As part of BHA’s Yardsale Auction, New England BHA is auctioning a fully outfitted Rhode Island waterfowl hunt for the winner and three hunting buddies (4 people total) that was generously donated by Chapter partner Big Game Waterfowl. In addition, Connecticut-based decoy carver and taxidermist Bill Embacher has generously donated a mount for a duck of the group’s choosing.

Bid on the RI Waterfowl Hunt in BHA’s Yardsale Auction Here

BHA’s Rhode Island team has a long-standing commitment to conserving waterfowl and the habitats they depend upon, and supporting waterfowl hunting opportunities in the Ocean State. Proceeds from the auction will support continuing these efforts and will also support exploring new waterfowl conservation and hunting initiatives.

Protecting Waterfowl Habitat

18 species of waterfowl that are open to hunting appear in RI DEM’s 2015 Wildlife Action Plan as Species of Greatest Conservation Need. While some of these species have local breeding populations, most waterfowl that are hunted in RI breed elsewhere and travel here during their winter migration. The reason why they ended up on the SGCN list isn’t necessarily because their population abundance is in danger – it can also be due the habitat that they depend upon being at risk. In the case of waterfowl, the loss of wintering habitat poses a direct risk to waterfowl hunting opportunities. Without wintering habitat, ducks have no reason to migrate here and will go elsewhere. If ducks don’t migrate here, we can’t hunt them regardless of how abundant their population numbers are elsewhere within the Atlantic flyway.

Several years ago, BHA’s RI team began scrutinizing CRMC’s permitting process after we realized that several aquaculture developments occurred within or near locations that wintering waterfowl depend upon. BHA has worked to stop or relocate several flawed applications, like a 2023 proposal that sought to establish a 10-acre kelp farm above one of the largest mussel beds in Narragansett Bay.

Protecting Waterfowl Hunting Access

Along New England’s highly developed coast it’s common for waterfowl hunting access to be threatened. Wealthy property owners don’t like being woken up by shots at sunrise, other users of public lands and waters aren’t as comfortable being near firearms as they were a century ago, and new development can unintentionally close off hunting because of safety setbacks.

These things making protecting the access that we currently have essential to the future of waterfowl hunting. In 2021, BHA objected to an aquaculture development proposed a couple hundred feet from one of RI’s only coastal wildlife management areas. With 400 miles of coastline in Rhode Island, why allow an oyster farm near such a limited resource? Over the last century the State of RI applied for and received millions  in Pittman-Robertson grants, funded by hunters, to ensure that Sapowet Marsh Wildlife Management Area was acquired and maintained as a public hunting and fishing area.

Over the last four years RI’s Coastal Resources Management Council, which permits aquaculture, has made little progress disposing of the badly-sited oyster farm proposal near Sapowet Marsh, so during the 2024 legislative session BHA worked with policymakers to pass legislation that specifically protected the nearby waters from commercial development. The bills that were enacted into RI’s General Law, H7060A & S2415A, specifically name “hunting and fishing” as priority protected uses, while explicitly prohibiting “commercial development” like oyster farming.

Supporting New Hunters

It’s no secret that the number of licensed hunters today is considerably less than a couple decades ago. A contributing factor to this is the loss of generational hunting ties. Essentially, as adults choose to give up hunting their children lose their hunting mentors, and the chain is broken. One of the ways that BHA’s RI Team has worked to reverse this trend is by actively supporting RI F&W’s youth hunting programs.

Over the last several years BHA has been a lead sponsor of RI’s youth mentored waterfowl hunt. Each year, the program pairs around a dozen young hunters with experienced mentors who teach them waterfowl hunting skills like species identification, shooting safety and waterfowl hunting regulations during a day-long workshop prior to the hunt. During the state’s special youth waterfowl season, mentors bring their hunters out for a morning in the field, followed by demonstrations on cleaning the waterfowl they’ve harvested and cooking wild game. In addition to sponsoring the event, BHA members participate as mentors each year.

Winter & Spring Waterfowl Banding

Nearly all waterfowl hunters covet the small metal bands that some ducks & geese wear on their ankles, and these bands are far more than jewelry. When hunters report the information from a banded bird the data helps wildlife biologists track migratory travel patterns and population dynamics. This feedback loop – acquiring scientific data and using it to set seasons and bag limits – is the proven management technique used to set seasons and bag limits for most North American wildlife.

BHA has actively contributed to the scientific management of waterfowl in RI by joining RI DEM’s F&W Division to assist with their annual banding efforts. BHA volunteers joined F&W biologists last winter to band migratory ducks on their winter range, and last summer to band resident Canada geese. Each year RI F&W biologists put hundreds of new bands onto ducks & geese, and during the two outings that BHA assisted with our volunteers helped to band several dozen birds.