Full steam ahead for duck season

Published 4:50 pm Monday, November 20, 2017

Duck hunting for all areas in the state — West, East and Coastal zones — is open now, but hunters are finding that ducks just may not be as plentiful this year as last, at least for the time being.

Larry Reynolds, who conducts aerial surveys over the state for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, noted in his recent report that the current duck count is just about half of what it was a year ago.

He did say that the report did not include the northwest Louisiana survey due to poor weather.

“The estimate of 1.54 million ducks on this survey is half of last November’s estimate of 3.06 million and 23 percent below the most recent five-year long-term average of 2.0 million,” Reynolds wrote in his report.

“Distribution of ducks was skewed toward Southwest Louisiana with 63 percent of ducks being counted in that region. Notable concentrations of mostly gadwalls were seen in the marsh south of West Cove (Big Lake), on the East Cove unit of Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge and on Rockefeller Refuge south of La. 82.

“Interestingly, more ducks were counted in the brackish marsh and fewer in the agricultural habitats of Southwest Louisiana than expected,” he added.

The count for Southwest Louisiana was: mallard (3,000), mottled (12,000), gadwall (523,000), wigeon (4,000), green-wing teal (144,000), blue-wing teal (135,000), shoveler (93,000), pintail (1,000), scaup (14,000) and ring-necked (39,000).

“Habitat conditions across the coastal marsh survey area are improved over the extensive high water seen during the September survey, but remain below average.

“High water throughout the spring and summer led to poor production of seed-producing annual vegetation in most places in Southwest Louisiana. Some areas of fresh and intermediate marsh such as south of White Lake, continue to be impacted by invasive aquatics, mostly water hyacinth. Flooding in the agricultural region of Southwest Louisiana is at least average with most all managed impoundments flooded. Less pasture and shallow flooding was seen than in September, but conditions appear good in the agricultural habitats despite seeing few birds there on this survey.”

The Coastal Zone (south of Interstate 10 and La. 14 in Southwest Louisiana) and the West Zone kicked off hunting on Nov. 11, while the East Zone (north of I-10 and La. 14 in Southwest Louisiana) started yesterday.

The first week of action for our area’s Coastal Zone was spotty, according to hunters who found few ducks south of Hackberry and mainly teal (both blue-wing and green-wing) in the Little Chenier area.

Up above the dividing line, around rice fields in the Pine Prairie area, hunters working on their blinds early in the week reported good numbers of ducks one day and then nothing the next.