# "The Duck Commander"



## duckyday (Oct 28, 2003)

Just got this sent to me from a friend, and was wondering what you guys think of it.

*The Duck Commander speaks*
Chester Moore, Jr column for Thursday, February 2, 2006 
Phil Robertson is serious about ducks and duck hunting.
Known to waterfowlers around the nation as the "Duck Commander", theWest Worgan,La.resident is renowned for his superior hunting skills, entertaining home videos and no-nonsense attitude.
I had the great pleasure of sharing a couple of days with Robertson at his headquarters and in a duck blind in a beautiful flooded bottom in north-centralLouisiana.
It did not take long to find out, he believes serious changes need to be made for there to be a future for duck hunting.
"The greatest detriment to duck hunting is what is called the federal refuge system," Robertson said.
"It sounds great that the ducks will have a place to rest and all, but in reality it makes hunting very difficult as it does not take them long to figure out where they are being shot and where there is no pressure," he added.
By law, hunting and fishing are considered "priority" uses of refuge land, but that leaves vast tracts of the 110 million of acres of refuges off limits to hunting.
Robertson, who hunts all around the country, said when scouting locations to film hunts for his home videos, he goes as far away from refuges as possible.
"You can literally watch the ducks pile in the no-hunting areas. A lot of guys will get excited because they get a duck hole near a refuge but soon learn that it works against them in most cases," he said.
A big part of the problem according to Robertson is that most of the refuges are in the flyways and wintering areas, not in the prairie pothole or "duck factory" region where they nest.
This is a fact, the U.S. Fish an d Wildlife Service boasts of on their website.
"Most of the more than 520 National Wildlife Refuges and additional Waterfowl Production Areas managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service are located along the migratory flyways, serving as breeding and wintering grounds and as 'rest stops' for these birds."
"For example, in the 'duck factory' of the upperMidwest, the National Wildlife Refuge System manages just two percent of the landscape, yet 23 percent of the region's waterfowl bree d there," according to their national refuge web page.
Robertson said this is pointless.
"It doesn't make sense to have all of this refuge land in areas where the ducks winter if you're trying to do something about duck production. They keep telling us we are losing crucial breeding grounds but they keep buying refuge land down in the wintering areas," he said.
His suggestion would be to allow some hunting in the sanctuary areas of refuges every year and rotate which areas are off-limits every two to three years.
"The ducks imprint to the sanctuaries and by rotating them and allowing hunting throughout the refuges at various times you could stop this, which help would help out all duck hunters by keeping the ducks moving," Robertson said.
Just as frustrating for him as the presence of so much refuge land off-limits to hunting is the lack of predator control programs in the prairie pothole region.
"Pretty much everyone agrees we are losing about 85 percent of our ducks before they ever fly down due to predation in the nesting areas. Think about that for a second," Robertson said.
"What we get to fly down is around 15 percent of the potential ducks. If you have a total flight of 100 million ducks, decreasing predation by only five percent would add 30 million ducks to that. If you could ever get predation down to around 70 percent you could pretty much double the fall flight every year."
Robertson said he believes if hunters knew just how much of a role raccoons, foxes, mink and other predators played in duck production they might support paying more for federal duck stam ps to support predator control.
"No one wants to wipe out the predators. God put them here to do their role, but he also put ducks here for us to hunt and to eat and we can balance things out if we put the effort into it," he said.
"With fur being out of fashion because of the animal rights people and very little trapping, you have a situation where you have more predators on the breeding grounds than ever and we are seeing the results every fall," he added.
Robertson believes that ducks should not be managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service but instead the Department of Agriculture.
"They should view them as a food source and a cash crop like cattle, sheep or corn. If you get a boll weevil outbreak, they do whatever it takes to eliminate that problem," he said.
"If we took that stance with ducks and their predators we would likely have the skies black with them again like we did many years ago."
Another problem Robertson sees is overbearing federal regulations and a lack of understanding of ducks and duck hunting in federal game wardens.
"They get 13 weeks of training and very little on duck identification. I think the wardens should be required to have a hunting license and duck stamp if they are going to have the power of the federal government that they can bring down on you. They should be required to hunt 10 days out of a season," he said.
Robertson said he has nothing against wardens but duck hunting regulations are complex and they should have an intimate understanding of laws before they enforce them.
"This is what I do. I am a duck hunter and I hunt every day of the season. I want to make sure that people will be able to have quality duck hunting 100 years from now and unless we change some things that is just not going to happen," Robertson said.
"Hunting can be good at times now, but we can make it a whole lot better."


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## dlip (May 16, 2004)

Smartest, most thought out thing I've ever heard come out of his mouth.


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## Old Hunter (Mar 8, 2002)

He bad mouths the game wardens,wants to open the refuges,raise and shoot tammies,and wants to turn everything over to the Dept of Ag. This guy is a absolute idiot. He does not speak for me.


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## 4CurlRedleg (Aug 31, 2003)

Old Hunter said:


> He bad mouths the game wardens,wants to open the refuges,raise and shoot tammies,and wants to turn everything over to the Dept of Ag. This guy is a absolute idiot. He does not speak for me.


Ditto!!


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## ND decoy (Feb 1, 2003)

These hunters that have turned themselves into movie stars (Robertson, Nuggent, etc.) have gotten just as bad as the real ones. They all think that there word is gold. They expect every body to just keep buying there products and fall in line and never question them. I am more interested in listening to the guys with a back ground in science than the guy with a video camera.


