It may be seen that the state daily bag limits 
are 25, 20 or 15, except in three states where they 
go down to 10 or 12, the average per state being 
20.5 ducks per day. However, since abundance 
of ducks, and consequently of duck hunters, are 
largely confined to those states having the maxi- 
mum limit of 25, the actual effective or practical 
limit is approximately 23 ducks per day per duck 
hunter thruout the entire United States and no 
amount of shifting of figures can alter this fact. 
With the above facts fresh in mind, we will 
now show the method used in Bulletin No. 6 to 
"reduce" the limit to 15 per day. Most of the 
states do not permit hunting upon Sundays and 
thirteen of the states place a seasonal bag limit 
on ducks, in addition to the daily bag limit shown 
in the table above. To illustrate, Pennsylvania 
has a state bag limit of 15 ducks per day, and a 
state open season of 92 days (including, of course, 
Sundays. If a duck hunter could legally kill 
15 ducks for each of the 92 days, he could legally 
kill in Pennsylvania, 15 X 92, or 1380 ducks dur- 
ing the season, but because of the seasonal limit 
he can legally kill but 60 during the entire season. 
This would be equal to the daily limit of 15 ducks 
for each of 4 days' shooting, or to its equivalent. 
The bulletin has "reduced" the daily bag limit 
on ducks (shown above to be practically or in 
effect about 23) down to 15 by the following rea- 
soning. To illustrate, the Federal open season 
extends for 107 days in Pennsylvania and the 
state seasonal limit is 60 ducks, so that they 
assume the average daily Federal bag limit for 
Pennsylvania is 60 ducks divided by 107 days, or 
about one-half of a duck a day, instead of 15, as 
given in the table. By similar reasoning they 
have "reduced" the bag limits for twelve other 
states having reduced seasonal limits, and by this 
method arrived at their value of 15 ducks per day 
as an average. But to get the average daily limit 
down to 15 for the entire country, they have 
divided the total of the states seasonal bag limits 
by the total number of Federal days open season 
(including Sundays or rest days when hunting is 
not permitted in some states). Since the state 
open seasons are controlling, the total of the 
states seasonal bag limits should have been di- 
vided by the total number of days in the states 
open seasons (less the closed Sunday and rest 
days) and not in the Federal open seasons. This 
would have given them about 19 per hunting day 
in place of 15 1/6 ducks per day, as an average 
for this basis of reasoning. 
Now we all understand daily bag limits to mean 
 
the maximum number which may be taken in any 
day, and the matter of number of days this limit 
may be taken as being entirely a different and a 
separate matter. As a matter of fact, seasonal 
limits are seldom if ever enforced. If a hunter 
did succeed in taking the season limit in one, or as 
a total of several trips, and he wanted to hunt 
more ducks in the same state, he would very prob- 
ably take another trip to a different section of the 
state and shoot some more. The matter of sea- 
sonal limits, even if they were enforceable (which 
they are not) have no place in discussions of daily 
bag limits as universally understood. Being prob- 
ably introduced here for the first time in connec- 
tion with bag limit controversies, they serve only 
to mislead, to confuse, and to give an impractical 
picture of what is  a- a    mpl        .... For 
instance, if all of the states, instead of only 13 
of them, had reduced seasonal limits, it would not 
materially change the number of ducks actually 
killed but would "reduce" the average bag limits 
down to about 7 ducks per day by the reasoning 
of Bulletin No. 6. Even the Biological Survey 
when considering a reduction in daily bag limits 
must of necessity base their conclusions upon in- 
formation obtained from observers in the field, 
as to the apparent supply of ducks rather than 
upon a highly theoretical analysis of national 
average daily bag limits. 
It will be obvious from the above that upon the 
basis of the general and accepted meaning of 
daily bag limits that state laws (which are con- 
trolling) permit a maximum of approximately 
23 ducks being killed per day per average duck 
hunter, in the entire United States. It is well and 
generally known that this is the basis of the pro- 
posed reduction in Federal limits from 25 down to 
15 per day, which has brought about this con- 
troversy. The 15 1/6 claimed in Bulletin No. 6, 
even upon the unusual reasoning, is not even 
legal, because the comparatively shorter state 
open seasons take precedence over the longer Fed- 
eral open seasons. Furthermore, altho the state- 
ments pertaining to average daily bag limits, 
would if state open seasons had been used in ob- 
taining them in place of Federal open seasons, 
have been technically correct from this unusual 
viewpoint, it is, to say the least, most unfair to 
use such methods of "reducing" figures, and then 
compare them with figures of daily bag limits 
which are based upon an entirely different but the 
generally accepted basis. 
Yet in spite of the above facts, Bulletin No. 6, 
in further criticisms of the suggested Bag Limit