Ep. 490: Duck DNA: Are “Wild” Ducks Really Wild?

If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listeningast, you can't predict.

Anything presented by First Light creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt, first Light, Go Farther, stay longer. Is it on Phil Machines on?

Do you want to put your headphones on?

Oh?

You don't have to suggestion?

Okay, good, definitely got to hit Phil's upcoming show.

We already you mention that it's in here.

I gotta I'm gonna give I'm gonna give Cren a comment sandwich. Okay you ready? You guys know what a comment sandwich is. If you need to critique someone, right, you don't come in and critique them bad's in the medal. You come in and say something good, then you say the thing you're trying to get across, and then you end on something good. So uh, Crinnell is great that you got that red stag in Scotland. See thanks. Sometimes you can do what's called the open face sandwich anywhere

It's a true.

Okay, well we can cut out of you can cut out of fair bit.

You try a new soap. She bought a new kind of so open in Scotland. Did you have fun in Scotland? For real?

Had a fantastic time like it? It was, it was wonderful. I mean, the hunting process is obviously a bit different.

Yeah, deers are like for sale in some market. Ye's eating your deer like that he bought at the store.

That's or like dog food.

But but yeah, I mean the government, the Scottish government tells an a state how much I mean, it determines how many animals on its property need to be called. And then you're you know, so there's a professional stalker at each estate and that's their duty to carry out what's required. And then if you're there hunting it, you're kind of helping to you know, fulfill fulfill the aim. And and each animal is then sold to a a

When you guys got it, did you you gutted it from the diaphragm back right? Yes, which they got a weird sounding name for like glat glock.

I don't I don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember the name of it, but they didn't. Yeah, they did it a different way.

Look that up, Yanni, I type in something like Scottish, I don't know, gutting, gutting method, diaphragm. I'll get you started.

Was it a drive hunt? Was it like driven or were you stocking?

Yeah, ladies and gentlemen. That was voice of Phil Lovretzky, Russian born researcher who has a University of Texas at El Passel. Krinn has pointed out, you have a whole lab named after you. Sure explain what you guys do. You're here to talk about mailard ducks and some real problems. We are real problems. So yeah, no, yeah, I run a wildlife genetics lab. While we focus on ducks. You know, our whole stick is feel to gene We are right now.

I have Cruise in Arizona catching Mexican ducks, and other crews in Texas catching model ducks, and we do everything from catching, banding, telemetry work all the way to population genetics, evolution, these types of things. And basically the difference or the big thing about us is we use genetics to identify individuals correctly, so we have no you know, you can't run away from your genetics.

It is what it is.

So by understanding who we're working with, we can matter.

Who has in critters creators. Now this is all just a prey lude to her answering the question, but I just wanted to people know who they were here and talking.

Who it is the foundation? Yeah, so our foundation is genetics, and then we explore everything from migration to morphology, how hybridization causes issues if so if not, how releases feral populations in New Zealand here in North America, Europe, How are they establishing, why did they established, and how they look like compared to the things that they came from.

God, we're gonna get into that head yeah, real heavy kring go on though.

Oh yeah, So the animal is sold in full coat to a game dealer, and then that game dealer turns it around again and sells it to a butcher, which.

You guys, cut it off at the knees right when I was there, they did. They got it diaphragm back, cut it off at the knees and out the door.

So diaphragm and guts were cut out, left for the eagles and then everything. We drug out the animal for a little bit and met horses and then we threw it. Oh you know, head comes off, but nothing was cut off at the knees. It came all the way down.

Back to the horse on a horse.

Yeah.

They come out with horses and one one horse like holds the head or that's kind of like the horse in training that eventually might have the body of the animal on it, and you walk it down.

On a horse. How made you guys?

Shoot Morgan Morgan Potter who's been on the show before he got to I got one, and our friend David who invited us, got one.

Are they gonna do? You get to send the head home and keep it?

I've got the antlers, uh somewhere in the mail on their way over to Bozeman.

With the skull cap or you just saw them all so they.

It's kinda yeah, skull cap like kind of like a yamica where.

That there you go yeah, yeah, I'm dragging. Yeah, phill's draggon.

I don't know what you call that, but that's.

A skull cap.

Yeah, okay.

As if you cut a little deep around your yamica.

Like slices the eye sockets in the middle to it's not it's not like just tight around them, that.

Saves you a lot of cutting. Yeah. When you when you get the eye sockets into your cut.

Yeah, I think it also makes for a nice flush mount.

To the wall.

And that is right.

It's uh years ago. We were hunting Alabama in Tuskegee National Forest and I killed a little teeny spike horn that had you know, inch and a half spikes. And when I scull capped the might just cut this super narrow strip of bone to connect the two little spikes. And I'm not joking. I went home. I flew home with his rack and my shirt pocket. Probably I could pull it out of my shirt pocket. Man, holy cow. Man. Like I said, we got so much talk about we're.

Gonna let's not make the show like two hours and a half. Let's like maybe cut a thing out you want, you can, we can cut the non waterfowl stuff out.

Listen. Let me just let me take a look here. The Flying V guys are here. Introduce yourself, boys, Brady who goes first?

Matt McCormick here, yep, Living Bozeman.

My partner, Brady yep, Brady Davis.

I also live here in town Flying THEE. Matt and I have a couple of companies called Flying Thee. This year is gonna be really fun. We're going to be doing a bunch of waterfowl content with Meat Eater and for meat Eater, so we're super pumped about that.

And you guys manage land.

Yeah, we've got another business where we do land and ranch management. So we do you know, habitat construction, restoration and management.

And so yeah, these guys like the Army Corps of Engineers. Man, I went on these guys in terms of like waterfowl Habitat's impressive.

Yeah, yeah, and then waterfowl is the primary focus. Ducks, you know around here, ducks are a primary focus for us. But there's inherently some elk stuff and some deer stuff and some upland stuff that kind of comes along with it. Excited to be here, talk a little bit more with with you, Phil, But yeah, it's development and restoration man. And it's for the greater good, you know, providing food safety, nesting habitat all that.

Yeah, a lot of lends work you guys get involved in.

Yeah, and we have to work with the Army Corps of Engineers and a lot of that stuff.

Because I know, I was just making a joke, you know, I mean when you.

When you start doing stuff like this, there's natural wetlands and everything. I mean, they got to come out and they'll they'll bring a big roll of red flags and they'll put it all over the property and say you cannot touch this. I mean all the way across the board. You can't. You cannot mess with it.

You can add to it, but not mess with it.

Yeah, and if you take some you have to give some back. But they have parameters around that. There's a bunch of permitting and everything. But you know, the state of Montana, they they love trout, so you kind of lean on the trout thing and trout then everything that a trout loves, the duck loves too.

So so you know how to game it. Yeah, you have to game and are going to love it.

And yeah, yeah, it's really fascinating. I mean it's the it's the same. It's the same answer but a different question, right, what's good for the trout? What's good for the duck? But it's the same answer.

And then you guys, that's good that aligns. Yeah, yeah, you guys gave up on like basically most kinds of hunting just to focus on ducks over the years.

Yeah, you know, it's it's funny. We both grew up doing all kinds of hunting. Matt grew up waterfowl hunting when he was young.

I did not. I got into waterfowl hunting in my early twenties because you're from the arid West. Yeah.

Yeah, when I got into it in my early twenties. The problem is, once I got into it.

It was over, no looking back.

The very first day I had some decoys called in a few geese.

I remember you told me about that.

And the day those geese died, I walked into the house I was a newlywed, told my wife, I'm like game over.

I had I had hounds.

I was hunting lions and bears and stuff with dogs, and those dogs got sold.

Next thing, you know, I had a labrador and.

More decoys and more decoys, and if you ask my wife more decoys.

Well, surprise, those line dogs didn't team up and kill that lab out of spike.

I moved them out of the asylum before the next inmate came in.

Yeah, they're like, this sun bitch is gonna be trouble. Yeah.

Now I had a question, Now, do you guys go after knockout grants? Is that how you guys do a lot of the habitat work?

Yeah, there is some. There is some of that, and we and we work with a couple of different consultant agencies that just focus on permitting, right because you need you need people that can read the fine print. And at the end of the day, we're looking to do macro you know, macro restoration, and so a lot of those guys are handling the the the details of that. But yes, to your to your.

Question, there are some of that.

We also a lot of our clients are people who purchased the land for the purpose of hunting, so they are willing to invest more money and you know, they're they're they're good to put the money in for the end result.

And so at the end of the day, what.

We care about is that the birds are there and that the habitat supports holding the birds, not just having them there for a shooter or for a hunt. And so we're looking at everything from Okay, how do we get them here? But then how do we hold them

And in reference to the water sources as well.

Ohuld maybe have you guys take a look at my pumpkin patch.

We're here, We're enough to I've never done anything with pumpkins.

Pumpkins and I want up with just two. But we can talk about it later. I got three kids, so this is not going over the well. Yeah, I'm stick of doing it. Plug the me Eater Live Show. Let me hear you just tear it up.

With no notes.

No here here, there's no notes in this documentary Like.

It just didn't do a very good job of producing.

I didn't want to spend seventeen minutes on us talking about.

All is going to do it for speed version.

If you're looking for something really fun to do in December and uh, you live somewhere between Colorado and Philly, your luck because meteor.

Is you know, so it makes like a little line across the country.

Yeah, totally.

And I know a lot of people are upset from the South, Southeast, Texas, other parts of the country because they're like, what about us, And we only have so much time in our lives.

And when the pandemic curry you got keep in track how long we talk about this before the pandemic. We were going out the other direction, but it all got canceled because of the pandemic.

Yeah, And we have hit you know, states and cities all over the country in the past, and I think that in future versions of this, we probably will hit the South and we'll hit the West coast. But this time around, we're in Denver, Kansas City, Missouri, Davenport, Iowa, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Detroit, Michigan, Cleveland, Ohio, Pittsburgh, PA, and Philly, PA. So all VIP tickets are already sold out, but there are general admission tickets left. Come and see us,

A lot of great guests lined up. We've got guests lined up all or damn place. Kevin Murphy's coming out.

Mm hmm.

You're gonna have We're gonna have Wolf, You're gonna have We're gonna have a casting contest at every show in order to win a seat at the trivia table. How long was that? Kran good? M hm, thanks you loving that is great. Phil over to Phil speaking of the live show, Take it away, Phil.

I, okay, yeah, very very generous. I think this is the third time we've talked about this local community theater thing I'm doing.

Bill is the Thespian.

This one's for all you and Michigan. Come on out, uh Yellen Theater October twentieth doing a show. It's a nineteen thirty screwball comedy called you Can't Take It with You Jo, Phil, just one, oh no, We're doing six or seven shows. It's two weekends, two weekends, long starts. The twentieth goes through the twenty ninth.

Okay, yep, still tickets available.

There are still some tickets available. Yes, okay, dude. I went to a live show the other night and it was my one of my favorite bands, but probably the worst show I've ever seen, Brian Johnstown Mass And I didn't mean to stay. I told my wife I had a bunch of friends, not a bunch.

Yeah.

I went down to a bunch of friends and I said, listen, I want to have my own car because I'm not staying. I'm just going to have a look like I don't like you know, I'm gonna have a look, and I'm gonna go home. So if you want to stay, drive separate. But we all left at the same time early. This is a horrible job. Wow. But he said something that's been keep me up at night. He said, it's good to be back in this part of the country that I love so well that teeters between rugged individualism and

Is that why you left early?

No?

Okay?

But was keep me up at night? Is what way? Does he mean that it's tipping? Which is a good way?

Yeah?

Yeah, like tip, like you know you could read it that he doesn't think it should tip too far. In either direction because it teeters on the edge or he feels that it's tipping.

Well, the term common sense has scent of connotation. I would say, so, my my gut would be he's saying it's tipping too far towards rugged individualism.

He's saying that's not keep me up tonight. Maybe I wasn't even in the talking points.

Maybe he's trying to say that he would like us to keep that balance and that we should just hold those two qualities near and dear and don't tip out of wherever else we might end up.

