Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
Speaker 1: wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
Speaker 1: get serving both. Big shout out to ONEX Hunt for
Speaker 1: their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle,
Speaker 1: and in this episode we've got some big and exciting news.
Speaker 1: There is a new hunting season, like brand new getting
Speaker 1: opened up to the public and that doesn't happen every day.
Speaker 1: The state of Louisiana is opening a special black bellied
Speaker 1: whistling duck season this October. I mean, how cool is that?
Speaker 1: New hunting opportunities is something to celebrate, But as always,
Speaker 1: there's a much bigger story to be told, like what
Speaker 1: is this duck? Where did it come from? What are
Speaker 1: the implications of it? Setting up shop and several of
Speaker 1: the southern coastal states. There is a whole lot to learn.
Speaker 1: And also, if you have not noticed, I happen to
Speaker 1: be wearing my bear Grease bibbs. My good friend Clay
Speaker 1: new who y'all already know in First Light, have been
Speaker 1: working on these BIPs for quite some time and frankly
Speaker 1: they are fantastic. Y'all should check them out. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's get into it. The year was twenty twelve. I
Speaker 1: was working and Drew, Mississippi, which is right in the
Speaker 1: heart of the Mississippi Delta, for a property that I
Speaker 1: helped guide duck hunting on during the winter months. In
Speaker 1: the summer, however, they held a boy's summer camp that
Speaker 1: took kids out shooting, archery, clay shooting, bow fishing at night,
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy stuff. I distinctly remember one day
Speaker 1: I was walking back from the clay range towards the
Speaker 1: lodge in the middle of the day, paralleling along the
Speaker 1: side of a big sloop. I happened to look up
Speaker 1: into a tree and saw a bird perched on a
Speaker 1: limb that I did not recognize. I'd never seen anything
Speaker 1: like it before. I got my friend's attention, who was
Speaker 1: working out there with me, and asked him what he
Speaker 1: thought it was. His response was, Oh, that's one of
Speaker 1: those black belly whistling ducks. And although I don't remember
Speaker 1: my exact response, I'm most sure it was something along
Speaker 1: the lines of what in the world did you just say?
Speaker 1: I had never even heard of such. I even took
Speaker 1: the time to stop and whip out my iPhone three
Speaker 1: and try to get a sweet picture of this rare
Speaker 1: avian species. I was so keyed up about the entire
Speaker 1: incident in the event of getting to see one. I
Speaker 1: went home and told all my friends and family about it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe that I had laid eyes on this
Speaker 1: rare kind of duck, which at the time was rare.
Speaker 1: You just didn't see many of them around. You'd hear stories,
Speaker 1: you talk to people that said they saw them, and
Speaker 1: you'd hear reports that apparently there was more of them
Speaker 1: down in South Louisiana and South Texas, And if you
Speaker 1: were lucky, like I was, you laid eyes on one.
Speaker 1: And all I knew about their origin at the time
Speaker 1: is that they apparently weren't originally from here, and that
Speaker 1: they had come from South America, Central America, something along
Speaker 1: those lines. But like I said, that was the year
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. In the year twenty twenty six, things have
Speaker 1: changed quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Maria just had our second warmest fall on record, and
Speaker 2: experts think the warm weather maybe affecting birds and their behavior.
Speaker 2: In fact, one neighborhood in Saint John the Baptist Parish
Speaker 2: is seeing an influx of black bellied whistling ducks In
Speaker 2: their backyard.
Speaker 3: They are totally confused by whatever's going on.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: They're called black bellied whistling ducks, and here at the
Speaker 2: Riverlands subdivision in Laplace, the ducks have taken over. Kim
Speaker 2: Hernandez has been living here for decades and says she's
Speaker 2: never seen so many of them all at once.
Speaker 3: The noise goes on all day long, even at nighttime.
Speaker 3: If you don't have something to black noise, you will
Speaker 3: hear that all night long.
Speaker 1: She says.
Speaker 2: They usually leave around September, but this year they're hanging
Speaker 2: out a bit longer. She thinks it's climate change, but
Speaker 2: bird experts say there could be more to it. There's
Speaker 2: something that is propping these birds to wander much more widely,
Speaker 2: as well as expanding their core range. Kim Hernandez just
Speaker 2: wants to enjoy her backyard again, she says. The ducks,
Speaker 2: however beautiful they may be, have overstayed their welcome.
