Ding on Ducks

As U. S. duckhunters laid away their guns and decoys last fortnight all of them agreed that it had been the worst season on record. From Susquehanna Flats to the Suisun marshes and from the Kankakee marshes to Pas a l'Outre all species of wild waterfowl had been scarce; canvasbacks, redheads, ruddy ducks, teals, gadwalls, widgeons, shovelers especially so. Everyone knew the reasons--drought, a hard winter, the disappearance of eel grass, overshooting. Not so easy was the remedy.

In Manhattan's Hotel Pennsylvania last fortnight met the annual conference of the American Game Association. Prime question before the Conference was: should there be a closed season on ducks in 1935- 36? Ruddy-faced sportsmen argued it up & down meeting halls, corridors, bedrooms. Then a man who probably knows and cares more about conserving U. S. wild life than any other in the land stood up to tell the Conference what was what. Snapped famed Jay N. ("Ding") Darling, who left his highly-paid cartooning to become the Bureau of Biological Survey's $6,800-a-year chief:

"Do you realize that in all the millions of government expenditures during these last three years not one thin dime was appropriated specifically for wild life restoration. That the only money actually available now has to be sucked through a straw from someone else's barrel. . . .

"Our eight and a half millions being spent now for duck mating areas and refuges was only secured because we were able to show that by spending this money to aid distressed agriculture and the unemployed we could at the same time do something for the ducks. Our endowment of wild life resources is the bowlegged girl of the village. Every one sympathizes with her but never asks her to the picnic. . . .

"Now, as to the ducks. . . . The amazing thing to me is that with a $500,000,000 industry to maintain no one should have started long ago to put the duck business on a factual basis. No one knows whether we kill 12,000,000 and hatch 11,000,000 a year or whether we kill 24,000,000 and hatch 10,000,000. . . . This year the Biological Survey has set its hand to that job as intensively as our constricted budget would allow. . . .

"Yesterday began a winter count. Men of practiced ability are at this moment stationed from Long Island to Yucatan, to simultaneously report on the winter resting grounds of ducks and geese. The spring flight will be closely watched and the 1935 nesting conditions again observed. On the tabulated results of these observations the Biological Survey will make its recommendations to the Secretary of Agriculture and the President for next year's migratory waterfowl regulations. The first consideration will be the preservation of a safe margin of population among the ducks, I assure you. . . ."

Next day the Conference voted down a resolution for a closed season, voted up a resolution of unqualified confidence in "Ding" Darling.

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