Hunting: The Duck Drain

It may be small consolation to the water-short U.S. Northeast, but game ducks have long been more parched than people. For five years the great prairies of the central U.S. and Canada have had subnormal rainfall—not bad enough to bother humans but plenty bad for ducks. Thousands of breeding marshes and potholes turned to mud, then dust. That meant that for every 100 ducks that flew north to breed in the spring, only 80 came back through U.S. flyways in the fall. Hatchings were a little better this year but still far below...