Speaker 3: This has become where you can no longer come out
Speaker 3: to the bulkhead and enjoy that any longer.
Speaker 1: Like I said, things have changed a lot since my
Speaker 1: first personal encounter with these birds back in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Now they're becoming a public nuisance to some people in
Speaker 1: South Louisiana apparently, and their numbers have grown so much
Speaker 1: that they're getting their own special hunting season, which we're
Speaker 1: going to dive into in great detail. But first we've
Speaker 1: got to get a little bit more context. For most
Speaker 1: of recorded natural history, this bird, the black bellied whistling duck,
Speaker 1: has been in the tropic, a resident of coastal Mexico,
Speaker 1: Central America, and down through South America as far as
Speaker 1: Argentina and Brazil. A handful pushed up into deep South Texas,
Speaker 1: but that was about as far north as you would
Speaker 1: ever find. And the interesting thing is they're not known
Speaker 1: for migrating much where it doesn't have to across most
Speaker 1: of its range, it really just stays put. So the
Speaker 1: question is, how does a non migratory tropical duck end
Speaker 1: up in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, even
Speaker 1: wandering into the Midwest. Somewhere in the late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: something changed. Nobody flipped a switch or anything. There's not
Speaker 1: a single event that you can point to, but the
Speaker 1: range simply started moving north and east, and it hasn't
Speaker 1: really stopped since by the year twenty twenty, the range
Speaker 1: had swallowed most of the eastern half of the Lower
Speaker 1: forty eight and it's tapping on the door of southeast Canada. However,
Speaker 1: the highest concentrations of them now can be found in
Speaker 1: places like South Texas, Florida, and of course South Louisiana,
Speaker 1: which is why these ducks are now getting their own
Speaker 1: special season, and it's about time we learn about it.
Speaker 1: To do that, we've got a genuine subject expert.
Speaker 4: My name is Jason Olzak. I'm the Waterfowl Program Manager
Speaker 4: for the Louisiana Department of Wilac and Fisheries. I've been
Speaker 4: in this role for about five years now. However, I've
Speaker 4: been doing waterfowl work since I've left undergrad, so back
Speaker 4: in the early two thousands, late nineties, nineteen nineties, actually
Speaker 4: been working with ducks and waterfowl in some fashion or
Speaker 4: another across the country. Gotcha Department. I've been with the
Speaker 4: Louisiana Department WiLAN and Fisheries for twenty years now.
Speaker 1: Because of Jason's position as Louisiana Waterfowl Program Coordinator and
Speaker 1: his multiple years of experience, he is both uniquely and
Speaker 1: perfectly suited to inform us on the topic of black
Speaker 1: bellied whistling ducks and how it led to them getting
Speaker 1: their own special hunting season. The first thing he's going
Speaker 1: to tackle is getting us all a little bit more
Speaker 1: familiar with the bird itself.
Speaker 4: It's really unique, actually an odd for a duck, you know,
Speaker 4: looking at him phylogenetically, they're not quite a duck, not
Speaker 4: quite a goose. They're in the family and that today,
Speaker 4: but they're in a separate subfamily from both the regular
Speaker 4: ducks as we know them and the geese. So a
Speaker 4: few unique things about them is, like geese, they're not
Speaker 4: sexually dimorphic, so the males and the females look exactly
Speaker 4: the same. The males stick around and help raise the brood,
Speaker 4: so brude survival seems to be pretty high because they've
Speaker 4: got five parental care throughout the growth period. Unique amongst
Speaker 4: whistling ducks is that the male will actually incubate the
Speaker 4: eggs too. You will not be uncommon to find a
Speaker 4: male in a wood duck box, you know, sitting on eggs,
Speaker 4: so perhaps that increases you know, hatchability of eggs and
Speaker 4: a nest as well.
Speaker 1: So they're not quite a duck. But they're also not
Speaker 1: quite a goose. They're fully their own thing, which I
Speaker 1: find kind of cool. Along with the rest of the
Speaker 1: facts that we just learned, what I'm interested in now
Speaker 1: is how they established themselves so firmly in the state
Speaker 1: of Louisiana.
Speaker 4: There's been vagrant sightings in southern states going back to
Speaker 4: the eighties, maybe even into the late seventies, you know, Texas, Louisiana,
Speaker 4: maybe Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida as well as another one of them.
