Been watching the hunting decline in ND for 15 years. I started hunting ND as a student in the fall of 2000. It was so easy. Made plenty of return trips to hunt with college buddies in the years since. Some of those buddies now own and farm thousands of acres. I could pontificate for hours on the reasons that it's gotten to this point, most of the major issues have been mentioned. It's still a great state to hunt, and with some hard work, flexibility, and a little luck, you can have some banger hunts yet. But, the days of going to an unposted field and getting 2 or 3 shoots in a row off it are long gone. Any good feed is going to get found and there will be two A-frames, 20 dozen divebombs, and 8 spinners in that field at sunrise.
Everybody loves to pile on SD for limiting non resident waterfowl licenses, but during weather patterns such as this, it sure keeps pressure manageable. Even on a wet year when the birds are spread out, I know of land owners that get 15 vehicles in their yard and 25-30 calls by 10pm when there is a decent sized mallard feed on one of their fields. We've got some youth and new ideas in our GFP leadership, and from what I've seen so far, land owner/hunter relationships are at the forefront of their management goals. I actually feel that there will be more private land opened up for waterfowl hunting in the coming years due to that.