Content Warning: This multi-part blog post contains references to hunting, agriculture, and research practices of killing birds. This installment contains a photograph of a duck hunter with his kills—a pair of dead Mallards. If you choose not to read on, I respect and admire your choice.
Like most of my blog journeys, this long perseveration on Mallards started with questions about a visitor in the yard: What happens to a Mallard hen’s flight muscles while she is nesting? If she spends a flightless month on the nest, then two more flightless months escorting her flightless ducklings, how does she keep her muscles in flying condition?
A prolonged literature search produced partial answers. And raised more questions.
In the end, a research paper out of North Dakota (Krapu, 1981) confirmed that wild Mallard hens lose significant body weight during nesting, including most of their fat reserves. But the researchers did not measure or comment on flight muscles.
Beyond that 1981 anchor point, my flight muscle question lies abandoned, waiting for another researcher or reader to pick it up. Until then, I’m content with Part III‘s conclusion: Only the Mallards know.
Caught in tangles of tangents
I can’t resist tangents. They are how my world expands. And how my mind works, OCD and all. So here I am, more than a year later, still exploring this labyrinthine idea web of Mallards and Mallard literature.
But this particular perseveration, my Mallard fixation, runs deeper than most of my blog ideas. In fact, it runs straight into a mire of social and psychological issues that I am poorly equipped to navigate. So here I remain. Grappling for words and wisdom in the Mallard archives. Because much of what motivates me to care about this world, much of what motivates me to read and write, is also in the Mallard archives.
In all of the decades between the anxious moment captured, above, and my present seat at the blog table, I’ve lived in the tensions between mine and not-mine. Between the coop and the wetlands. Between the self-protective urge to stay small and inconspicuous and the inescapable longing for expansive connections.
I expect most readers live in the same tensions. It’s part of being human. It is, perhaps, part of being Mallard, as well.
Out of my comfort zone
These Mallard posts have turned into foundation work for a policy argument.
(Spoiler alert: I am not crafting an argument against hunting.)
Policy arguments are not my norm and most definitely are not my creative strength. But I’m wading in.
I’m wading in without a map or floatation device, hoping for the kind of synergy that sometimes makes words more wise than their author. Hoping for fewer small and inconspicuous silences.
I grew up around poultry, both wild and domestic. I also grew up around guns and hunting. Through all my many long years, I have accepted, unquestioning, most of the arguments in favor of hunting as both a sport and a science-backed approach to wildlife management and conservation.
I still accept some of these arguments. But I’m developing deep resistance to others. Resistance based on all of this reading about the history and practices of Mallard hunting and conservation.
(Let me repeat that spoiler: I am not crafting an argument against hunting.)
I’m not comfortable arguing policy, which means there will be throat clearing and wandering off-topic. I am, after all, a blogger. Not a lobbyist. A poet, not a lawmaker. I seldom demand rhetorical precision of myself, in my creative work. Which is part of why I enjoy blogging. Rhetorical precision is for the classroom and office, not the blog.
But there are upsides to making this argument in blog form. There’s freedom from structure and stricture. My hybrid interweaving of literature review and memoir is choice, not style guide. More importantly, there’s no peer review. I am my own editor and publisher, so I’m allowed to make overt appeals to emotion. Including photos and videos of ducklings.
These photo and videos are my unsubtle attempt to convince readers that ducks are stakeholders in policy discussions about waterfowl hunting.
Sport hunting is a profitable mine, and Mallards are a form of ore
Unlike many of my blog topics, Mallard hunting isn’t a rabbit hole. It’s a multi-level, vastly profitable mine regulated by international treaties and cooperative relationships between state and federal agencies.
Everything in the Mallard mine is complicated by tradition and money and land.
This isn’t about the flight muscles
I introduced a few ideas about the capitalism behind the science curtain in Part II. And where Mallards are concerned, science isn’t the only interested party. Mallard hunting (and farming) is not an independent storefront on the town square. This is big business and big money, so big policy questions come into play.
