EP 443. All Waterfowl Sanctuaries Are Created Equal–Or Are They?

The Importance of Sanctuaries for Waterfowl

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We all know, I think we do that sanctuary is important for waterfowl hunting. We want somewhere to kill ducks, but we also want somewhere for ducks to go that they ain’t getting shot at because they got to do ducky things in between the volleys, right? And all sanctuary is created equal, where is it? Here to help me answer that today is Ethan Dittmer, he just finished his master’s thesis at University of Arkansas, Monticello, under Dr. Osborne, Doug Osborne and Ethan, how the heck are you today? Thanks for joining us.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m doing great, I’m thankful to have a couple days of rest around Christmas and back at it once again.

Ramsey Russell: Are you a duck hunter yourself?

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, I’d call myself a duck hunter, probably a fair way to put it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And you were telling before we recorded about growing up a little bit, where you grew up, where did you grow up from? Not Arkansas.

Ethan Dittmer: No, not in Arkansas. I grew up in kind of North Central Illinois, on the Illinois river near Henry so growing up exposed to some duck and goose hunting, did a little bit of it myself, particularly the culture of the Illinois River, I was exposed to that intensively going to the decoy shows, museums in there. It was interesting and quite unique from other places I’ve been across the country.

Wildlife Management as a Career

Ramsey Russell: Why do you think you got into wildlife management, what drove you into this field as a career?

Ethan Dittmer: It’s kind of a long story, but a funny one I’ll try to tell as condensed as I could, growing up, I – My dad did hardwood floors, my mom owned a pottery store. And to be honest with you, even after my first semester of college, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a wildlife biologist, let alone a waterfowl biologist and kind of got lucky with decisions I made of where to go to school and eventually I ended up at Southern Ohio University, Carbondale and talked and got to work with Dr. Mike Eicholds down there and I started duck hunting on public lands about the same time that I arrived down there for school. And it worked out where I talked to Dr. Eicholds[**00:12:41] and he kind of mentored me and gave me some opportunities to do some waterfowl related research and have some jobs down there and once I realized it was possible to have a career doing waterfowl research, it’s a dream come true for me, there’s nothing else I’d rather do. So kind of stumbled into it and just tried to make the most of it that I can, I truly enjoy it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Did you grow up duck hunting?

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, we grew up duck hunting some public land, but not a ton of it. My dad eventually got a small wetland off the river through a tax sale and so in high school, my brother and I and some of my buddies would go there and mostly shoot wood ducks and shoot a couple mallards, but grew up doing some duck hunting, but it wasn’t really until my undergrad that I took it very seriously, particularly going after public land walking type hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Public land will – if you’re a public land duck hunter, you take it seriously. I think the public land duck hunters are some of the top duck hunters in the country. I personally think that it’s competitive, you have to scout, you have to put in the time, you have to play an A-game.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, it’s not, I mean, I love hunting public land. Nowadays, I hunt for waterfowl, 99% public lands and it’s part of the game. It’s fun to chase ducks and all but it’s kind of a fun component of the game, for me, at least, to deal with other people out there, just makes it a little bit more interesting at times.

Ramsey Russell: Do you think that growing up, like where you did in Illinois, there’s a lot of old, venerable historic clubs up there, mallard is king, unless you hunt on a river where divers are king. But do you believe there were some access issues? Do you think that there could be a limiting factor to young people getting into duck hunting? Is just having access to duck hunting?

Ethan Dittmer: Absolutely. And I will say my experience growing up in that area of Illinois, access was a serious issue for young people. My father did a little bit of waterfowl hunting, but it wasn’t like he had a boat or anything like that and we were kind of limited on where we could go, especially that area of Illinois, the river is just filled with private clubs and access is pretty tough as far as public land, especially without a boat and yeah, growing up in that area, it was, I mean, I think of high school and probably beginning of college. For younger people getting duck hunting, it’s nice to have places that you can walk into, maybe take a canoe and paddle into and for me, growing up, that just wasn’t really available. So definitely kind of an impediment, in my view, it’s nice to have some private land that you can go to when you’re younger. But for us, aside from goose fields, we just didn’t have that available, duck lands a high commodity in that area of the country.

Waterfowl Hunting Pressure Woes

Ramsey Russell: It really, the whole Mississippi Flyway is tough. There is some high quality public land, but there’s a lot of people using it. I hear a lot of people talk about there’s too many duck hunters and I read a statistic recently, there’s fewer than 1 million duck hunters in the United States of America, how in the world can there be so many duck hunters on the boat ramp in the morning if duck hunting is in such decline, according to duck stamp sales and things like that? I think it’s just because of loss of habitat, too. But throw a drought on top of it, like we’re going through right now and it’s tenfold. It’s a lot of people hunting a very small landscape now and access has become, even on public, has become daunting, has become difficult. I see some of these states, like state of Mississippi, some of the great properties have gone to draw and okay, so it keeps the quality good, Ethan, but what the heck, if I can’t get drawn that year, I can’t get drawn but once. That doesn’t make much of a duck hunting tradition, getting drawn once to go on a good duck hunt.

Ethan Dittmer: No, no. Yeah, I mean, you see it on social media a lot nowadays with the pressure, especially on public lands. I think there’s a number of factors that played into it, I’d say number one, in my view and some of the places, I know for a fact that pressure’s always been a thing on public lands with social media today, the perception of it is much different than it used to be because used to be back in the day, I mean, I didn’t know this growing up, but from people I’ve talked to, you were mostly familiar with your neck of the woods where you lived, at places you hunt nearby. Nowadays, you see videos from all across the country showing craziness happening on public lands, so perception aspect of it and then the technology available, nowadays, anyone can get Onyx and go look for public land all across the country and there’s boats and Utvs and access for public land hunters, as far as being able to go and find places to hunt, is much improved than what it was back in the day.

Holding Overwintering Waterfowl

 I think sanctuary as far as wintering waterfowl and I’ll say let’s focus on dabbling ducks, particularly mallards, is probably the most important aspects of modern day waterfowl management, mostly for the fact of there’s a lot of pressure on public and private lands.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I agree. I do agree. Speaking of hunting public land, I know a lot of the public land you hunted in grad school down in Arkansas, state and federal lands, they’re pretty big on sanctuaries down there. We’ve actually had Heath Hagy, who was a cooperator in your research, on here to talk about sanctuary. It seems to be a very important component of holding overwintering waterfowl in a geographic area and why do you think that sanctuary is important at all?

