Erwin Bauer, in “The Duck Hunter’s Bible,” noted that, “in duck hunting the scene is as important as the shooting.”
This month, many a waterfowl hunter will be out among what Bauer called “the loneliest places… blinds washed by a rolling surf, blue and gold autumn marshes, a rice field in the rain, flooded pin-oak forests or any remote river delta.”
But the hunters will not be alone. Beside them will be trusty dogs, trained to retrieve downed birds.
And the hunters will also have a literal boatload of equipment, decoys, and waders, that they’ll tote from one body of water to the next as they work to find birds.
“A result of all of this back-and-forth action is that sometimes vegetation gets attached to the equipment and is taken out of the water along with the gear and the dogs,” noted Francis Skalicky, of the Missouri Department of Conservation.
That hitchhiking vegetation which may seem insignificant, can be a big problem for all of us in the form of aquatic invasive species, or AIS.
