How much has duck hunting changed in Minnesota in the past century?
Consider: At one time, the number of scaup — bluebills — killed by Minnesota waterfowlers in Otter Tail County alone exceeded the total number of ducks felled during an entire season in the Atlantic Flyway.
As recently as 1949 Minnesota waterfowlers bagged 559,000 bluebills — a harvest number that in the years since has inexorably declined to the point where, last year, barely 14,000 of these fast diving ducks were felled in the state.
So prominent a place in the state's waterfowling lore did bluebills once possess that entire hunting camps were built to focus specifically on them.
From Delta March in Manitoba south along the bluebill's migratory path to Lake of the Woods, then Thief Lake, Leech Lake, Winnibigoshish and Pelican lakes, among others, big-water duck hunters gathered to intercept a diving-duck species they ranked above even the storied canvasback.
So what happened to this duck that so many Minnesotans held dear?
Certainly, its continental breeding population has declined, from a long-term springtime average of about 5 million to about 3.6 million today. But 3.6 million is still a lot of ducks — only 3.3 million gadwall, for example, were counted continentwide this spring.
"It's hard to figure out why scaup don't migrate through Minnesota in the numbers they once did in part because we don't know why they were here in such great numbers in the first place,'' said Steve Cordts, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources waterfowl specialist.