Who owns wildlife, on public and private lands? Who gets to decide how wildlife is exploited, on public and private lands? When is wildlife no longer wild? (Keep inserting “on public and private lands”, as the questions roll on…) What are the roles and aims of conservation work? Who gets to own and discharge firearms? Why and how are tradition and research guiding individual and community decision making, when it comes to hunting?
This isn’t about flight muscles.
Except, isn’t it?
Mallards are poultry. And once Mallards are defined as poultry, once flight muscles are defined as breast meat, Mallard hunting is only about the flight muscles. Wild Mallards are protein harvested by shotgun.
Just how big is this business?
A 2006 survey from the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) found that “…waterfowl hunters represented 10 percent of all hunters, 7 percent of all hunting-related expenditures, and 6 percent of all hunting equipment expenditures” (Carver, 2008, pg. 3).
Here’s the waterfowl hunting numbers for 2006 (derived from Carver, 2008, Table 1, p. 4):
| Number of US hunters (ducks) | 1,147,000 |
| Number of US hunters (geese) | 700,000 |
| Number of US hunters (all waterfowl) | 1,306,000 |
| Reported US trip expenditures (waterfowl) | $493,987,000 |
| Reported US equipment expenditures (waterfowl) | $406,298,000 |
| Total US spending (waterfowl) | $900,285,000 |
Those zeros are not a typo. That’s over nine hundred million dollars spent, in 2006, on hunting ducks, geese, and other waterfowl. While more than half of those dollars went to the travel industry, some four hundred million dollars were non-travel purchases, including “rifles, shotguns, other firearms, ammunition, telescopic sights, decoys, hunting dogs and associated costs. Also included are auxiliary equipment such as camping equipments, binoculars, special hunting clothing, processing and taxidermy costs. Due to small sample sizes, special equipment purchases such as boats, campers, trucks, and cabins are excluded…” (Carver, 2008, Table 1, pg. 4).
The author of this report adjusted the economic impact of waterfowl hunting through input–output modeling, to estimate how this spending radiates through the economy: “The trip expenditures of $494 million by waterfowl hunters generated $1.2 billion in total output while equipment expenditures of $406 million generated $1.1 billion in total output in the United States” (Carver, 2008, pg. 10).
So it’s fair to say that waterfowl hunting is a multi-billion dollar industry, in the US. That’s multi-billion per year. And Mallard hunting is a massive chunk of that industry. “Hunter reports indicate that mallards made up about 43% (5.5 million annually) of the ducks taken before 1960, when mallard regulations were less restrictive; the Duck Wing Survey indicates that mallards have made up 33% of the harvest (3.6 million annually) since 1960″ (Martin & Carney, 1977, p. IX).
Given the money spent on hunting ducks, geese, and other waterfowl, it’s not a surprise that “…waterfowl hunting is positively correlated with income. That is, as household income increases, the percentage of waterfowl hunters for each group also increases. Income is also positively correlated with the participation rate of all hunters. However, all hunters do not tend to be as affluent as waterfowl hunters” (Carver, 2008, pg. 6).
This is not subsistence hunting. For the majority of duck hunters in the US, suspension of duck season would not equate to food insecurity. Yes, many hunters eat the ducks they kill. But they would still be able to eat, even if they killed no ducks.
How many Mallards are there, anyway?
Efforts to count the continent’s ducks began as early as the 1940s, when researchers tramped out into the marshes for hand counts. Then pilots joined the work, providing population estimates (and species distributions) for flocks spotted during aerial flyovers. Hunter surveys, requesting that hunters report how many and what kinds of ducks have been killed in the season, add a final dimension of data. At the confluence of these ongoing data streams, USFWS calculates Mallard “abundance”, which isn’t exactly a population count but is close enough for my purposes.
