Birders and Duck Hunters on the Day of the Christmas Bird Count

      Recently, there has been quite a bit of discussion about duck hunters shooting in an area locally on Cayuga Lake that is a favorite of birders in the winter time because the area attracts a lot of waterfowl.  An added complicating factor is that it is near several public tracts of parkland.  Some folks in the birding community have suggested that an effort be made to create a no-hunting zone in the area of greatest waterfowl concentration.  These same people have said that they don't want to eliminate waterfowl hunting on the lake; they just want to stop it in their favorite birding location.  Could this really work?  Would birders and duck hunters both be happy with the situation?

Waterfowl on ice.  From Google images.

The short answer almost certainly is, 'NO'.

          The first challenge is that waterfowl don't use all parts of Cayuga Lake evenly or even randomly.  Cayuga Lake is huge.  It is about 41 miles long and 2-3 miles wide on average.  At it's deepest, it is more than 400 feet deep, meaning that much of it does not freeze in winter.  There are certain spots where they want to be, and other spots they rarely occur except to pass by infrequently. 

Why is this a problem?  Well, see the graphic below.






          Waterfowl hunters really need to be very close to the areas where the waterfowl want to be.  Their effective shooting distance is only about 50 yards (meters), and they prefer to shoot at waterfowl that are even closer than that.  Of course birders prefer to be close, too.  Watching bird behavior and interactions is really fun when the birds fill our field of view or camera viewfinder.  With just about any kind of optics, though, birders can be quite some distance away from birds and still enjoy seeing the crisp details of their plumage. 

           So, segmenting the area into hunting zones and birding zones probably would not be very practical.  This raises another question: why can't birders and hunters tolerate each other enough to actually focus on things that are important to both -- namely, bird conservation issues and habitat protection?  This idea will be the topic of another post.

          Go bird!  And don't forget to buy a federal "duck stamp" formally known as a migratory bird hunting and conservation stamp.  To learn more about the federal duck stamp program, go here:  www.fws.gov/duckstamps/