Photo by Ken Archer

The canoe glided slowly and quietly downriver, slowing even more as it entered the pool.

"Big ducks."

My host's voice from the stern of the canoe alerted me to a flock of ducks resting quietly under a large sycamore tree near the end of the pool. "Look in the top of the tree."

I looked up, following his pointing finger. Perched in the upper branches, watching the ducks, was a mature bald eagle. The ducks were nervous.

My host was a local conservation agent from a southern county. He and I were doing some early-morning survey work. He was looking for hunters out to take migratory ducks that use the river to rest before continuing south to Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana; I joined him to hunt, as Missouri's southern waterfowl season had just opened on this south-flowing Missouri stream.

It was an excuse for me to visit the river in the early morning and, with any luck, to flush a duck or two

"Watch now," my host said as we slowly closed the distance to the flock of ducks. "The eagle's waiting for the birds to flush. Usually there'll be a bird or two in the flock having problems, maybe from being shot on their trip south as they passed through Iowa and northern Missouri."

I was skeptical. As a scientist, I needed more proof than speculation from a local conservation agent, even though he'd spent the better part of the last 20 years observing wildlife in his small outdoor community.

As we neared the flock, I picked my shotgun up from where it rested in front of me and loaded two rounds of No. 4 steel shot. If we floated within 30 yards of the ducks, I'd shoot as the birds flushed. As bad a shot as I am, the odds were all in favor of the birds.

Waterfowl season had been open for several weeks in north Missouri, but had just opened in the southern zone.

The flock of "big ducks," as my host called them, flushed well out of range for me, leaving one bird still on the water. It struggled to get airborne. The eagle dove at it, missing by a few feet, as the duck struggled airborne and followed the flock.

I thought about his words. Even if it was a coincidence, his thoughts about wounded birds made an impression. The ducks had been dodging hunters since early October and November as they flew south from the prairies of northern Canada, North and South Dakota and Minnesota, where they nest and rear broods before flying to wintering grounds in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The odds of waterfowl reaching those destinations in the fall depend on weather cycles during and before the spring, predator numbers and hunting-induced mortality as the birds fly south in the fall.

During the past 10 years, waterfowl hunters in Missouri and elsewhere along the Mississippi River Flyway have experienced near-record waterfowl population levels, a lag effect arising from the wet cycle in the prairies a decade ago that created or revived wetlands in which waterfowl could nest successfully.