Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Minnesota
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Due to the steady decline of duck hunter participation, several studies have investigated means to bolster the duck hunter population. Researchers and wildlife professionals have assumed that simpler regulations would attract new and unconfident hunters to participate in duck hunting. In light of this, we sought to identify what portion of the duck-hunting population had difficulty understanding species-specific bag limits or complying with species-specific bag limits in the field. We also sought to describe hunters who had difficulty complying with specific bag limits and how their difficulties were associated with elements related to demography, attitude, and behavior. We found most hunters had no difficulty understanding or complying with species specific bag limits, but flyway, number of ducks harvested, and number of years hunted were important to predicting hunter difficulty with compliance. Hunters who can overcome their difficulties understanding and complying with species-specific bag limits may be more likely to be integrated into the duck hunting culture, and ultimately more likely to continue duck hunting in the future. More species identification tools and fewer species-specific bag limits may be appropriate for the 18% of the duck hunter population who indicated that bag-specific regulations were difficult to understand and the 26% who indicated that it was difficult to comply with species-specific bag limits in the field. A closer look at how the trade-offs associated with the combination of species-specific bag limits in combination with the variety of duck season zone and split options states employ, license/stamp requirements, area-specific regulations, and trespass laws may influence duck hunter experiences may be warranted.
KEYWORDS attitude, behavior, demographics, human dimensions, hunting constraints, waterfowl hunting.