My guest today is John Devney, Senior Vice President of Delta Waterfowl.

John and I have been friends now for over 15 years and he has a wealth of

knowledge on the challenges surrounding duck production and duck hunting.

Today we talk about John’s background growing up hunting and fishing in

Minnesota and how he came to work at Delta. We talk about the unique value

proposition that Delta brings to the conservation and hunting

conversations. Everything from balancing duck production with farming in

the prairie pothole region to CRP and WRP programs here in the US, the

Alternate Land Use program in Canada,  the farm bill and other legislative

initiatives. We also talk about Delta’s long leveraged use of predator

management as a conservation tool, where it is deployed, why and the

results of predator management. We discuss Delta’s First Hunt initiative

and how that initiative is aimed at hunter recruitment of all ages, not

only our youth but anyone who has never hunted ducks or geese, Delta’s

First Hunt initiative is making great strides in increasing the number of

waterfowl hunters and that conversation actually brought us to a very

interesting cross roads because for those of us that hunt increasingly

crowded public ground, it would seem that hunter recruitment is NOT a

problem, in fact it would appear to be just the opposite. In fact there is

another issue in play and that is public access, so John and I discuss how

decreasing levels of public access compounds and impacts the hunter

recruitment issue, really interesting perspective and look at that whole

equation. We then talk about the overall conditions across the PPR and what

impact the flooding conditions across the Midwest may have on duck

production this year. John has been a great friend of mine for a long time

and we, as waterfowlers, are truly fortunate to have John and Delta working

on policies that impact the future of ducks and the future of duck hunting.