Speaker 4: But yeah, as far as making a permanent push into
Speaker 4: this state, that started around the late nineties, early two thousands.
Speaker 4: The first actual breeding observations you know bi biologists, that
Speaker 4: was done in the early two thousands in southwest Louisiana. Again,
Speaker 4: in the early two thousands, Louisiana did a breeding bird
Speaker 4: at list enlisted black belly whistling ducks as pretty much
Speaker 4: confined as far as breeding anyway, is confined to the
Speaker 4: southwestern portion of the state. Fast forward another ten twenty
Speaker 4: years now and we've got them in every parish of
Speaker 4: the state, breeding obviously year round residents, mostly in the
Speaker 4: southern parishes of Louisiana along the Gulf Coast. But as
Speaker 4: far as kind of annual occurrences, they're across the entire
Speaker 4: eastern half of the US. Now, you know summer observations,
Speaker 4: breeding records up into Minnesota and Ohio, you know that
Speaker 4: far north. So this is a species that's been growing
Speaker 4: in abundance and expanding their range for about twenty thirty years. Now.
Speaker 1: Forgive me for interrupting, but I do feel the need
Speaker 1: to interject the timeline that he just laid out. It
Speaker 1: feels rapid to me. In just around twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: years time, this bird that is ecologically not migratory, has
Speaker 1: managed to expand its range not only in the Southern States,
Speaker 1: but across the eastern half of the country.
Speaker 4: That is wild, yeah, for sure, and I think they
Speaker 4: You know, one thing about this species is there as
Speaker 4: we see it anyway, they're real tolerant to human disturbance.
Speaker 4: So one of the places where we have issues with
Speaker 4: them here in Louisiana is at the ports on the
Speaker 4: Mississippi River where they're loading grain. Obviously, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of spillage there that's that's duck feed, so they take
Speaker 4: advantage of that. And because they can tolerate all the
Speaker 4: activity going on there, even the the hazing you know,
Speaker 4: by the by the workers there to try to dissuade
Speaker 4: them from being in those locations there that they're they
Speaker 4: don't have a lot of fear, so that with the
Speaker 4: ad labetum feed that they've got there, their fecundities probably
Speaker 4: really high. And so they're doing well throughout Louisiana for sure,
Speaker 4: and and the Gulf South in total.
Speaker 1: So we have a water file species that has expanded
Speaker 1: and established itself in the southern US, especially in southern Louisiana.
Speaker 1: We have a waterfowl species that has grown rapidly in numbers,
Speaker 1: and we have a waterfowl species that is apparently very
Speaker 1: tolerant of human disturbance. The reasoning behind opening a special
Speaker 1: hunting season is becoming more clear by the sentence. But
Speaker 1: you can't just haphazardly start a hunting season. Well, I
Speaker 1: suppose you could, but the outcome is likely not to
Speaker 1: be great. To be done properly, these kind of things
Speaker 1: require a fair amount of thought as far as season structure,
Speaker 1: bag limits, and a lot of other factors that come
Speaker 1: into play.
Speaker 4: That being said, you know, as we kind of go
Speaker 4: into this hunting season and kind of think about where
Speaker 4: where success is going to be highest and where these
Speaker 4: birds are most likely found. It's usually around areas with
Speaker 4: some substantial wetland complexes. So typically outside of the breeding season,
Speaker 4: you're not going to find them in an isolated you know,
Speaker 4: a little land out away from you know, the big
Speaker 4: complexes that we have here in Louisiana. They're breeding phenology
Speaker 4: is a little bit different, you know. One of the
Speaker 4: first things we were worried about when black bellies, you know,
Speaker 4: started coming into the state with the knowledge that they
Speaker 4: use cavities just like wood ducks and our hooded mergansers,
Speaker 4: is that there might be some competition there for nest sites,
Speaker 4: nest spaces. We've done some research on that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 4: some competition. There's some nests parasitism. They're just like wood
Speaker 4: ducks and hoodi mergansers. They'll dump them, they'll dump an
Speaker 4: egg and a wood duck nests of wood duck will
Speaker 4: do the same. But wood ducks seem to start a
Speaker 4: little bit earlier as far as nesting, and they're peak
Speaker 4: nesting is a little bit earlier than black bellies. We're
Speaker 4: seeing black belly peak nesting about June, so that's that's
Speaker 4: quite a bit later than wood ducks, and with that too,
Speaker 4: we'll see we'll see nesting activity all the way through August,
Speaker 4: probably some of it even bleeds into September. So little
Speaker 4: puffball ducklings to be on the water in September is
Speaker 4: not uncommon at all, and even October I've seen them.
