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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service improvise management policies that 

 brought many migratory bird species, and ducks in particular, to 

 historic population lows. At the same time, I have seen Federal law 

 enforcement agents increasingly pursue policies that have done lit- 

 tle or nothing to increase the flocks but which have succeeded in 

 driving many ordinarily law-abiding hunters from the field, includ- 

 ing landowners who once invested considerable assets in migratory 

 bird management but who are no longer willing for fear of violating 

 a law no one understands. 



The Migratory Bird Treaty Act gives the Federal Government the 

 right to tell sportsmen when they can hunt migratory birds and 

 how many per day or season they can shoot but not the time of 

 day, gauge of gun or other, what are normally considered, ethical 

 options. Such matters should be for sportsmen's clubs and personal 

 conscience to determine. Unfortunately, we live in a legalistic soci- 

 ety, and lawyers have little faith in the power of personal con- 

 science. 



As a result, beginning in the 1920's, we have created a spectrum 

 of moralistic rules to regulate migratory bird hunters which have 

 had little, if any, value for scientific management of the birds. The 

 most arbitrary and capricious of these rules concerns baiting. In- 

 credibly, the Fish and Wildlife Service is now considering expand- 

 ing baiting rules to include "the manipulation of native vegetation 

 and moist soil habitats." Thus, pasture owners in the Southeast 

 who have been burning hydric soil areas for more than 130 years 

 to attract snipe for hunting may shortly be prosecuted for doing so 

 under Federal regulation. Likewise, duck hunters in the West who 

 cut cattails and bulrush in order to open up holes in the marsh and 

 to provide themselves with material for making blinds could be 

 charged with baiting. 



Although career opportunism undoubtedly underlies some abuses 

 by Federal law enforcement agents, I am willing to give most 

 agents the benefit of the doubt by assuming their excessive zeal is 

 a function of their having watched the Fish and Wildlife Service 

 underwrite the collapse of continental duck populations in the 

 1980's and now claim that only partially recovered stocks are so 

 fully recovered that we can shoot them at daily rates exceeding 

 those we had even in the 1950's, when we really had ducks. 



One result has been a no-warning law enforcement policy. Agents 

 stake out allegedly baited ponds and fields and then wait until the 

 maximum number of ducks or doves are killed before beginning to 

 write summonses. Should the agents themselves not be liable for 

 prosecution when they have the authority to stop illegal shooting 

 but do nothing until the worst-case scenarios are acted out? 



Since many of the people cited for baiting are hunting as guests 

 and are not even aware of the subtle difference between feeding, 

 which is legal, and baiting, which is illegal, they often give up 

 hunting, and the conservation dollars they once generated through 

 their purchases of hunting licenses, bird stamps and excise taxes 

 on firearms and ammunition is lost to wildlife management. Add- 

 ing insult to injury, the reputation of hunters gets another kick in 

 the head every time a sensational headline about a baiting bust 

 hits the evening news. That is why I recommend that Congress re- 

 place the dead-end law enforcement policies of the Fish and Wild- 



