Jake Smith: Working the numbers: Fall game bird and waterfowl outlook

It’s that time of year again, when the “numbers” from a lot of work by wildlife biologists and technicians become available to the public to give us an idea of what kind of bird populations we can expect this fall.

Many things are weather-dependent, of course — not just with how it affected the reproduction and recruitment of bird populations this past spring and summer, but also in what we experience when we step outdoors.