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Young ducks need time to fully grow, gain flight strength, and build up some reserves, and successful hens need to molt and regain body condition from raising young before making the fall migration. Likewise, ducks on wintering grounds have to survive, form pair bonds, regain body condition, and initiate molt before starting the spring migration toward breeding grounds—we close the season so they can more effectively accomplish these tasks.
We have also learned from a number of radio-telemetry studies that once a duck survives to about mid-January, it will survive the winter unless shot by a hunter. Harvest in late-January and beyond would likely shoot into the breeding stock. A female that loses her mate in late-winter incurs additional harassment and energetic costs until she can re-pair, which may reduce her reproductive success. Fish and Wildlife Service allows zones and splits to provide separate hunting regulations in areas of states with different habitats, species composition, and migration chronologies.
For example, in Louisiana, the first large flocks of migrant ducks appear in the coastal marshes in mid to late-October, but migrant ducks generally appear in the swamps and flooded forests of central and northeast Louisiana later in November or early December when flooding is more widespread. Similarly, species like pintails, shovelers, gadwalls, and green-winged teal typically migrate into coastal marshes earlier in the fall, where mallards, scaup, and canvasbacks show up later in the year.
Louisiana recently returned to two zones, East and West, to take advantage of a recent change in federal regulations that allows two splits in the season if no more than two zones are used. The zone boundaries as of the season are very similar to those used from through that combined the piney woods and large reservoirs of northwest Louisiana with the coastal prairies and marshes of south Louisiana.
The map of current zone boundaries can be found online. Each zone has one or two splits, or closed segments, to allow hunting on early migrants in early to mid-November as well as later migrants in late January. The first split is in early to mid-December when we expect birds to be moving into Louisiana from northern habitats; the split encourages them to stay as they are not pressured by gunfire during their arrival.
If managers say that hunting has virtually no impact on waterfowl populations, why do we have restrictions? When waterfowl managers say hunting has virtually no impact on waterfowl populations, they mean virtually no impact within the bounds of historical hunting regulations. We have no experience with regulations outside of what we have set historically; for example, we do not know the impact of completely unrestricted or completely closed seasons.
For all we know, longer seasons and larger bag limits than we have had might significantly impact waterfowl populations. Consequently, restrictions that balance providing hunting opportunity with maintaining waterfowl populations will remain. If we have a daily bag limit, why are there additional rules regarding baiting, electronic calls, night hunting, more than three shells in your gun, etc.?
If all of the approximately one million duck hunters took a daily bag limit of six ducks during all 60 days of the waterfowl season longer in the Central and Pacific Flyways , the kill would exceed the number of ducks we estimate to be in North America. The duck population is not only safeguarded by the daily bag limit or the season length, but also by the whole suite of hunting regulations that have historically constrained harvest rates to acceptable levels to both provide hunting opportunity and maintain the population.
Fish and Wildlife Service established the September teal season in the mids during a period of low duck populations to offer hunting opportunity on blue-winged teal, a species that migrated so early that they experienced very little harvest pressure.
Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky were allowed to add wood ducks to their teal season bag limits over 25 years ago, but in exchange, they were only allowed 5-day seasons instead of 9 or day September teal seasons.
In , the USFWS increased the daily bag limit for wood ducks in the regular season from two to three per day so long as the harvest rate does not exceed a prescribed amount. There are additional concerns regarding black-bellied whistling ducks in Louisiana. Mottled duck populations are declining in our state, and they are particularly vulnerable during September. The USFWS has made it clear they will not consider adding black-bellies, or any other species, to the September teal season bag limit.
Keep in mind that we only have this information from ducks that are banded—many of the species commonly harvested in Louisiana, such as gadwalls, green-winged teal, and shovelers, are not banded very often.
However, their breeding range largely overlaps that of more commonly-banded mallards and blue-winged teal, so this information is likely representative of them as well. What is the source of funding Louisiana sends to Canada for breeding ground habitat conservation?
Who decides how it is spent? Since , LDWF has sent money to Canada to restore, enhance, and protect breeding habitat for migratory waterfowl. Specifically, LA R. Per state law, the funding comes from hunting license fees, and the Commission decides who receives it and which projects it funds. Accuracy is defined as the relationship between the estimate and the truth or reality.
However, by conducting an aerial survey using the same methods year after year across a large portion of the breeding habitat, we have a reliable index of population size that we can confidently compare across years and among locations within the surveyed area.
This is a common complaint, but it may not be universally true as we get reports every year of both best ever and worst ever hunting seasons. However, given the changes in habitat quality in Louisiana, declines in duck hunting should be expected. Rice agriculture, an important habitat for wintering ducks and geese, has declined in acreage in Louisiana but increased in states to the north. Invasive aquatics, like water hyacinth and giant salvinia, have reduced habitat quality and quantity in large areas of the state from reservoirs in the northwest to coastal forested wetlands in the southeast.
Warming temperatures have left habitat available at the north end of the Mississippi Flyway longer into the winter. These two things are not the same. Growing grain and flooding is a form of habitat management, while dispersing grain to hunt over is baiting. Grain crops are grown in a finite place, and they provide habitat components other than food for waterfowl including thermal cover, protection from wind and predators, and a food base for invertebrates.
They are also available to any species of wildlife that choose to use them, they cannot be moved, and they cannot be replenished when they are gone. Growing grain and flooding is similar to how we artificially manipulate land and water in moist-soil impoundments, coastal marsh impoundments, or green-tree reservoirs—all common types of habitat management.
In contrast, placing harvested grain is done strategically during times and in amounts that maximize use by waterfowl only and in optimal locations for hunters to kill birds.
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