Speaker 4: So that's one of the things too about you know,
Speaker 4: structuring a hunting season for this species. Is the model
Speaker 4: of wildlife management North America anyways, is we don't shoot
Speaker 4: vulnerable animals with young that are still you know, being
Speaker 4: being brought up. So that's one of those things you
Speaker 4: know that we were considering as the public's kind of
Speaker 4: been clamoring for a tip for adding black bellies in
Speaker 4: the September teal season, Well we knew at the time,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of young ducks still on
Speaker 4: the water if if we were to start this season
Speaker 4: and say mid September. So yeah, we're kind of going
Speaker 4: into this a little bit cautiously, a little bit conservatively
Speaker 4: with an October season, but yeah, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: That's a very interesting and important bit of information there.
Speaker 1: I know, anecdotally I've heard for several years now as
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of clamoring for a special season
Speaker 1: for these black bellied Whistling ducks. A lot of folks
Speaker 1: have asked why we couldn't just somehow put it in September,
Speaker 1: maybe intertwine it with till season. Well, now we know
Speaker 1: part of the reason why it doesn't really line up
Speaker 1: correctly with their breeding calendar, and with this being a
Speaker 1: brand new season. I fully understand them being cautious as
Speaker 1: they tread into this new territory. I imagine with kind
Speaker 1: of this rapid you know, just you know, growth in
Speaker 1: their distribution, people are seeing them more often talking about
Speaker 1: figuring out this season. How to your knowledge, how long
Speaker 1: have people been wanting there to be some sort of
Speaker 1: special season for these ducks. I imagine it's been for
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, for sure, you know, and you know, historically
Speaker 4: people would see them during the tell season. We had opportunities,
Speaker 4: We've had opportunities in Louisiana to shoot them, you know,
Speaker 4: early in the regular season, which in our case doesn't
Speaker 4: open until about mid November in the coastal zone. But yeah,
Speaker 4: hunters have noted that, you know that that opportunity at
Speaker 4: Black Belly was the nuts as fleeting. You get maybe
Speaker 4: opening weekend, a week or two into the season, and
Speaker 4: then they're just not seeing them anymore.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Historically that thought was, well, they're going back to Texas,
Speaker 4: they're going back to Mexico. That's why we don't have
Speaker 4: those opportunities. Some additional research we've done here recently has
Speaker 4: shown that that's not the case. These these birds are
Speaker 4: sticking around in Louisiana throughout the year, certainly all the
Speaker 4: way through the through the winter. In some specific areas,
Speaker 4: they're not. It's just that they are, again alluding back
Speaker 4: to their tolerance of human disturbance. They're they're just going
Speaker 4: to those places where hunting can't take place, you know, neighborhoods, parks, zoos,
Speaker 4: these these elevators along the river. So yeah, they're just
Speaker 4: they're real good at identifying the safe place and holding
Speaker 4: out through the winter there.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what all went into making the season,
Speaker 1: everything from the dates to the bag limits, all of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, looking up records going back to two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: when the Louisiana Department while and Fisheries first made a
Speaker 4: request of the Fishing Wildlife Service to add black bellied
Speaker 4: whistling ducks to the September teal season, you kind of
Speaker 4: identifying that as a potential increase in their harvest vulnerability
Speaker 4: For us. However, the federal government has been adamant about
Speaker 4: maintaining teal only in that season. You know that some
Speaker 4: of your listeners will certainly be aware. There's some states
Speaker 4: that have a telen A wood duck season though, but
Speaker 4: that comes with a penalty of days. So you know,
Speaker 4: states like Kentucky and Tennessee have a telen A wood
Speaker 4: duck but during the years that we have a sixteen
Speaker 4: day teal season, they only get nine days. Here's like
Speaker 4: like this year where we got a nine day teal season,
Speaker 4: they're only getting five. So Louisiana annually harvest is about
Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty thousand blue wings during that September
Speaker 4: teal season. So cutting back on days is just that's
Speaker 4: a no go for this day. We'd be stupid to
Speaker 4: sacrifice almost half of a teal season just to add
Speaker 4: black bellies to it. So yeah, that was you know,
Speaker 4: it's always been a no So we came into it
Speaker 4: this time with a different ask. It's a different season,
Speaker 4: it's separate from the September teal season.
