The Central Flyway Council is the clearing house for coordinated planning in this Flyway. It is a delegate organization, including in its membership administrative and technical representatives from the fish and game departments of all states and provinces in the flyway. A Flyway Representative has been assigned from the Fish and Wildlife Service. This group is concerned with all phases of waterfowl research and management in the flyway. The Central Flyway Council provides for an effective interchange of information between member agencies and assists in the coordination and integration of flyway management programs. These purposes have been furthered by regular meetings for the open discussion of flyway problems.
Flyway Council Approach
In early 1953, the Council and the Fish and Wildlife Service, acting jointly, adopted a flyway program which has been expanded and improved as factual information and experience dictate. This program outlines objectives and suggests methods and priorities for accomplishment. State game departments now pattern their activities around the flyway program.
Extending the cooperative idea, the Council has joined with corresponding organizations from the other flyways to form the National Waterfowl Council, which annually participates in the official discussion of continental and flyway management problems and regulations. From their inception, the flyway councils have been successful in promoting understanding and teamwork so necessary for the perpetuation of the waterfowl resource.
Your Responsibility
As an individual reader of this booklet, you have a part to play in the essential partnership between agencies and waterfowlers. Your part may be small and may take various forms, depending on the circumstances, but certainly it is there. Perhaps, having sent in one or two waterfowl bands in the past and having experienced the initial novelty of hearing where your birds came from, you now forget to report them. The next time you have this choice between reporting or forgetting a band, remember that its prompt recovery, with full data, might be the clue to some missing fact to improve your future gunning.
Hunter bag checks indicate crippling losses in the Central Flyway run to an average of about one quarter of the total kill. In certain marshes, early in the season, crippling can greatly exceed the one quarter loss. Shooting at birds on the fringe of effective killing range is a crippling practice and, moreover, as you probably know from observation is contagious. The usual effect of one “sky shooter” in a marsh is to force other gunners nearby to attempt impossible shots which increase crippling losses and soon ruin shooting for everybody. Controlling such practices lies solely in the hands of individual gunners. With large-gauge guns of modified bore, the shot-pattern that will produce kills should be consistent up to forty yards, a distance well within capabilities of the average gunner to hold and compute necessary lead. Successful duck shooting is a matter of good judgment. To avoid errors in judgment drive stakes in front of your blind at distances of thirty and forty yards to indicate safe killing range. Hold your fire until the feet of an incoming duck can be seen distinctly, for only then will the bird be in range. Good sportsmanship in duck blinds and marshes is equally as important as remaining friendly with your home neighbors. Train a good retrieving dog, and add to your day’s pleasure by watching him at work on downed birds.
Above all, remember that the future of waterfowling is partly in your hands—that your good sportsmanship and cooperation are as necessary to the work of the Central Flyway Council and its member agencies as their activities are to you.
PARTS OF A DUCK
