As I have listened to the complaints of Ark public land duck hunters for several years now, one can only think the future of duck hunting is bleak for public land hunting.
I am truly amazed at the money being thrown into private land duck hunting. I’m gonna throw a few private duck hunt names out there that have publically shown their operations and I’m astounded by the resources they have committed. Island 34 is one, the owner stated he estimates he can feed up to 10 million birds. When you can pump 80,000 gal a minute and it takes 14 days to get your water you do the math but that’s impressive. 100’s acres of standing corn just to feed birds.
But this is just one operation, there are literally hundreds of other operations doing the same thing on varying scale. Habitat Flats up in Missouri is well known, Whiteoak Duck woods is another. Vast amounts of money to attract and hold vast amounts of ducks.
Now what’s public land WMA in Ark gonna do to compete? You know back 40 years ago the cut Agri fields were the food, private GTR adjacent was the loafing and resting. So when you have large land owners up and down the Mississippi flyway putting that kind of resources in just holding ducks couple with milder temps it’s gonna be hard for a duck to leave that.
But it’s not only that but folks have fine tuned the hunting, they don’t hunt haphazard. They have enough blinds and pits to move around. They can flood one field until it gets eat out then move that water to the next patch of corn. Up north they stagger their fields and when it’s 11 degrees they pump another field up with water at 55 degrees to keep their birds.
It simply blows my mind at the resources thrown toward a duck. The cost alone to plant a hundred acre corn field is crazy, not counting the cost of land and just the level they move water.
I am truly amazed at the money being thrown into private land duck hunting. I’m gonna throw a few private duck hunt names out there that have publically shown their operations and I’m astounded by the resources they have committed. Island 34 is one, the owner stated he estimates he can feed up to 10 million birds. When you can pump 80,000 gal a minute and it takes 14 days to get your water you do the math but that’s impressive. 100’s acres of standing corn just to feed birds.
But this is just one operation, there are literally hundreds of other operations doing the same thing on varying scale. Habitat Flats up in Missouri is well known, Whiteoak Duck woods is another. Vast amounts of money to attract and hold vast amounts of ducks.
Now what’s public land WMA in Ark gonna do to compete? You know back 40 years ago the cut Agri fields were the food, private GTR adjacent was the loafing and resting. So when you have large land owners up and down the Mississippi flyway putting that kind of resources in just holding ducks couple with milder temps it’s gonna be hard for a duck to leave that.
But it’s not only that but folks have fine tuned the hunting, they don’t hunt haphazard. They have enough blinds and pits to move around. They can flood one field until it gets eat out then move that water to the next patch of corn. Up north they stagger their fields and when it’s 11 degrees they pump another field up with water at 55 degrees to keep their birds.
It simply blows my mind at the resources thrown toward a duck. The cost alone to plant a hundred acre corn field is crazy, not counting the cost of land and just the level they move water.