Ethan Dittmer: In my opinion, I think sanctuary as far as wintering waterfowl and I’ll say let’s focus on dabbling ducks, particularly mallards, is probably the most important aspects of modern day waterfowl management, mostly for the fact of there’s a lot of pressure on public and private lands. Ducks are smart, particularly mallards and they can find food where they need to find food at. The problem is I’m having a safe place to sit while they’re not finding their foods and these areas, especially in the wintering grounds down there in Arkansas, help to hold and support ducks in the area for the fall and winter. If you didn’t have places that did this and offered this safe area for them to rest during the daytime, they would continue to move around, it helps hold ducks in the local landscape. And yeah, I agree, it’s incredibly important today.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Any estimate of how much sanctuary acreage wise or relative percent wise there is in the deep south or in the state of Arkansas.

Ethan Dittmer: For the whole state of Arkansas, that probably be a heath question. I will say nearby public hunting areas, in my view and for example, my study area, the spatial sanctuary, that’s entirely closed to access by people. So it’s just mostly managed for ducks. And people can’t walk in there, they can’t hunt in there, make up single digit percentages of the waterfowl habitat within the area. So a very small amount, but incredibly important for what they are.

Ramsey Russell: It’s frustrating for a duck hunter sitting on a day that the ducks don’t fly for whatever reason, knowing that there’s gazillions of them sitting on a sanctuary somewhere. And I’ve actually, in the past, I’ve heard people say, well, we ought to shut down the sanctuaries, we ought to move the sanctuaries, we ought to do something to shake these ducks up a little bit and make them fly in front of the guns better. What are your thoughts on that?

Ethan Dittmer: I mean, I get the general idea of it, I don’t agree with it by any means. For example, if you have a sanctuary area that’s supporting a large number of ducks and let’s say someone decided to break some laws one morning or maybe for a couple mornings in a row and went in there and shot them up, kicked them all out, those ducks are going to leave and they’re going to find a new safe place. And so I get the frustration to an extent of knowing that, hey, we don’t have ducks in our area, but nearby, there’s 1000s of them sitting safe, resting. But if that area wasn’t there for them to sit and rest and they wouldn’t even be within the general vicinity of you to begin with, these areas help hold them in a geographic area for a longer duration than if they weren’t there. They’re smart, if they get shot at, especially for days in a row, they’re leaving and they’re not coming back.

Ramsey Russell: They don’t like pressure. They don’t like shotgun shot, they don’t like ATV’s, they don’t like – recently, Bradley Cohen was talking about they don’t like the appearance of a human figure. They know ducks say, whoa, those things kill me and they don’t like disturbance at all.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, I mean, eat just a little tidbit. I do, throughout my research, there’s been times where, whether it’s going to trap ducks or go look for a transmitter or something to that extent. I’ve had to walk nearby some sanctuaries to do some activities. You would think these ducks are in this area for weeks or maybe months, that, oh, they know it’s safe, they might not be too bothered by people. I’ve had ducks spot me on foot through trees, 100s, if not 1000s of yards away and they don’t like it. I’m not saying they leave and don’t come back, but they see you and some get up and they fly around and they move farther away. So, yeah, they don’t like pressure and they will deal with it if they have to.

Ramsey Russell: Ethan, what is the topic of your recently completed research down at University Arkansas, Monticello, with Doug Osborne?

Is All Waterfowl Sanctuary the Same?

There’s varying levels of it and it’s state to state basis. 

Ethan Dittmer: Generally, what we wanted to do was in that area of Arkansas, particularly on White River National Wildlife Refuge and the vicinity around it was deploy mallards with GPS transmitters and investigate how they use different types of public sanctuary, public hunt areas along with private lands. And so we did this project for 3 fall and winter periods and kind of what we wanted to learn was, one, how are ducks using those areas, both at a day versus nighttime level and then how it changes or evolves throughout the fall and winter and then after the duck season and get some results from that so that managers, particularly on state and federal areas in Arkansas as well as other winter areas for that predominantly support mallards can use that knowledge to design the layout of how they have hunt and sanctuary units within their wildlife management areas. And so it was really kind of a process to look at how our ducks are using it here in Arkansas and how can this knowledge be applied for management, both to improve what we’re offering for ducks and waterfowl habitat, as well as for public land hunters and hunters in general?

Ramsey Russell: How to say it this way, is all waterfowl sanctuary created equal? Because sanctuary is sanctuary is somewhere they can’t get shot at, it’s got to be good.

Ethan Dittmer: Absolutely not. There’s varying levels of it and it’s state to state basis. There’s some general themes of how states might apply sanctuary, but it’s kind of different from state to state and that’s another reason of why we did this project. It’s commonly applied on many state and federal waterfowl areas across the country. But there’s been very little research ever done to see how these different regiments of sanctuary influence duck behavior and that was another thing we want to do with this project, was provide some hard science to say, this is what we found and this is how you can apply this knowledge to management.

Ramsey Russell: What is sanctuary? How do you define sanctuary? Textbook definition of sanctuary.

Ethan Dittmer: Well, I don’t know if I can give you a sanctuary definition from a textbook. My definition –

Ramsey Russell: It seemed intuitive.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah. From a very basic level, because there’s levels of sanctuary for waterfowl sanctuary, it would be area or a regulation that’s made to limit disturbance, primarily from humans to waterfowl, ideally provide them safe opportunities to rest and forage. But to be clear, there’s different types of sanctuary and some are more conservative and some are more liberal with how it’s implemented and the effect that can have on ducks.

Ramsey Russell: All right. And that’s what I’m leading up to and I want to talk about, I’m just trying to draw the lines in which to color initially. So let’s talk about the different types of sanctuary that you all researched.

New Waterfowl Sanctuary Research

So it’s a huge fish and water service property and we looked at that refuge and then from around it, about 50 kilometer buffer all the way around that refuge and so within our study area, we have White River National Wildlife Refuge, Bayumeda, as well as the southern portion of Cash River National Wildlife Refuge.

