
2. Determine the duck species com- 
position in the kill, 
3. Obtain information on changes in 
the species, sex, and age composi- 
tion of the kill during the season. 
4, Determine the chronological dis- 
tribution of the duck killby periods 
within the season, days of the week, 
and hours of the day. 
5. Secure a variety of other types of 
information that can be obtained 
from duck wing surveys. 
Immediately before the opening of the hunt- 
ing season, the hunters tobe sampled are sent 
supplies of business reply envelopes and are 
asked to return one wing from each duck they 
kill during the coming season, A post card 
addressed to the Bureau is included for use 
by those hunters who might exhaust their 
envelope supply. The hunters whose kills are 
sampled in this manner are selected largely 
from respondents to the Bureau’s mail ques- 
tionnaire survey of the previous year who 
were over 15 years old and who had reported 
bagging at least one duck. Additionalhunter- 
contacts come from lists of respondents tothe 
previous year’s wing surveys and in a few 
instances from lists of hunters who had re- 
ported bagging a banded bird, An attempt is 
made to draw samples of waterfowl hunters 
that are distributed geographically within a 
State in the same proportions as the distribu- 
tion of duck stamp sales. This was not 
possible in a number of States because an 
insufficient number of names was available, 
Until the resultant data can be reweighted rec- 
Ognizing the differences in sampling intensity 
between geographic portions of States, the 
estimates presented in this report must be 
regarded as preliminary. It is not antici- 
pated, however, that the more refined weight- 
ing procedure will greatly change the findings 
presented here, Details of the procedures 
followed and the technique involved have been 
summarized elsewhere (Geis and Carney, 
1961, and Carney and Geis, 1960). 
All wings received are kept frozen until 
they can be examined by teams of State and 
Bureau biologists who assemble at freezer- 
storage points and identify the species,age,and 
sex of the bird each wing represents, This 
information is reduced to a series of numeri- 
cal codes and summarized by the Machine Data 
Processing Unit at the Migratory Bird Popu- 
lations Station at Laurel, Maryland. 
The number of hunters contacted and the 
number of wings they returned each yearare 
presented by flyways in table B-1 (p. 74). Be- 
cause all the names of the hunters contacted 
were not obtained in exactly the same manner 
each year, the differences inhunter-response 
between years should not be interpreted as an 
indication of changes in hunting success, Sec- 
tion B (p. 74) of the appendix contains tabular 
data summarizing the annual results of the 
wing collection survey. 
WINTER SURVEY 
Data supplied by Fred A. Glover 
Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife 
The annual winter survey to obtain informa- 
tion on waterfowl wintering conditions and 
distribution covered all major wintering 
areas of the United States, Canada, and 
Mexico. In Mexico the Bureau of Sport Fish- 
eries and Wildlife organized and conducted 
the survey. In the rest of the continental 
United States, the Bureau organized the sur- 
vey, but much of the field work was done by 
personnel of the various State conservation 
departments. The U. S, Department of De- 
fense and the U. S, Coast Guard supplied air- 
craft for.aerial counts in many areas. In 
Canada, the survey was organized by the 
Canadian Wildlife Service and the Provinces. 
The wintering areas were surveyed by 
means of boats, cars, and aircraft, with most 
of the important areas being censused from 
the air, Aerial photographs were taken to 
supplement visual estimates in some of the 
more important concentration areas, 
It must be emphasized that the number of 
birds observed and recorded during the winter 
survey does not constitute an estimate of the 
total population in any flyway or for the 
continent as a whole for the following rea- 
sons: (1) the survey includes most but notall 
wintering areas of North American waterfowl; 
(2) some species are more visible than others; 
and (3) inherent variables existing in the 
