Rick wrote:I understand that the science fails to support sparing hens, given our current harvest rate, but repeated out of whack ratios, like this latest 15 to 1, suggest that it sure wouldn't hurt.
I always find that interesting because I just don't see that up here. I wonder if there is some difference in migration between hens and drakes. Maybe the hens and drakes are feeding on very different things when the get to southern LA. It just seems very odd and out of line with the population.
Do you harvest nearly all drakes? For me, mallards are the primary thing we hunt and ratio is just 1.9 drake per hen and that's with preferentially harvesting drakes making the ratio of what we see a little lower than that suggesting about 35% to 40% of the mallard population we see is hens (between a 1.9/1 and 1.5/1 ratio). At 15/1 ratio that means just 6% of the population is hens.
Something interesting going on with your trapping program producing this out of line ratio. Have any of the biologists offered any suggestions why what you trap is so out of line with the population as a whole?