Ethan Dittmer: Got you. So, like I’ve said, some of these sanctuary types are found throughout the country. Some are kind of more specific to Arkansas or the south, more in general. So what we looked at was White River National Wildlife Refuge was kind of the center of our study to give some context for people. It’s a huge refuge, it’s primarily made of a continuous track of bottom and hardwood forest. It’s about 45 miles long from north to south and it’s skinny to an extent. It’s about 160,000 acres and that comes out to about 250 square miles. So it’s a huge fish and water service property and we looked at that refuge and then from around it, about 50 kilometer buffer all the way around that refuge and so within our study area, we have White River National Wildlife Refuge, Bayumeda, as well as the southern portion of Cash River National Wildlife Refuge. And so within this landscape and there’s some general themes with how sanctuary and public hunting are implemented by the state and the Fish & Wildlife Service. I guess we’ll start with spatial sanctuary. These are areas that are on state federal property for our study that are entirely closed to public access. And so they’re managed for waterfowl habitat and people can’t duck on in there, they can’t even step foot in there. They’re just entirely left be for waterfowl. I guess this would be more for the federal system. Some state areas have seen provided as well, we also had within our study areas, inviolate sanctuary. And so like I said, it’s most prevalent in the Fish & Wildlife Service system. These are places where migratory bird hunting is not allowed, but other forms of recreation are allowed. So, for example, you can’t hunt migratory birds in these areas, but you might be able to deer hunts or run hounds for raccoons or just walk. So it allows some forms of human recreation, but no migratory bird hunting. And then we also had daily hunt areas, these rivers we defined as public land where people can go and hunt every day of the week, but hunting closed at noon or 01:00 p.m. daily, that’s something that’s kind of more particular to Arkansas, within our study area, they allow hunting every day of the week, but the hunting stops at 12:00 or 01:00 p.m. and duck hunters have to exit the water. Some of these places might allow for non duck hunting activities in the afternoon, but for the most part, duck hunting is closed at 12:00 or 01:00 and duck hunters have to leave the water, so the afternoons are left presumably available for ducks. And then we also had some areas where we define as intermittent hunt areas. So they allow duck hunting for 3 or 4 days a week on a schedule. And so you might be able to hunt Monday, Wednesday, Friday and the rest of the days of the week, hunting is not allowed for ducks. And those were kind of the public lands layouts we looked at within our study area and then we also had private lands. One of the things that proves to be very difficult to these type of studies is there is sanctuary on private lands, but it’s nearly impossible to define and so for our study, we had these different public hunt and sanctuary areas that we delineated out, but private lands was everything else and that was kind of the layout of what we looked at within our study.

Ramsey Russell: How do state sanctuaries differ from federal sanctuaries? I’ll start with that, but then I want to know how public, excuse me, private sanctuaries differ from institutional sanctuaries.

Ethan Dittmer: So state and federal and this is kind of a opinion of mine, both from what I saw in Arkansas as well or other parts of the country. In my view, they’re generally implemented the same, depending on the type of sanctuary they are and particularly for the Fish & Wildlife Service. In my view, they generally have more sanctuary on their properties than some of the state areas. But that’s often a factor, in my opinion, because the Fish & Wildlife service properties are bigger than the state areas. So in general, I would say the Fish & Wildlife Service provides more sanctuary than most of the state sites, but they’re often implemented the same. And then private lands, like I said, it’s a hard thing to get really fine scale about, because you could have duck clubs, for example, that have specific areas they set aside for sanctuary or maybe they stop their hunting at noon and the afternoons are set aside for a form of temporal sanctuary. So in those duck clubs, it’s hard, one, you’d have to contact all of them to find out, okay, where are your sanctuary areas and what type of sanctuary do you treat it at? Which might be a feat that’s accomplishable. The thing that really makes it hard is ducks will also use private lands that people might not even think of as being duck habitat. So, for example, it could be a farm ponds in the middle of a pasture that ducks might use a sanctuary, but no one even thinks about hunting it. It’s just an area set aside that no one hunts, but the ducks might use it for sanctuary and so that’s kind of the thing with looking at private lands, it’s hard to really get at the sanctuary aspect of it just because of how vast it is compared to some of the public areas.

Ramsey Russell: And how did mallards utilize all the different types of habitat? Like, how do they utilize sanctuary? Is it just somewhere to go and rest? Is it just somewhere to go and find respite from getting shot at?

Ethan Dittmer: So, we saw a couple of things, I guess I’ll start with, I guess, a little bit about kind of how we design the projects. So, like I said, it was focused on White River National Wildlife Refuge. And what we did is we picked 4 spatial sanctuaries on the refuge, kind of spread from north to south. So again, it’s 45 miles long. So these were north to south 4 spatial sanctuaries where we deployed GPS transmitters on mallards at. And we did this primarily, the majority of our birds were put out before duckling season open in Arkansas and then we looked at their use of the landscape from that point until into or the end of February. And so some general themes we can get into specifics if you want, later. But generally speaking, what we found is the mallards preferred to use spatial sanctuary during the day, during the duck hunting season. At night, though, they preferred to use private lands even more so than they did spatial sanctuary. So the biggest theme of what we saw overall throughout the study and not looking at kind of a week by week basis, was daytime mallard selecting for spatial sanctuary, that’s where they like to be and at nighttime, they preferred to be on private lands, more so than spatial sanctuary. It’s not in our recent publication, that’s from my thesis, we also looked at, with the same data, the habitat type they were using both during the day and at night and some other general themes kind of played into this was daytime, when there are these spatial sanctuaries, their daytime habitat use was predominantly, for the most part selection for forested woody wetlands. At nighttime, though, they were going for flooded rice fields, they were selecting for flooded rice fields at night, 16% greater than their availability and overall, throughout the entire winter period of our study, they used rice fields at nights for 33% of their flights. And so it was kind of a flip flop of daytime, spatial sanctuary, woody wetlands. Nighttime, private lands, predominantly flooded rice fields.

Sunrise & Sunset: Mallard Movement

Ramsey Russell: During the daytime, when the guns are out, I’m going where I’m not getting shot at. I’ve got vertical structure to hide in after dark, boom, I’m hitting the buffet. The gunner at camp having tidies and I’m out there in the rice field, there’s something interesting that, I don’t know if there’s a dumb question or not, but I’ve asked plenty of dumb questions in my life. Say shooting time ends at 05:30 and starts at 06:35, what hours were they hitting those rice fields? Was there a peak time they were hitting it?