Stay on the knife edge. Stay on the knife edge.

Uh man, he is giving me stink eye.

This is all great. I don't even know where to begin. I'm gonna jump around for a minute. Oh, here's the thing I want to talk about. This is a craction to a craction. You should will limit it to like there'll be a statement, a correction, a correction to a craction, a craction to that correction, and then we usually drop it. That's what this is. This is where we're at. I

They don't like ducks.

Well, let me give you a tip. You want to get something in there, listen to what I'm gonna tell you. I'm all yours, he said. He wrote he published in Nature about the role of climate change in wildfires in California, and then publishing ed saying, if you want to be published in Science or Nature, you have to focus exclusively

It was the time on that twelve seconds?

Uh, New Jersey? Can we hit this Krinn?

Yeah, it'll take a minute.

Remember when I said my least favorite politician in America was New Jersey's Governor Murphy Whoe. I wouldn't know him. No, I wouldn know, hi, because I remember when he got he was one of those governors that got real, telling everybody not to do anything during the pandemic, and then he gets caught out in a restaurant without his mask.

Yeah.

Anyways, he campaigned on shutting down the black bear hunting New Jersey, which makes him my least favorite politician in America. My current least favorite politician in America is Jay Insley, but back then my least favorite politician in America was Murphy Well. The New Jersey hunt is back on. The New Jersey bear hunts back on New Jersey. Screws with the hunters real bad, so they'll do it. They'll do a black bear hunt. And when you kill a BlackBerry,

We talk about a lot of words over the years, so it's hard to remember the last one.

But yeah, So it causes all this trouble and all these protests and then everybody gets bent out of shape. Meanwhile, it has the highest density of black bears anywhere. New Jersey has the highest density of black bears anywhere in the country. So the controversial black bear hunt is back on in New Jersey following a Superior Court judge ruling that did not favor animal rights groups and de facto murphy. Monday mark the first day of the October hunt. So whatever,

I think this came out like last week, so this is like early October.

Another is scheduled in December. Hunters brought the bears they killed to the Waiting Haam Wildlife Management Area in Newton. One limitation is the bears weighing less than seventy five pounds can't be harvested.

Ooh, that's tricky.

I like that. Oh man, you do well. I like it because of the alternative. Because remember what happened last time when New Jersey did a bear hunt. Some killed that bear pedals that had like the deformed feet. Oh yeah, everybody liked it because it had no feet. John Muellen, who's been on the show twice and I love the guy to death. I'd like to strangle him for this,

Uh?

That is tricky. While the officials say the hunt is the most effective way to prevent bear and human encounters in densely populated in New Jersey. I can't remember how many bear complaints they had.

Well, well, so New Jersey resumed hunting in twenty twenty two or bear hunting and so last year due to reports of the animals causing property damage and being a nuisance, with reports of those up nearly two hundred and forty percent since the previous year twenty twenty one.

Yeah, that's a lot. Flora's going to face a similar situation Florida to try to bear hunt. They ran it very conservatively. Everything went right, but they blew past their their harvest quarter. Like you if you're doing a hunt and you have a harvest quota, a lot of times you'll have to you'll check every night. Like let me just let's say you have a hunt. You say that there's a harvest quote of ten, and you open it up in this big area. Well, every day you're counting

Can I just jump back to Jersey for a second. So we're really only talking about two short weeks, so October ninth through the fourteenth and December fourth through the ninth as hunting days, so we're not talking about like a long season of months and months. So and then it's it looks like on the first day of the season, one hundred and five.

Bears were killed on the first day.

Can they bait out there?

No way?

Probably probably not. But and I don't know how. I don't know. Statistics sound like sounds like yeah.

And they don't hibernate over there. Apparently, well, they stay up all year. I don't know if in December.

I bet they go down eventually, they probably intermittently. Maybe that's why they.

Did the December hunt because they know they're.

The you win this one, we're gonna give you a hunt in December.

Oh, check this stuff out, so everybody knows f HF. You should know FAHF f HF gear, Fish Hunt fight all American made gear. If you like to hunt docks, we're here to talk about ducks. She just check out the So you know, like the biny rigs. If you see our stuff, you all to see that that we wear a lot of f HF binyl rigs, which are the best vinyl rigs on the planet. Paul's been in the binyl rig game since the binyl rig game began.

Oh that's what it's short for. I thought it was like short for Colbert kid.

So it's a shell bag, okay, pictures. It's this little square shell bag with a hand on it and a zipper. You can dump three boxes of shells, like I think, you know, it'll hold three boxes of two and three quarters, maybe three boxes at three inch. I know because we have the bird loads, I can dump twenty Well, okay, let me say this. I know for a fact that for my kids, I can dump three boxes of twenty gage six shot in the bag. It's zips and it's like this square little bag. And then it's got a

Cattle pouch, So philm has a lab named after him, and Cal is a pouch named after pouch steed.

I also use that for dog food if I'm doing like a day tripper two daily trip, throw dog food in there.

Works out great. I love it. No, it is a great, great, great idea. Yeah, it's called Steve Reno, just the same ring. Also, dsd's Honker Maximum line available this fall. DSD is Uh. Here's the thing about DSD decoys in such demand that, like I think, I hear more people are trying to I shouldn't say this because works again, DSD. You gotta wait in line to get DSD decoys.

Sometimes because they're so good.

Yeah, I never realized this. People want those decoys, so get in line. Well, they're kind of getting all this taken care. But just an enormous amount of demand for DSD decoys and their Maxima Honker line available this fall, and a brand new Maximum Full Bodies Geese full Bodies soon. Floaters are in stock now. Stackable sleeper shells will be back in stock soon as well. So if you're sitting around wonder why you gotta wait to get DSD decoys,

More crinn No, we already that was That's I'm joking.

I have something on ducks. Oh please.

So I don't know if you guys have seen it yet, but there's a meat Eater collab collab call coming out from seven thirty seven Duck Calls that is bad to the buzzes good. Yes, it the call runs awesome. We've we've used their calls for a long time. But Matt just got the proof texted to him yesterday. We were on a call with those guys yesterday. But that call is going to be coming out in November.

Yet one you got one in your pocket right now?

I go. It's a limited sneak sneak peek on the picture.

So there's only going to be a couple hundred of them. Oh really, So they're they're going to go like hotcakes and no one quick.

Can you you can buy?

It's going to.

Guy that could help you acquire one. Yeah, man, that'd be cool. But they're they're awesome.

So Singler Double it's going to be a single single read Yeah, so that'll be coming out early November.

Yep X party really quickly introduce yourself to you. Come on all the time. Have you ever won trivia? Yeah? Yeah, A couple of times. Yeah, a couple of times before, a couple of times.

Well I've I've been on the podcast a couple of times, but I haven't. I've only won trivia once.

Great, was doctor Randall there?

Doctor Randall was there? Was there? And you want to yeah, I want overtime.

So no, I think the only reason why I'm here because I like ducks and I want to talk about ducks and learn more about ducks.

So yeah, this case, he's taking dun pictures. He's like, look at all these ducks I killed, and I might where just a spot.

It is a great answer.

You should be able to black people's numbers based on what they text, like filters like gripping grinds. You got to like opt in or out for their gripping grands man. Right, Oh, what's super cool is the guy right down the road in Belgrade, Montana, won the federal duck stamp contest. Have you guys heard of this artist before?

I had not heard of him.

No, I hadn't either. Chuck Black, He's gonna come on the show, but not for a while, right, m.

H yeah, early early in the new year.

Yeah, I was surprised how young you was. I don't know what I was picturing. Good for him, you know when I was picturing in my head Elliott West.

He's in his seventies.

I'll picture Elliott West. But yeah, like so he he uh, he's been in this business his whole life. Right, is that cracked? I'm asking you?

Yeah?

I mean.

It looked like he started drawing at least when he was a kid.

And he doesn't do just docs either. He does Kyle's Birds Elk Scenic.

It's incredible landscape stuff.

Too, Yeah, painting.

Sorry, This this video that FIL's showing right here kind of documents the process, but it also shows him up in red rocks, up in Montanne getting the inspiration video for this duck. So this duck is actually like a Montana duck, which is pretty cool.

Steve, do you know what kind of duck that is?

It's pin tail? Okay, just making sure tell you what we got. We got a we ate a pintail two nights ago that the end just got. He got an antelope punt of all things with the proper firearm. That's cool.

Yeah, it's really cool.

So congratulations Chuck blackfirst. So he'll he'll be on next year's duck stamp, right. Yeah. Yeah, I was hunting. I was hunting and my kids, my boy and my daughter. My boy's old enough and my daughter's not old enough. And he gets a buck and we get it all caught up and we're carrying it and we hit a road and I'm like, oh, this world. To go to the truck. So I tell the kids you wait here, and uh, I'm gonna get the truck. And so they want to go up to this little hill to look around.

Yeah, we can skip the next one too.

Well. I don't know this is bad news. Can we just roll this into the other stuff?

Mm hmm.

Head.

Last year duck hunter numbers on the decline. Mm hmm. So there was an uptick and duck hit duck hunter numbers during COVID and then an and then a slight decline afterward. Right they realized how hard it was. Yeah, kid, and they had to go back to work.

Yeah.

Oh, hunters begin Duck hunters drop out at around age seventy, which means neither of our presidential candidates are going to be duck hunting are in the duck hunting mix. Minnesota mallard harvest numbers declining. Now, is this because of there aren't as many people out or because of some other issue? You guys should be able to answer this. I have a theory on it. Go ahead, Okay, let's do around and do a round table.

I think these mallards are just getting smarter and when they're migrating through. I think they're just hitting the cities and they just become city birds. You obviously can't hunt them in the cities, and I think that's where they're going.

During the golf courses university campus.

Well, yeah, I mean just like town parks too. Like I mean even just driving around Bozeman too. You there's a bunch of city birds.

We'll actually get to that really a little while.

Great. Uh, I was talking about this with Matt and Brady here. We were talking about the way that if you go along the I ninety I guess it'd be ninety four out there, right, ninety four corridor after Gooseyes, has been a running a while, and you see like all the places you'd expect to see a goose and he's not there. But they're piled up in the weirdest little spots basically like they got one foot in the highway.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I would do if I was a goose and all my friends were getting shot, I'd hang out somewhere like that for sure, like.

In the highway media.

Yeah, yeah, somewhere right on the shoulder.

Yeah.

What what's fascinating is the the population numbers of mallards aren't necessarily down. I mean they kind of do this number regardless.

Yeah, yeah, we've been we've been bound and around right with those numbers. I think we went under ten million this year, but we the height.

Was what three three years ago we hit.

Like thirteen million, fourteen million, and uh. But yeah, they basically cycle. A lot of it is cycling with the may ponds up in the Dakotas where they where they use some of that data to.

Estimate those numbers.

But then some interesting aspects is that it looks like some mallards are starting to overfly into into areas Nunavate territory further north where you're not where we don't have anybody checking. But I was moose hunting on the Yukon VC border and they were everywhere last year.

Did you get one? I did?

It was great. I made my.

You know, I don't want to talk about that.

No, no, no.

I was just holding you say like, well, how big was your moose? Yeah?

You got one?

Well let's hear about it.

Well, I'll tell you when you go to Register of Moose online. There's a drop down where you enter how many brow times it has? Mm hmm. I had to go all the way. No, No, you couldn't get there. You had to lie to drop down, didn't It ends at nine? He just kept going it ends at nine. Yeah, I couldn't. The number was not high enough to accommodate the brows. Did your bull move ten?

Wow?

One more than nine?

This actually teased back up into the duck number thing. So Matt can talk about we we have a theory as well that I think.

Well, and it's more of a question for you know, somebody like yourself, phils. So if population numbers continue to do this, but hunter harvest numbers are down when you look at how they actually gather that data for hunter harvest numbers, they use a hip survey, right like everybody has to, you know, fill out a hip survey.

I got two of those sitting on my desk right now.

