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At its 87^th annual convention in San Diego on May 29 to June 1, Ducks Unlimited announced that it delivered one million acres worth of conservation work and projects across North America from the beginning of 2023 to 2024. The achievement represents a first in the 87-year history of the organization.

DU CEO Adam Putnam called the milestone  “a testament to the hard work of our dedicated staff and volunteers, following years of exponential conservation growth. We don’t just advocate for wetlands—our mission moves dirt. Ducks see it. Communities see it. Partners see it. Each acre represents in-the-field success.”

Of the acres conserved in 2023-2024, a little less than a quarter represent restored and/or permanently protected acres, according to DU Communications Director Chris Sebastian. “Since its beginning, DU has permanently protected 18,000,000 acres,” he says. “In fiscal year 2024, we added 200,000 permanently protected acres to that total.” The projects that made up the remaining 800,000 acres included repairing older projects, or working with landowners on short-term practices like cover-crop plantings. Cover crops provide nesting habitat while also filtering and cleaning water that drains into wetlands, says Sebastian, citing them as the type of conservation partnerships with private landowners that are vitally important to DU’s mission. DU also partners with corporations and state and federal agencies in its work.

Sebastian says the historic increase was made possible by donors increasing their support for DU, and by landowners demanding more conservation projects on their holdings. Landowners increasingly recognize that the benefits of wetland acres extend beyond waterfowl habitat to including cover for all types of wildlife, including pollinators, fish habitat, floodwater storage, and groundwater recharge. Wetlands also make excellent carbon sinks.

Sebastian also notes that despite the 1,000,000 acres worth of successes of the past year, much remains to be done. “North America continues to lose wetland acres,” he says, “but those losses would be much higher than they are without the work of DU and its donors and partners.”

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You could call me the archetypal proud dad. When I share a picture on social media, it’s often of my 9-year-old son, Anse, with some critter that he’s shot or fish that he’s caught. Last month, the kid bagged his first Eastern longbeard after an epic fly-down hunt in the timber. Last winter, he shot at decoying ducks for the first time and afterward declared that he wanted to be a waterfowl biologist and work at Ducks Unlimited. Back in November, he went still-hunting with me in the rain, and made a perfect shot on a big Tennessee 8-pointer.  

None of those experiences guarantee that he will go on to be a lifelong hunter, of course. He enjoys baseball, guitar, and playing video games with his buddies, too. But even if Anse doesn’t want to hunt when he’s older, I can rest easy knowing that I’ve done everything I could to properly introduce him to it now. He’s been tagging along with me since he could walk. I let him start practicing with a 22 rifle when he was 4, and he killed his first squirrel when he was 6. Later that same fall, he got his first two deer, and the next spring, he bagged his first turkey.

No Kids Allowed

But in a number of states, Anse’s introduction to hunting would’ve been illegal. In New York, kids can’t even hunt small game until they’re 12, and they can’t hunt deer with a firearm until they’re 14. Kids under 12 are also prohibited from hunting in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, while 10 is the minimum age in Minnesota and New Jersey. Many western states, including Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, prohibit kids from hunting big game until age 12. In North Dakota, there is no minimum age for hunting small game, but kids can’t hunt deer until age 11—and even then, they can only get a doe tag until they’re 14.

Why do any of these regulations still exist? And why is the hunting community not raising hell about it? We are still wringing our collective hands over declining license sales, and still pouring money into R3 programs that focus on recruiting new adult hunters. In the short term, I understand that—adult hunting licenses cost much more than youth licenses, and so state agencies get more bang for the buck by recruiting new adults. The hunting industry benefits more, too, since young kids are likely to use borrowed or hand-me-down gear, while adults are more apt to buy new stuff.

But what about the long game of turning the kids of today into the hunters of tomorrow? There’s an assumption that most of the youth hunters out there come from families who already hunt. Basically, we’ve got them anyway, so why spend the extra money and effort?

That’s just a terrible way to look at things. It’s not a given that a kid is going to enjoy hunting just because Mom and Dad do. Kids become interested in hunting by having lots of opportunity and success early, and it’s obvious that a minimum-hunting age—especially one as old as 12—does nothing except create a barrier to all of that. You don’t even have to be a parent to realize that with all the distractions available today, getting a kid interested in going hunting is easier when he’s 6 and still thinks his parents are heroes than when he’s 12 and beginning to think they might be nerds (and, yes, the word “nerd” is coming back, same as mullets). Virtually every passionate teenage and young adult hunter I know started hunting when they were 6 or 7 years old, and sometimes even younger.

Non-Hunters Aren’t the Only Problem

So what’s behind the minimum-age laws? A lot of it seems to be nothing more than the usual hysterics from people who know nothing about hunting in general or about hunting with kids in partiuclar. In other words, people who think: We can’t turn little kids loose in the woods with guns! I’d tell those people to relax because nobody’s asking for that. Universally, young kids who haven’t passed their Hunter Education course have to be within immediate supervision of a licensed adult hunter who can take control of the firearm. Even after that, in most states, it’s not legal for a youngster to hunt alone with a firearm until age 15 or 16. Nothing wrong with that necessarily (even though I was hunting by myself at a much younger age and somehow survived).

