8 THE AUDUBON ~BOU LD Eeiaay 
of basic revisions in management and regulation policies, the Society will 
have the definite support of a very considerable number of sportsmen. Men 
who, with eager anticipation, have looked forward each year to the water- 
fowl hunting season; to the tang of salt air on the open marsh, to frosty 
sunrises on prairie sloughs, to the whistling of ducks’ wings overhead and 
the beauty of geese coming into the blind—these men realize that there 
must now be a closed season if they, their sons and their grandsons, are to 
enjoy in the future what has been to them a fascinating sport. 
The plight of the waterfowl was one of the main points of discussion 
at the recent North American Wildlife Conference held in San Antonio. 
Reports from men with first hand experience on the breeding and wintering 
grounds were gloomy indeed. 
Dr. Harrison F. Lewis, Superintendent of Wildlife Protection of the 
Canadian government, said: 
“It must be obvious to all that, without an adequate increase in 
restrictions, duck-hunting on this continent will soon encompass its own 
destruction.” 
Dr. Aldo Leopold, in summing up the high spots of the conference, said, 
“T have attended this conference for 20 years, but this is the first session 
that ever was unanimous on waterfowl. Misfortune is a great leveler.” 
Albert Hochbaum of the Delta (Manitoba) Research Station, had many 
things to say that are well worth repeating to you; that, for example, a 
certain pothole in Manitoba is losing its breeding stock of ducks, not because 
it has become less attractive to waterfowl; nor because of crows; nor be- 
cause of skunks; nor because of mink or hawks or jackfish or ground squir- 
rels; nor because it needs more water or less water; nor because of fire or 
drought or grazing; nor even because “seven out of ten” are lost before 
they grow. 
It is losing its breeding stock, he said, because there are not enough 
breeders to go around; that 1946 was the first year in which he found 
perfectly good breeding sloughs minus ducks, and that in some excellent 
marsh areas, little changed physically, the loss in breeding pairs was 80 
per cent to 90 per cent of the 1945 population; that there were far less 
breeding pairs last year than in 1938, when waterfowl were in the early 
stages of their increase from the last duck “depression.” 
Now that the breeding areas are used as hunting grounds, the cropping 
is too early (in some areas as early as the middle of September) and the 
harvest is too efficient, resulting in “burned-out” marshes that are now, 
to use Dr. Leopold’s phrase, “rapidly moving to the Arctic.” This is par- 
ticularly true where commercial shooting (where the hunter pays for the 
privilege of shooting and may rent guides and equipment) attracts numbers 
of gunners from far and wide. | 
On that Delta marsh, in 1946, despite the terrific drop in duck popula- 
tion, there was the heaviest kill on record. More red-heads, Hochbaum 
said, left for Chicago, St. Louis and points south in frozen packages than 
in migration. More than three-quarters of the local production of red- 
heads were killed on the opening day of hunting, and the season’s kill was 
