Is it decline or fall for Louisiana's autumn duck hunting tradition? According to state waterfowl experts, the answer may be: a little bit of both Photo by Lynn Burkhead.

As a young man living in Baton Rouge, I quickly took note of two defining characteristics of the passage of autumn in the Sportsman's Paradise: LSU Tiger football and duck hunting ruled. Years later, not much has changed.

The arrival of this year's first cold fronts finds the Bayou Bengals still the reigning kings of the college gridiron, and as the first fall winds begin to blow from the north, scores of ducks and geese still pour into the region's wetlands. But while the Tigers' position at or near the top of the college football ranks appears relatively secure for at least a few more years, the same can't be said of Louisiana's autumn duck hunting.

Despite generations of waterfowl hunting tradition and duck-strap success at the bottom end of the Mississippi Flyway, times are changing.

"There is a definite long-term decline in terms of our larger limits and longer seasons," said the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries' North American Waterfowl Management Plan guru Larry Reynolds.

Unfortunately, noted Reynolds, some of the very reasons that Louisiana has long been a bastion for waterfowl and waterfowlers are working against our birds and hunters.

First, Louisiana is surrendering precious waterfowl habitat to saltwater intrusion, which causes marsh losses, and through agricultural changes resulting in substantially fewer acres of rice being farmed at the end of the Mississippi Flyway.

"Our marsh loss is very high," Reynolds said. "We're losing about 22 square miles per year. And we've lost nearly 50 percent of our rice agriculture in the state, especially in our coastal zones. In many cases, that has been replaced by sugar cane conversion, but the rice crop provides migration, wintering, and even nesting habitat, while the sugar cane doesn't."

So what's the bottom line? "There is substantially less food here in southern Louisiana than there was 20 years ago," Reynolds said.

A conversation I had about snow geese a year or two ago with Dr. Bruce Batt, chief biologist for the Memphis-based Ducks Unlimited, underscores this point.

"These birds have traditionally wintered in marshland habitat," Batt said. "But over the last 30 to 40 years, the geese have adapted to agriculture. As a result, they spend more time (in the fall and winter months) on the agricultural habitat than on their native (marsh) habitat."

In other words, the light geese that have historically wintered along the Gulf Coast marshes in Texas and Louisiana have switched to a new winter buffet. And in many cases, so too have the ducks that historically have swarmed into the rice acreage dotting the Sportsman's Paradise.

"Arkansas and Missouri? They are gaining that acreage -- while we're taking a big hit here," Reynolds said. "And it got worse with the hurricanes."

After Hurricane Katrina virtually destroyed the southeastern portion of the state in August 2005 and Rita ravaged the southwestern portion of the state a month later, Terrebonne Parish was the hotspot for Louisiana duck hunters in 2005.

"Katrina missed the parish to the east and Rita missed to the west, so Terrebonne Parish in the middle was virtually covered up with birds. Hunter effort, of course, was down that year because of the hurricane damage and displacement.

In the southeastern coastal country, Katrina's devastation altered the habitat greatly, and thus is being felt still by duck hunters. "Katrina scoured away, relocated, and destroyed areas that are highly organic," Reynolds said. "When those plants die, ponds grow deeper and it is harder for plants to regenerate."