LITTLE ROCK – Heavy rainfall passing through Arkansas on Wednesday should put flood more waterfowl hunting areas as the duck season hits its final stretch with 14 days to go. Mild springlike temperatures since Sunday could have ducks thinking it’s time to migrate north. This weather pattern comes just as Arkansas Game and Fish Commission waterfowl biologists take to the sky once again this week for the final aerial survey of the season.
Results from the Midwinter Waterfowl Survey released last week showed the biggest concentration of both mallards and total duck estimates came from the Lower St. Francis River survey zone, a region known historically for more boom-or-bust duck counts driven by the extent of natural flooding on the landscape. Anecdotal reports from some hunters in the field in east-central Arkansas noted more pintails in the area on ponds and flooded fields, which often indicate the return of ducks that migrated through a few weeks back. It will be interesting to see what numbers the biologists see in their transect flights this week throughout the Delta and the Arkansas River Valley.
Both the December aerial survey, which was delayed several days because of inclement weather that curtailed flying, and the Midwinter Survey indicated mallard estimates that were the best seen in the Arkansas Delta since 2018. Two weeks ago, the estimates were 929,248 mallards and more than 1.74 millions ducks in the Delta. This was not only the highest mallard population recorded since the 2018 Midwinter Survey, but it was the second-highest since 2010. Total duck population estimates also exceeded 1.5 million ducks for the first time in any survey since December 2011.
The Midwinter Survey followed weather conditions to the north that were extremely favorable for moving ducks into Arkansas, with snow and ice conditions through the midwest and frigid tempetures, which also concided with much needed and massive amounts of rainfall in Arkansas. With this latest warmer, wetter weather in Arkansas, it still did not appear that ducks were racing back to Missouri: In the Missouri Department of Conservation’s hunter harvest counts from their public lands in the southeast portion of the state (in particular, Ten Mile Pond CA), harvest numbers were only about 1 duck per hunter this past weekend. Otter Slough CA saw less than 1 duck per hunter harvest success on Saturday-Sunday.
Arkansas geese estimates continue to be high, with specklebelly (greater-white fronted geese) numbers taking a big jump from December estimates, up to 618,925 in the Delta. Arctic goose estimates totaled 1,693,343 light geese (lesser snows and Ross’s) in the Delta. Waterfowl report observations this past weekend also noted significant geese in Arkansas and Prairie counties and points west (we did not travel east of Arkansas County), especially snows and blues in the Keo area. (Luke Naylor, AGFC chief of wildlife management, has noted in the past as waterfowl program coordinator that the aerial survey counts are designed for ducks, and for geese they are not as precise and more difficult to obtain because geese tend to be spooked by the survey planes, affecting the count estimates, compared with counting ducks on the ground.)
Dry conditions hampered hunting in Arkansas during the earlier portions of the season, but even before Wednesday’s rainy front passed, water levels in such WMAs as Steve N. Wilson Raft Creek Bottoms and Ed Gordon Point Remove were at or near ideal levels throughout those areas. Check out more conditions in the habitat report below.
New Waterfowl Program Coordinator
One of Luke Naylor’s key moves after taking over as the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Wildlife Mangement Division chief was finding a his replacement as waterfowl program coordinator. Naylor found his new program leader in Brett Leach.
Leach is a native of Wisconsin and is currently finishing up his master’s degree work at the University of Missouri at Columbia while here at the AGFC headquarters. He came aboard Jan. 9.
Austin Booth, the AGFC director, said Wednesday at the January Commission Meeting in Little Rock that he had told Naylor during the hiring process “to find the next Luke Naylor.”
Leach was at the Commission meeting on Wednesday to be introduced by Booth to the commissioners, but was also scheduled to fly on different days this week with AGFC biologists in their aerial surveys for the January waterfowl estimates.
Last Call for Permits
This week will mark the last application period available for both WRICE Program private lant permits and for WMA permits that will be offered for the last weekend of the season, Jan. 28-29. The waterfowl season in Arkansas officially closes on Jan. 31, and permits for WMAs that require them will be available on visitors’ kiosks for the final day (the youth and mobility-impaired blinds at Steve N. Wilson Raft Creek Bottoms WMA still much be applied for this week for Jan. 31). The application period begins at 3 p.m. Thursday and concludes at midnight Sunday. Winners of permits will be notified on Monday, Jan. 23, for the upcoming weekend and the permit days that follow Jan. 31.
Visit https://www.agfc.com/en/hunting/migratory-birds/waterfowl/special-waterfowl-permit-hunts/ for more information on all waterfowl hunting permits offered or to be directed to the application site (found also at “By Licenses/Check Game” on agfc.com). Each application is $5. Hunters may only apply for one WRICE field per week. WRICE permits are for the entire weekend, from 30 minutes before sunrise to sunset, and the winning hunter may being three other hunters. Permits in Raft Creek Bottoms, Sheffield Nelson Dagmar WMA and Red Cut Slough, including the youth and mobility-impaired blinds in Raft Creek, are for one day of the two-day weekend, opening up opportunity for hunters to try for either day.