'(CANADA) 
 
 
                  A Permanent Work in Sport and Conservation 
                                   201 Bank of Cconerce Chambers, 
                                   Winnipeg, Manitoba, 
                                   July 11, 1947. 
 
 
 
Professor Aldo Leopold, 
Director Of Wildlife Management, 
University of Wisconsin, 
MADISON, Wisconsin, 
 
Dear Aldos 
 
I received copies of the correspondence which has passed between you 
and Mort Smith, and to say that I am astonished at your reaction to 
the June Duokological, is to put it mildly. I feel deeply wounded at 
your statement, "Your staff continues its incredibly expert job of 
taking a given set of facts and so twisting the emphasis as to create 
an overall impression that is false." I am responsible for the state-

ments in the June Puckologioal. Your statement not only impugns my 
honesty but debits me with a cleverness to twist facts for some 
ulterior motive of which I am wholly unconscious. 
 
Your second statement, "The overall impression one gets from the June

Duckological is that things are not so bad after all, and that by 
opening day we may again expect a pretty good flight." This is 
exactly right, Remember we are reporting on current duck conditions 
in western Canada. The July Duokological was completed and in the 
press before your correspondence was received, and strikes an even 
more optimistic note. 
 
I not only have the information from our own Kee-men, biologists and 
fieldmen, but also copies of the preliminary reports of the U.S. Fish 
and Wildlife biologists. Bob Smith's summary of the duck population 
in the three prairie provinces is, "Averaging the three provinces 
together, if that can be done, we arrive at a 'no change' status." 
How on earth can this statement be reconciled with a collapse to 54 
million from 80 million in 19h6? Mort Smith has already quoted Fred 
C. Lincoln's release of July 8. 
 
The plain fact is that things are not so black as they have been 
painted and to say the shortage of breeding ducks with the exception 
of Alberta, is almost catastrophic, is sheer nonsense. I say this 
with a wealth of experience of duck populations over the past nine years.

 
We have such an abundance of surface water on the prairies this year 
that even if 150 million ducks had returned it would still give the 
appearance of being occupied much below capacity. 
 
 
To Increase and Perpetuate the Supply of Ducks