A Fish & Game study has probed the impact of hunting regulations such as bag limits and season length on the harvest, harvest rates and, annual survival of mallards and grey ducks.
Senior Fish & Game Officer Matt McDougall and Courtney Amundson's research focused on the period from 1997 to 2012 in the Eastern Fish & Game Region.
They found that harvest was determined by hours hunted and bag limits, and hours hunted was driven by mallard population size, but was also declining over time.
Read the full study, published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, here.