Speaker 1: Another important bit of information there. It gives us even
Speaker 1: more context and understanding as to why they decided not
Speaker 1: to combine till season with this new black bellied whistling
Speaker 1: duck season. Basically, if they were to combine the two,
Speaker 1: they would have fewer days to hunt overall. Till season
Speaker 1: is very popular in Louisiana, so they opted not to
Speaker 1: do that, which I think is a good all on
Speaker 1: their part and a popular one.
Speaker 4: You know, we set up this the bag limits pretty conservatively,
Speaker 4: I think, you know, to four bird bag limit, you know,
Speaker 4: twelve possession. It's only a nine day season, but yeah,
Speaker 4: for three or four years, you know, it's an experimental season.
Speaker 4: We're going to evaluate what can we what can we
Speaker 4: achieve as far as total harvest and harvest rates on
Speaker 4: this species. I don't think we're gonna come anywhere close
Speaker 4: to an objective harvest rate. Kind of what we've got
Speaker 4: in the proposal that we put together was a fifteen
Speaker 4: percent aspirational harvest rate on this species to kind of
Speaker 4: maintain the population where it is so it's not continuing
Speaker 4: to grow. But yeah, with a nine day season, four
Speaker 4: bird bag limit, I'm not sure that we can we
Speaker 4: can achieve that. But again, coming to it conservatively, you know,
Speaker 4: we're not asking too much here. It's separate from the
Speaker 4: teal season, and we finally get a yes. Misissippi Flyway
Speaker 4: Council approved it. We got buy in from the other
Speaker 4: flyways as well, so with all four flyways in support,
Speaker 4: it goes to the Service Regulations Committee of the Fish
Speaker 4: and Wildlife Service and it was approved there last December.
Speaker 4: So here we are, we finally got this experimental season.
Speaker 1: Tell you what I think. I think it's good for
Speaker 1: all of us to know a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what all goes into establishing a hunting season, or a
Speaker 1: bag limit or anything else that goes into this. I
Speaker 1: know Jason covered all that pretty quick and efficiently for us,
Speaker 1: but just think a little bit about all the work, research,
Speaker 1: and time that he and a lot of other folks
Speaker 1: put in to finally get this experimental nine day season.
Speaker 1: That's some real effort, and frankly, it ought to be applauded.
Speaker 1: Another thing I find pretty cool is that now in
Speaker 1: Louisiana you have two hunting in September, black bellied whistling
Speaker 1: duck hunting in October, and then regular duck hunting in November.
Speaker 1: That's some pretty consistent hunting opportunity, which is a good thing,
Speaker 1: right well, but obviously.
Speaker 4: There's some pros and cons to that too, you know.
Speaker 4: So you know, some of the cons might be that
Speaker 4: these birds have already experienced a teal season, so they
Speaker 4: know the shotguns have been been firing. They may be
Speaker 4: a little bit more wary. They may have already sought
Speaker 4: out some some urban refugea so that that there'd be
Speaker 4: a potential con And then also you know that that
Speaker 4: break between teal season and the regular duck season kind
Speaker 4: of let migrants start settling in, you know, leave the
Speaker 4: Marshall loan for a little bit let birds build up.
Speaker 4: There might be some impacts to that too, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: and that's one of the reasons too, we really wanted
Speaker 4: to frontload this at the beginning of October and not
Speaker 4: go into into sure ye.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, So that's a good that that raises a
Speaker 1: good question. So like as I imagine like.
Speaker 4: Like a lot of your like public.
Speaker 1: Land and and nwrs and stuff like, will those will
Speaker 1: will those be opened up for people to hunt during
Speaker 1: this black wealthy season at this time, all.
Speaker 4: Of our WMA's will be open We are waiting to
Speaker 4: hear back from the FEDS as to whether the National
Speaker 4: Wildlife Refugees will be open. I've heard positive things about that.