As of 1974, “The estimated size of the continental mallard population in May has ranged from a high of 14.4 million in 1958 to a low of 7.1 million in 1965. Generally, the mallard population began to decline after the 1958 peak until 1962, and remained below 10 million birds until 1970. The decline and consequent low level of the mallard population between 1959 and 1969 generally coincides with a period of poor habitat conditions on the major breeding grounds” (Pospahala, Anderson, & Henney, p. 49).
Over more recent decades (from 1992–2024) the “mid-continent” stock of US Mallards has ranged between 6.2 million and 11.9 million (USFWS, 2024, p. 12). (There are management purposes at work, in this focus on “mid-continent” Mallards, which I will get to later.)
In 2024, Mallard abundance in the US registered some 6.6 million. In 2023, about 6.1 million (USFWS, 2024, p. iii).
With recent numbers hovering near the low end of the 1992–2024 Mallard abundance range, and below the lowest 1960s numbers, it seems that the Mallard glass is currently half-empty. But if accounts from the late 1800s and early 1900s are accurate, the North American Mallard glass has been half-empty for over a century. (Drop a pin in this claim. There will be evidence later.)
Where do North American Mallards come from, and where do they go?
Continental Mallard production can vary wildly over a very short span of years. For example, 1957 produced a count of 22.1 million Mallard “young”, but 1961 saw only 5.9 million (Anderson, 1975, p. 33). Granted, it’s difficult to count Mallard young, but there was undoubtedly a major decline between 1957 and 1961.
By the 1970s, it was clear that Mallard production was related to the number of ponds in Mallards’ breeding grounds. (Here is where that focus on mid-continent Mallards starts to become important, as the largest and most productive breeding grounds are in the north and central portions of North America, in “prairie pothole” country.) And, prior to 1960, the number of ponds steadily declined everywhere. But habitat was never the only factor.
Nesting season and shooting season
The existence of a “long-term average” population number for Mallards, of around 7.9 million (USFWS, 2024, p. iii), flattens into stasis a seasonally dynamic population. Spring and summer are boom and winnow seasons. Some 75% of Mallard mortality occurs in first-year ducks, either in the nest or during the weeks immediately after hatching, before young birds learn to fly (Anderson, 1975, p. IX). Then fall and winter bring the hunter’s guns.
“…it may be predicted that about 60 out of every 100 mallards flying south along the Mississippi Flyway will be hit by shot” (Bellrose, 1953, p. 358-359).
After Mallards survive their first summer, death by shotgun accounts for a significant percentage of overall Mallard mortality. Of the adult males that die each year, about 50% die by shotgun (Anderson, 1975, p. 24). The percentages are slightly lower for females (40%) and first-year Mallards (45%) (Anderson, 1975, p. 24).
Given all these shotguns, and all of the other Mallard hazards out there, the majority of Mallards that survive their first summer do not live more than two adult winters (Anderson, 1975, p. IX). That doesn’t mean that a three-year-old Mallard is an old Mallard, only that it is a lucky Mallard. Even luckier Mallards have lived as long as 13 years in the wild (a few female Mallards), and one particularly charmed male Mallard survived 18 years (Anderson, 1975, p. 26).
Harvest by shotgun
In the US, prior to 1960 hunters bagged some 5.5 million Mallards every year (Martin & Carney, 1977, p. IX). It’s worth repeating that number: 5.5 million Mallards. Every year.
After hunting regulations were tightened in 1960, the Mallard kill dropped to about 3.6 million per year (Martin & Carney, 1977, p. IX). Such numbers fluctuate, of course, and have dropped somewhat further since the 1970s. But hunting still claims millions of Mallards, each year. USFWS estimated a Mallard harvest of 2,042,668 birds, in 2022 (USFWS, 2023, Table 1E, p. 25).
Up through the 1970s, close to a quarter of the entire North American Mallard population was killed by hunters, every year (Anderson & Burnham, 1976, p. 40).
