Writes Chad Love in Field & Stream.com: “When I read news stories about the upcoming hunting season, it’s no great stretch to make the assumption that one of my dogs is going to be getting a whole lot more mouthfuls of feathers than the other one. Duck populations (depending on species) are at record or near-record highs while many upland bird species continue to slide toward historic lows.
“Just in my region, the lesser prairie chicken – once the most populous upland gamebird species on the southern plains, so numerous it was market-hunted by the millions – will most likely be listed under the ESA. Meanwhile, populations of the bobwhite quail, King Bob (in many hunters’ minds the very epitome of the upland hunting experience) are at range-wide, all-time, never-seen-before, staring-into-the-abyss lows….
“…. But here’s a question I’ve been kicking around in my head for a while now: would it be possible to emulate the structure and the success of the duck stamp program, but with upland gamebirds as the target species? And if it were possible, would now be the time to do it?”
Read Chad’s article HERE.
