finally, cold finally brought the mallards.

Yes it did! Finally!

any updates on north east texas near the red river?? Havent been up in 2 weeks but last time i was there it was just local birds with groups of migrators just starting.

We have had good duck numbers

as a guy who has been duck hunting for over 40 years, I’m gonna give you my perception and what my data backs. I’ve been keeping a detailed logbook of our hunts since 1993 and on average I hunt about 60 days a year. I own and control the Hunting pressure on over 30,000 acres in central Tx so i am able to watch the trends over the last 20 years on these properties.

1. when I started hunting these properties in 1991 we were averaging 600 mallards a year on our properties on the Brazos river from 91 through 2001. In about 98 we saw that number start declining from a peak of 800 dropping to 600, 400 200 and by about 2005 and every year since we’ve shot 50 mallards or less. What changed? Farming practices and hunting practices north of us. Farmers started doing no till farming and Duck clubs started farming for Ducks. Everybody says come on cold front, come on cold front – our mallards in the 90s started showing up on the river in October – didn’t matter what the weather was that’s when they showed up. At that time having moved from Louisiana I had over 100,000 acres in Central texas that I could hunt that no one else was hunting. I could hunt the whole season and not hear another person shoot. every year since our peak harvest of total ducks in 2011 I’ve seen the number of Hunters drastically increase. Now there’s not a piece of water in our area greater than an acre that somebody’s not hunting. The cost of deer hunting and the popularity of duck hunting on social media drastically increased the number of Hunters. I’ve got at least 20 friends that have jumped into the sport in the last five years. These are guys with money, assets, and time, and they are shooting a lot of ducks on properties that were not getting shot a few years ago.

2. Do the cold front push mallards in? Absolutely but other species like pintail, gadwalls, redheads, shovelers, Ruddy Ducks, and snow geese historically have all shown up at a very predictable time. I have a pond that for 30 years Has held a group of 30isg ruddy Ducks and we do not shoot them. Every year they show up plus or -5 days of Thanksgiving and they stay the entire season and leave in May. This isn’t rocket science – go follow some of the guys that are doing the telemetry banding studies and they will show you that the birds show back up to the same place as they were caught and banded within a matter of days every year. We have a big snow goose roost on one of our properties and for the last 28 years those geese show up every year between December 26 and January 4. Doesn’t matter what the weather is that’s when they will show up. The difference is 20 years ago our roost was 50,000 birds and this year it’s 500. We noticed a drastic dropping off in the population when the conservation order season kicked in. It’s no secret that the wholesale massacre of the snow geese which I’m not against but it has correlated to a substantial decline. I have this data so well documented that if a guy tells me he wants to kill a lesser scaup I can tell him exactly which farm he needs to be on and which week and they will be there. I’ve got this to the point where I’ve actually considered selling hunts by species for the guys that are chasing their 41 bird target.

3. targeted pressure and focus has me really doubting the harvest data. we really saw a ramp up in the decline of our Central texas type birds like Widgeon and gadwalls 10 years ago. What change? Cadillac Creek outfitters, tornado country, outfitters, bluestem, outfitters, Fowlco, etc. These guys are killing machines. A frames and realistic full body decoys have impacted success rates of field hunting birds. They have acquired hundreds of thousands of acres of land that historically was getting recreational hunting and have numerous guides scouting up to 400 mile circles, finding the birds and hammering them. Just go look at their Instagram and it becomes real hard to argue. One of our ranches in the San Saba area for decades has held lots of Widgeon that normally showed up around January 1. About six years ago, we started noticing a decline in them and I have not seen a single bird on any of those ponds in three years and they get zero duck hunting pressure. Just look at the number of Widgeon that Cadillac and tornado country are killing year in and year out and it’s got to have an impact. How many of you guys accurately report what you shoot each year? Every year when I do my hip survey and put 500+ birds I get a call/email from Fish and wildlife saying it must be a mistake that nobody shooting that many ducks and this year it looks like i will shoot a total of 48 ducks. Guys I personally know that are shooting 2 to 300 birds a year are putting that they’re shooting 20 because they don’t want the government in their business. You know what we have not seen a decline in? Pintails. We still see big flocks of pintails every day you know why – it’s been restricted to one bird limiting the number that are killed. Id bet you a lot of $$ that when that number goes to two next year, we will see a big drop in the number of pintails making it to Central texas.