Ethan Dittmer: So the predominance with our analysis, we looked at, we were taking hourly GPS locations, but for our analyses we looked at of those GPS locations, which ones were associated with flights, so movements greater than 250 meters. For analysis, we weren’t interested in GPS location, let’s say, for example, at 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. to noon, where that bird didn’t move, we looked at from an hour to an hour basis the movements that were associated with flights where these birds actually made a decision to leave where they were at and go somewhere else. And so it was very clear across the 3 years of our study that these mallards were flying around sunrise and sunsets with huge peaks. They made up the vast majority of our flights and our analyses and were associated with obviously the greatest movements. So, yeah, throughout the time, it was super clear, sunrise, sunset, that’s when the mallards were making their movements.

Ramsey Russell: How far were they flying sometimes to go and hit these rice fields?

Ethan Dittmer: In our study area, on average, daytime flights. So around sunrise and the nighttime flight around sunset was about 3000 meters. That’s what we found and generally fits with what most people find for mallards. But I will also say –

Ramsey Russell: A mile and a half.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, the landscape context kind of in my view, dictates a lot of how long a flight these birds will have to make. For example, in my opinion, with mallards, what I’ve seen overall, as well as studies from other parts of the country, they’ll try to fly the shortest they can to have safety during the day and if they need to feed at night, they’ll try to position themselves to close as possible. But if need be, as far as where safety is and where food is, they will fly farther if they have to.

Ramsey Russell: You say they prefer spatial sanctuary over temporal sanctuary, but hunting a rice field at night is temporal sanctuary.

Ethan Dittmer: Yes, but I mean, to an extent, I will say that mallards are at, I’m a duck hunter, I’ve duck hunter before this project, I knew mallards were smart, but to see the level of repetition that they will show, I mean, rice fields where I’d have a mallard or even multiple mallards go to the same pattern, they’ll leave at the same time and go there at nights for days and weeks and even a month straight every single day. And so, yeah, I guess you could say it’s a form of temporal sanctuary, but they know and through their own experience, if they go out to that rice field at night, there’s no people out there. They know it’s safe and they know that the people show up with the guns in the morning and they get on out of there. We didn’t have many mallards, in the grand scheme of things, shot during our study, but the most common theme that I saw of when did our GPS mallards get harvested? It was when they made a mistake and they made a flight either too early or a little bit too late and they got harvested.

Private vs. Public Waterfowl Sanctuaries

Did you notice any difference in management of those areas?

Ramsey Russell: Did you notice any difference in the different sanctuary types state versus fed versus private. Did you notice any difference in management of those areas? Like my past experiences with federal sanctuaries were permanent or semi permanent water with a blue goose sign around it, don’t hunt here, that’s it. It was passive management and the safety component, the non disturbance component, seemed to take precedence over any other habitat variable. What was our benefit? So did you see any difference in that or did you see that mallard would utilize areas that were managed differently than others, all things equal, don’t shoot me here?

Ethan Dittmer: So we didn’t specifically evaluate management regime as part of the study, but to give some context, I mean, this part of the country predominantly and this is a somewhat overgeneralization, but predominantly, what you’re looking at for habitat type for mallards is forested areas. So this could be bottomland hardwood forest or cypress swamps and then flooded agriculture. There’s some moist soil mixed in there and other management practice, but you’re predominantly looking at flooded forests and flooded agriculture. And so in this part of the country, most of the public lands within our study area are comprised of Bobland Hogwarts forests. And so they provide nutrients for mallards, but not the same density as flooded agriculture. And so one of the things I suspect with our research was mallards are chasing 2 things, they’re chasing safety and they’re chasing food. So if they can find their safety on the public areas that have sanctuary in these forested areas during the daytime, that’s what they’ll do. And at nighttime, they’ll leave those areas and they’ll go to private lands to find flooded agriculture at night. And so that probably played a part into our study overall was kind of the landscape itself as a whole and kind of how food and safety was laid out within the area.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’m getting up to your results, finally, but here’s where I can’t get my mind wrapped around. When I think of sanctuary, I think of inviolate and spatial and temporal space, this space is set aside for the entire season, temporal is set aside for part of the season, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays or something like that. But what’s the difference in spatial versus inviolate? I’m just –

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, spatial versus inviolate. Spatial is an area where it’s delineated and the public cannot enter, the public can’t go in there, it’s set aside and in our case, it’s managed for waterfowl habitat, so it’s inundated. Inviolate Sanctuary is typically associated with the federal system and migratory bird hunting is excluded. And so you can’t hunt migratory birds, but you’re often allowed to deer hunts or walk through it, maybe even run dogs and hounds for raccoons. So it provides forms of human recreation, but no migratory bird hunting. And like I said, it’s mostly found with federal refuges and it’s a component of how they were initially established. Some of these areas have mandates for how much waterfowl sanctuary they have to offer and that’s a way for them to offer migratory bird sanctuary while still allowing uses for the public.

Ramsey Russell: And they do, they’re under a mandate to allow some form of public use, consumptive use. Did you notice any difference between an area that had zero human entry versus limited cane[**00:44:21] hunt duck, but you can still enter it? Did you all see any differences in those types of sanctuary?

Spatial Sanctuaries vs. Inviolate Sanctuaries

 And we constricted that availability only to inundated areas using surface water coverage and that helped us look at not just the landscape as a whole of what mallards used and what mallards could have used, but more specifically, what was inundated and likely truly available to mallards.

Ethan Dittmer: Yes. So that would be comparing, for example, our spatial sanctuaries versus season inviolate sanctuaries. So the ducks preferred the spatial sanctuaries overall. They did use the inviolate sanctuary, but they didn’t select for it. So that means that what was available for them to use, they didn’t use it more so than what was available to them, they used it less than that. So while they used it, they technically avoided it, that’s part of our analysis. Another thing I’ll throw out there right now, a cool component of our analysis of we used for our availability of looking at, well, here’s where the mallards made their flights and went to our observed flights, we also sampled available flights. So here’s where the mallards theoretically could have flown to. And we constricted that availability only to inundated areas using surface water coverage and that helped us look at not just the landscape as a whole of what mallards used and what mallards could have used, but more specifically, what was inundated and likely truly available to mallards.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. Now I’m going to get into this temporal deal, because my own camp, we use temporal and it’s not purely temporal, I mean, we don’t hunt ducks in certain areas on certain days, but there’s still deer traffic running around and it may be a few hundred yards removed, but nonetheless, it’s some form of disturbance. And I noticed in your research that spatial inviolate versus temporal, there was a marked difference in the way mallards utilized those 2 different habitats. What were the final results of that?

