They are headed back north. Texas is about halfway home for them.

really? i thought i read somewhere that a huge percentage of the teal population winter in the gulf.

The gulf goes alot further south than TX. Mexico holds the majority of them.

They are headed to central and south Mexico. You will have stragglers that hang out but the bio mass of teal are headed way way south.

Seriously! Not!

Seriously not what? The mass migration heads to central and south Mexico to winter and then back to Canada for the summer. Not all of them make it that far in either direction. So is there a statement or a question I can help you with here?

Not to highjack the thread but . .
This is what is so screwed up with the federal early teal regs.
(16 days and 4 bird limit)

If you do a little research you find that:
1 Early teal season total harvest is nearly 50% of the total US annual BWT harvest. i.e. not many get killed during regular season.
2 The total BWT population is 2nd only to the mallard and nearly equal to it in recent years. (you know, the bird you can kill six a day of when their here during the entire 72 day season.)
3 The ratio of harvested birds to the total species population for BWT is the lowest of any duck species.
4 It is estimated that nearly 40% of BWT do not survive the migration. . . the longest of any N American waterfowl. i.e. nearly half the birds that you dont shoot during early season will die anyway.
5 The BWT population is currently 91% over the long term average and has been over for the past 15 years . . yet no changes to limit regulations !?!

Doing the math:
If every hunter that participates in early teal season shot a limit of 6 birds (instead of 4) every day of early teal season, the impact to the spring time returning BWT population would be less than 5%.