The Wild Duck Census

Faced with the prospect of shortened or closed duck seasons, Knapp and More Game Birds had decided that immediate action was required. But first they would have to gain a fuller understanding of the causes of the duck decline. To do so they undertook what has been called the "granddaddy of all wildlife surveys": the 1935 International Wild Duck Census.

Today we accept such technology as routine. But at the time, counting wildlife from the air had never been done. In fact, Bert Cartwright, who became Ducks Unlimited Canada's chief naturalist in 1938, wrote that not only was the method new, it was "a method received in many quarters with skepticism; in others, with outright ridicule. Suffice it to say, the method has since become standard practice among those whose business it is to know what the waterfowl population is from year to year."

State and provincial wildlife agencies, as well as sportsmen's groups, were telegraphed, alerting them to the upcoming survey. All wired back their approval and promised wholehearted assistance. The survey was partially funded by arms and ammunition manufacturers, and the Chrysler Corporation donated the use of Dodge cars for the ground crews.

In each of the states, one man was hired by More Game Birds to coordinate efforts there. But in Canada these jobs were assumed by Huntington in Manitoba, A.C. Camerle in Saskatchewan, and Bartley in Alberta.

The aerial survey was largely done north of the prairies—as far north as Great Slave Lake—and the surveyors on those flights were the three men just named, with assistance from William Vogt of the Audubon Society. In three weeks the men logged nearly 14,000 air miles and took nearly a thousand photos of habitat using hand-held cameras.

Most of the Prairie Pothole Region was surveyed from the ground, using volunteers or wildlife agency personnel. Many of the 1,500 volunteers were the landowners themselves, mostly farmers, on whose property marshlands were found. Thousands of standardized forms were mailed to the volunteers so that information collected would be consistent.

When the survey was completed and the information tallied, More Game Birds issued its findings. Estimating the continent's total duck population at 65 million birds, More Game Birds reported that it believed there were 42.7 million ducks in the surveyed area. The organization estimated that North Dakota held 1.2 million ducks, South Dakota 350,000, and Minnesota 650,000—for a total of 2.2 million ducks in the United States.

Most important, the census dramatically reinforced for the duck-hunting constituency the need to focus on the prairies of Canada. The fledgling Bureau of Biological Survey was already acquiring land in North and South Dakota for the benefit of waterfowl, an emphasis greatly supported by More Game Birds, which worked feverishly to ensure that the federal government provided the funds needed to acquire those lands. The cost, however, of working in the United States, and the fact that so much more duck breeding habitat lay in Canada, made it clear that it was in the latter country that the private foundation would do its work.

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