Sport: Ducky Season

The blue and green-winged teal had already begun to fly; canvasbacks, mallards, widgeons, pintails, shovelers and redheads would follow soon, before and with the frost. In western Canada last week 140,000,000 ducks (a 10% increase over last year, 450% more than in 1934) flocked and fattened for the flight south. The great conservation experiment in North America’s wild duck factory had hit the jackpot.

Seven years ago, after the duck population had dropped to a miserable 30 million, sportsmen formed Ducks Unlimited (Canada) to restore drought-ridden breeding grounds and wage total war on duck-egg-eating crows and magpies. In the battle of the eggs, Ducks Unlimited paid 2¢ apiece for hundreds of thousands of crow and magpie eggs. In Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwest Territories, the conservation group built 130 duck refuges covering 1,200,000 acres.

Now the cycle had made a full turn, and a million U.S. duck shooters looked forward to the best season in years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with an eye toward crop damage from the excess stock, added ten days to the season (which opens next week in the Northern Zone). In addition, the WPB relaxed shotgun ammunition restrictions, allowing each hunter four boxes (100 shells) instead of the one box allowed last year. The hunter’s problem was to get his four boxes; most dealers still had scant supplies, were doling out one box per person. It might not be such a bad year for the ducks after all.