Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, Reloaded, but we bring you the best of our past episodes.

Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you.

Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland

conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting

strategies. And reloaded, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the

mission strong. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload. Today we're going to be welcoming a new

guest to our series on the history of waterfowl harvest management. Today we're going to be welcoming a new guest to our series on the history of waterfowl harvest management.

Today we're going to be digging into some details on adaptive harvest management.

We introduced this topic with Dale and Ken, but today I am pleased to be welcoming as our guest,

a guy that spent the better part of his career in harvest management

for waterfowl and various analytical aspects of that certainly was an influential figure

in the development and implementation of adaptive harvest management very quantitatively minded and i am

excited to welcome to this episode dr jim nichols retired retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,

U.S. Geological Survey, I think, most recently. So, Jim, thank you so much for joining us here and being willing to discuss adaptive harvest management in a bit more detail. So welcome, Jim. Oh, thank you very much, Mike. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you. Well, it is my treat. I feel like it's more my treat to

have you on as a guest. I have for as long as I've been in this career, sort of seen your

name associated with a lot of the work that has been done regarding waterfowl harvest

management. And to get to speak with you about some of this is a true treat. So thank you for sharing your time with us here.

And to get started, Jim, how about you provide a bit of background, personal and professional

background to our listeners on, I guess, what you spent the majority of your career doing?

You can actually start before that and talk about where you went to school and even where you grew up

and things of that nature.

But yeah, just give people an idea of who you are. I grew up in the mountains in western Virginia,

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