Reprinted from the January, 1932, issue of FIELD & STREAM 
 
ucks or Debates? 
 
The time for dissension has passed. if we are to have ducks, we must have
action-now! 
By SETH GORDON 
 
"I'M plumb disgusted with the shoot- 
ers of North America," confided 
one of this country's best-known 
game authorities to me recently. 
Coming from a man who has always 
fought for the sportsmen, who has spent 
thousands of dollars of his own money 
to continue the sport of hunting in the 
good old American way, it shocked me. 
And if I were to tell you his name, you 
would be shocked, too. But what he said 
next put cold chills right down my spine. 
"I no longer have any delusions about 
these so-called sportsmen in the mass 
being willing to pay for anything," he 
continued. "While they haggle and de- 
bate about a dollar or two the mortal 
enemies of all shooters--a small but de- 
termined coterie of non-shooting super- 
sentimentalists-are taking their sport 
right out from under their very noses. 
We might just as well set aside a few 
natural zoo areas, then hang up our 
guns! " 
Now you sweat as I did. Of course, I 
disagreed with him, and tried to con- 
vince him that the sportsmen were will- 
ing to pay for any sound programs-but 
it was wasted effort. He was just "plumb 
disgusted" and felt blue because sports- 
men as a mass, and organizations too, 
have differed and haggled while things 
were getting worse and worse. I waved 
the incident aside, but somehow my 
friend's warning about the failure of the 
sportsmen to stand together kept ring- 
ing in my ears. 
The very next morning an unusually 
large heap of letters greeted me. And 
right on top of the pile was a clipping 
from a Canadian newspaper in which 
one of the leading exponents of little or 
no shooting in this country--a man who 
in his younger days killed far more than 
his share-lauded our thirty-day duck 
season, then wound up with the follow- 
ing appeal: "Now it remains for Canada 
to join the United States in perma- 
nently fixing one month as the maximum 
open season on waterfowl." 
There, Mr. Duck Hunter, is the next 
play. One month now; next they will 
try for two weeks. And then- Well, it 
is about time that we get organized be- 
hind a constructive program and stop 
mixing our signals, or we will be doing 
exactly what my pessimistic friend pre- 
dicted. 
"Without a doubt," said a Western 
conservation leader recently, "we have 
gone as far as we should in the matter 
of sensible limit reductions; the next 
step cannot stop short of complete pro- 
hibition of wildfowl shooting." 
And concerning the drought he said: 
"There is no sense in deluding ourselves 
with untenable alibis. We should not 
 
lean on the unstable belief that a swing 
ift the weather cycle and consequent re- 
sumption of wet years will materially 
check the alarming diminution of wild- 
life resources. Unwise and unrelenting 
reclamation and drainage projects have 
been extended so rapidly that a per- 
petual man-made drought exists on the 
continent's most important breeding 
grounds." 
Both times he hit the nail squarely on 
the head. We all admit that with the 
enormous increase in shooters during the 
past decade, quick transportation, better 
arms and ammunition, and an appalling 
decrease in the breeding grounds there 
has been too much shooting for the pro- 
ductive machinery. We also agree that 
wet years will help, but they won't bring 
back millions of acres of breeding 
grounds where the drainage ditch has 
done its deadly work. And since it will 
always be easier to cut seasons, reduce 
bag limits and add other "shall-nots," 
the restrictionists can be expected to 
play that one string and play it hard. 
What we need is some real duck in- 
surancel Let's restore those breeding 
marshes, and do it quickly. Every acre 
will help! 
RE CLAMATION has run hog-wild in 
this country. Instead of retarding it, 
our own Federal Government has sped it 
up. We would probably all be just as 
well off if there had never been a Recla- 
mation Service. Behind the de-watering 
and irrigation of every acre to increase 
plow land was a land promotion or a 
ditch-digging outfit. Where these pro- 
moters could not get action in any other 
way, they brought political pressure up- 
on Congress and obtained a mandate 
for the Federal Government to act. 
Many will say, "Yes, but every ir- 
rigation reservoir is also a waterfowl 
rendezvous." 
Yes, a rendezvous where they can get 
a drink, and that is all except possibly a 
retreat from shooters if a refuge is es- 
tablished. It is comparatively recently 
that such refuges were established on 
irrigation reservoirs, but as breeding 
grounds the majority of these bodies of 
fluctuating water-levels are absolutely 
worthless. They will never compensate 
for the vast breeding areas which were 
ruined in the interest of agriculture. 
In the Far West, men who know, and 
who are independently situated so that 
they may speak their minds, say that 
from 65 per cent to 75 per cent of the 
original occupants of reclaimed lands, 
both drained and irrigated, have long 
since been compelled to abandon their 
holdings. In some instances they have 
been able to hook some other equally 
 
unsophisticated sucker, but in the ma- 
jority of cases they have lost everything. 
In some sections, those remaining on 
these reclaimed ranches are wresting a 
meager subsistence from the soil, but if 
they could move out today they would 
gladly do so. They can't let go, and they 
will starve if they stay. 
On the other hand, there are some 
irrigated and drained farm areas where 
the people are prosperous and happy. 
But what all of these projects have 
done to the waterfowl breeding grounds 
is a crime! Something like 75,000,000 
acres drained; millions of bushels of 
surplus grain; the ducks without breed- 
ing grounds. An economic blunder of the 
worst kind! Are we going to haggle and 
debate, or are we going to do something 
about it? 
It might be interesting to cite a few 
of the outstanding former waterfowl 
breeding and feeding areas which were 
destroyed or practically ruined: 
Acres 
Tule Lake, Cal.                     20,000 
Owens Valley, Cal.                   8,000 
Lower Klamath Lake, Cal. & Ore.     80,000 
Malheur Lake, Ore.                  80,000 
Warner Valley, Ore.                 38,000 
Mouse River, N. Dak.                22,000 
Milwaukee Sloughs, S. Dak.           7,000 
Long Lake S Dak.                     5,000 
Waterhen Lake, Sask.                20.000 
Big Hay Lake, Alta.                  9,000 
Low Water Lake, Alta.               11,500 
Thief Lake, Minn.                   22,000 
Mud Lake Minn.                      30,000 
Horicon Mdarsh, Wis.                40,000 
Sheboygan Marsh, Wis.                9,000 
Winneshiek Bottoms, Wis.             9,000 
Trempealeau Bottoms Wis              6,000 
Kankakee Marsh, Ind                400,000 
Little River, Mo.                   41,000 
Mingo Swasp Mo.                     25,000 
Squaw Creek Bottoms, Mo.            31,000 
Lake Mattamuskeet,. N. C.           50,000 
An entire story could be written about 
each of these areas, some of which are 
being restored, but I shall elaborate 
briefly upon only a few of them. 
Tule Lake, California, originally con- 
tained 20,000 acres. Today its area is 
less than 12,000 acres, and its avail- 
ability as breeding grounds depends en- 
tirely upon the amount of water which 
is permitted to escape from the neigh- 
boring irrigation project. This year the 
water held up very well, and thousands 
of ducks bred there. 
OWER Klamath Lake was one of the 
"spirit of patriotism" gifts to those 
who had defended their country. Formerly 
one of the greatest waterfowl breeding 
grounds on the continent, it is now one 
of our worst examples of putting land 
under the plow. Most of the poverty- 
stricken settlers have moved out. Others 
are still hanging on, but indications are 
that the entire area will be abandoned 
shortly. The water supply is involved 
with a power project, but it is stated 
that the commercial club of a near-by