Well, here's the thing about a hip survey is they don't they they they max you out. They say thirty one or more.

Two hundred yeah, oh is it thirty one or more? It's like eight to eleven, thirty one or more.

I'm so high thirty one plus.

Yeah, right, well, well, and most like guys that are going hard are thirty one plus. But how do they get accurate numbers with thirty one or more?

Yeah, let me hear the couple. Let me hear a couple of stats from this deal that we're looking at, and then then we can take off from there. So, for the first time in more than a half century, mallards were not the most common duck. This is from Twin Cities What is this newspap Twin Cities dot com? What the hell's at?

Probably the Pioneer Press or something.

Okay, for the first time in more than a half century, mallards were not the most common duck shop by Minnesota waterfowl hunters in twenty twenty two. Okay, Mallards were topped by both blue wing teal and ring neck ducks. Mallards had been the most harvested duck in the state since at least the nineteen sixties, and that's coming from Steve Courtz Waterfowl Specials for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

That's gotta be coincidence, right, So, so the bluing teal. The reason that those numbers, my guess is you have to look at a weather severity for that that time of year, during that entire hunting season.

My guess is it was a milder season winter.

Yeah, so those otherwise they split yet exactly so blue wings like if they feel a northern wind, they go, got it. Like, the only reason that they would stick around in Minnesota is it's it's not it's not. The weather severity is not long enough and it's not strong enough for that to move them. The same thing for the ring necks, although ring necks are doing better.

Now too, got it.

The interesting part is on the mallard side that could be a hunter thing. I would imagine a little bit of that where those number because wood ducks are also bred in the state. I actually have a wood duck project right now in Minnesota trying to ask some of those questions. But uh, wood ducks are mostly bred in the States, so those numbers shouldn't fluctuate unless hunter hunter numbers are a hunter what's the word ate effort is not equivalent.

This throws out this hits Max thing where it says it seems more ducks are avoiding Minnesota during their migration, at least when most hunters are in the field. M like, they fly over Minnesota like peace. They just fly around it.

I just don't.

I don't think they do that.

I've never had for Minnesota hunters so bad, hunter's so not bad, hunter's so good. Ducks avoid us.

Docks will fly over Wisconsin. I've just never been asked ever species specific surveying.

On my hip me neither.

No, I've never been asked how many ring necks I've killed?

How many Yorks? Yeah, well they must be doing I mean, they got some pretty precise damn numbers. They must be doing some kind of uh, they must be doing some kind of survey information.

Yeah, so a lot of those surveys and this is one state, right, Yeah, of course those will come from wingbe harvest. If anybody knows what I think you guys talked about wingb's where you, uh, random number of hunt waterfowl hunters in the country are asked to cut off a wing and send them.

In with that for years. One time it was a lot of paperwork. It was a lot of envelopes. Yeah.

Yeah, you just kept shooting them, didn't you.

Well, yeah, motivated me to hunt more research. I was like, I don't want these suckers think I'm no good because they sent me all these envelopes. Man, and then they would take I'm lazy.

On top of it, they'll have surveys at all of the w m a's or wildlife management areas well. They'll be where you have to go in and say and they actually check your bag and they're like okay, and then they extraple you can.

Extract, so they do model it.

Yeah, got it that they.

Have not like specifically counted all of these ducks.

I mean, if if I'm in my backwoods shooting wood ducks and stuff and nobody's nobody's asking that, because you're right, the only other survey direct survey is just a general number of how many ducks did you shoot?

Which is the hip.

Uh.

Can I tell you quick thing about wood ducks. It's interesting. One time when I was a kid, Uh, we would hunt wood ducks in their roost ponds that night. M hmm, and uh with a baby. I don't mean at night, but I mean like it'd be you know, I'd hate to go there now and with a game warden and have them with a watch. You don't know what time it was. I mean I do remember, like we're like, you know, just it just was different. I don't know,

Of the the marl shot first light, last light.

Right right at the end. Man, and it'd be uh, yeah, you'd be out with a flashlight trying to find down ducks. But it'd be like a great way to ruin a spot. That we had enough spots that you know, we keep real busy for like five six days and we just blow every spot because it just ruins it. However, one time we were cleaning wood ducks and had a wood duck. Check this out. You know what his crop had in it? What is it? A bunch of salmon eggs.

Yeah, he's down.

In the creek picking up salmon spawn.

Yeah, that's amazing. That you're you're so I don't know that. So I have a study look at using DNA from poop of ducks to do diet. We're trying to do a different way the original ways you go out, you shoot like two hundred birds, you figure out what they eat, like kind of like cropping outs. But instead we're using DNA analyzing of the feces and we're getting and we're matching up pretty well so far with like crop, but we're getting a ton of ton of the vege that

There's no way that they're fish eggs. Oh oh, this was like a full fish. No, you know what a salmon egg looks like. Yeah, no, no, this isn't. This isn't by catch.

I understand that might be like actually target because Mallard's orange, I understand.

I understand, But you're thinking he's trying to eat weeds and catching fish or fish eggs.

Fish eggs, eggs, eggs.

Yeah, so we keep coming up with yeah, that was pissed for a minute. I'm with you, no eggs, eggs.

Yeah, but they're in everything, gadwell, wigeon, everything we've been studying to star though. Yeah, it's a complete different calorie count that we've never really considered as far as I'm as I as I see it. So it's kind of interesting that it's that I'm the woody. I'm sure maybe mistakenly got them, which is interesting in itself. But we've

No good, Yeah, Okay, Now, why do you think that a duck isn't Why do you think that a duck isn't selecting for vegetation that's coated in eggs.

That's a good question. I don't know. I just don't think.

I mean, I don't know. I mean, they could be, but it would be.

It.

It just wouldn't make sense right now, I guess I don't know.

I mean, they you're saying.

You're telling me they're like looking around at the veget like, Oh, that one's got a whole bunch of eggs.

I'm going to eat that.

Yes, they could do that. Well, I mean, I don't know, that's what I'm saying. That's what I mean, That's what I would be wondering.

Because I mean, nobody's really tested the Colorado baby is calorie rich.

I need to dive down and get that.

Yeah, because you've got you've got things like Widgeon that are specialists on just veg right, so they're not even omnivorous really and so and they're still picking it up.

So that's got to be bycatch.

But you're right, I mean, this is completely new like that we that every time we analyze something. Fish is like ninety percent in all in all of the feces. And what's that ninety percent? You said, Yeah, like of the samples we've collected, and that's you know, we focus on Mallards, Mexican ducks, Model ducks because it's in Texas, but we have sample you know, Wigeon, Gadwell, other stuff that that we've sampled.

It's in ninety percent. It's not ninety percent of.

The Oh yeah, it's in ninety percent of the samples, right, so that's a hot that's that's some amount of fish.

Yeah, god it You know remember when, uh, when they banned lead shot for waterfowl, which have been what like eighty eighty It was a good old ninety two when the band led for waterfall.

Yeah, the legislation was late eighties and then it finally went into effects states.

Ahead of it though it was when Kirk Cobain died.

Yeah, right around that.

I don't know those are linked checks out. Uh. I used to tell people, but my understanding was that that they would the reason ducks were ingesting a lot of shots, they were picking it up as grit for their crop.

That's correct, Okay, that is Yeah.

I've heard other people say no, no, no, no, they're just getting it. No, no, they would, they were going they would pick shot for their crop.

Yeah, And there's been plenty of studies that showcase that that it's all it's all accidental pickup because they're going to get rock, right, grit, and it just the amount of lead shot at that time that was at the surface, you know, at the surface of the lake, sediment was really high so they were the probability of picking it up was really high. But then they did several studies where they just basically turned the sediment over and all

Bearing, the lead settled down.

So now all the leads way down there for someone else to have a problem with later on.

Yeah, speaking of ducks eating stuff, I was always amazed as a fishing guy. You'd be out there during just an amazing hatch. I think it used to mostly be midges, I think, or mayflies, not so much the caddis, but you'd see those ducks get into an eddy where all those bugs will be getting caught, and they would just be pounding away and he'd be like, oh, I thought you just state like white bread and let us leap.

But well, the salmon fly hatch for the geese, I mean you watch those like during the salmon fly hatch, oh, you see those big broods of geese up on the bank shores, they're just smashing salmon flies. Oh yeah, like if you ever hit the samfly hatch right, which is incredibly challenging regardless.

Like on Canada geese, Yeah, feeding on those.

Oh you see whole brute. I mean you'll have you know, eight groups of groups of eight or whatever, and they're just smashing those those salmon flies. But I mean sam flies.

I'm not a squeamish man. Yeah, but when you open up a crop, I'd never like to see. Uh. I don't like to see I don't like to see critters. Yeah, especially because they're still live. You know. It's like yeah, I was like, dude, come on some clover the right over there. I don't need to see all this. It's upset my meal plan. Phil. How'd you get interested in ducks?

Duck hunting?

Yeah, so now walk me through. Take me back to Russia.

Yeah, it was cold.

You never want a ducks in Russia because.

You're probably yeah, we were.

I was so you were born in Russia in Moscow talking Russian?

Yeah, yeah, so my parents the way in Russia it works, you know, you just drop your child off in the middle of the woods and if they come back, it's okay. Yep, Yeah, that's what happened. It was January, so it's cold, but I made it. No, So we were we we got over to the States in eighty nine, and I think I was telling you, uh, the choice of two evils, Los Angeles and New York.

And because you guys just weren't into the whole Russia.

Scene, correct, Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if you know. Note this, but a lot of Russians fall out of windows occasionally, just my chance and bears every time.

Sure as we just learned with when why did name he was the most interesting man in the world for a few.

Days the leader progosen Yeah, airplanes.

Said like progos, and everybody's like, I wouldn't go near an open window. Sure enough.

So yeah, anyway, so we got over, uh, and then my folks obviously had to work. And but then eventually my dad finally got enough cash and bought a shotgun and we went.

Because how did he How was he even aware that hunting was a thing? This is the thing I was because my dad was raised by Italian immigrants, and the journey of becoming even aware that this is like a thing you can engage in is interesting, right.

Yeah.

So the interesting thing is Los Angeles has a lot of really great sporting plays area and he shot I mean, he hunted in Russia, so we wanted.

Yeah yeah, yeah, so.

So he wanted to do it, so he kind of got it. We started going to some of the sporting clays areas. Eventually I competed there and and then.

Really, yeah, how good are you?

I'm thirty one plus on ducks every year.

So that's pretty good. Yeah, he quits at Yeah.

So there's a place called Sultan Seed, do you know what that That's where I grew So that's where we started hunting, mostly dove initially, and then uh started to hunt ducks. And that's where I shot my first dove when I was ten with my dad's twelve gage and I was probably the most expensive shot ever because you know, that set my entire life forward of putting a lot of money into this sport. And then we started hunting ducks and I loved it. I mean that's what we did.

I have a little bit of a hard time believing it.

Look, I hunted a zone a ton. The only thing I got was a two by one. All those years, I was real proud and you should have been. Yeah, and it's it's just hard. And also my dad hunted big game Russian style, which is a lot more drive driving with shotguns.

There's no right, I'll say, with those giant Soviet helicopters.

Yeah, yeah, first one of those.

So it was completely different, right the way big game hunting here is. So I didn't really get into it until like fourteen fifteen. So until then I was I was duck hunting most weekends in LA. I was mostly I would tell them I'm just fishing because apparently fishing is okay, hunting not so much.

So, so like when you had to explain where you'd been.

Yeah, where were you this week? I was fishing, yeah.

And so yeah, so I got into it, and then that sort of set my tone forward. I went to undergrad at UC Davis up in Sacramento. One of the reasons I went there besides getting in the hunting ducks yeah, uh, sack refuge and all of that is there. So it's great hunting.

So did you know you're gonna be a duck researcher. At that point, I didn't.

I thought I was going to be the guy in Jurassic Park that brings back all the dinosaurs. But then, and that's why I'm a geneticist.

Oh you were interested in that? Oh yeah, do you remain interested in that?

I I am, but it's impossible. Although well so I'm on.