4. Saying the migration has shifted or changed infers that the ducks are still somewhere. i’ve developed an extensive network of friends all over the country that we trade hunts each year. Been doing it for 30+ years and I can tell you my friends in Canada say they saw 1/10 of the number of birds they normally do to the point they cane home 3 weeks early from their 6 week hunt. My friends in South Dakota have killed less than 20% of what they normally kill. My friends on the East Coast have watched the same decline of their eiders and scorers over the last 10 years. In 2008 the first time I went hunting with them we literally saw tens of thousands of eiders. Last year when I went, everyone was happy to shoot two on a three day trip. what changed? Hunt 41 and the targeted pressure of “collectors”. i’m not knocking it, i’ve done it and just pointing out facts.

here’s the reality of the current situation – U.S. Fish and Wildlife and most state agencies have recognized this is a problem. They understand that there are likely more ducks being killed right now than there ever was in the market hunting day. They also know they don’t want to do anything that will impact the sale of licenses because that’s where they get their funding for all of their programs. Canada and South Dakota are both changing their laws this year to regulate out of state guides and outfitters. Several states are considering going to a system like Alaska, where you are not allowed to shoot more than four of any species of sea duck in a season. Imagine what they would do to the King eiders on st paul if you were allowed to shoot six a day instead of four per season.

so to sum up all of this gibberish, basically we are feeling the impact of 10 years of a drastic increase in targeted hunting pressure on the waterfowl and this year is the eorst drought year in my area in 16 years which always correlates to less birds. my data is certainly limited to central Tx but it reflects what my friends are seeing all over the country. Or as said above, we are waiting on those paper ducks.

Damned duck dynasty......

Those damn Robertsons…..

And they are coming back for two new seasons.
https://people.com/duck-dynasty-reboot-revival-series-nearly-8-years-after-original-show-8778648

Just after the first season or two of Duck Dynasty I was on a drawn Alligator hunt at JD Murphree WMA. My hunt was concurrent with Teal Season. I remember some of the WMA staff was complaining about the sudden increase in Teal hunters and the high number of lower-caliber or inexperienced hunters that came with that. They blamed it directly on Duck Dynasty.

Well said!! As a waterfowler with 41 years of experience and as a forester/wildlife biologist your observations in Texas are exactly what I have seen in Louisiana. The reports are the same all over the Mississippi and Central Flyway.

I also believe that informed managers know the waterfowl population has crashed. BUT the elite scientists want to keep their high paying jobs. The person or people that report the real numbers would be fired quickly.

Why? Think about it. Acknowledging that the duck population is far less than reported would devastate the “hunting economy”. Hunting in the U.S. is over a $10 billion per year business. Think about all the specialized gear required for waterfowl hunting. Clothes, waders, atvs, boats, mud motors, outboard motors, decoys, etc. All those manufacturers and retailers would be devastated. Most guide services and outfitters would disappear overnight. Other businesses like farming, real estate, hotels, restaurants, convenience stores, etc, would all be negatively affected.

Would they lie to protect their jobs? Maybe not downright lie but the majority have believed faulty statistics without questioning them. Almost all have been blindly committed to the current adaptive harvest model without any “real” data to back up the statistical validity of the model. It is a previously untested model based on the hypothesis that there is a direct correlation between the mallard population and their nesting and reproductive success amd the population of the other duck species.

Just like managers believed the erroneous model that allowed for the harvest of 10 pintails per day which almost decimated the species, managers now blindly believe the adaptive model and bash anyone that questions the model. (Yes I have been bashed many times in the last twenty years.) i am now concerned about the future of the duck population more than I am about how many ducks we get to harvest. I think we are almost at a level of no return or at best very slow return.

BB, Thank you for your excellent insight. It is a shame the “experts” treat our observations as antidotal even though we have detailed logbooks with real numbers to back up our observations. We have been completely disregarded.

