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I'll admit I've heard this so often, that I've come to think of Canada 

 as one vast nesting gro-and of ducks, geese, and swans, extending from ocean to 

 ocean and from our northern border straight on up to the Horth Pole or there- 

 abouts. 



However, I think Mr, Lincoln and the Northwest Mounted Police have help- 

 ed set me a little straighter on ray geography, as far as ducks go. Actually 

 the great central prairie strip that extends from the boundary of North Dakota 

 and eastern liontana north to Great Bear Lake contains the most importajit breed- 

 ing ground for ducks in North America. And that certanly is a sizable strip. 



But that also is the strip which includes Canada's big farming country. 



In the last few years, many of the marshes where the ducks used to nest have 



been drained. Today thousands of acres of wheat are grown on land that former- 

 ly supported ducks. 



Yet even ?/ith all that big-scale farming, tliat is still the chief homo 

 of our ducks. 



For throe years hand-running now the drought has sucked water out of the 

 remaining ponds, and lakes, and marshes. 



An investigator of the United States Biological Survey in coot)eration 

 with Canadian officials h-as gone over tliat drought- stricken region from the 

 foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta cast to iianitoba and north from 

 our border to the great dalta region of the Peace and Athabaska Rivers. He 

 reports tliat in traveling those several thousand miles they found only parched 

 grain fields, dried-up sloughs and marshes, and only a few dozen small broods 

 of young ducks in an area that in normal years produces myriads of mallards, 

 pintails, rcdiicads, canvasbacks, bluebills, pjid teals. 



"'oil, you say, maybe the ducks have just moved further north to some 

 other place whore conditions are better suited for nesting and rearing of yo-ung. 



Ad^ such notion is not according to what we know about geography and 

 ducks, the bird specialists soy. There is no such place to which these prairio- 

 ncsting ducks could retreat oven if they were so inclined. In spite of that, 

 tho Canadian government, through the Northwest Moionted Police, has made far- 

 reaching inquiries about ducks. That force reputed always to get its man, re- 

 ported no signs of other and more remore breeding grounds of ducks. 



In fact, there was evidence that what ducks still lived were on the 

 regular breeding grounds. Flocks of full-grown ducks were fo\md on some of 

 the bigger cxid. deeper lakes, at the time they should have been paired and 

 scattered throui^ the marshes raising their young. In other words, it seemed 

 that they wore not raising young. 



VThoX that will mean to sportsmen in this country this fall and winter is 

 rather plain. The shortage of breeding birds in Canada cmd. the loss of so 

 many young will have a very serious effect upon shootir-g conditions in both 

 this couiitry and Canada. One of the biggest problems ever faced by our game 

 officials '7ill be to preserve the breeding stock throu^jh the next few years, 

 and nurse our duck supply back to normal abundance. 