I'm part of.

The way. My kids understand it.

Yeah, yeah, so it's gonna be interesting.

Yeah.

So I'm on the board with a Reviving Restore as well as Colossal, the ones trying to bring back the mammoth.

Are you on the advisory panel or the board?

No?

Advisory just like science, especially in fact, there's a meeting right now that I'm missing. But that's okay, that's good. Yeah, so I am interested in it. But to be fair, I got into fisheries at UC Davis. So I was doing trout Sacramento Purge, doing genetics on them, creating uh captive breeding programs for releases and stuff like that, looking at hybridation between red bands and rainbows and all this, and then I realized, like, I like talking about fish,

But it wasn't for me.

I like, I like the gop in wetlands and calling big spreads these types of things. But yeah, so, and that's where I dove into waterfowl research, primarily mallard complex. So I don't know if you know this. There are fourteen species of mallard like ducks all around the world. Here in North America we have the mallard, American black duck, two types of model duck Florida and West Golf Coast, and the Mexican duck.

And those are all real tight sister species.

Yeah genetically. Yeah, so those are the most recent recently diverged groups.

So they diverged about half a million years ago.

The rest of the group the African black duck, yellow bill duck, mallards duck in Africa, a couple spot build ducks in Asia, Pacific, black duck, New Zealand, gray duck, hawine duck, Laysan duck. Those are more old than about million two million year old divergence. Yeah, so I started diving deep into it, and we're gonna start getting into some some of this stuff that I am interested in.

Know, you know, and now I know climate change.

And then uh, but but I'm really big on management, right, so, and it's taken me over a decade to show how genetics can play in management, uh more applied aspects. And so how that kind.

Of what you mean by that?

That means, Uh, when I talk about genetics to a bunch of wildlifers, they usually like roll their eyes back and they're like, oh, this is gonna be abou drosophilo or mice or something like that, because that's that's what they've known what genetics is. And so they are just like, that's not applied. You know, band recoveries, telemetry units, you know,

You know, we work on So.

Can you run test real cheap?

When I send you bones, bones, bones are gonna be Yeah, how old are those bones?

Ancient, ancient bones.

I'd like them to be a lot of times are not. I would have to I've gotten some disappointing results. So but it was so deep.

So we uh, the best we've done, and I would have to go to my Smithsonian colleagues is because they've got an ancient lab there where we work. And we did a one thousand, five hundred to one thousand year old bones out of Hawaii.

Duck bones.

And the fun part about this, in the same cave where Polynesians were eating, there was a laysand duck, a Hawaiian duck, and something they thought was a Hawaiian duck based on the bone morphology, turned out to be a northern shoveler from a lot of really yeah.

And then they have butcher marks on the bones.

I don't know. I didn't get to look at them.

Oh uh no. Yeah, So so we sort of So the paper that where we're going right now, so something that we can do we've got to study, hopefully published in a year or so as we finish up. But we've got mallards now sampled from eighteen hundred to today across space time.

Really yeah. Yeah.

So so where'd you get there.

Where'd you get the eighteen hundred mallard from?

They're from twenty seven partnering National Museum, So thank you all.

Oh did you get anything from Cornell? We did, dude, we went to Cornell. We were at Cornell and they opened his door and we're in their their bird collection thing, and so you know, I asked, like, what apparently everybody in the planet asks, is you guys got any passenger pigeons? No, not passed with the helmet was yeah, yeah, and an Ivory built woodpecker. Everybody asked about the same birds so

Let me think for a minute, they have a labor.

I think it was in that. I think that it might have been in that thing. It was crazy man to hold one in the ivybuilt woodpecker. I used to dog on people, you know, when people are are like, oh I saw an ivorybuild woodpecker. And then they come out and be like, oh, you idiot, it was a appiliated woodpecker. Well, listen, I know a lot of people spend a lot of time out with out in the woods. I could have laid that down in the woods and they would have said, oh, appiated woodpecker. It's not it's

No, we're your genes, I suggested to a reviving restore.

I'm talking about the mallards. They probably got some old ass mallards.

Oh they do.

We got eight of them. They're supposed to ship them. So we're doing we'd finished all the genetics. We're doing morphology, so we're doing three D scanning of their heads to look at change and bill. So they're feeding mechanism. And I'll explain why this is so important across time and space.

You've no doubt read the book The Beak of the Finch. I have not, really. Yeah, well you might be like it might be too elementary for you.

Yeah, probably, Yeah, we'll go with that.

No, The Beak of the Finch, it's about how you can watch the bill size on finches. They you can watch the beak size on finches change in the Glopagos. You can like, I don't want to say in real time, but I mean it's amazing. Yeah.

The Grants husband and wife group watched a new species evolve since they started studying Darwin's finches.

On the galop Goos.

What happened was two species came on one island bread made this thing what we call a hybrid. But the hybrid was so distinct from its parents the way the types of food that they ate, that thirty years later genetically they were just their own now, their own own thing.

That's what Yeah, Okay, this book might detail for a layman the research, but it was these birds are colonizing a new area with different food resources, and as they come in and they're like whatever, they're trying to get into a seed that's a harder shellacked because they're in an area they hadn't been before. And you can watch selective pressures on those birds and watch their beaks change as they become accustomed to and have selective pressures applied around.

And then you know, I think I had this conversation another podcast about like.

Evolution, another podcasts, what others? There's others really.

Anyways, like people are like, oh, evolution, what's that? Honestly, the only the only name of the game and nature and what evolution is is be as good or better than everybody else. Right, So all you're trying to do is limit competition, and the good or better is that you either survive better and or have more babies.

Right.

The more babies you have, the more genes that are on the landscape, and thus you're winning. And so nature in island systems like the Galapagos are so interesting because it's so fast there, right, the pressures are like nope, you didn't eat, you die. That's that's what we call a selective pressure of one where it's like no, those genes are gone. And so it's so much faster for adaptations to arise or go extinct because the ecology changes so quickly and everything.

God's going somewhere with that those I don't know hmm, oh, no, I want need to ask you. I want to get to this whole thing with mallards and mallard like when you let pretend ducks go. Yeah, Okay, I want to get to that, but give me an example of how genetics could play into management. Like, I don't get it, Like, give me a concrete, specific example of how genetic analysis would play into management.

Yeah, so I'll give you a study that we're doing right now. So, the model ducks on the West Golf Coast have been declining in size.

Okay, slow that down, say that again.

Model ducks on the Gulf Coast regions of Texas and Louisiana, Ghostly, Texas have been declining and the surveys they were doing. But at the same time in West Texas, so the brush country of West Texas.

Have you been there?

Yep?

Does e Averynthy know what I'm talking about?

Lots of ran that Johnny Cash song. I've been everywhere, man.

That's me and ya in America, in America, America. Uh and anyway. So there's a bunch of brown looking birds. So if you've never looked at a model duck, it's a it's a brown looking mallard.

People.

Yeah, everybody's like people mistake them, right, Yeah. But the Texas Parks and Wildlife wants to do surveys to be like, Okay, is this a population crash are the population shifting? And for that they needed to know what the heck these things are from an aerial perspective. So then they contacted me, and what we did was we took We took birds.

We collected.

In fact, you were having a discussion about does anybody go out scientific collecting with a shotgun anymore?

Oh? Yeah, with your fowling piece.

That's that's what we do in May. So we go out, I'm free. Yeah.

Does that count in the survey?

Do you put down.

Extra?

No?

So, so we need to have breeding pairs, right, So we took hunter harvest. We took out anything we could, but we needed also what is breeding in this landscape? So we went all the way from I'm from Texas, but I don't know anything about Texas, so like Dallas all the way to the Mexico Texas border, right, ye. And so because there's another situation happening. Mexican ducks, which is another type of mallard like duck, are expanding out of Mexico nor kind of like a bomb out of

Was fly right over the wall.

They just imagine that thought they would dig under anyway. So we did this, So we went from one end to the other and lo and behold, both of them came in because and so on the one side, if you get all the way to about San Antonio and you draw a line model ducks, then something that we didn't expect but hypothesize model duck Mexican duck hybrids in this tiny band, and then all of a sudden, just Mexican ducks. So they're both coming in and interbreeding in this location.

So the model ducks are declining, but what's replacing them is is.

High modeled duck, more model ducks and potentially these hybrids.

So we did, what do you call the hybrids a.

Mexican duck, model duck hybrid, Mexican.

Model Okay, what do you call it? Two generations later, So that's what.

So we're looking at how many generations they can interbreed. It seems like we're picking up back crosses, which means like geographically, if you're closer to the model duck group, you back cross into model duck and you become more and more model duck. Is on the other end, close to the Mexican border, their back crossing into Mexican ducks

But they're totally healthy there as far.

So that's that's part of the diet analysis. With the feces, We're looking at bill morphology, muscle fiber morphology to understand can they still fly the same, do they feed the same? What you know? Is there anything that would suggest these are less adapted than their parents?

Yep.

So anyway, so the point of this, how to get back to your question, how does genetics uh provide applied aspects? So that data right, So I plot all that on a map so everybody understands what's happening. That data is now fed back to Texas Parks and Wildlife to say, okay, we need to go in these regions to ban because our probability of getting a model duck, because that's what we care about, is really high, and so we're going to ban there. But on top of it, they're shifting.

Yeah.

Right, So this is how it's feeding into that. And we've got studies in Hawaii, Arizona, all American Samoa doing similar things, trying to tell them what they're working with and how the genetics plays on the landscape.

Here's a question about genetics and how it's applied. Manage it be. I'll start with a story years ago, almost been in the early nineties. I was hunting ducks on the Saint Mary's River, which separates Michigan's Upper Peninsula from Canada. And I remember getting checked by state and federal game warden, right, I remember I had. I was like, I'm sitting there with the hen Mallard and I remember they're going, what

Notice if you if you don't know what you're looking for.

Yeah. So if you had to take like duck knowledge, like average duck knowledge, I know, yeah, and then you put it on a spectrum of one to ten. Yeah, and you got to be like a ten point five to go down to this place in Texas and pick up one of those ducks and be wait a minute, this is a modeled Mexican Mexican hybrid or would it just be to a duck hunter, it would just be like.

It would be called a dusky duck, because that's what they call him right now. So Texas, Texas, I think Arizona has a dusky duck limit and it's usually one or two. And they just say anything that's equivalent to a black duck, a model duck, a Mexican duck.

I'll go here now, New Mexico.

They're bundling black ducks, model ducks, dusky ducks. I'm sorry, Mexican. What's what's the name Mexican Mexican duck. It's just the Mexican ducky Mexican duck. That a black duck.

Yeah, all I want.

They're just calling them all dusky.

That's that's in the game game rules. Yeah, that's in the hunting REGs. Uh.

And so, so sell me on this, Sell me on the what you're talking about here, like the Mallard thing that we're gonna get to. I get. But sell me on why this matters.

Oh well, I mean this would matter if we don't any If model ducks are declining at the rates that they are in the Gulf Coast region, then Texas Parks and Wildlife is probably gonna have to make some serious decisions.

But they're being replaced by right.

But if they're not, they're being replaced, which we didn't know, so now we have to understand. All right, so they're being replaced. They're not being replaced, they're making more. Right, that's what a contact zone. They keep coming together and it's like fringe. They're at the fringe of both of their ranges. And this is what happens. It's kind of like a growler grizzly polars on the fringes are starting

Just call them.

So were there human causes? Is it of interest? Because it's like human behavior, human landscape changes are leading to this collision. Because I could see that, then you'd be like, well, now we're forced to pay attention to it because we're making it happen.

So that's that's definitely a question so one of the issue on the Gulf Coast is eroding habitat. That's that's a thing, right. So the question is then, all right, so is that eroding habitat causing decline, you know, survival and fecundity, baby making and that's why we're seeing a decline or are those birches leaving?

Right?

So that was.

They're losing X thousands of acres away?

Yeah, is it wetland food stuff?

Both?