Based on the numbers previously cited for 2022 (2,042,668 Mallards killed by hunters) and 2023 (estimated population of 6.1 million), it seems that perhaps one-third of the US Mallard population continues to die by shotgun every year.
Overkill?
Only a few paragraphs ago, the USFWS estimated a 2024 Mallard population of 6.6 million. In 2024, a pre-1960 harvest (during years when harvests averaged 5.5 million ducks per year) would have obliterated the US population of Mallards.
In fact, the pre-1960s binges, on top of widespread habitat destruction, dealt multiple near-obliteration blows to North American Mallards. Starting early in the 1900s, hunters and researchers agreed that something needed to be done to save the Mallards. At least, they agreed that something needed to be done to save Mallard hunting.
The first (documented) North American Mallard bottleneck, circa 1920
Prior to the 1900s, hunters spoke of North America’s duck populations in awe-tinged phrases.
“It is about the finest country you could imagine in the wildest flights of fancy; Ducks getting up under your feet at every yard; Hawks, Goatsuckers, Prairie Chickens, and small birds in all directions… I shot a Teal and a splendid Shoveller drake for the pot. I can fancy I hear you exclaiming against the barbarism of eating such a bird; but I am getting daily accustomed to birds which are considered rare in England, and regard them now from a more utilitarian point of view” (Wood, 1885, p. 225).
“During this autumnal movement the number of ducks frequenting the lakes and ponds throughout Manitoba is prodigious. I shall not soon forget the hundreds I saw on the innumerable ponds between Rapid City and the Oak River, whilst on an excursion towards Fort Ellice, in the middle of October, 1883. Yet those I saw must have been as nothing compared with the abundance to be seen in some other places. A friend who had several days’ shooting at Totogon, near the south end of Lake Manitoba, about the end of September, describes the ducks as being so numerous that only the terms ‘acres’ and ‘millions’ could adequately express their abundance. The majority were Mallards, Anas boscas…” (Christy, 1885, p. 133).
By the 1920s, Mallards populations had declined to a notable low:
“The duck marshes on the Saginaw River no longer teem with water fowl. In early September and before the first frost the cackle of the Carolina rail is on every hand. These little birds—the Sora, seem as plentiful as ever, so I have not given up the marshes of the Saginaw entirely, but once or twice in the early part of September I get out the old canoe and with Alphonse to paddle or push, I take the trip through several miles of the Cheboyganning rice beds and usually get what the law allows of rail shooting, but in making all of this distance through acres and acres of rice, one or two ducks is all I see in place of the thousands of old” (Mershon, 1923, p. 73).
And this is where I leave the Mallards, for now. A poor remnant of a once thriving species, scarce and growing scarcer into the 1920s. In the next post, help arrives.
A housekeeping note (or, rather, a territory-keeping note)
Throughout this post, I’ve switched back and forth between talking about North American Mallards and US Mallards without much fanfare. Doesn’t it sound presumptuous? It’s almost as if I have forgotten that there are other countries on the continent. (Doesn’t it sound familiar?)
But from here on out, I’ll need to take more care. Because, starting in the early 1900s, lawmakers and researchers divvied up North America’s Mallards. There were, and still are, jurisdictions and flyways. More importantly, genetic work has identified two discreet and rarely-intermixing populations of Mallards, an eastern gene group and a western gene group (Lavretsky, Janzen, & McCracken, 2019). And my particular policy argument involves eastern Mallards, alone.
Preview of Part VI: The US judicial branch decides who owns the Mallards that visit US lands, and funding arrives for conservation
As long as there were plenty of Mallards, everywhere, distinctions between North American and US Mallards were moot. But as Mallard populations dwindled, hunters came into conflict over who got to shoot the Mallards that remained. And with increasing scarcity came increasing value, along with politicians to squabble over resource ownership.
The problem was (and still is, to a certain extent) that Mallards have always migrated according to their own maps, which existed long before humans decided that land could be owned. Given that the North American Mallard mine spans three (or more) countries, including most of the states in each country, and that Mallards are valuable ore, who owns the profit? Who gets to harvest this particular protein, and how should they be allowed to market it?