Speaker 4: It was kind of late them getting it into their brochures,
Speaker 4: but yeah, you'll hunters will definitely want to check in
Speaker 4: with the individual National Waldlife refuge to make sure that
Speaker 4: that's open for that October season. Within Louisiana. As far
Speaker 4: as licensing goes, you have to have all the licenses
Speaker 4: that you would for a normal duck season, whether it
Speaker 4: be teal or the regular duck season. In addition, though
Speaker 4: for this October black Billy season only, you do have
Speaker 4: to have it and it'll be a free permit. A
Speaker 4: black belly was a duck hunting permit. You can obtain
Speaker 4: this where you buy your regular Louisiana licenses online. Again,
Speaker 4: it's a free permit, and that comes with a mandatory
Speaker 4: postseason reporting, so by the end of the season you've
Speaker 4: got fifteen days to report harvest and hunter effort. That's
Speaker 4: just one of those you know it'd be in a
Speaker 4: new season. We want to get as good a data
Speaker 4: as possible to kind of evaluate number one hunter interest.
Speaker 4: People have clamored for it for years but are they
Speaker 4: going into partake in and that's another question, and then
Speaker 4: also getting better harvest estimates for this season. In addition
Speaker 4: to that, the shooting hours are a little bit different
Speaker 4: for the black bellies too. It's sunrise shooting time, not
Speaker 4: half hour before sunrise. This gives up hunters an opportunity
Speaker 4: to you know, with a little bit better like conditions
Speaker 4: to identify their targets again because it's black bellies only.
Speaker 4: And again the bag limit for per day, so that
Speaker 4: was That's one of the things still we get a
Speaker 4: lot of questions about, and yeah, just trying to try
Speaker 4: to get the word.
Speaker 1: Out again, we are continuing to learn how much thought
Speaker 1: goes into this. A new hunting season fantastic. However, in
Speaker 1: the name of not allowing it to degrade another hunting season,
Speaker 1: they moved it to early October so there would be
Speaker 1: no overlap. And it also sounds like there will be
Speaker 1: a good bit of access available to hunt and hopefully
Speaker 1: more as well as some easy to follow regulations. I
Speaker 1: would imagine there's a lot of happy Louisiana waterfowl hunters
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, almost across the board. There's always a
Speaker 4: few naysayers, you know, but across the board, it's you know,
Speaker 4: a long time coming. We've kind of been interested in
Speaker 4: some type of an early season structure for this species
Speaker 4: for a while and finally we've got something to something
Speaker 4: to evaluate and see how effective it can be.
Speaker 1: How will y'all measure success? Like, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it'd be it be hard to judge something off
Speaker 1: of one season, But like you said, after you do
Speaker 1: two three seasons, like what are you looking for in
Speaker 1: terms of like, yes, this is working, We're happy with this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So kind of the main measures of success will be,
Speaker 4: you know, obviously increase harvest on this species. This is
Speaker 4: a very lightly harvested species as it is, so increase
Speaker 4: in harvest and harvest rates. You know, you can shoot
Speaker 4: six black bellies, you know, in the past, you can
Speaker 4: shoot six black billies during the regular season per day.
Speaker 4: Some folks have done it. Some folks have done it
Speaker 4: even into January in the past. But you know, harvest estimates,
Speaker 4: total harvest estimates for Louisiana have only averaged about four
Speaker 4: thousand per year. That's super low, you knows, It's not
Speaker 4: even in the top ten as far as harvest goes
Speaker 4: in within Louisiana. So so increase in the harvest of
Speaker 4: this species is a measure would be a measure to success.
Speaker 4: Stabilizing population growth, you know, to something that's more socially
Speaker 4: a social carrying capacity. You know, where conflicts within suburban
Speaker 4: neighborhoods are or parks. They have gotten to the point
Speaker 4: where they're as much, if not more of a nuisance
Speaker 4: than like Canada geese resident east and some aria. Oh yeah, for.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, no kidding, yeah, because that's when you were
Speaker 1: talking about that. That's or my head when I was
Speaker 1: like that here it's if there's a waterfol causing a nuisance,
Speaker 1: it's a Canada goose. Uh. And i'd heard, you know,
Speaker 1: I've heard stories about apparently just how overrun you would
Speaker 1: think that there are black billy whistland ducks everywhere in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: But I didn't know there was actual like nuisance.
Speaker 4: Sure you should take a trip down here and see
Speaker 4: some up for yourself, because it's, uh, yeah, it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 4: So yeah, stabilizing that population growth, heck, even negative population
Speaker 4: growth would be would be acceptable. I think for for
Speaker 4: a time period, I want.