Ethan Dittmer: So they preferred the spatial sanctuary and they avoided those – I think you’re referring to the intermittent hunting areas that allowed for like 3 or 4 days a week.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what I think of as temporal. Yeah.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah. So they avoided those areas. They used them less than their availability and certainly, compared to spatial sanctuary, they avoided them. Generally, it’s taken some conclusions from our research, but we ran our analyses through the end of February. So duck season closed this the last day of January. It took about 2 weeks for mallards to start using areas that they previously avoided during the duck cutting season after close. So you get into 2 weeks into February, duck hunting seasons close, then they start using private lands during the day or previously during the duck hunting season, obviously, they weren’t doing that. And so what we kind of found as long as, well, with previous research, the idea of having a couple day, a 3 day closure, likely is not enough to influence mallards to make a decision to view the area safe, it needs to be measured, a closure in weeks rather than days, probably about 2 weeks.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. That conflict with some research done in Mississippi where for – And the scope of that research was trying to balance public use with sanctuary. And I think they found a sweet spot at around 4 days, like every 5th day, I could hunt this property and get a fairly good result again. But you saw something totally different.

Ethan Dittmer: Yes, we saw that different. I’m not exactly familiar with the study was. Do you know if it was using GPS transmitters?

Ramsey Russell: I do not. I don’t know at all.

Ethan Dittmer: Got you. Because some people ask me about this research of, I guess this is overall. Well, have you found this? And how do ducks get shot? And one thing I always remind people, so a couple of points of we’re looking at mallards that arrived in Arkansas, their historic wintering areas, early in the season. We’re not looking at mallards that are coming down in late December, January. We’re looking at mallards that came here early and this is where they’re staying at and so some other sanctuary regimes, for example, is having a 3 day or 4 day closure. It’s better than nothing and it might prove beneficial, particularly for birds that are coming into the landscape that weren’t there previously. If they can find a wetland that for that time period is not being hunted, they might use it until it’s hunted. But as far as birds that are in an area and they’re staying there for the whole winter, we found, as well as previous research weeks rather than days to influence ducks to make these decisions.

Ramsey Russell: That really does make a lot of sense, Ethan. It really does, cause a lot of these late migrational pushes, a clipper blows through in late December, early January, it’s almost like those birds are like the tide coming in, the wave coming in, then it’s washing back at, it’s going to stay on that thermocline. He’s not sticking. He’s going to come in on a wave and retreat as soon as – and I think of last Christmas and the deep south, it was single digits or less and on Christmas, but by New Year’s it would have warmed again and the birds were pretty much gone. We still had the same bird, that it showed up early. Everything else was backed off.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah. The repetitive movements that they show is truly impressive. I mean, one of the things that really surprised me most about this research was the fact that these public hunters close hunting around noon every day. And so I mean, I expected begin with that, okay, they close hunting at noon, it would make sense, logically. If duck hunting closes at noon, public hunt areas, that mallards would start to use those same hunt areas either in the afternoon or maybe at sunset, because there’s no hunting there. I mean, it closes at noon. So, theoretically, a mallard can fly there at 01:00 p.m. or sunset to use that area for the night and leave. And another interesting thing we found is that they did not do that, those new enclosures did not seem to influence the behavior of mallards within our study area, particularly on these hunting or these public hunt areas and the overall, I mean, 2 ways to look at that, one, if we would have had mallard select for public hunt areas at night, we would have seen that in our model results. Another thing that I spoke about earlier was the time of flights that mallards were making, it was sunrise and sunset clearly throughout our entire study, one would think, well, if these public hunt areas closing hunting at noon was having an influence, you at least see ducks fly around noon, maybe a little bit more in the afternoon, but we simply didn’t see that. And so, once again, it kind of a management regime, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. But kind of the view I have on it of public lands closing hunting at noon, if you take a step back and think about it, it pretty much cuts a public land duck hunters season in half right off the bat, because they aren’t allowed to hunt in the afternoon. And so that was something we found and something, I hope, that’s implemented on some public areas in the future of maybe instead of closing duck hunting at noon, let it run the whole day, but provide more spatial sanctuary on the area out of a counterbalance.

Increased Opportunity for Public Land Duck Hunters

Ramsey Russell: That would be a change, a major change from current management systems, I see exactly what you’re saying. If I’m on a WMA or refuge, allow me to hunt all day because the ducks go move morning and evening, oh, I can sit there all day long and drink coffee and B’s and solve world problems midday and may catch a duck or 2, but it’s going to be that early and late flight, but then increase the sanctuary component within the area.

Ethan Dittmer: Absolutely. That would be my hope of how some of this stuff is implemented, mostly because I think it provides significantly more opportunity for public land duck hunters. Not even as far as how many hours a day you can hunt, but, man, if you’re driving, you’re driving a couple hours to go hunt, it’s a lot easier to do that in the afternoon as compared to do that at sunrise in the morning.

Ramsey Russell: Is there a perfect sanctuary type? I mean, I know people that plant rice, I know people that plant corn, I know people that plant moist soil. I know that there’s areas on public especially, that are, like you say, green timber or cypress or sloughs or button bush. But is there a best type for me to hold and attract ducks to my area?

 Best Type of Land to Hold and Attract Ducks to My Area

So that’s probably the key, it needs to be a true safe place where these ducks are undisturbed, whether actually in the wetlands or what they can see on the edges and outside of the wetland. The other thing I’ll throw in there, of what I’ve seen both in Arkansas and other parts of the country is that during the daytime, mallards really like to have some vertical cover to sit in.

Ethan Dittmer: I can give you an opinion, I would say an informed opinion on it right off the bat, you want an area that’s safe and not disturbed. So that doesn’t just mean that it’s not hunted, but you aren’t driving past it every day, there’s not people walking past it every day, it’s not near a building where you’re walking out in front of every day. So that’s probably the key, it needs to be a true safe place where these ducks are undisturbed, whether actually in the wetlands or what they can see on the edges and outside of the wetland. The other thing I’ll throw in there, of what I’ve seen both in Arkansas and other parts of the country is that during the daytime, mallards really like to have some vertical cover to sit in. I don’t know exactly why, my suspicion is to keep hidden from aerial predators, because, man, some of the disturbance I’ve seen as of late from hawks and eagles is truly impressive on some of these sanctuaries. And so they really like to have some type of vertical cover, whether that’s flooded trees or button bush or just really thick vegetation, I think that’s another important component of it. And the third thing I’d throw in there is, like I said, to begin with, you’re looking for safety. So that’s the overarching thing you’re looking for of a sanctuary, is true safety in undisturbed areas, it’d be nice to have food for them as well within these areas. I’m not saying it needs to be the just corn or rice or pure agriculture, but some type of food, whether it comes from moist soil or maybe some planted stuff, but something that allows them to feed during the day so they don’t have to chase their food at nights.