North American Mallards as a species have continued breeding and migrating, and US Mallards as a resource have continued falling into hunters’ bags, but the species and resource exist on two seemingly separate planes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes summed it up succinctly, in a landmark case that upheld the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty: “The whole foundation of the State’s rights is the presence within their jurisdiction of birds that yesterday had not arrived, tomorrow may be in another State and in a week a thousand miles away” (Missouri v. Holland, 1920, para. 6).
References
Anderson, D.R. (1975). Population ecology of the Mallard: V. Temporal and geographic estimates of survival, recovery, and harvest rates. Resource Publication 125. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/4786
Anderson, D. R., & Burnham, K. P. (1976). Population ecology of the Mallard. VI: The effect of exploitation on survival. Resource Publication 128. U. S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/4899
Bellrose, F. C. (1953). A preliminary evaluation of cripple losses in waterfowl. In James B. Trefethen (Ed.) Transactions of the Eighteenth North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (pp. 337-360). The Wildlife Management Institute. https://wildlifemanagement.institute/conference/transactions/1953
Carver, E. (2008). Economic impact of waterfowl hunting in the United States: Addendum to the 2006 national survey of fishing, hunting, and wildlife-associated recreation. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Services. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-04/1153.pdf
Christy, R. M. (1885). Notes on the birds of Manitoba. The Zoologist: A Monthly Journal of Natural History, 3rd Series, IX(100). https://ia801303.us.archive.org/27/items/zoologist85lond/zoologist85lond.pdf
Gillham, C. E. (1947). Wildfowling can be saved. In Ethel M. Quee (Ed.), Transactions of the Twelfth North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (pp. 47-52). The Wildlife Management Institute. https://wildlifemanagement.institute/conference/transactions/1947
Krapu, G. L. (1981) The role of nutrient reserves in Mallard reproduction. The Auk 98, 29-38. doi: 10.1093/auk/98.1.29
Lavretsky, P., Janzen, T., & McCracken, K. G. (2019). Identifying hybrids and the genomics of hybridization: Mallards and American Black Ducks of Eastern North America. Ecology and Evolution (9), 3470–3490. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4981 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.4981
Martin, E.M., & Carney, S.M. (1977). Population ecology of the Mallard: IV. A review of duck hunting regulations, activity, and success with special reference to the Mallard. Resource Publication 130. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/5230112/report.pdf
Mershon, W. B. (1923). Recollections of My Fifty Years Hunting and Fishing. The Stratford Company. https://archive.org/details/recollectionsofm00mers_0
Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416. (1920). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/252/416
Organ, J. F., Mahoney, S. P., & Geist, V. (2010). Born in the hands of hunters: The North American model of wildlife conservation. The Wildlife Professional 4(3), 22-27. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267749137_Born_in_the_hands_of_hunters_the_North_American_Model_of_Wildlife_Conservation
Pospahala, R. S., Anderson, D. R., & Henney, C. J. (1974). Population ecology of the mallard. II: Breeding and habitat conditions, size of the breeding populations, and production indices. Resource Publication 115. U.S. Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. https://nwrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16473coll29/id/10213/rec/1
USFWS (2023). Migratory Bird Hunting Activity and Harvest during the 2021–2022 and 2022–2023 Hunting Seasons. USFWS. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/migratory-bird-hunting-activity-and-harvest-report-2021-to-2022-and-2022-to-2023.pdf
USFWS (2024). Waterfowl Population Status, 2024. US Department of the Interior. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-08/waterfowl-population-status-report-2024.pdf
Wood, T. B. (1885). Notes on the zoology of Manitoba. The Zoologist: A Monthly Journal of Natural History, 3rd Series, IX(100). https://ia801303.us.archive.org/27/items/zoologist85lond/zoologist85lond.pdf
Rae Spencer 