Speaker 1: To highlight something that I think is really cool here.
Speaker 1: As hunters, anglers, outdoors men and women, we have heard
Speaker 1: for the majority of our lives that hunting is a
Speaker 1: conservation tool, a management tool, and what we're seeing here
Speaker 1: is a perfect example in the formation of this new
Speaker 1: hunting season. Of course, it's a great new and exciting
Speaker 1: opportunity for hunters. However, according to Jason, it's also a
Speaker 1: means of managing a population that frankly is getting a
Speaker 1: little bit out of control. There's not too many situations
Speaker 1: these days where you will hear a biologists say that
Speaker 1: negative population growth is acceptable. I'm not saying it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: It definitely does. I'm just saying it's more rare than common,
Speaker 1: and right now in Louisiana they're trying to get a
Speaker 1: handle on this growing population of black bellied whistling ducks.
Speaker 1: I don't know about y'all, but I hope this hunting
Speaker 1: season turns out to be a success and turns out
Speaker 1: to be the perfect management tool that they're looking for.
Speaker 4: You know with this season too. This is a hemispheric species.
Speaker 4: It's you know right now. The range is from say,
Speaker 4: you know, Tennessee on down through Mexico and Central America
Speaker 4: into Argentina. So we're going to have a hemispheric population
Speaker 4: estimate for this species obviously, but we can perhaps get
Speaker 4: an estimate for Louisiana alone. Some of our banding data
Speaker 4: shows that most of these birds, most birds that are
Speaker 4: banded in Louisiana are encountered again in Louisiana. So through
Speaker 4: banning data we can get a population estimate for our
Speaker 4: banded cohort that are our banded population here in Louisiana.
Speaker 4: So so that's another another thing that'll that'll that'll is
Speaker 4: a measure of success, but that it will increase our
Speaker 4: ability to manage this species as well, and then reducing
Speaker 4: conflict like I like I said earlier, you know, both
Speaker 4: for residents, uh and then industry. Not only are they
Speaker 4: an issue at grainloading ports along the river, but also
Speaker 4: rice farmers in the spring during planting, they can they
Speaker 4: can do some considerable damage to to some of those
Speaker 4: fields as well. So yeah, that'll be kind of hard
Speaker 4: to quantify exactly, but yeah, any kind of anecdotal reduction
Speaker 4: in the efforts that farmers have to take to keep
Speaker 4: birds out of their fields during kind of that vulnerable
Speaker 4: period would be a success as well. Man.
Speaker 1: That is interesting. There's always a it's so funny. There's
Speaker 1: always a bigger story than I even realized the more
Speaker 1: you start asking these questions. I didn't know that they
Speaker 1: were causing this much of a of an issue. The
Speaker 1: old black belly whistling duck.
Speaker 4: Well there's you know, not only has has you know,
Speaker 4: the state agent, State Wildlife Agency been requesting you know,
Speaker 4: harvests as a means to alleviate this problem, but industry
Speaker 4: has has been very vocal, specifically in recent years, for
Speaker 4: somebody to get involved to address this problem for them. So,
Speaker 4: you know, they've got some political pool as well, you know,
Speaker 4: agriculture across the across the country, so that they've been
Speaker 4: pushing those buttons for a while to say, we need
Speaker 4: some relief here. Somehow, maybe a hunting season can do that.
Speaker 4: We'll find out.
Speaker 1: I suppose time will tell, and the success of this season,
Speaker 1: both from a hunter satisfaction perspective and the perspective of
Speaker 1: population management and conflict reduction, this is going to be
Speaker 1: one to keep your eye on, no doubt. One thing
Speaker 1: I'm curious about now is that if we know this
Speaker 1: is an expanding population across a good chunk of the country,
Speaker 1: could we possibly see other seasons open up in different
Speaker 1: states if this one in Louisiana goes well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so some of the some of the states within
Speaker 4: the Mississippi Flyaway have expressed interest, you know, with this
Speaker 4: new experimental season. There's a lot that we as an
Speaker 4: agency have to put into collecting data and evaluating the
Speaker 4: success of this season. And some of those states they
Speaker 4: don't have the population that we do yet anyway, so
Speaker 4: it's it's not as as urgent of a push for them,
Speaker 4: but they just kind of want to see how we do.
