Don't complain about ducks...

[B. Amish]

I hope you realize that it's big time illegal to shoot hawks and owls.

How about carrying a chainsaw and fix the cause of the problem by cutting down trees where trees aren't supposed to be.

[Get-em-good]

How much is a bushel of corn worth?

Let's see $1 a bushel susidy ($0.50 a gallon ethanol), Direct Payments (you get these every year regardless of crop price generally around $20 an acre), Loan Deficency Payments (if the price falls you get extra), tax payer susidized crop insurance (buy it for cheap and get PAID), tax breaks (Green Acres), low interest loans, and of course a Disaster Payment when that wetland you drained fills back in with rainfall even though you NEVER PURCHASED INSURANCE!

So almost nothing if Taxpayers quit paying them to grow it.

Yes, but we do pay them to grow it. Money is all the same to them no matter where it comes from and it will not likely ever change.(farming subsidies)

All I was getting at is that you will never find a farmer that says, "Sure, go ahead and plug up that tile so my field floods and I cannot plant in it. Then the ducks will have somewhere to go."

Not happening unless something is in it for them.

[carpshooterdeluxe]

My final duck rant. Geese in my area seem to be a slight problem. The predator list is huge against the ducks. Coons,fox,coyote,possom's,skunks,owls,eagles,hawks and many more add in cats and dogs. The goose, ok here's the theory, my grandpa J's farm had 3 dandy muskrat huts in one of his ponds. Used to have a mallard or teal claim those every year to nest on. About 1990 that turned into a goose on top of each of those and the mallards and Teal were delegated to shore cover for their nest. I know the problem with duck numbers is more than that and there are many reasons. Just seems the geese are hogging a lot of the prime nesting locations before those puddle ducks. Our farm cat started bringing some of these hens back to the barn meaning the nest was then destroyed or left for whatever. Those geese were sure touchy about their nest. So instead of roughly 25 ducklings in grandpa's pond it turned into 6 big honkers and roughly 20 goslings. I know that's probably 1/1000th of the problem. The other is we have about 8 ponds on his farm in the spring, by end of august 5 of those go dry. Even with fairly heavy fall rains, they just can't get duckable kind of water, they dry up so quick. If we had the water in the fall that there is in the spring, it would help, quick ? As a kid hardly anyone had an irrigator, now a lot of the fields I'm familiar with have irrigators. Can that mess up our water systems at all ?

a few thoughts on your post...

correct me if im wrong, but i dont think that male ducks tend nests like male geese do, and thats part of the reason why hens seek out grassy cover away from water. muskrat mounds are not ideal locations for ducks to nest due to avian predator exposure.

second thought: anytime we had farm cats on our place show up with a pheasant or duck from the crp; that cat got a .22 stinger for its troubles. cats kill something like 17 million birds nation wide each year. you cant expect good nesting success on your land with cats around.

third thought: grassy cover away from the water is more important than permenant water. the ducks need the seasonal wetlands for the close by food sources, better chance of a farmer leaving a grassy buffer around the wetland, and to get their clutch to water after hatching. ducks will migrate 1/2 to 1 mile to find better permanent water. so as long as your grandpas farm still had 3 of those 8 initial ponds, the ducks "should" be fine.

now my facts maybe flawed; anybody feel free to correct me if i posted inaccurate information!

[Roosterslayer05]

Carpshooter- You are spot on! I couldent agree more with your post. Farm cats are a real threat to ducks/birds in general and many dont realize this. If I see a cat while out hunting, it gets shot, plain and simple. Cats shouldent be out roaming in the CRP or WMA's period. Besides the cat issue I think habitat is the major problem, not an overabundance of predators.

[Musky Buck]

No carpshooter you are right on, although we must not have had many avian predators in my younger days drilling the ducks off the muskrat huts, but many trappers in the area in those years had the old trap on a poll thing going. If I would've went on about the cats my grandpa couldn't shoot anything, because of World War 2, but when my dad showed up to pick me up from the farm on Sunday afternoon's and after that incident, the cat was taken care of without a doubt. I bet in 10 years my dad and i have taken out more than 100 wild cats and they sure know they are wild, I've seen them carrying pheasants,grouse,ducks. Your third point is true. I worked in North Dakota putting up irrigation systems, walking through CRP as we plotted irrigation pivots, jumped a lot of hens on nests and the closest water was in that 1/2 to a mile away range. I wonder if things are prorated meaning like at our farm, lets say maybe 100 ducklings scampering for water, Dakota's maybe it's several hundred. More of em would make for more making it. Anyway, it sure is a sad story. Sad to see so many ponds in the Spring dry up by mid-August, what seems to be left is poor water quality ponds, no beaver, no woodies. Here's a ? I had beavers blocking a creek that runs through my land, did I have to let them trap them off ? Or could I have denied the trappers. What is the rule on something like that ? When the dam was in, lots of ducks, now gone the creek barely is a creek with hardly a bird come September, Spring waters the creek has many nests in it, then I'm not sure what happens to the birds.

[Boedigheimer]

Landrr, I would very interested in talking to you about your shrimp harvesting. The pond I hunt most often used to have shrimp and leeches in huge numbers, minnows showed up, shrimp disapperared, minnows are now gone (thank goodness for winterkill) and the duck numbers are getting better, but I would like to jump start the shrimp coming back with some stocking of shrimp. Can you help me out? I have researched several suppliers from southern regions but would like to try a more northern tolerant strain. We put out nesting boxes, cylinders, honker platforms, etc. which all helps, but would like to see Bluebills return to the lake and shrimp might just be the ticket.

[walleyeslayr]

Body drop me an email. [email protected]