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## hydro870 (Mar 29, 2005)

> Robertson believes that ducks should not be managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service but instead the Department of Agriculture.
> "They should view them as a food source and a cash crop like cattle, sheep or corn. If you get a boll weevil outbreak, they do whatever it takes to eliminate that problem," he said.


YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. :eyeroll:


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## honkbuster3 (Jan 11, 2006)

This guy is a complete idiot. I can't stand him at all. :evil:


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## roostbuster (Oct 19, 2005)

i just like the lessons he gives in his movies on how to water swat teal. him and his whole crew should just go back to the boondocks and never resurface.


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## sink (Feb 14, 2006)

don't agree with what most of the duck commander said, but I'd be willing to pay more for the fed stamp to help take care of some of the predators


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## cranebuster (Nov 2, 2004)

I absolutely agree with him on a couple of things, one, the fact that refuges are not were they are needed the most, in the nesting grounds. They are worrying about were the ducks are going to winter and not worrying about whether or not there will be ducks to winter there. They will find a place to winter as long as they make it past June. Second, and tied to the first point is that of predator control. The balance of large predators to small on the prairies is so out of whack it is unbelieveable. The wolves, bears, and lions that used to prey upon the smaller predators are gone, leaving humans as the only source of management. Raccoons, skunks and fox followed humans onto the prairies, essentially introducing non-native species nesting ducks were not designed to deal with. It is said that for every nest predating animal removed, 70-80 game birds are saved, makes sense when you consider 10 nests per season destroyed at 7-8 chicks per nest. One predator each summer for every 5 ducks I shoot. I run box traps, snares and an arsenal of small arms for them, and probably save in the range of a couple thousand birds each summer. Look at some of the nesting successes in some of Delta's trapping plots and you will see that predator control is definitely a tool that needs to be implemented to make ducks. Call me a hillbilly just like you did him, but I like to shoot and eat ducks, even if it means warding off other predators to do so.


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## Old Hunter (Mar 8, 2002)

Cranebuster the refuges do not produce the ducks. They are a place for the birds to rest with out being hammered at constantly. The duck nesting takes place on or near the various sloughs and small lakes. The tammie commander does not have a clue about duck production on the prairies. Its great that you are thinning down the preditors. I do the same thing.


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## brianb (Dec 27, 2005)

I agree with the need for more refuges and just plain habitat work in Canada and the Dakotas.

I would agree to a change in management if it would eliminate the politics from setting seasons / limits. Chuck Petrie did an article for Retriever Journal that outlined how the seasons were set. It was probably biased but it was really sad how biology had much less to do with it compared with $$ and political clout.


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## 4CurlRedleg (Aug 31, 2003)

I just read he will now be pimpin' Realtree and Benelli's versus Mossy Oak and Brownings.

I hope Realtree gets lambasted for showing off Mr Tamie!!!


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## cranebuster (Nov 2, 2004)

Old Hunter, I was referring to refuge's in the upper plains and canada, I know for a fact that a lot of ducks are raised on refuges all over Nodak. WPA's, WMA's and obviously CRP probably bring up more, but refuges bring off a lot of ducks when they are in the right places. I will agree that Robertson is more than likely out of touch with a lot of the science that goes into duck production, but he does have a lot influence that controls a lot of money. If they are willing to try to raise ducks themselves at $15 apiece or so, imagine what they could do in predator management up here with that kind of cash??? I for one would quit my summer job if some one offered just a $20 bounty on nest predating species, that would be some cheap ducks if you ask me. Maybe I should start a foundation that funnels southern money north to fund trapping efforts? DU and Delta wouldn't have to worry about getting bad names for killing predators, and I could get paid to trap them buggers!!!!


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## 4CurlRedleg (Aug 31, 2003)

cranebuster said:


> Maybe I should start a foundation that funnels southern money north to fund trapping efforts? DU and Delta wouldn't have to worry about getting bad names for killing predators, and I could get paid to trap them buggers!!!!


I don't think Delta is worried about a bad name, they hire trappers every spring to keep them in control around nesting areas.


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## cranebuster (Nov 2, 2004)

They do walk thin ice by doing so, anti's love it when we feel the need to kill one animal to boost populations of another animal, so then we can in turn kill that one! Wolves, bears, coyotes, and mountain lions have been doing it for thousands of years though.


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## Old Hunter (Mar 8, 2002)

cranebuster You are correct in your statement that the refuges do produce a considerable amount of ducks. The NDGF does a good job of managing them to produce a lot of wildlife. The point that I poorly conveyed is that Robertsons idea that moving some refuges north is not a viable part of the answer to a stable duck population. We wont see any refuges being moved or new ones established in North Dakota . We know its all about water and CRP. Back to the subject. Robertson says that he hunts as far away from refuges as possible. I assume its because he is not good enough to run traffic.


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## saveaduckkillaskybuster (May 29, 2005)

4CurlRedleg said:


> Old Hunter said:
> 
> 
> > He bad mouths the game wardens,wants to open the refuges,raise and shoot tammies,and wants to turn everything over to the Dept of Ag. This guy is a absolute idiot. He does not speak for me.
> ...


and he shoots hens on a regular basis


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