I mean, it's wetland and then it turns into food stuff. So so, but what's interesting as I was driving around West Texas is and noticing all these large, high fenced preserves that have really beautiful stock tanks and corn everywhere, and nobody there wants to shoot a mallard because they got to shoot that Neil guy over there. So my hypothesis currently is they're both moving in because the habitats actually there. It's man made, but it's there year round.

Can tell, only a little bit. Oh no, oh, you know, he's doing it a little bit on the in the in the places with the nil guy and then the beautiful ponds, and you're like my god, the ducks. Yep, they'll now and then get some yeah.

Yeah, so and I.

Walk around being like that is all I would do, so so.

Yeah, so I would.

Uh you know.

The funny thing is I contacted a bunch of landowners and I went on some other podcasts asking for help, and I got contacts and but then like I was in Texas and then nobody, like, nobody like called me up. So I had an outfitter out there.

Uh, what part of Texas are you interested in? I could probably help you.

It's more or less all of West. We went from, like I said, Houston, Dallas area all the way to the.

The so west of that is. I'm trying to figure out West Texas. Yeah.

So if you draw a line you know that way and all the way south like that triangle.

Yeah, well have you yeah, I feel like I know, Well we'll talk about later.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I know all kinds of people who'd let you go out there and do it with your fill.

Well they say yes, and then I'm like, I'm I'm in your area, you know, calling them, and nobody's calling me back because they're like oh, And I told him I'd always be like look blinders on.

Let me go to your pond.

But what's that? What's the what's the Remember the guy we had those dudes we had on about the oslots.

Uh huh yeah, the c yeah name, I mean, yeah, this is gonna be my contribution to American science.

I will find you a bunch of places to go get your ducks.

Well, yeah, that would be great because we have a few more.

We have a few counties that are pretty poorly uh sampled and uh and they're right like you know, we could shift that line of where the zone is potentially a few miles this way or a few miles that way by getting them, and that would shift there.

Do you like to be close to the Gulf coast though?

No, No, those are all model ducks, like you know. Yeah, we went from to be fair, we went from Louisiana all the way across and it was model duck, model duck, model duck, model duck, and all all of a sudden, this like new genetic variant which are which now we know are these hybrids and hybrids and then it goes Mexican duck. So it's this very clean, sort of interesting story that will be hopefully publishing soon and figuring that out.

You draw a picture of Texas and show me where you wish you could be.

Where is that to.

Draw the little corn kernels in the pond too? Yeah, just like exactly, Okay, there's Texas. Let's do that.

I think that whole area I think.

As tip of Texas going north.

Oh this way, wait, no, that way.

There you go.

So Philip, you turned this camera, here's Texas. You know, you know everybody points us out. Do you know that you could fit EXAs, California and Molsta Montana into Alaska?

Is that amazing?

I don't mean to masculate you Texans, but especially when I'm trying to hit you up. If You're in this little honey hole and you got one of them sweet ponds called doctor Phil, called doctor Phil, doctor Phill, He's gonna be like, homet what the other doctor Phil.

You can also write the meat Eater podcast at the meat Eater Doctor and.

Have the subject line be fowling piece. Yeah, sure know what you're talking about.

Yeah.

So that's that was a long way of showing how where genetics has come into play. I mean, you gotta understand ten years ago I would go into a conference, uh, it's it's called the North American Duck Symposium called Ducks nads. Yeah, I didn't want to Yeah, it really is.

It's called Ducks now, okay, Ducks nine?

Is it North American Duck Society your cops?

Yeah, I'm aware, I'm aware.

And is that like? Are they they they recognize that that's funny or.

No, it's no longer funny.

They made it unfunny. Well, yeah, the joke war.

Off, the joke war off eight eight eight conferences in a Yeah, so it's gonna be in Portland in February.

Should come anyways. Uh yeah.

So you know some of the first ones that I would go to ID be like, oh, there's that geneticis that weird geneticist dude? Because they just didn't see the like what it couldn't do? What what that data can provide?

You know, before we get into the mallard thing, do you remember, Brady Matt, Do you guys remember when there used to be on twenty seven kinds of Canada geese and then all of a sudden one day they're like, nope, there's three. Like what is the popular number now? Seven? Eleven to eleven? So there used to be ridiculous numbers there.

Think eleven's pretty pretty commonly agreed on, right.

Okay, that came from you folks. That came from me, folks, That came from your No, that's not true. You had this discussion with Cornell, I believe. So we folks provide data and we're like, look at how different these things are. And then there's the American Ornithological Union. Here, there's the British Ornithological Union. Every country has their own unions, and then they use that data to say should.

They be species?

So they're the taxonomists that make the decisions.

So they're looking at what you're looking for them.

So the Mexican duck when this was a good example. Mexican duck was full species when it was first identified in like eighteen ninety something. Then everybody's like, oh no, there's lots of hybridization in the sixties, so they bumped it down to a subspecies of the mallard hybridsation with

Only recently so they.

Got bumped back to be in their own.

Their own full species.

So if you've got you know, the slam going, you gotta gotta come back when you one.

Is that what it is now?

For forty one Mexican ducks.

Is the newest?

Yeah, so is it forty two?

I think it's forty two. I'm gonna say it's fully How close to you guys?

I mean I was like eight off here for a while.

You're eight off.

Yeah.

Have you told you've got so You've gotten all I need?

Like my model ducks and tree ducks and that that weird stuff in the South. You know he's talking.

About, huh, did you get them all stuffed?

But like, no, I don't have them all stuff I wish I did. I wish I would have done it, kind of like our our friend down the road, Mark Pierce. You know, he's got them all like flying in the same direction. It's like one big flaw. I would have loved to have started that.

Yeah, because I always think, like I've gotten a lot of stuff over the years, is whatever and not going there like no, I haven't.

No, Well, just tough. I mean, you know, back when we were really shooting him. You know, even when I went to Alaska, I was there on a on a photo shoot and I got to hunt a king Eider and I shot the you know, the male and the female and shot some scooters and stuff like that. But shit, man, I couldn't afford to stuff everything like you can't. You know, it's expensive to do it, you know, four or five hundred bucks apiece to do it right, and it's.

More than you got paid for the photo shoot. Yeah, no, kid, deficits. So years ago, we were out in uh the east Shore, Chesapeake Bay, and we're driving down the road and we're going over a bridge, okay, and I look and it's just like I even comment on to my friend because it's duck season. I knew it was duck season. And we go over bridge and there's Maillard sitting. That just

At least as far as we think.

Okay, okay, at least as far as I thought. Maybe you're can tell me otherwise. And so it just winds up being like, here's a species that is out there. They require a lot of human assistance. If you want to supplement with pen raised birds. Knock yourself out, like you're not interfering with anything. But the fact that you could let mallards go is really surprised me. But then

This, now, sure did? Is that the segue?

That's a segue, that's a good setd Yeah.

So yes, so in a nutshell, that's that's more or less what happened. But we've I've sort of reconstructed exactly what what potentially happened. So if nobody here knows this, the mallard is the wolf of all domestic ducks, right, So like the wolf is of the.

Dog, the mallard is that.

To all domestic ducks. He lost all right, so peaking duck? Oh yeah yeah really Yeah.

They pulled all the domestics off of.

Mallards, just like you could get a chihuahua off of a wolf.

Okay, this is interesting because I was you know, uh, what we pulled cattle from.

Yeah, they're trying to bring it is gone.

What we pulled the pig from is still around, Yeah, sus scraff what we pulled sheep from I believe is still around.

I think so that was out of what uh, Saudi Arabia, Arabia, Northern Africa. That would have been red cheap I think.

Is the ancestral one on what we pulled the horse from is I think gone.

So they so revive and restore recently cloned the second I'm gonna say this wrong, Piswick.

Yeah, that's like the foundation species. Yeah yeah, yeah, so I had no idea the mallard.

The mallard is.

The duck that created that. They pulled all the domestics.

Yeah, so they were one of the last successful domestication events about five thousand years ago. So there's only two, well three the goose sort of, but the only other good domestication was in South America with the Muscovis. They kind of just looked like that's how you say, that's all Yeah, either way either acceptable.

In my book. Yeah.

So so the mallard, you know, there's good writings about the Ming dynasty was one of the first ones to start domestication, domesticating the process of domestication of of of mallards, and that was for food, right, make them fatter, fat making more eggs these types of things now five thousand years ago about yeah, and now again. Domestication is a process, so it ebbs and flows, happens all over the once it started, then those things get transitioned, just kind of

So he was a sixteen thirty one.

Sixteen thirty one.

The name game farm Mallard was first, as far as I know, recorded in eighteen nineties in England by people ringing them and calling them game farm Mallard. I'm going to refer to this thing called a game farm Mallard. But all it really is is a domestic variant, right. It's a name, just like a lab or chihuahua or whatever. Beagle is a name, pekin, duck rowan duck, runners call ducks. All these things have names, right, So this thing is called a game farm mallard because it was farmed for

Then I don't know.

Then whatever was around just just like a pheasant shoot, but with with ducks, right, they're flying more erratic, more like a make a a.

Mallard fly like a wigeon.

Oh okay, the objective the same way a pigeon fancier. Yeah, wants to make pigeons that have all these crazy colors. They were like, breed me outright, we want to make this hard. We're crazy flying.

Yeah, all right, So now let's move forward to America.

You know one second, Yeah, did they do what did they in Europe? Did they do the tower? Is that what they're doing? Tower shoots?

They do both they do so currently how bad I guess bad is relative? I think is bad. So they do tower shoots, but they also released right before the season, France releases three million of these things to have a fall flight. Now, wow, no, that was last year's numbers.

I think that's a staggering number.

France cuts loose three million mallards.

Something like that, like game farm mallady, game farm mallards.

Things that you breed and you release right before the season, just like you would release pheasants, you know, before Thanksgiving, youth, Christmas.

Maybe. Yeah, well it was another important distinction between pheasants those like the gall of forms. You like that word?

Yeah, I like it.

That was that was a you a question, that meaning your trivia that I got right not too long ago. One of the deaf defining features of the Galli forms is they don't really go anywhere. Correct, that's a small home range. When you caught a mallet, Loo says, some bitch takes off.

Yeah, so so dogmatically, wait, can we go to America?

Now?

Oh right, okay, all right, so so you're right. So the gunning years of the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, you know, market hunting was spelled demise for all our bird populations, including passenger pigeon eventually going extinct, heath hen going extinct for now.

Oh we held one of those. Ah yeah, Krin they head in that drawer. I'm talking about the extinct drawer. I don't think they had the dog. I think they had the it was ivory bills, passengers and heath.

Hen Okay, in the special, I don't totally.

Right by the door.

I will note that my contribution so far is to reviving her stories so far, just suggesting we should bring back labrador duck. Yeah, but I said I would get the first tag.

Anyways.

Okay, so we are we are gunning year's population crashes, and so what did folks do? There's two things that are occurring. So if you don't know this, east of the Mississippi River was boreal forest, right and the duck mallards were were vagrants, which means we're going.

Back to the Mississippi. Wasn't boreal forest during the place to scene?

Yeah, we're going there because we have we have a very good distinction here. The east of the Mississippi before humans started cutting things down was mostly boreal forests and the ecological replacement, which means the thing that is better than the other thing to the mallard in that area was the American black duck. That is the reason it is completely dark, both males and females, because you could

Too, all right, So cause mallard is king there.

It is, big greenhead, big greenhead.

Same thing.

Did you know, do everybody see the story of the Hunter? I think she was a thousand years old in Nova Scotia. Last last meal mallard.

Yep, yeah, chestnuts, chestnuts and mallard yea chestnut.

The mad So we've been doing this for a while. Everybody loves mallards.

She was what else had she had she been eating?

Well, she also had a lot of diseases. I remember seeing all Yeah.

Yeah, I think her last they were saying her diet was I don't remember. I remember the chestnuts and Mallardy went out on a high.

Yeah, pretty much anyway.

