Hard Questions: Do Duck Surveys Work? with Mike Anderson

Midwest Flyways Podcast

Midwest Flyways

Sports, Wilderness

4.9 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week we’re lucky enough to have World Champion Duck caller Mike Anderson joining us and while Mike was here he started to offer some thoughts on topics we’ve discussed in the past involving Duck number surveys and our season date structure. Instead of having a behind the scenes conversation, we decided to record it for all of you so you can gain some insight into the inner workings of the data we all rely on. If you’re a Duck Hunter this is a must listen episode! Thanks so much for listening and be sure to subscribe and review! New Waterfowl Film out now! Out West | Waterfowl Hunting in Montana Stay comfortable, dry and warm: First Lite (Code MWF20) Go to OnXHunt to be better prepared for your hunt: OnX Learn more about better ammo: Migra Ammunitions Weatherby Sorix: Weatherby Support Conservation: DU (Code: Flyways) Stop saying "Huh?" with better hearing protection: Soundgear Live Free: Turtlebox Add motion to your spread: Flashback Better Merch: /SHOP

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, guys.
0:00.6	Madatuma.
0:01.9	That's a great way to open it.
0:03.3	All right, guys, welcome back to 10 minute Tuesday, and we have a very special guest, and he's about to, I think, school us a little bit. So we're very excited for that. So Mike Anderson, you've noticed us talking about duck numbers on some podcasts, and I just want to hear your unfiltered thoughts on our either stupidity or thoughts on it. Well, I don't, I don't know if I want to say schooling or just,
0:22.7	just bring up some things that I know and that I, that I've gained from some of the friends that I have. Because we keep getting Stonewall. Yeah. We're not getting any answers. You're getting Stonewall for information. Totally. So we were talking about, before we got on here, we were talking about season structure and limits and then,
0:36.7	then how the duck count is made and,
0:39.4	and what all of this is based off of.
0:40.8	And it's based off of, before we got on here, we were talking about season structure and limits and then how the duck
0:38.1	count is made and what all of this is based off of. And it's based off of what's called AHM.
0:43.0	It's adaptive harvest management. And that's, you can Google it and it's a survey done every year
0:48.8	that the feds do. And to be honest, it's the most scientific and thorough outdoor wildlife survey done in the world every year.
0:59.9	It's the most involved.
1:01.1	It's the most thorough.
1:02.7	And I don't know if some people have started to say, hey, why don't they change their routes in this survey?
1:07.4	That's been my question.
1:08.5	Correct.
1:09.1	And it's a valid question on the surface. And I asked the same question myself, but then when I got informed a little bit more, it's so like when they say like, there's 6.1 breeding mallard pairs, the B-pop survey came up with 6.1 mallards. That's not saying that there's 6.1 million breeding mallards exactly. What that is is a litmus test year to year.
1:30.1	So they fly this same route, okay, that they've been doing for 40 years, the same exact route,
1:35.9	and they see trends year to year based upon the same route.
1:39.9	If they change that route, it blows up the entire survey in the entire 40 years worth of data.
1:46.6	So the control is the route.
1:48.3	Correct.
	...

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