Point I was trying to make, once again, is ducks travel hundreds and some thousands of miles annually. What is going on on one small privately managed wetland is one particular spot will most often not be a solid indicator of the big picture.

I have my own 3 ponds in the North Texas/Southern Oklahoma area. We do a round of hunting on each around Christmas on each pond, then we repeat last week of season (usually do 2 rounds on each pond this time). Most hunts we are limited in 30 minutes (2 or 3 of us). 3 hunts times 6 ducks is 18 ducks. That's is all I need to eat for the year. We shoot 80% Mallards and Woodies and fill in during tougher hunts or when someone wants a certain duck to mount. After the season was over, my ponds were full of ducks. Still have 30 woodies and several geese on them this morning. If you have your own land/ponds and don't over harvest, the hunting is still very good. And before you start with me being "lucky" or "blessed" for having my own land, I use to hunt public until I was 40 years old. I didn't waste money on coffee, cigs, bars, monster drinks, etc. I brought my lunch to work, saved and invested. Born with nothing....went to Army....went to college....worked my [censored] off. Everyone can do what I did.

Drive around Houston, Dallas, Austin, etc Metro areas and you will see 1000's of community ponds built each week. Most of them are full of ducks and geese. They are not as dumb as we think. They go to were they get free meals and no hunting pressure.

Unfortunately this is not always the case. Have a wetlands that went virtually untouched this year in N Texas and then only hunted a couple times between Dec-end of Jan. Less than 10 ducks taken. The ducks have been increasingly sparse over the last 10 years.

I don't hunt or kill ducks. I have some stock ponds that in past years had ducks on them in the fall and winter. It seems that every year there are less and less ducks. This year I have a few Teal. There were a pair of Mallards here for a few days. I have a pair of resident Canada Geese that stay here most of the year and that is it.