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Show Utah Duck Studies Will Aid Refuge Development For years, the question of "where the duck goes" and "how many ducks are there" have posed fascinating fas-cinating problems for the nation's waterfowl experts. To determine some of the answers, an-swers, which will have a far-reaching effect on future development of the state's duck and goose refuges, re-fuges, Noland F. Nelson, waterfowl bioligist in charge of waterfowl research re-search for the state fish and game department, is conducting interesting interest-ing studies from his headquarters at Ogden Bay. The slender Utahn, who learned his business at Utah State Agricultural Agri-cultural college, points out that one of the most interesting and important im-portant phases of the study is the determination of age ratios in birds that is, the ratio between the number of young birds and old birds. "The thing we are particularly anxious to determine is an accurate accu-rate picture of the number of birds raised each season," Nelson explained. ex-plained. To arrive at the ratio, careful checks are made of each hunter's kill at most of the state's six shooting shoot-ing areas. Nelson has trained several sev-eral aids in the work, and as he points out, "just anyone can't tell whether a duck is a 'grandchild' or a 'grandpa'." The age ratio for any one season, to be of use, must be computed from the kill taken during the entire en-tire season, Nelson explained. The reason for this is that old birds and young birds do not necessarily migrate at the same time. Many species of waterfowl, Nel- 1 son said, do not migrate as far as is poplarly supposed. This is particularly par-ticularly true of certain types of geese. "Previous studies as well as those being carried out now, indicate very strongly that if we are going to have good goose shooting in this area we must provide breeding breed-ing areas for the birds," Nelson said. Nelson, who asserted that "opening "open-ing day shooting was probably as good as for any preceding year, but has since declined rapidly," has made no estimates as to total numbers num-bers of ducks for this season as compared with former years. "Such an estimate must wait until un-til the migration south has been completed," he pointed out. He believes that decline in kills since the opening has been largely due to the early freeze, which has stepped up the southward migration. |