What Will Be Landing in Your Decoy Spread?

DELTA WATERFOWL, one of America’s leading conservation organizations, is giving duck hunters a fall flight forecast despite the cancelation of the 2020 Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey.

“The Service’s cancelation of the survey due to Covid-19 means we don’t have estimates of breeding duck populations or pond (wetland) counts this year,” said Dr. Frank Rohwer, president of Delta Waterfowl. “However, a far more important metric for predicting a quality hunting season is duck production. That’s the overriding factor in whether we’ll see a good fall flight.”

Therefore, duck production among species likely varied based on their regional preferences.

Delta expects that mallards took advantage of wet conditions in the Dakotas and prairie Manitoba, which will send plenty of greenheads down the Central and Mississippi flyways. This was reflected in the North Dakota survey, which estimated 872,982 breeding mallards, the 18th highest index recorded.

The Dakota prairies are the core breeding range of blue-winged teal, which spells good news for early teal seasons. Bluewings increased 58 percent in the North Dakota survey.

“Bluewings were off the charts in the Dakotas and should, in turn, provide an outstanding fall flight,” Rohwer said. “Green-winged teal are more challenging to predict, but they typically nest farther north in the stable wetlands of the Canadian parklands and boreal forest. It’s rare for greenwings to have a bad year.”

Delta anticipates an average fall flight of gadwalls. Roughly 50 percent of the population nests in prairie Saskatchewan, where conditions suffered from low precipitation, while the other half settles in the Dakotas. Breeding gadwalls climbed 6.16 percent to 440,379 birds in the North Dakota survey.

The news is less favorable for pintails, as conditions were well below average in prairie Saskatchewan, the traditional heart of the pintail’s breeding range. However, an increasing ratio of pintails have settled in the Dakotas in recent years in response to vastly better wetland conditions.

“If enough pintails nested in the U.S. prairies, it could help offset the drier conditions in Canada,” Rohwer said. “Regardless, I don’t expect a good year for pintails. This wasn’t the spring we needed to get them back on track.”

Wigeon are believed to have had an average nesting season, given conditions in their preferred prairie Canada breeding grounds.

Delta expects a decreased fall flight of canvasbacks due to the poor nesting conditions in the Saskatchewan parklands.

“The canvasbacks that nested in Manitoba will fare better, but it’s just not going to be a good year for cans,” Rohwer said. “They’re very inflexible nesters and will fly right past good water in the Dakotas to reach the Canadian parklands.”

Redheads are far more adaptable in their habits based on the presence of water, which they found plenty of in the Dakotas. Though redheads declined in the North Dakota survey by 11.64 percent, their breeding population estimates of 203,121 birds remains a whopping 72.34 percent above the long-term average.

“The Dakotas will give redheads a much better fall flight than canvasbacks,” Rohwer said. “Even more cans than normal settled in the Dakotas, though not in any significant numbers.”

This is the first year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not produced a survey, and the TF&G staff appreciates Delta’s in-depth and unique analysis.

 

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Pintail ducks have not enjoyed the same benefits of wet years in the breeding grounds that other species have, so their numbers have fallen dramatically since the 1970s.

 

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— TF&G Staff Report

 

 

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