Big Hutch

Brother, I lived through the 3-39 days of the early 90s Hunting in South Louisiana and I can tell you there was a hell of a lot more ducks back then than there is today. Even during that so-called conservative season due to low population, there was still tens of thousands of divers on Toledo Bend that are nonexistent today.

A good friend of mine it’s pretty high up in fish and wildlife said exactly what you said. The Hunting equipment industry has consolidated to three or four really large owners with very large lobby power. You also have a big guide lobby fuel by multimillion dollar lodge operations. Not only that the pork belly bureaucrats at fish and wildlife many of them have multiple interns doing 95% of their work. None of these people want to see a reduction in anything that will shake up their way of life.

my wife recently asked why I’ve been on such a big push for my kids to experience hunts around the country and I told her because either we’re gonna burn it out or it’s gonna get shut down due to the way it’s currently being managed.

they can call my experience anecdotal all they want to because scientifically it is, but I challenge how many people they have that have been managing the same 30,000+ acres for duck hunting for over 25 years with documented records of what’s coming to that property year end and year out.

Well said.

If anyone wants to listen to a solid pod cast about duck numbers, check this one out - https://open.spotify.com/episode/2w...ltLAw&nd=1&dlsi=08d0b58f04224568

This is the last weekend and as much as I want to go, I already know there are just no ducks in this area. Last weekend I drove all over and saw one small group of ducks.

I for one am ready for the season to be shorten to 30 days and a 3 duck limit. And yea, I truly believe that duck surveys are crap.

I have been hunting ducks and geese avidly for 54 years. This is the worst it has ever been. I believe what you guys are saying about the numbers. Too many hunters in too many states echoing the ⁸same thing. Where are the ducks.

How much longer do yall think they will ignore this?
Whats the end game? It just gets run into the ground and implodes before they do anything?

well, if it’s run the way the rest of our government is? yeah pretty much. oh and they’ve already proposed another liberal season for next year.

Maybe Trump can fix it.

make waterfowling great again……

We need all the help we can get. Last Saturday of the season and I stayed home. My hunting partner told me not to waste my time. We close on the 31st and he is already picking up decoys. Most blinds on the lease are empty. Nobody is hunting. These are big money spots that have historically (last 30-40 years) produced piles of ducks.

Had flu for 3 days, skipped Friday and called off guns today- didn’t want to get anyone sick. Quit @ 8:15, could have limited on Teal early.

Big Hutch, is that $10billion dollar number accurate?

If it is, i take a different view than you. I don't think anyone in the government could give a rats [censored] about $10billion. That's nothing in the grand sceme of things. We've given Ukraine what 60-70billion so far. There is what like 10 or 12 trillion dollar companies in the US?

I don't think anyone in the government cares about 1million waterfowl hunters or what they think is important for the ducks. They'd rather allow farmers to till and farm up every wetland there is to produce more grain that accounts for 10x the GDP than hunters do.

I’ve got 2 places, Fannin and VanZandt county. Not seeing declines. 22-23, 22-24 record numbers, augmented w many more Ringnecks. Have hunted less this year because of weather, and flooded very late- 30% less hunts this year, but averaged 9.5 ducks per hunt, primarily 2 gun hunts, few solos, and handfull of 3 gun hunts. On days I’ve hunted with buddies or people not from the gun club., I have typically shot a limit, with only 4 ringnecks harvested all year. I manage very aggressively, tweak water levels, and rest typically 7-10 days, unless we had big fronts.

I’ve got some unique properties, but again, talking 200 ducks/ year

Nice way to finish in 2 man pit blind today. Done by 8:00

I’m not old enough yet to have the years as some of you, but I feel that the ducks simply do not exist to begin with. I hate to throw in the towel, but this is the second season I haven’t even attempted managing for ducks due to lack of. So many states winter counts being down by double digit percentages backs this. If other states numbers aren’t up(which they aren’t) the ducks either migrated straight through to mexico(where they don’t get counted), or they don’t exist to begin with, you pick it.