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This is just one pothole that illustrates what has happened to the brood production in the PPR......



This is just one pothole.......and it will produce ducks when the rains come again because there is still some nesting cover around it........but not nearly enough to offset predation. Notice how close the crop is planted to the pothole. This is a good one.......most have been plowed right up TO the edge.

The region we have hunted in Southern SK started suffering drought conditions 4 years ago. The first year we were there, you could find a pothole with a concentration of waterfowl about every 5 square miles. It's gotten steadily worse every year since then. This year.......we hunted a 15-mile radius......and there were only 4 bodies of water (potholes like this one), that had water in'em, PERIOD. Naturally, they held birds as long as nobody got 'greedy' and busted the pothole.

Now the real significance of the pothole in the photo is.........in the hill country of the Coteau, there may be as many as 12 of these in every 'section' of land (1-mile, square). Some smaller than this, some larger. Mulitply that times 25 (or 5 miles square).....and that's 300 duck producing potholes.........DRIED-UP!!.......and been that way for 4 years.

The longer the region stays dry, the closer to the pothole the farmer can plow......until ALL surrounding cover is converted to cropland. Some of the more conservation-minded farmers will just bale the grass on the inside of the rim and leave an 'edge' cover for pheasant, huns, and grouse.......but it'll take years to reclaim nesting cover around these potholes for duck broods.

Now, this photo shows a different senario........



This was taken in mid-latitude SK where they had excessive rainfall........great for duck and goose production and bad for farmers. So, to make-up for what they lost in crop revenues due to the flooding, they get an early start on draining the water off........even out of nearby potholes. When the fields fill-up with water, they get a better sense of the slope of the land and connect the low spots (formerly small potholes) with ditches that eventually drain-off into either a large pothole, or a ditch. Good thing is.....the water eventually ends-up in a larger pothole, but only to have the nesting cover plowed as close to the rim, as moisture in the soil will hold-up the farm equipment.

Notice the black ditches connecting the low spots in the field in the photo.

Made me want to vomit.

We took a trip to South Dakota in '04 for opening day of pheasant season and since you cant hunt until after lunch, I spent the mornings scouting the area potholes for ducks. We also saw very few wet ones and the locals who would talk to us confirmed our fears and said they are seeing fewer ducks in that area each year due to drought and no-till farming practices.

Another comment about the mid-latitude photo.....(the ditches)......when we arrived there the last week of October, it was too wet to drive a pick-up into the fields. They got 15" of rain and 6" of snow 2 weeks before we got there. The only access to fields was by foot or 4-wheeler, only.

This could have been real bad for us (having to pack-in our decoy spread on foot), but the temperatures dropped and the ground froze about 6" deep.......so we only had to pack-in, one day. Farmers still had crop they couldn't get to because the ground wouldn't hold a combine up without rutting the field too badly. BUT the farmer that was cutting the ditches was able to get a smaller tractor with the 'cutter' in the field to make these trenches.........mind you, everything was frozen tight......the ice held the equipment up........but he got stuck while doing this field and had to get a bigger tractor to pull him free. Then he went right back to trenching.

'Can't get your barley crop out of the field, but you can sure cut ditches and have a place for the water to run-off, when the ice melts in the Spring. You can't blame them, though.......they're trying to make a dollar off every square inch of ground they own........with depressed market prices and 3 previous years of drought in THIS area, too.......until this year. So, it goes from one extreme to the other.....drought to flooded.

Good info., slightly depressing though. Farming is always tough, no matter what the year, or so it seems to me. If I had to farm in order to eat, what would boog do? Tough one to answer.

I can only hope that there are some incentives ($$$) for the Canuks to leave some cover & water.

Anatidae: ...they're trying to make a dollar off every square inch of ground they own........with depressed market prices

I agree. IMO, the dismal agricultural economy is largely responsible for crop encrosion (or whatever it is referred to). Ag commodity prices are basically the same as they have been the last 30+ years and the cost of growing a crop (seed, fertilizer, chemical, labor, equipment and fuel prices) increase every year. New farming practices, technology, tillage systems, government programs won't generally promote "sodbusting" or long-term conversion of grass to crops by themselves.

Farmers are generally very conservation conscious - after all their livelihood depends upon the productivity of the land. However, they need some financial incentive to raise ducks. For example, the US's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) has been very beneficial for numerous wildlife species and provides some stable income for farmers to convert marginally profitable cropland to native grass.