But a surprising number of objections to young kids going hunting come from within the hunting community. There’s always the hypothetical concern about the guy who would put a rifle in a Bog Pod, line it up on a big buck, and then have his 3-year-old daughter squeeze the trigger on opening morning of youth season. Are there some sh*theads out there who actually do that? Maybe, but if you’ve done much actual hunting with a little kid, and seen the patience it requires, then you understand why it’s not many.

Most of the time, the above hypothetical is introduced by someone who opposes the very idea of a youth-only hunting season because it takes opportunity away from adults. If you don’t like the idea of a kid going hunting because you’re afraid he or she will kill your target buck before you do, then you just might be the sh*thead yourself.     

There’s also my favorite: Young children can’t possibly understand the gravity of life and death at that age! OK, so where should they learn that from instead? Netflix? Fortnite? I’ll decide when my kid’s ready for that lesson without the state’s help, thank you. The world would be a better place if more kids were exposed to firearms in a safe, controlled way, and maybe also taught that every chicken nugget once had a little blood on it.

Is every kid ready to go hunting at 6 years old? Of course not. But mine was, and the best moments I’ve ever had in the woods—and in life—have been in the past few years, right by his side, teaching him the ropes. I can’t imagine some arbitrary law having interrupted that.

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Duck hunters may soon be able to shoot more than one bull sprig each day during waterfowl season. This spring, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Migratory Bird Regulations Committee (SRC) approved a three-bird daily bag limit as an option for the 2025-2026 season.

On May 17, the SRC consulted with the Flyway Councils to identify initial regulatory recommendations for the 2025-26 season. The rulemaking council put forward several options for that season, including 0-, 1-, or 3-bird pintail limits. The final regulations have not yet been set and will depend on future waterfowl surveys, as well as a public input process.

The potential for a 3-bird limit is big news for waterfowl hunters, particularly in the Central and Pacific Flyways. Since the 1980s, daily pintail limits have fluctuated between one and four birds, though, in 2017, the limit was cut to one bird in all three flyways due to low estimated numbers. In recent years, some hunters have been frustrated by the restrictive bag limit while encountering numerous pintails in the field.

According to California Waterfowl, which has led the push for liberalizing the sprig limit, hunting pressure is likely not causing low counts for the species. “The last three decades of restrictive regulations on pintail have not resulted in a significant boost in pintail populations, even in years of good precipitation in the U.S. and Canadian prairies,” explained the conservation group. “Rather, changing farming practices, especially in wheat fields favored by nesting pintail, appear to be the main factor limiting pintail populations—not hunter harvest.”

Read Next: Canada’s “Super Pig” Invasion Likely to Spread into Northern U.S.

It remains to be seen whether the SRC’s bird count threshold, which has not yet been publicly released, will be met to greenlight an increased pintail limit in any of the flyways for the 2025-2026 season. In recent years, the estimated population has only narrowly avoided dropping below the 1.75 million bird threshold for closing the take of the species. The SRC will meet again in Fall 2024 to review the latest information and develop final recommendations for the 2025-2026 season. State agencies then use the approved regulatory framework to set their seasons.

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Last December, Mike Wec was hunting a pond in Massachusetts when he bagged an incredibly rare leucistic black duck with his first shot of the day.

In the low light conditions, Wec initially thought the duck he’d killed was a hen mallard based on its flight pattern and silhouette. When he retrieved it and saw the varying shades of blonde feathers, he knew he’d shot something special—but still wasn’t sure of the species.

“I remember thinking it had to be a leucistic mallard or game-farm mallard,” Wec told Ducks Unlimited (DU). He finished the day with a black duck with normal coloration, two greenheads, including a banded one, and a wood duck. Back home, he was still curious about the strange white bird, so he sent a sample to the duckDNA lab, a partnership between DU and waterfowl geneticist Dr. Philip Lavretsky at the University of Texas at El Paso, for genetic testing.

This spring, Dr. Lavretsky confirmed that the bird was a leucistic 100-percent pure American black duck hen—the first of its kind confirmed through genetic analysis. Leucism is a recessive condition that’s related to but distinct from albinism. Leucism results in the partial loss of pigmentation, while albinism results in a total lack of pigmentation. In this case, the bird’s different shades of blonde feathers and black eyes were clear indicators of leucism.

In addition to the leucistic black duck, the duckDNA lab detected 15 species of ducks from 721 samples collected in the 2023-24 season. The researchers also identified 19 different duck hybridization combinations, including several examples of “three-species hybrids,” which result when a hybrid duck breeds with another distinct species.

