if we could take several regions and really kinda manage or control high and low food quantities and quality and high and low hunting pressure and do that over a period of a few years and rotate those, man, you talk about a great experiment to really get at, you know, how does food and hunting pressure influence harvest, things like that. That would be awesome.
Scott Stephens:Yeah. The challenge is nobody wants to be assigned to the low food and low
Mark Vrtiska:bag limit. Just treatment. Yeah.
Brian Davis:The political challenges of doing that, but, man, you talk about a really cool experiment to kinda get at this some more. But, yeah, I mean, it's complicated, so that's why we need podcasts. Right?
Mike Brasher:That's right. That's right. Talk about all this stuff and help help peel back the onion. I appreciate the three of you joining me here, appreciate everything that you've done for the resource and your professions, and is we're lucky. We're lucky to be in a profession where there is so much passion, so much energy, so much interest in these birds.
Mike Brasher:That interest is shared, of course, across our professional colleagues. It's also shared by our constituents and those for whom we we manage this resource and we dedicate our careers to, and and I I think that's probably the fascinating thing here. We've very easily sat here and had a more than an hour long conversation about sort of one topic, bag limits, and how it interacts and affects our satisfaction, and how our satisfaction can also be influenced by our expectations going in, is influenced by what regulations say we ought to be, quote, ought to be able to to shoot, if that's how we interpret it. We can have that conversation for an hour, and then then other hunters out there have the same conversation at length in the blind in the clubhouse, and and we'll continue to have those conversations, and the managers out there that are that are charged with make making these decisions will continue to hear those discussions, conduct these surveys. A lot of the data that we've talked about come from surveys that state agencies, federal agencies have conducted, and that hunters have provided the data for.
Mike Brasher:It's another example. We say it many, many times how hunters are the ones that that make this profession make waterfowl management in North America the envy of the world. It's not just bands, it's not just parts collection, it's also your participation in these opinion surveys, these satisfaction surveys. So encourage you to continue to do that and continue to make make those phones buzz whenever you are whenever you have something to to say because at the end of the day, that shows that you care, that's how people know that the decisions they make are important to you and this resource, and so just keep playing your part in this wonderful community. We're here now in hunting season, and this is our time to get out there and enjoy the resource.
Mike Brasher:Scott, you've already been doing some of it. Brian, you're about to get out there. Mark, is your hunting season open yet?
Mark Vrtiska:Yeah. We opened up two weekends ago, so, yep, I've been out a little bit. Shot some blue wings.
Mike Brasher:Alright. Well, I'll be I've I've not been out duck hunting yet. I was out dove hunting in New Mexico last week, but getting excited about trying to find a place to go out and shoot some duck here in the coming probably in a few weeks, I'll be doing that, and I think we all will live by doctor Scott Stevens' immortal words, life is short. You better hunt. Mark, Scott, Brian, thank you all so much for joining us.
Mark Vrtiska:Right here. Thank you.
Mike Brasher:Special thanks to our guests on today's episode, doctor Mark Vertisco with the University of Nebraska Lincoln, Scott Stephens with Ducks Unlimited, doctor Brian Davis at Mississippi State University. We appreciate their insight and their dedication to this resource and and sort of committing their career to helping us do better in everything that we do for waterfowl and waterfowl hunters. We thank our producers, Rachel Jarrett and Chris Isaac for the great job that they do with every one of these episodes, and to you, the listener, we thank you for your support of the podcast. We thank you for your for your time. Most importantly, we thank you for your support, passion, and commitment to waterfowl and wetlands conservation.
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