Population survey results give hunters a look at what to expect this waterfowl season
Oh boy, it’s October — finally.
Finally, the promise of cool mornings leading into warm, but not hot, afternoons.
Finally, hunting seasons and terrific fall freshwater and saltwater fishing.
So, with Mother Nature dealing us a winning hand (all the while praying for the absence of late-season hurricanes), all we need is for the game we like to hunt and the fish we like to catch to cooperate just a little.
We’re not asking for much. How good is it to celebrate in our Sportsman’s Paradise with a rabbit spaghetti, a squirrel sauce piquant, grilled redfish or fried speckled trout on our dinner tables?
Even better, November is right around the corner and we will be able to add the rest of deer seasons in Louisiana’s 10 deer-hunting areas along with welcoming the opening days of a 60-day duck season and 72 days for taking geese.
That’s if the ducks make it to our fields, marshes, ponds and impoundments.
Yes, “if.”
Waterfowl Breeding Population Survey
By now, any duck hunter worth his salt knows what the 2025 Breeding Count Survey showed. This year’s count of 19 species on the breeding grounds showed virtually no change from 2024’s 33,988,000 estimate.
The good news is the mallard count (along with the May ponds count) remained above the threshold for another 60-day duck season for the 2026-2027 season. Mallards are estimated at 6,550,000, a total that was 1% less than last year’s count and 17% lower than the long-term average, which is derived from all surveys taken since 1955 by U.S. and Canadian waterfowl biologists.
For us in Louisiana, the number of gray ducks is up 6% from last year — 2.41 million — and that’s good because the early days in the upcoming season usually holds a fair number of grays.
The bad news came in a decline in blue-winged and green-winged teal, a respective decline of 4% and 15% from last year. Bluewings are down 13% in the long-term average while greenwings are 16% above the long-term average.
Canvasbacks showed the greatest improvement from last year, up 22%. Shovelers (OK, we call them “spoonies”) and pintails were up 4%, redheads were up 17% and wigeon increased 9% from 2024’s count. Scaup, the bird we call “dos gris,” continued to plummet, down another 10% from last year and down 25% in the long-term average.
Short-stopping ducks
All that information conveyed, it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty.
Most readers here know Don Dubuc. He’s a long-time friend and sometime cohort in this outdoor media thing.
Don’s worried, and he expressed it during August’s Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission meeting. And there are many others that share his concern.
It goes back to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule allowing flooding of agricultural fields — more than the flooding rice fields in Louisiana and Arkansas. It is corn and other grain fields in the Midwest that are sticking in the craws of deep-south waterfowl hunters, who call this maneuver “short-stopping.”
If you don’t know the term, then it means adding something on the landscape to entice migratory waterfowl to stop along their migration routes to rest and feed.
And, if you ever saw what ducks can do with corn, then you know how enticing it is to a migrating duck to see a flooded corn field — all that bright, shiny golden stuff just lying there like a flashing neon, welcoming, come-hither sign.
The rub here is that when corn and grain fields weren’t allowed to be flooded, the ducks would feed on left-over kernels then move southward to continue their migration. Add water and the fields become like a Caribbean resort with only a hard freeze to provide an onward push.
Cold January days
To be clear. I’m not a waterfowl biologist, nor pretend to be one.
Yet, here’s what most long-time Louisiana duck hunters know. Years before this rule was instituted and before water projects were added in the Midwest, states like Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and the eastern parts of Oklahoma saw a lot more ducks in the early season than they did in the late season.
We knew some ducks, like blue-winged teal, left breeding grounds as early as late August, and gray ducks, pintails, spoonies and green-winged teal followed them a few weeks later and wigeons, mallards and canvasbacks appear later in the season.
Not now, and it’s why, for the last handful of years, ardent duck hunters have asked Wildlife and Fisheries’ waterfowl staff and the commission to push their seasons to the end of date — Jan. 31 — allowed to Mississippi and Central Flyways hunters. (Louisiana is in the Mississippi Flyway.)
That’s because winter, the real downright freezing conditions, has appeared later in the calendar year and the first days in January in recent years.
This “true” cold is what’s needed to freeze the flooded ag fields and give a push to ducks to leave the Midwest resorts.
For now, even with the decline in mallards, we know about next year, another 60-day duck season, and we, down here at the end of the migration range for most ducks, can hope we see ducks in our skies or risk seeing a continuing decline in Louisiana ducks hunters.
Good hunting!
