It’s official: September of 2013 will go down as the lowest one on record for blue-winged teal in the annual waterfowl population estimates conducted by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.[…]
In what may come as bad news for local duck hunters the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has found a drop in the number of ducks estimated to be in the coastal region of the state by 20 percent over the beginning of the season last year.
LDWF’s count comes from a Nov. 7-9 aerial survey in which a manual count was executed during an aircraft flyover of the region of the state south of Highway 90.
The biggest trends reported in the survey were a large decline in blue-winged teal from 451,000 to only 33,000 and far fewer coots from a record high 1.84 million to 555,000.[…]