Ramsey Russell: Okay, I’m going back to the public land proposal, you’ve got that we maybe consider hunting all day because once this area is defined by the ducks as, okay, this is a hunting area, they’re not going to utilize it. So if I quit at noon, I might as well go till 05:00. They’re not going to really prefer to use these areas. How long into the season did it take for those ducks to respond? I’m assuming you were monitoring some of your marked mallards, you could see them out there on the terrain in October, early November. Were they utilizing some of these hunting areas before the first shot went off? And if so, how long into the season before they said, I’m going to avoid this area?

Ethan Dittmer: So, in general, what we saw was when we first put these ducks out, there’s a short acclimation period to the transmitter, probably a few days for them to get used to stuff. But it was right off the bat, I mean, into, I’m looking at it right now, about the end of November is when they started doing private land selection at night.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Ethan Dittmer: But there is some signs beforehand –

Ramsey Russell: One week, in the state of Arkansas that gives them about one week, about 5 days shooting days and they’re like, I get it, at least survivor said that.

What to Avoid Before Duck Hunting Season Starts

So there’s some disturbance going on even before the duck cutting season starts.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah. Another thing to think about, too, is even though the duck hunting season starts when it does in Arkansas, on a lot of these private lands, I mean, people are out caught, not that they mean to, but causing disturbance during the day before the duck hunting season starts. They’re pumping water, they’re brushing blinds, they’re driving through fields and all that stuff. So even the duck hunting season starting is clearly the biggest change for these ducks, before it even begins people are out there doing a ton of management activities, primarily during the day. So there’s some disturbance going on even before the duck cutting season starts.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you read my mind because I was just fixing to ask your thoughts about the 2 week and it is turned into an intense event, now, the 2 week white front season preceding duck season, if that was having a notable effect on duck behavior.

Ethan Dittmer: To be honest with you, we didn’t truly evaluate it.

Ramsey Russell: What are your thoughts? I mean, if you can have an opinion.

Ethan Dittmer: Potentially, but I would say that for the most part, a lot of that white front hunting is taking place away and not directly on the same areas that people are hunting mallards at. I know there’s probably some overlap, but for the most part, it’s different types of areas. So my suspicion would be it probably doesn’t have, it’s not like it’s the end of the world, I wouldn’t be too worried about it as far as influencing duck behavior, especially with, like I just said, I mean, if you’re worried about that, there’s people before duck season doing disturbance as is on their waterfowl hunting areas, brushing blinds, pumps, all that type of stuff.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, what effect do you think the drought is having on waterfowl? Because, I mean, I’ve seen the pictures, I’ve seen videos coming from a lot of old Arkansas hunts, from breaks, from cypress breaks, I’m saying, from floated timber, there’s not a lot of water on the landscape. What are your thoughts ducks are doing this season with so little places to go and not get shot?

Ethan Dittmer: Certainly, likely being very concentrated and in a dry year in particular, I would view these sanctuary areas as being particularly important for ducks, both for the ducks as a whole, but also to keep them within a general geographical area. For the most part, most of the federal and state areas within our study area in Arkansas, the spatial sanctuaries either have permanent water on them or they’re areas that are easy to pump and get water on. And so these areas, I mean, they likely have water on them this year, I’m not down there, but that’s my assumption from the past and so, probably critically important for ducks this time of year to provide a safe place for them and keep them within the area.

Ramsey Russell: We all know the ducks are still up north, we’re recording the week between Thanksgiving and New year’s and we still haven’t had a major weather event to push ducks, but I was telling somebody earlier today, thank goodness for the ducks. They would be standing on top of each other 10 ducks deep if they all showed up right now. There’s just not a lot of water on the landscape in the deep south. What did you – I asked you about the initial response of waterfowl to hunting? We established somewhere around the first week, they start going to their nocturnal pattern on private lands. What about after the season? What happens after the season end, then what the duck do?

Ethan Dittmer: So if we’re looking at during the duck hunting season, some general themes just to keep it fresh, we’re looking at predominantly selecting spatial sanctuary at day, private lands at night, avoiding pretty much everything else. So they’re avoiding the different types of public hunt areas as well as the different types of sanctuary. Now, we look at duck hunting season ending and we go about 2 weeks after that, so mid February, our mallard started selecting for private lands during the daytime, as well as daily hunt public areas during the day. And so these are, in my view, the most risky areas for mallards, private lands and public daily hunt areas. So you go about 2 weeks after the duck hunting season ends and they started selecting for these places over spatial sanctuary. And so, yeah, when the season ends.

Ramsey Russell: That’s where the food is.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, that’s where the food is and I think it would be reasonable to assume and this is, again, an assumption that mallards would prefer to feed during the day than at night if they had the choice. That’s kind of an assumption of mine and it’s certainly what we found after the duck cutting season ended, 2 weeks, they’re used in private lands, public daily hunting areas during the daytime, while previously during the duck hunting season, you would not see that at all.

Ramsey Russell: I love that question because, I love the answer because so many people to this day know they duck season ends, they go home, they lick their wounds, they hose off their 4 wheels or whatever, do some honey dos, they got to go back and clean up camp, they show back up to their properties and it’s wall to wall ducks. Well, the ducks just showed up and I’ve heard people recently, as 2 weeks ago, proposing out loud that we have a duck season that runs into February. Let’s go into Valentine’s, let’s go into March, that’s when the ducks are showing up, they’re coming late, but that’s a prime example of my antidotal observations not reconciling with what’s really happening, is it?