So so, uh so, folks first tried to start breeding programs with our wild birds mallards and black ducks. They didn't take because it's their wild It takes time for them to be like, Okay, I'm going to not stress out, I'm going to make eggs, all these types of things. So that failed. But somebody must have known that the Europeans already got this right, you know.

Can I let me ask you extra detail about this because you just said something that's interesting. They found the opposite with turkeys that which which one Well, when they started trying to repopulate turkeys.

The out of Pa, those last turkeys.

Well everywhere they I mean they recover turkey's are old damn place. But what they found initially they were trying to use captive bread yeah birds.

Yeah.

The captive bread birds wouldn't take. Yeah, And then they eventually came to the conclusion they had to use wild bread birds correct to distribute them around. So you saying that that they had an opposite experience with ducks.

It's the no, because that the point of that was actually establishing populations. Currently they just want to make ducks, right, So those are two different h wants.

Right, So, oh, they're recovering something, they're trying to get something going exactly, I got it.

Yeah, all right, so they went So someone must have known that the Europeans like figured this out and brought game farm mallards here and I'll explain how I figure that out. But so they started propagating them, and from about nineteen twenty nineteen sixty they released about half a million of these things just on the Eastern seaboard every year, and then nineteen sixty to today is about two hundred and fifty thousand to our best estimates, but my guess is way more than that.

So these games getting released, still getting released, and still of the progeny of these European birds. Yep.

Yeah.

So so is this the state doing this or is this just like private currently?

It's private. When it first started, it was state fed private. Everybody was trying to raise them. In fact, more game birds for America.

Do you know who they became?

Anybody du had no idea the trivia?

Yeah, do you know who James Ford Bell started which other one Delta Waterfall. Yeah, so they both initially wanted to do game farm mallards too and hot Yeah, Delta Waterfowl had a hole their first thing in the Delta marshes.

Take these European ducks, these European mallards, cut them loose, and then the next year just no successful reproduction. Yeah you're going over again, correct. Yeah, they never took off.

So the dogma since then of why we continue to release them is that they are some Oh the other fun fact is everybody tells me that, oh, well, they're born here, they can like smell their way here, and so they don't leave here. It's like their house no matter what. And if they do leave, they die, and if they don't die, they definitely don't breathe. That's the dogma that I was under, including when I was in school in uh UC Davis. I was I was learning about this.

Can you tell me? Can you tell me that again? The dogma.

The dogma was that it's okay to release these things sort of like pheasants, like look, winter's gonna come, the coyotes are going to get.

Them, like nobody's gonna survive.

Right, So the dogma was these things are trained quote unquote if you can't see them, uh, to to stay on the wetland that they're you know, made, and.

That would so that would help, and that that posturing or that belief alleviated concerns that you're gonna let this sort of like global Pandora's box out by taking this animal and it flies and all around the world and spreads itself every correct. Yeah.

So so that happened for one hundred years, and I was studying American black ducks and mallard So if you don't know this American black duck again very close relative sister species or relative to the to the mallard in fact off the Mallard tree. It was a mallard in North America and then evolved adapted to boreal forests and over the last half million years turned into what we now considered the American black.

Can you tell uh us have such little experience of black dogs? Can can you tell the hens from the drakes by looking at them?

Yeah?

It's tough fight. It's hard. No, greenhead obviously, No, it's you have to what is this? What are you looking at? Bill? Bill? Yeah? And only thing. That's the only thing.

And can't you look at the speculum too?

You can, But they're not supposed to have a white wing bar, so the white hybrid in between. Okay, that's that's what I know.

Yeah.

No, and and your and your thought process was correct us fish and wildlife. So this is part of this study. We were saying, like, okay, so we're at this wing b where all these things, and you know, professionals are calling Mallard black duck hybrid. You know, based on those characteristics you have the amount of white on them and all this other stuff. So we did the genetics on them,

You know, this is starting to sound like is when you show people the deer's teeth and they tell you how old it is. Yeah, work without cutting into it. Yeah yeah, it being.

Like that's a maybe that's year old buff Yeah exactly.

Anyway, So but within that study, I started picking up this genetic signature that didn't that wasn't black duck, and it wasn't Western Mallard. So west by Western Mallard, I mean west of the Mississippi River, west of the Mississippi River, they're all this one genetic cluster. And then as you go east, this secondary genetic cluster that is mixed with the western Genei cluster started to come in.

Higher and higher abundance.

And when we looked at black duck hybrids, they tended to backcross with this other genetic signature. So that was twenty nineteen. I knew the story of this game farm releases, and of course dogmatically I was like I shouldn't look at that, like that's that's not a thing.

They don't go anywhere that I don't go anywhere.

And I saw that, I'm like, no way. So but to you know, prove to the scientific community, and I had to go and get known game farm mallards. So I actually sent my wife to New Jersey and a couple other places and we collected we collected known game far mallage.

From some of these preserves.

How did she get them?

She shot him.

You sent her out as a client.

Unreally undercover undercover client heard.

These stories before I knew where this story was about to go.

So you sent your wife to masquerade as a client to bring you the ducks.

Well, on top of it, though, she was also giving me information of where these birds that she didn't didn't just come to the pond go And they all they all went to this location. And when I immediately in real time Google mapped where they were going, they're all going to a wildlife refuge.

You're kidding me?

So they know where they're going, gods.

Like an undercover component. Yeah, yeah, this is dark. I like a jehan.

Lecar So now those ys, So now we're back to Jersey, they're probably about.

To go kill me.

So so all right, So we had that, we had known game farm, right, and then on top of it, I'm like, well, there's park ducks everywhere. And the nice thing is we were banding Mexican ducks and alongside them there were there were Khaki Campbell's, which is a different variant of mallard. So we had those, so they are were our proxy other park duck domestic thing, right, So if this genetic signature was park duck, we would be able to tell that, or if it was game farm,

No?

They were the genetic signature of a mallard one hundred and fifty year old mallard was that which you have here in Montana in the prairies, so for now, and this other genetic signature was causing that the eastern mala to be completely different than what is western mallard today

A wild mallard.

All right.

So then I was like, all right, let's look at how this occurs across the world. And for that we had to go to Europe and on top of it be like, okay, are our game farm mallards from Europe?

You know, had to prove that, So you had to send your wife there.

So I just I would have gone.

No, I had colleagues in Europe.

They sent me a whole bunch of DNA and blood and all this other stuff from Sweden. Almost what did we do? Twelve countries? It's in that paper right there.

We back over one second. Your is she a duck hunor she is? Okay?

Yeah?

Did she bring friends?

Uh?

No, she's just solo clients.

Strange a single woman shows up to the hunting club with her fowling piece and just like, let's go.

Well.

We also requested that the dogs handle the birds, uh carefully because we were making a mount a mount.

Oh that's good. Wow.

I have a quick question backing up real quick, Khaki Campbell. I've never heard of this before, is it?

No?

I see it. I'm curious if that is commonly known as a blonde mallard.

Maybe, so we're going to get it.

I'm not trying to like deviate however, like this is this is this is very interesting to me.

Yeah, because like the blonde Mallard was always like genetics and like it was just losing its color.

Yeah, we've always thought it was like it was like lousistic mallard. If that's even a real is.

The domestic tree of life for fort first, for.

Mallard, because a blonde Mallard is a prized piece for.

For very years.

You should hold fills cameras.

Here's one right here.

Focus there you go, Matt, I have a I have a quick question as well. So as you're talking about Ossippy, so many of these mallards have game farm bird genetics in them. Matt and I have a lot of friends east and south east of the Mississippian in the southern United States who claim that they know ducks better than anybody in the world. It's a culture that prides itself

I think that's what he's getting at to what we have.

I'll let you make that conclusion, okay.

But afterwards, your game farm ducks, the game farm ducks you guys got, can you write me a note after sign it? I walk through like I'm telling you.

That doctor said this. Yeah, doctor Phil tells you.

Because I want to have I would like to have some some bragging rights.

Yeah, I feel like, well, yeah, we're pure game park ducks, dude, and like, no, wonder you got him. I hope you got it. I hope you I'd hope you'd be able to get one. Yeah.

Yeah, you guys don't even need calls, you just go quack quack and yeah, okay, so we're going to talk more about that.

Let's put white bread out. Actually, don't feel that that causes them.

Uh, it doesn't matter.

All right, all right, So so we were doing it. So where was that night, twenty twenty pav Yeah.

You were global Global.

So I also knew that they released game far mallards in New Zealand. They stopped in nineteen what was it, nineteen seventies or so, I think it's the date.

So what was their duck with it?

We record show both game farm mallards were bought from Europe and brought there. That was the first time.

Did they have what native ducks they have? Oh? Did they have a Mallard light?

Yeah?

Yeah, it's called the New Zealand Gray Duck. It's part of the Pacific Black Duck group.

But it's it's a it's a Mallard off.

It's a Mallard off shoot.

Yeah, it's totally different though.

Yeah, all right, so we call this Mallard complex. It's like a Mallard complex. But actually the Mallard was not the source for all of these other ducks. It's it's an African species which was completely we probably extinct, but most likely part of like the African black duck, yellow bill duck group. We call it the Mallard complex because we have a complex with mallards and yeah, it's like mallard.

Yeah.

Did you do it out of season or in season?

No?

In season? Yeah, just straight up hunting.

It's called scientific collective.

I mean you guys are like scientists, decoy calling.

Well, that's how you get them, inn yet I don't know.

If you get some other things you're about, like you shoot them out of golf course ponds. I don't know.

No, maybe in Mexico we did that.

So you're like, like I would have looked, but like those guys are duck hunting, but in fact you were collecting specimens.

Yeah okay, yeah, so we did this whole thing. So I had a bunch of mallards that are so so. Their population I think the last estimate was also three just about three million, so they're doing well. The question is where did they come from? Right, so we know that they had two efforts of bringing in mallards into New Zealand. One came out of Europe and another one they came to North America. And they bought mallards from North America.

Really thinking of assuming they were different.

Hey. Uh, when I was in New Zealand, I shot with my rifle a Canada goose, did you, yeah, which are like wide old the rifle. That's the same deal, right, I mean it is.

Those Those were Canada geese that were probably I don't know where they brought were brought from, but I'm assuming from the States.

They just brought like caught them loose, same thing.

Yeah, you know the moose that they brought there was I think new Fie.

They think they're gone, yeah.

But every so often they like pop up.

It's become their Tasmanian.

So Phil, I was in New Zealand and I did a duck hunt as well, and their prize duck is the mallard. Right, everybody wants to shoot the mallard down.

There, and would you look and be like that's a mallard.

Well, so here's my thing. So I wanted to shoot Perry's because Perry's are super cool. What's that duck? Paradise shell duck yep, so super fascinating native to their Yeah, yep. And it's fascinating that with the paradise shell duck. Not to get off subject, but the drake is actually black and the hen is all colored up. I gotta believe it has to do with no land predators. But so I was looking at the mallard there, Yeah, really cool duck. So the female is the one with the white head.

Yeah.

So I was looking at the mallards there, and the mallards don't fly high. They fly really low to the ground, right, And so I was like, gosh, these mallards are kind of weird. They work a little bit funny over the decoys work to the call a little bit different. We get them in, and I was convinced that the legs of the mallard were further towards the head than of

In New Zealand specifically, I'm assuming you never saw one perfectly looking green head.

I mean they all looked the same. Yeah, they looked different. Yeah, not like a farm duck, but like different.

Yeah yeah yeah.

So New Zealand had their source was game farm mallards from Europe and from North America. Another one we went, I have a study looking at Hawaiian ducks and this issue with hybridization with domestic mallards there, so I had mallards from Hawaii as well. I thought those were going to be park ducks. So let's just like move forward into the into what we now know feral populations on Hawaii as well as New Zealand source population were game

But the other part of it, there's no predators, right.

That gives them time to be like, oh, we're really bad at life, but we'll survive long enough.

Oh yeah, feral cats are the only thing that kill them.

Yeah, and New Zealanders as if you guys have been there, man, they like to just shoot everything off like cats everything. You know, they're there to shoot stuff. So anyway, so Europe we were able to confirm is the game for the wild mallard from Europe is the ancestor of all mallards including in North America. Now we got birds. The

Where are they coming from there?