Read Next: Canada’s “Super Pig” Invasion Likely to Spread into Northern U.S.

“This is a huge showcase of what duckDNA provides to hunters and scientists in cooperation at a level we’ve never had before,” said Dr. Lavretsky. “No more assumptions and biases. There is no hiding DNA.”

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This year, Browning announced the sad news that their BPS shotgun has been discontinued. A staple in the Browning lineup for over 40 years, the BPS first appeared in 1977.  It was a well-made, well-fit-and-finished pump gun. It looked like a Browning, with deep, rich blue and glossy walnut. Its all-steel receiver gave it a solid heft. And it had a Browning pedigree. Inspired by the John Browning-designed Remington 17 and Ithaca 37, it was a bottom-ejecting pump. You loaded it through the port in the bottom, and the shells ejected out the bottom, too, not into the face of the person sitting to your right in the duck blind. It also had a top safety, making it a genuinely ambidextrous gun.

The BPS came in all the gauges, from the massive 10 to the .410. Sixteens were made occasionally as special runs. There were field guns, a trap gun, slug models, and a short-barreled, straight-stocked upland gun. As a left-handed shooter, I had to have one as soon as I realized they existed. A 20-gauge BPS with a 26-inch barrel and Modified choke was one of the first guns I ever bought. To this day, it remains my favorite BPS, although I have bought and sold several over the years. I shot ducks, pheasants, and woodcock with that gun. I loaned it to my friend Jay when I took him hunting, then, to my almost immediate regret, I allowed him to talk me out of it for all of $250. I still miss it.

I shot my first 25-straight at skeet with a 28-gauge BPS I had on loan from Browning. For a few days, I was afraid I would have to get rid of all my other guns and shoot it exclusively. The 28- and .410 BPS models were built on the 20-gauge frame, which made them a bit heavy for the uplands but especially shootable for clays and doves. Sweet as that 28 was, it wasn’t magic. At the next outing to the gun club with it, my scores fell heavily back to earth. That was a relief, honestly, as I liked my other guns, too.

Related: The 50 Best Guns of All Time

My next BPS was a 12, made during the BPS’s unfortunate engraved phase. It is true that the BPS receiver, with no ejection port to get in the way of engraving patterns, begged for decoration. What it needed was a sparse design like the one on the Auto 5, not a full coverage of scroll and game scenes so faintly executed that it disappeared if viewed at more than arm’s length. I covered the engraving with camo tape in the springtime, and mounted iron sights on the rib. I shot turkeys at home with it for a few years, and took it Missouri and Mississippi and shot turkeys there, too.

I eventually got rid of the engraved gun and found a used post-engraving BPS. I took it on duck hunting trips. Once, on my way to Arkansas, the guy at the airline check-in counter in Memphis told me what a nice gun I had when I took it out of the hard case to show him it was unloaded. That was the BPS in a nutshell: It was a pump gun that owners were proud of and others admired.

And, the BPS worked. I once tripped on a steep bank and accidentally flung my BPS into a muddy creek. It went in barrel first and stuck, standing out of the water for an instant then listing like the Titanic to slide under the murky water. I fished it out—I hadn’t loaded it yet—and rinsed all the gritty mud out of it as best I could. It sounded like a coffee grinder when I shucked a slug into the chamber, but I killed a buck with it half an hour later.

My last BPS was a 10-gauge. At 10-plus pounds, it pointed surely. All that weight soaked up recoil, too, making it surprisingly pleasant so shoot. It was a great goose gun, although the forend of a bottom-eject pump has to be set well forward, especially with a 3 ½-inch action. I never got completely comfortable cycling that gun. It made me feel as if my arms were short. When the chance came to trade it for a Gold 10, I did.

So, what happened to the BPS? Times changed. Semiautos were still called jam-a-matics in 1977, and many hunters back then preferred to shoot pumps even if they could afford a semiauto. As semiautos got better, the reliability gap between pumps and autoloaders shrank. Costs rose. The real advantage between pump and semiauto shotguns became price. The pump market adjusted. Remington responded with the Express in the 1990s, a cheaper version of the Wingmaster. Benelli introduced the very affordable Nova around 2000. Mossberg kept cranking out the same humble, durable Model 500 it has always made.

Related: The Best Cheap Pump Shotguns

The BPS wasn’t intended to be a cheap pump, and Browning stuck by its gun for a long time. While it’s too bad the BPS was discontinued, honestly, it stayed around a little too long. In the last years of the BPS, it was readily apparent that costs had to be cut to keep the price down, and the gun no longer looked like the glossy 20-gauge that I bought so many years ago. But that can hardly be counted against it in the big picture. For nearly 50 years, the BPS was a refined and reliable pump gun that any hunter could be proud to uncase. It may no longer be in production, but Browning made a lot of BPSs in 47 years. If you want one, both as a great hunting gun and as a relic of time that has just recently passed, you can find one used with plenty of shooting left in it.

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