Ethan Dittmer: It’s like I said, without seeing the GPS data like I have and others have, I could see why you would think that during the duck hunting season, you don’t see ducks around a ton during the day, aside from extreme weather events and stuff like that. After it ends, they’re all over the place, but they’re there, you just, they’re hiding in places that they don’t want to be seen at it. It’s truly incredible to see that not only these designated sanctuary that they’ll use during duck hunting season, but their ability to find places sometimes on private land that you would not think a duck would want to be at. If there’s not people there and they can find it, they will use just about anything they can find. Last week I was chasing a transmitter bird here in Kansas, trying to just get an idea of what it was up to. I’d seen every day it was bouncing between daytime, a 40 yard by a 20 yard cattle ponds, tiny little ponds and at night it was going to a large duck club and so I was just, well, it’s done this for about 2 weeks in a row, I want to go see what’s going on with it. I pull up on the gravel road next to the pond, I can’t see into it and I’m getting ready to get up on the hood of my truck with a scope to look in and just as I’m about ready to get out of my truck, I roll my windows down, I hear a bunch of mallards beating in there, making some noise, a big truck comes by with no exhaust and kicks up 500 plus mallards out of a 40 yard by 20 yard ponds in the middle of nowhere, tiny little ponds. And so their ability to find these safe areas is, I mean, truly impressive and when they do, they like them, they like using them repetitively.

Temporal Sanctuaries: Relying on Where I Hunt

Otherwise, once you start shooting nearby, what, you have a sanctuary, if it’s too close and they don’t feel safe, they’re going to get on out of there. 

Ramsey Russell: Wow. A note I’d made, previously that I forgot to ask, the average duck club, the average landowner that can only do some temporal, he doesn’t he can only do some form of temporal sanctuary. What about – is there an ideal distance relative to my property, that existing sanctuary exist? Does that make sense? I know you said those ducks move about a mile and a half on average, but how close can I utilize other geographic sanctuaries near where I hunt to my benefit?

Ethan Dittmer: It’s a hard answer to give. The best thing I would say is they, it can be close. I’ve been on some sanctuaries where I’m in the sanctuary, there’s 1000s of ducks out in front of me and less than 150 yards from me, there’s public lands, open hunting where people are shooting ducks at. But between that area is a small river and 2 blocks of timber. And so it, in my view, it can be close, but there needs to be a true level of separation for the ducks to know this area is safe, this area is not. Otherwise, once you start shooting nearby, what, you have a sanctuary, if it’s too close and they don’t feel safe, they’re going to get on out of there. And so I believe they can be close, ideally not, you want to have as much distance and separation as possible, but it can be closed. So ideally, though, I’d say you’re probably looking for something around what their flight distance is, but it certainly can be closer, as long as there’s a true form of separation for them.

Ramsey Russell: Their flight distance can be more than a mile and a half. I just, I never, ever will forget. Many years ago, working for Fish & Wildlife Service and some GPS, mallards landed on federal property in the North Mississippi Delta and I would have guessed they’re just going to fly a mile and a half, 2 miles away to some of the ag fields out nearby. But they’ve demonstrated that those particular, that mallard cohort was flying due west to the Mississippi River, crossing the river, going up the white river and dying in the fields of Stuttgart, Arkansas, 45 miles away. That just blew everything, I mean, all the habitat they must have flown over between that particular sanctuary and Stuttgart is just mind blowing.

Ethan Dittmer: Absolutely. From our study, it’s and again, that’s the average. So about 3000 meters was their morning and nighttime flight distance, there’s exceptions to that and a big component of it is, I mean, it’s a couple of things. One, it’s the landscape composition. So how far away is the food from the safety, that’s going to drive a lot of how far their flights are. Another big thing, in my opinion of these daily flights that they’re making, there’s a big difference between a duck that’s in a established routine, so he has the safety, he has his food and he’s going back and forth day after day after day versus a duck that’s moved to a new landscape and is trying to establish that pattern. When they’re trying to establish that pattern, they definitely might be flying much more so on a daily basis because they’re in search of safety and foods. But yeah, it’s variable how far their flights can be, certainly especially when they’re on the move, stuff changes and they do some really crazy things at times.

Ramsey Russell: What were some of the biggest surprises you found in your research?

Ethan Dittmer: Biggest surprises I found, that shocked me was one, their non use of these public hunt areas in the afternoon and nights because they close hunting and get people off the water around noon or 01:00 p.m. I was surprised, to say the least, that ducks weren’t using these areas in the afternoon, let alone at night, so that was a big one and then I say the other thing and I don’t really know if I put it as surprise or more so of just a level of respect of the repetitive nature that they can show when they’re in an area. I’m saying they sit in the same spot in the sanctuary during the day, go to the same field at night for days and weeks and up to a month straight and their routine and repetitive nature, and the small area they truly use within a landscape once they’ve been there for a while is incredible. I mean, when you’re out duck hunting, you see ducks flying all over the place, so it’s interesting to see, well, here’s a bird that we have a GPS transmitter on and it’s been in an area since maybe before duck hunting season started. Well, that’s probably not one of those ducks that you see just flying around looking for somewhere to land because they know what they’re doing and so the repetitive nature was very surprising to me to see.

Ramsey Russell: They really don’t use the entire landscape, do they? I mean, I can just remember talking to Doug Osborne a few years ago and he described a hen wigeon being shot 3 years later within 7ft of where it was initially banded. That’s crazy that it could have gone anywhere, but it didn’t, it died 3 years later, 7ft from where he had put a band on it.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, it’s really interesting to me to look at just within the landscape. I mean, we all know that there’s at least in the vast majority of the country, there’s less wetlands than other type of habitats around, but there’s wetlands and there’s ponds scattered around and I always kind of assume that ducks, yeah, they might have some patterns, but they’re flying around there in search of areas to feed and rest at throughout the day. But, yeah, the level of detail they use in their selection of areas to actually land at is incredible and quite repetitive, that’s the thing. I know I’ve stressed it a bunch, but the repetitive nature of stuff was shocking.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it’s a very interesting research. Did, when you were a little boy hunting up in Illinois, did you ever see yourself doing this? I mean like, as a former wildlife major, what I enjoyed most about my whole career was actually being in where you are with it right now. Just being able to go out and catch the duck and put my hands on them and God, we could only have dreamed all those years ago about sitting back and looking at a computer and seeing like a James Bond movie where those ducks were and how they were behaving during the day, that’s amazing stuff.

Ethan Dittmer: I mean, growing up, like I said at the beginning, I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a wildlife biologist. I just wasn’t exposed to it growing up or in school and I had no idea that this would be the route my life took. But I’m very happy with it, I truly enjoy what I do and it’s awesome. I mean, I love hunting ducks, but if you told me if I had to pick Ethan, do you want to be able to hunt ducks for the rest of your life or do you want to be able to do GPS research with ducks? I probably would pick the GPS research.