The really the some of the major release groups.

Are there, so they got they got like the dark it's numbers, the stocking.

Yeah.

So so that location and now some of our newer studies in the Great Lakes region is starting to find that the Great Lakes region is starting to look like Jersey and France. And these are three locations that are not doing great in duck number, in Mallard numbers.

This is going to bring back the whole freedom fry thing again.

So so anyway, so it's sticking with the North America just to give you some numbers. The Atlantic Flyway. So we had hunting season, non hunting seasons, the summer, summer banding time, so like, what are we banding in the in the States, and we did it state. We have every single state.

Because banding is always done in the summer.

Correct, Yeah, there's winter banding as well now, but the majority of the banding is summer.

Because when they're molting's easy to get them.

Yeah, you think that that represents your production of that state, right, So that's the production.

So there's.

All right, So Jersey, Massachusetts, and whether it's hunting or non hunting, I can't find.

A wild mallard. It's like zero percent.

What Yeah, Massachusetts, Jersey, Connecticut, I'm missing, But that.

Whole little sit in the summer. In the summer, if you're in the summer, you go out to a state game refuge in New Jersey, you're handling either a feral thunkel mallard over the head. That's not a wild mallard.

Yeah, genetically, you're funny. Yes, it's not a North American wild mallard anymore.

So New York's a little bit better.

I think they were like sixty sixty forty sixty percent mostly wild forty. But New York's an interesting piece because we now know that there is a substantial number of Canadian birds. Canadian birds Mallard's out of Canada moving in to those states when we didn't think they were. So they're adding to the production. And what I can tell you is that Canada is is more like Quebec is sixty forty sixty percent wild, forty percent hybrid feral.

I did want to mention, so have they has Quebec? Does Quebec have a history of cutting birds loose?

Not that we know of.

No, it's it's it's it's okay. So they didn't create this, it's just happening to them.

So that's the whole epicenter of what we find. So what a feral bird is is a bird that is in the wild. Right, they're not in the cage anymore. They're in the wild. I don't know if they're in the wild this year, last year, whatever, So I just have to call them feral, just like you would call a feral pig. Right if you let loose pigs and then you had no idea and you came out to some property in West Texas, you'd be like, oh, feral pigs because you had no idea.

You don't know the individual's history, correct, He could be tenth generation in the wild, first generation but he's just feral, right.

And so where you expect, So the epicenter would always have feral birds as well as things that are back crossing genetically interbreeding with these game farm lineages. So you have things that are moving like between wild and game farm, but more game farming. Yeah, and so that's an epicenter, and that's Jersey. What happens as you move away from Jersey is it sort of dissipates. So these genes are being perpetuated through the landscape, but then what they're doing

Yeah, currently twenty two.

Uh, it's two percent wild wild. You gotta you drop a mallard out of the sky. In in the Atlantic Flyway, it's about two percent. Again, some states are better than like.

The fake not fake. The feral ducks have effectively in these areas they have replaced wild mallards more or less. Yeah, let me hit you with the let me hit Let's say you're not interested. Let's say you don't care about endemism and use like the hunt docks, and you don't care about the genetics of the duck. Yeah, so let me hit you with the who cares? I mean, is New Jersey just kicking ass at duck recruitment? No, no, no, that's the problem.

So the Atlantic Flyway has been declining two percent in its annual production over the last twenty years, just constantly ticking ticking, ticking ticking. In fact, they were down for a five hundred I think they somehow found.

Like regardless of the gene background, we're just talking.

Like ducks, No mallards.

We're talking about I'm sorry, and the mallards like the mallards, regardless of what you're counting. If you're like, there are fewer and fewer mallards out there every year, regardless of whether you're dividing them into wild or well. We didn't know what was the cause. Yeah, but you know that they all have their heritage, is all. We now know that arm raised. Their numbers are going down.

So the next question is obviously doesn't matter right, sure, all right, so it's about two percent there. But then as you go to the Mississippi Flyway, there's an interesting aspect and we uh uh some work between Brian Davis and Mississippi stay Rikaminski and others, Kevin Ringleman. We did a a sort of like Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, if you know that area, Georgia, Louisiana, parts of Missouri. We've

I get a question, Yeah, are you grabbing these ducks during the breeding season.

From all these different states?

Yeah?

So so that works.

So they're they're breeding the two separate, separate types of sampling. So we do hunter harvest sampling. Hunters are just you know, during the hunting season, we get a bunch of samples.

Uh.

But then there's banding crews again. Ben Lucanan and his his crew out of the Great Lakes, Doug Osborne or of University of Arkansas, uh, Brad Cohen out of Tennessee Tech, and Brian Brian Davis out of Mississippi State. They are constantly catching, putting telemetry units and banding and.

All that stuff up out of the wat.

So then so then I partnered with them and be like, all right, just bleed them a little bit and get me that sample.

Right, We're not killing those birds.

So so uh so then we have those two comparisons. What are we banding during what summer? And then what are we harvesting? So we have those types of comparisons so we're building those data sets to answer how does the mixture between Canada raised mallards and US mallards occur across the hunting time span? Because if you go to folks in the Mississippi, they'd be like, all our ducks.

Are stopping in the north.

Yeah for sure, Yeah, because.

Yeah, I was just thinking about migration and I'm like, how do you know where this exact duck came from?

Yeah?

Yeah, So so that was our question.

All right, so we know this, so we we now we publish these papers and we know this like different population dynamics going on. We you know, so I partner with them and we've got telemetry units on them. Right, can anybody guess trivia where those birds in the lower Mississippi Alluvia Valley are from? Given their genetics of wild I made a hypothesis and thankfully I was right to.

The west more Preci.

Exactly Dakota.

Every every bird that was that, I think, every bird maybe not maybe except for one that was a hybrid, went to the Great Lakes. And then really and then the Great Lakes birds do they do you think they have? So well, we have four years now of telemetry units tied with genetics, so we know what's happening. What do

Should be holding they should be holding strong where somewhere up in the Great Lakes, somewhere up in that region because they're not going to migrate all the way south.

Yeah, they do a random walk, a walk, it's called random walk. There isn't a straight path. Some birds go to the Atlantics. Some birds go south, but then there's this wall in Tennessee that they do not cross.

Don't understand why, trying to figure that out. And they go straight back up. All of the birds with thirty percent.

So they'll scatter off various directions.

Just it's more random. Yeah, it's completely random. It's it's not significantly different from random. Right, So the birds in the lower Mississippi have this like straight patch.

Well, have you been able to watch any of these ducks and see what he does? Is he doing this? Is he is an individual duck doing the same thing, or is an individual duck doing different directions all the time?

Individual duck is doing random walks.

Okay, so in twenty twenty one he does this. In twenty twenty two.

They survive well. So it's these ones are all females. I wish we would put males because they're the males and waterfowl are the dispersing sex. So if you've got a game farmy male or a game farming female, it's the male that's most likely to move the gees. But nobody wants to put telemetry and it's on males. Apparently

Like what is the problem.

I have a timeline question because I'm just kind of tracking what you're saying. So boreal forests go way back. You had said that there was no mallards in the Northern Atlantic Northeast region. Yeah, anyways, that there was a bunch down south of Tennessee. Naturally, there was a bunch of while down there already there was none up in the New Jersey area, so they brought them in. We have the American black duck who's not getting messed with with you know what's going on here, And now all

Is it it's the spreading.

It's the spreading that we don't like, because having a mallard in New Jersey is seems like it's a success story.

Yeah, but when you say that all the mallard, yeah, like all the mallards in New Jersey are game fire mallards. But was there ever a difference meaning they went from no mallards to just only game fire mallards?

So I hope to answer that question soon with those eighteen hundreds, So we did we redid that study. We have eight hundred historical samples from eighteen hundred to today to answer that question, how did it happen? We know what we have now.

But you know where the samples came from, and.

We know exactly where the samples came from with the dates location.

So there were mallards that got killed out of New Jersey the eighteen hundreds, yeah, okay, yeah, number.

Some number, yeah yeah, yeah, I mean people shoot still shoot cinnamon teal in there every so often, right, so these things got collected. Is I'm sure at that time you shot a malley, you're like, oh, man, put this thing into the museum.

It was you were surprised. Yeah, I see, I see some strays would go through that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So now we're seeing these migratory differences that are that at least to some extent, are genetically associated. Because we have this nice association of an individual that's and it's very weird. Don't know why yet, but thirty percent or more game farm makes them do weird things.

All right, So now we've got so now we have sort of lists like situation.

Oh.

The other thing is is birds in the Atlantic Flyway had a connect connectivity to the Atlantic Flyway. There's birds that are interchanging. So the question is like, why is there increasing game farm in the Great Lakes.

Is it people releasing them or is it just this.

Like kind of ebb and flow between the Atlantic Flyway and the Great Lakes region kind of this natural, semi natural ebb and flow.

That's the question that we hope to answer.

Are there people releasing If they're releasing them, they're not supposed to be.

That's a state that's a state by state kind of situation.

We I mean, how would you not know if they're releasing them in the Great Lakes.

Nobody's keeping track of that as far as I can tell.

Okay, yeah, so someone could be I mean the Great Lakes, I don't know what it is, five or six states, whatever the hell. Yeah, So Michigan, are there there are not to your knowledge, there are not places in Michigan that like advertise that they're dumping mallards.

Not to my knowledge. Yeah.

So the genetic signatures that I see there make me believe that people are because because it looks like Jersey, it looks like France. Then the whole thing is like these things have a low survival, right, So a colleague of mine in Sweden kind of did a survival estimate. They said, like three percent, But look, three percent of half a million, two hundred and fifty thousand and a

It's the added every.

Single year you're just you're continuing to move those genes into the population over and over and over. We can go back to rainbow trot. So the fisheries are are far ahead of what we do where we are because they've been studying this. It takes only three generations for for rainbow trout to be in a stock tank. Uh, for for fifty percent of the eggs to be in viable, because what happens in this in Italy. Yeah, and the same thing with quail. Only three or four generations of

You know the unibomber got into this. Oh yeah, you read the manifesto.

I know, I know the unise Yeah no, well I'll just give it to Oh my god, didn't I didn't see this coming.

He rates levels of difficulty one to five and his manifesto, and he's like, one is I can't remember it was inverse or not, but let's say one is, Uh, try as hard as you can, you'll never succeed. Okay, Five is you don't even need to try, and you'll succeed. His deal is that technology that Human Survival used to hover like at the two three. Yeah, try pretty hard. He tried pretty hard, you'll be okay. Now you can do the opposite to try.

You sit there and just be fine.

And and that's part of his gripe with technology. Everybody wins in the cage.

Everybody wins.

See and then he tied that to all the neuro season. You know what I mean, there's nothing cleaning anything out anymore. Title well, we got away from we don't do a good title.

This is the second podcast this month where Steve's made the guests uncomfortable by being kind of like prom.

It's just springing it in. I'm not pro unibomber at all. I took a class in college called political rhetoric, and we read political rhetic everything from Doctor King, Camille Paglia, the Unibomber, Like, we read it all. And I think a lot of people know about the Unibomber, but not a lot of people had to read the Unibomber's manifesto. No, so you had to read the Unibomber's manifesto.

Are you going to talk about Charlie Manson?

Now, we didn't read anything abou Charlie. I'll have to write doctor Gillison note and tell him that he should have had some Charlie Manson writings in there. But no, not pro unibomber, but just he had a motive. He had he had like motivating thoughts.

No, yeah, I mean in a cage, everybody wins. I mean I teach I teach similar things, right, is it not unibomber things I teach? You know, Like, look, humans, everybody's surprised always that the effective population size of humans is ten thousand people. That's how many people there should be and it hasn't changed. And everybody's like, well, why is that that's because genetic very genetic variation doesn't come

Society. Society.

Society is our cage, and it becomes you know, we we we go further and further further to the four or five. Well, earlier on, as long as you were kings and stuff like that, you were really out of five. Everybody else was still kind of at a two.