Speaker 4: And then if this opens up to something that's offered
Speaker 4: flyway wide, they would certainly join in on that. Texas
Speaker 4: would be one, and in addition, Florida in the Atlantic
Speaker 4: Flyway they've got they've got quite a quite a health
Speaker 4: population of black bellies to there as well. So it
Speaker 4: remains to be seen whether they'll they'll pursue that, and
Speaker 4: really once we're done, kind of as the guinea pigs
Speaker 4: here in Louisiana, whether this is still confined to an
Speaker 4: October season or whether we can bleed into September. I'm
Speaker 4: not making any promises or or forecasting this at all,
Speaker 4: but if we can demonstrate success, then then that might
Speaker 4: be an opportunity in the future. You know, in this
Speaker 4: species too, really, you know the way it's been included
Speaker 4: in the bag limit historically, it doesn't see it right
Speaker 4: like this, the black belly whistling duck, it's a tropical species.
Speaker 4: It breeds on the coasts for the most part, maybe
Speaker 4: a little bit inland from the Gulf. But bag limits
Speaker 4: here should not be tied to the breeding success of
Speaker 4: prairie nesting ducks like we do. So the regulatory alternatives.
Speaker 4: You know, the weather it be sixty days, forty days,
Speaker 4: thirty days in the Mississippi Flyway for prairie nesting ducks
Speaker 4: is based on how well they're doing and habitat conditions
Speaker 4: on the prairies. That doesn't affect black bellies at all,
Speaker 4: so they should be decoupled from that. It is what
Speaker 4: it is right now. We're hoping this experimental season we
Speaker 4: might demonstrate some differences there. But then also why should
Speaker 4: a black belly a September black belly slash teal season
Speaker 4: be coupled with the breeding population of blueing teal when
Speaker 4: they're entirely different as well, So if the breeding population
Speaker 4: bluing teals gets below three point three million, we don't
Speaker 4: have a September teal season anymore, and so if black
Speaker 4: belies was tied to the September teal season, we would
Speaker 4: have lost that black belly season for no justificating shitting,
Speaker 4: not at all. So again, I think these birds need
Speaker 4: to be treated a little differently nationally as far as
Speaker 4: how we set regulations for them.
Speaker 1: Again, more fascinating insight and honestly getting to watch nature
Speaker 1: change right in front of our eyes. A tropical duck
Speaker 1: overlapping in habitat use with the migratory prairie duck. Why
Speaker 1: would we couple their management strategies or bag limits. Jason
Speaker 1: makes a very good point here. Exciting, man, exciting, and
Speaker 1: just like it's one of those things that's just the
Speaker 1: implications of it all. Like I just I'm fascinated by
Speaker 1: the story of them, like showing up and now, like
Speaker 1: for folks that are dealing with, you know, flocks of
Speaker 1: them causing nuisance issues, they're probably they probably don't think
Speaker 1: they're as cool as I think they are because I'm
Speaker 1: not having to deal with them all the time. But
Speaker 1: I just, I don't know, I think it's exciting. I
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I just sit around and wonder what's next.
Speaker 4: You know, black bellies have been making the move expanding
Speaker 4: further north. We've got crested caracara's fairly you know, really
Speaker 4: common in South Louisiana. Now, limpkens have moved in as
Speaker 4: permanent residents throughout throughout coastal Louisiana anyway. So yeah, it's
Speaker 4: just sitting around waiting for what southern species is going
Speaker 4: to make a move as a as a permanent resident
Speaker 4: in Louisiana in the future.
Speaker 1: For the record, the two birds he just listed off there,
Speaker 1: the crested caracarra and the limpkin. They're both tropical birds
Speaker 1: that historically occupied Central and South America and now have
Speaker 1: also set up shop in South Louisiana. Fascinating, you bet.
Speaker 1: And are there some significant implications there for why multiple
Speaker 1: tropical birds are expanding north now? Well, of course they are.
Speaker 1: But that's a whole other episode right there, my friends,
Speaker 1: But believe me, we'll get to it. I want to
Speaker 1: thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University as
Speaker 1: well as Bear Grease and this country life. It means
Speaker 1: a whole heck of a lot to all of us
Speaker 1: over here. If you liked this episode, share it with
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Speaker 1: whole lot more on the way.