Ramsey Russell: Come on.

Ethan Dittmer: Not that I’d want to, but it’s awesome. I really like it and we can learn a lot from it. Not that some of the older methodology that was used were before you had this advanced GPS technology didn’t provide good information. The information that can be provided from today’s technology is incredible, absolutely incredible.

Ramsey Russell: How many of your study mallards bit the dust, got shot by hunters?

Ethan Dittmer: Off the top of my head, I believe out of 105 who put out 10 were harvested throughout and that’s from fall and winter of 2019, 2020, 2021 spread across those. So 3 duck seasons we had 10 harvested out of 105.

Ramsey Russell: Were your 105 ducks that you all trapped? How did you know that they were like the early season, Arkansas mallards, the Halloween mallards versus the other ones. It’s just the time of the year that you caught them.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, that’s the time of year we caught them and again, it’s kind of a, if I want to say, an assumption, but if we’re catching mallards breed that hunting season in Arkansas, which about, I think, 60% of that 105 we deployed before the duck hunting season started, reasonable assumption they’re early migrators. Now, whether that’s that they’re early migrators because of something to do with their biology, I’m not sure or if there was a strong weather event that just pushed down the bulk of mallards, that’s another idea about it. And some of our mallards that we caught were, I think, our latest deployment, we had some the first week of December, but for the most part, most of our ducks were put out before the season started.

Ramsey Russell: What or how will your research be built on? What next regards this particular research project? What are the future research needs to continue on with what you started on this particular research project?

Sanctuary Configurations for Waterfowl Management

Say I did this project and what you’re asking me right now, what else needs to be looked at in regards to sanctuary from a management perspective, I’d be really interested and I think Brad Cohen’s working on some of this right now of, within a landscape, can we configure spatial sanctuary to influence ducks to move between them both throughout the season and maybe even during the day.

Ethan Dittmer: So I guess I’ll answer it from my view. Let’s say I did this project and what you’re asking me right now, what else needs to be looked at in regards to sanctuary from a management perspective, I’d be really interested and I think Brad Cohen’s working on some of this right now of, within a landscape, can we configure spatial sanctuary to influence ducks to move between them both throughout the season and maybe even during the day? So right now, kind of what we have in most of the country and particularly in Arkansas, is the spatial sanctuaries are super small but they’re not particularly close apart. And so what you have is ducks using a particular, very small sanctuary during the day for the whole season and at night going to private lands and for the most part, the same little area of private land for the entire season. I’d be really interested to see what the size and distance of spatial sanctuaries need to be and if it’s possible to have them spread across the landscape to influence more movements by mallards between these areas, both on the daily level and throughout the duck cutting season as a whole.

Ramsey Russell: Right now, I’m envisioning, okay, a monopoly board and I’ve got a sanctuary kind of over don’t pass go or at the go button. It’s a big block and somewhere along in your published paper, I read that there may be more hunting opportunities by making them smaller and spreading them more like a checkerboard across the landscape. And that’s what you all are looking at now?

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, I’m not doing that research. I believe that Brad Cohen’s looking at some of that at Tennessee Tech. But that’s a, I’d say it’s a reasonable assumption of what we saw from our research that we did of the idea of having a large sanctuary area is great for ducks, but probably not the best for hunters, particularly on public lands, because if it’s a huge block sanctuary, they might only have to fly into that sanctuary at day and the only other times they fly are outside of hunting hours. And so the idea of having these smaller blocks of spatial sanctuary spread around, at least at some point during the day or during the morning or the evening, ducks will fly over areas open to hunting and duck hunters could call them in or at least have the opportunity to have these ducks.

Ramsey Russell: They would fly just to stretch your wings, because based on your research we’re talking about them being pretty crepuscular to borrow from one of those words. I just remembered flying early, flying late. But maybe if the sanctuary were scattered differently among the landscape, they would just get up and stretch their wings to go from this sanctuary to another sanctuary to another sanctuary.

Ethan Dittmer: I mean, potentially and that would be, if there is, that hasn’t been evaluated. But it’d be really cool to see, like I said, if you could scatter these areas around. So if they know that they have safety within the local vicinity that they can fly to throughout the day, it’d be awesome to be able to see if we could influence them to make more midday movements between these areas. And still another thing about them flying at morning and dusk predominantly, at least during these flights, if, let’s say you have spatial sanctuary, let’s just ballpark think of it in the middle and then around that has public hunting opportunities. At least those ducks, when they fly to or from that spatial sanctuary, will be flying over areas that are open for public hunting. So if they fly a little bit too early or a little bit too late, maybe someone could call good enough or have a nice enough decoy spread where these ducks would at least fly over areas where there’s hunting opportunity and maybe potentially be available to the hunters.

Ramsey Russell: That makes perfect sense. What next for Ethan Dittmer? What now? You’ve created some great research. We’ve now learned that all waterfowl sanctuaries are not in fact created equal. So what next for Ethan? What are you going to do now?

Ethan Dittmer: Currently, so I graduated University of Arkansas, Monticello with Dr. Osborne last December and this January, this past January, I started a PhD program at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and the project I’m doing now is with Mark Vrtiska at University of Nebraska, Lincoln and Jay VonBank with USGS. And we’re doing a GPS mallard project in Southeast Kansas and so we’re looking at a variety of things, but this was our first field season that we’ve wrapped up. We’re deploying GPS transmitters on mallards on public areas in Southeast Kansas during the fall and winter and generally put we’re looking for some information on the overall ecology of mallards that use Southeast Kansas. There’s some more specific objectives, but generally that’s how I’d put it as far as habitat selection and movements within the region and out of the region and we have 2 more field seasons to go for the project. So for the foreseeable future, this is what I’ll be working on.

Ramsey Russell: That’s great, Ethan. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy studies to come on and explain about the way the types and how mallard used various sanctuaries and surrounded landscape. It’s been very informative and I greatly appreciate you.

Ethan Dittmer: Yeah, thanks for having me and I always enjoy talking about the research I’m able to be a part of and particularly sanctuary, it’s an interesting topic for me and I think it can have some true benefit for public land hunters as well as private land hunters. All the stuff I’ve mentioned today, it’s applicable to private landscape extent as well.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.