Yeah, you know, So what's the if the situation goes and continues to happen? Yeah, do you picture that? Do you picture that they'll continue to move westward?

That's exactly, Souse.

There's some amount astray, like exactly like when you look at that salm and a lot of salmon make a wrong turn, correct, and that's how they colonize new rivers. Correct, like they just go out the wrong river. Most of the time they do that. It doesn't work out now and then one does that and he's like, sweet, yep, that hold new salmon stream.

No, no, absolutely, And that's exactly what's happening. It's we we ben Senator and I looked at banding data we recently published Internal of Wildlife Management, and we saw that there's a twenty five percent emigration rate, so leaving the Atlantic flywight on the US side into the Mississippi. So this is one way that things are moving west. And so most likely what's happening is those genetics are coming over their pair bonding with something that goes to the prairies,

And that'll Jon Rock Mountain, that'll jump.

The unfortunate thing is uh so okay, So getting back to is this a bad thing? Let me let me prevince this. So study between Michael Schumer at Sunni SEF and his master student Susannah haligrand Brian Davis out Mississippi State Ariol Fournier with Forged Biological Station.

This is very generous someone receiving an OSCAR.

I want to thank everybody, as well as California Waterfowl Association with Caroline Brady and Brian Huber.

All right, I got all those out. Uh, So we did a study.

We want to We can't be like, well what I did, yeah, Ahi on this silver tower by myself.

No, No, that's not how I work. I'm like, we got to get this, you know study. I almost said, you know, the stuff done, and I work by bringing in the people who know how to do it quickly. And that's what I do, you know.

So anyways, so.

We're like, okay, we need to get wild strain birds and game farm birds into captivity to test. Like the first thing that we started seeing is their bill and we're like, this bill on this game farm mallard sure looks like it's better at pecking than it is at straining. So we had a hypothesis that in captivity where you throw grains out, potentially over in the last four hundred years, we've been selecting for things that can a run over to that and be peck at it. And so We're like,

So I called up some friends and they're like, yeah, there's some people.

I don't know who they really, So now I'm gonna have to send my wife back to California.

Anyways, so we brought these in captivity.

We genetically vetted everyone, meaning we did you know, ancestry dot com on everybody knew everybody, Okay, these are hybrids, these are wild these are the game farms. On top of it, we got game by doing this. We got game farms from like other states, everybody, same exact genetic signature, still old world Eurasian signature, right, still from over there. So we brought them in and what we were doing

I was like, what does this do?

And they're like, oh, you took a jumbo jet and you put fighter wings on it. You created you made it flightier. So these things can maneuver at faster rates. But here's the kicker. When we finished our feeding trials, we put them back on purina chow to get them fat, and the hybrids puriana child so a high protein diet to get them back to fat because we wanted to know what they would what they would do, and anything that had thirty percent more game farm or just straight

They're not getting properly geared up for.

It, and that's physiologically. They do not put fat on. It seems again anecdotally just because of what we've done game wild mallards. You put them on Purian chown in four days, they're like twelve hundred grands. Right, they're putting that fat on just as you would expect. So now let's put all this into a winter situation in Michigan. A freak storm comes in. You got a bird with no fuel, shorter wings, that can fly fast, but can't migrate far and would have to refuel almost every stop. Right,

So the city almost that's that's the random walk.

That's why they come back.

Yeah, they're like, oh, I gotta go back to bread.

Bread lady, you know, like refuel except bread gives ducks angel wings, So don't give them bread. They actually are killing them by giving them bread.

Really. Yeah, so if they had just done one of these introductions fifty years ago.

It would have been swamped out by the wild.

Because of all these problems. Yeah, what's the fact that you're just doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it, and once it's in there, it doesn't go away.

That's that's the New Zealand situation, where you had inundation, you put these things out there and then you like, let's.

See what mother nature basically would do.

Yeah, and obviously they but again an interesting situation. It's an islands island ecosystem. There are there there aren't needs for migration because you know, seasonality isn't the same, no predators, all these It's it's sort of like a perfect situation.

It's not this like complex web of all these correct intercontinental migration parallel migration paths, you know.

Exactly and so so yeah, So what we know now is that at minimum there are physiological morphological which means like their bill, their body, all this stuff, and they're physiological.

I forgot.

So when we started seeing some of this uh this uh changes in migration. We I have a master student uh uh Nico who's working on getting muscle fibers off

So basically what this game farm mallard.

Is is a fighter jet that goes really fast short bursts. Uh, and that's about it.

That's but that's what we bredd it for, right.

That, unintentionally or intentionally, we got what we wanted.

Yeah, I have a question for you.

So when I hear this, this is from my perspective, it sounds a little doom and gloom, right, like we're screwed. My question is, with all of this data that you have right now, is there legislation in place or being pushed to stop game farm releases? And even if they did, let's just say, you know, you're king of the world. You waved one. There's not another game farm bird released in North America today?

Are we screwed? Like?

Is this going to eventually be fully bled out as it gets into the West and other regions of the country.

I got a solution, good, it's Brady's point. If it was, if the new ones were to end, I mean, can you start bringing ones from the West and yeah, cutting them back loose.

Right, I mean, that's that's what it looks like, right if they're eventually if they're so weak that they're not going to be able to withstand the winters and they're not putting on the fat et cetera. I'm just curious, like forward face, forward looking, what's the play here?

That's a great question. More data.

He's not policy guys.

That's right, those kinds of questions.

What are the policy guys think about it? Are interested?

I am not allowed to come, so I do not comment. I don't know about the Atlantic FLA.

I don't give me the you don't comment on.

The Mississippi Flyway has reached out. They are they are supposed to be putting a comment out being like we do not support this, I believe.

Yeah, I don't know what about the U, S.

G S.

I feel like you're pleading the fifth right now? Uh? Yeah, it definitely is.

Okay. Let's say you had let's say you said no, no on it. Uh, let's say you said exactly what you think? What would what bad? What would happen to you? It was bad? All right?

So like everybody.

The question, Yeah, the Flyways asked me if if this is going to be like, how do you know if it's going to be bad? I won't know until it happens, but we can easily go back and ask, well, what happened with all the fisheries and u quail releases and pheasants and anything else we've tried to release with captive bread birds that have been domesticated for a while.

Like the track record's not great, not great.

Not great, And all of those signatures are popping up, not just here, but like we can just look at what's happening in Europe, right, So, so France is releasing a few million birds just to have a fall flight.

You know that.

That's and they have complex ecologies, right, they have my needs for migration. They have seasonality very similar to us. So given the situation there and the constant inundation, the probability of the same situation happening is high.

Really close to beyond at a time.

All right, sorry, I feel like we could talk about this for five more hours.

Yeah, who you worked for the university? I did? Okay. We had a USGS guy on a long time ago about grizzly bear. His job was to count. His job was to tell people how many bears are there. But he's like, my job is not to tell you what to do about it. I'll tell you how many I think are there, but what you do with that is your business. You're not held by that. You're a university guy.

Yeah, but I work with every state and federal agency in this country and in Canada, and you know, I leave it to them. I provide data and they do what they.

Want with I am.

I am.

Oh, then let's let's hear it. What do you really think?

Yeah?

So, so people, we gotta right we trivia Pete.

I've already done trivia with you guys, like right here, you did. I asked you a questions, a couple of questions.

Oh yeah, okay, I think, yeah, what do you do?

So we have a project in Hawaii. I'll wrap it up quickly. Like where we're testing this, can you artificially move back a hybrid population towards something different?

That's what I want to hear.

Yeah, so in Hawaii, can you were We just got funding, although we're two hundred and fifty thousand dollars short. If there are any donors on this podcast, please contact me at Peele Rescue at utub dot eu. Anyways, so we are actually going to try we know exactly the population. It's on Awahu. We're going to try to move pure Hawaiian ducks into this hybrid population and see generationally, how many generations does it take for us to get Hawaiian ducks again? So it's kind of like a genetic pseudo

Because you're in a Mallard stronghold.

Exactly what happened in the East hypothesis Now hopefully i'll have data with all the historical stuff, is that there weren't that many to begin with, and whatever was there you essentially bred out right, and so now it's just these hybrid thingies and so, and you're constantly putting it in where mother nature can't just be like, all right, let's just keep some of this wild in there, yep, because you're just constantly pushing it in and so again,

I lived in that flyway for a couple of years. It felt like doom and gloom when I was there.

So they're glad to be here now.

Now you were mentioning the Chesapeake Bay and that those ducks are funny.

Now you know that they are funny there.

Their behavior, everything about them is just you know, it looks like a mallard, but it's a chuaha a dog.

We're going to close with a role play. We're in a hotel bar. I don't know anything about you, yeah, okay, and I got no way of finding out about you. And I'm just thinking out loud in this hotel bar, and I'm like, man, I live in New Jersey. I'm thinking about getting into this whole deal of turning game farm mallards out. So I like to hunt ducks. You're just a stranger. What do you think I ought to do? Don't do it, that's what you'd say.

Yeah, doctor Phil says, don't do it.

Oh, doctor Phil says, I was giving you anonymity as a dude. That yeah, I mean I caught you in the traps. Oh god, yeah, I mean here's the thing.

It's now sort of a pastime right in a lot of part of this country. I'm not going to say like, oh, let's shut it all down. But what I can say is, our maps are our data flow are so at nice fine scales that there are management actions that we can have, Like, for example, you have a place that is releasing, and we can find these hot spots for any state and be like, Okay, we're gonna have special seasons in September. We're going to allow you to shoot ten Mallards or.

Whatever it is.

When you're there, you're just basically trying to push that three four percent survival rate to zero of Mallard's coming out of there.

That's what I would suggest.

You're not going to shut this thing down like it's a money maker, Like are you going to really know? But there are things that we can do. I think, And I think that segues to can we segue to duck DNA?

Now I was gonna.

Know that's that's the done, But it's an action item for duck DNA. Like one minute and then we need it, We're gonna still is gonna pull the plug?

So literally, where's the rights twitch?

So so yeah, So this is a citizen science project that has been in my mind for almost a decade. Mike Brazier, uh and I have been talking who's with Ducks Unlimited over the last couple of years, and then we went forward with this thing called Duck DNA.

Go to www dot duck dna dot com.

You got the u r L doug DNA Duck DNA. Congratulations, Yeah, well to do you?

So do you I have to thank Ashley Tunstall, Uh Kai Victor do you Communications department, it department and development.

This is where I play.

And my crew, Virgie Muncie, Lauren McFarland's Sara Gonzale. They're all working right now as we speak to get this thing going.

So this is a everybody.

Go to duck dna dot com and sign up today and you will get a kit with five vials and you could put a tongue in that vial and we will tell you the ancestry of that duck. We will be using it for research purposes, but you will get a certificate because congratulations I did. Yeah, we were supposed to do it on air.

I was going to do a show.

How I even had to take latex gloves out of my kill kit, uh because I forgot others. But like, uh, so you just put the tongue in there of your favorite duck. If you're you know, a little Jimmy, little Susie shot their first duck, we can give you the ancestry of that. Right now, it's only ducks. Soon we'll do all the geese because we're building the data set, the reference DATUS, after all those eleven Canada geese and

Right, we would be able to study.

We are there hotspots of hybridization, you know, pintail, mallard pin, you know these types of things as well as obviously my interest right now where this came about is adding a countrywide sampling of mallards, uh to to get get after and get ahead of this question with this whole game farm release and what it means to our wild North American mallards DNA dot com.

That's cool.

Curtain close.

Thank you to doctor Phil. Thank you to the flying be guys. Don't leave it out your vials.

Oh I'm govern ten of them.

It takes ten seventy one sign up.

Yeah, I signed up last night.

Thank you, doctor Phil.

Thanks, thank you all.

Right on.

Seal Gray shine like silver in the sun right right alone, sweetheart.

We don't beat this, damn of course, taking a new one and ride away. We're done beat this damn Parsiday, so take a new one and ride on.

H