by the regulations in general. To evaluate .hunter performance, the 
Bureau requested that each participating State complete a minimum of 
30 hunter performance (spy-blind) observations. In States where more 
than 4,000 permits were issued, the Bureau asked for at least 50 obser¬ 
vations. These observations were to be made without the hunter's 
knowledge and, preferably, should include entire hunts. However, we 
recognized that many, if not most, of the observations would probably 
include only a part of a hunt. The observer was to record what he saw 
on a form supplied by the Migratory Bird Populations Station which 
asked for data on: location, time, number of hunters, type of area, 
use of dogs, awareness of observation by the hunter and other questions 
about hunter performance. Data on the hunter's (or hunters') action 
when flights of birds passed within his range were to be recorded by 
species and numbers of birds in the flights. These actions included, 
for example, whether the hunter fired, numbers of shots fired and 
whether birds were hit and retrieved, hit and not retrieved, or missed. 
The form also provided space to record bag check data when a complete 
hunt was observed. Data obtained from the hunter performance survey 
were analyzed for each State using, for kill data, only those perform¬ 
ance cards which recorded that the subject hunter was unaware of the 
observer's attention. Numbers of hunters observed and total time of 
observation during the experimental season are shown in table 1 for 
each State. 
Banding 
Banding and recovery data are needed to provide information on 
kill rates, mortality rates, and differences in vulnerability to the 
gun of the various age and sex groups of teal before, during, and after 
the experimental hunting seasons. Summer banding of blue-winged teal 
locals and molting adults and preseason banding of flying teals, both 
immatures and adults, were given special emphasis in 1963 throughout 
southern Canada and the North Central States. This program has been 
conducted on a fairly large scale since then. During the years when 
experimental seasons were planned, banding was to be done immediately 
after the season as well as just before it. Banding during these 
periods will be continued with the continuance of experimental hunting 
seasons. The emphasis of this banding effort has been on blue-winged 
teal but some greenwings have been banded during drive-trapping and 
preseason banding operations in southern Canada and the Northern United 
States. This report does not contain an analysis of these data because 
all recoveries have not been reported; however, further reports on the 
experimental September teal hunting seasons will include analyses of 
banding and recovery data as they become available. 
RESULTS 
The total number of valid permits issued for the special season 
has been set at 201,972 (see table 1 for State and flyway totals). This 
is almost one-fourth of the duck stamp purchasers estimated for these 
6 
