Hunters identify birds using their size shape and color Male blue-winged teal are small birds with patches of light blue on their wings The mother wades out with the sack and places 17 decoys in a special formation designed to attract ducks The hunters then wade over to a point where the cattails poke into the pond The water is only knee deep They stand in the cattails and wait until it is light enough to shoot Their waders will keep them dry As the sun rises several flocks of ducks fly by Feathers make whooshing and whistling sounds against 6
the air Ducks circle the pothole and set their wings to land When the birds are over the decoys the boy and his mother raise their shotguns and shoot Boom Boom Boom Boom Two ducks drop into the water The hunters quickly reload Another flock swoops past The boy gets a shot off but misses The mother wades out quickly and picks up their ducks They are good-looking birds with black beaks and powder-blue wing patches blue-winged teal By the time the morning flight ends a couple hours later the hunters have killed 11 ducks The mother lines up the ducks in the prairie grass to admire them There are five blue-winged teal two green-winged teal a mallard a northern shoveler and two wood ducks The hunters soak up the warm autumn sun and unpack their breakfast Duck Hunting History People have hunted ducks for a long time Archaeologists have found 2,000-year-old duck decoys in Nevada 7
Native Americans across North America hunted ducks with bows and arrows traps and nets When European settlers came to North America in the 1500s and 1600s the numbers of waterfowl seemed endless People hunted ducks year round But by the 1800s people were killing too many ducks and bird 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 195519601965197019751980198519901995200020052010 Year D u c k P o p u l a t i o n m i l l i o n s Many factors help determine the North American duck population including money raised for conservation weather conditions and number of hunters 8
populations dropped In the early 1900s farmers drained a lot of wetlands and marshes And in the early 1930s a terrible drought hit North America Ducks lost much of their nesting habitat Duck populations sunk even lower In 1934 the US government passed the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act This created Federal Duck Stamps Hunters had to buy and attach stamps to their licenses in order to hunt waterfowl Money from Federal Duck Stamps went to restoring and conserving wetlands Game managers also set strict hunting seasons and bag limits around this time Today there are plenty of ducks to hunt Duck hunting offers many challenges and exciting rewards People of all ages enjoy the smell of the marsh the quack of ducks and the whistle of wings at dawn 9
