LITTLE ROCK – The best mallard numbers seen in Arkansas in recent years from last month’s aerial survey estimate continued with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s annual midwinter waterfowl survey released this week. The number of mallards in the Delta region of Arkansas hit a four-year high during aerial observations conducted in December, and that…
LITTLE ROCK – Arkansas waterfowl hunters endured a deep freeze leading into last weekend, and now temperatures will take an upward trend as the state’s 60-day season has reached its midpoint. There are no more splits left in the season as it runs uninterrupted through Jan. 31. Long-range weather forecasts indicate temperatures ranging as high as 68…
LITTLE ROCK – Despite challenging weather conditions that delayed flights for a week, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission waterfowl staff last week completed its December 2022 aerial waterfowl surveys for the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (Delta), the Arkansas River Valley and southwestern Arkansas, with the report issued this week by Luke Naylor, the AGFC chief…
Arkansas’s waterfowl hunting season will resume 30 minutes before sunrise Saturday, Dec. 10, and ducks and geese will have had nearly two weeks of mostly quiet on the Arkansas landscape. With this week’s nasty wet weather and ducks perhaps finding more habitat, this 14-day portion of the waterfowl season will open with more promise than…
LITTLE ROCK – An abnormally dry late summer and fall figure to play a part in the nine-day opening section of Arkansas’s 60-day duck season, which starts statewide Saturday morning, 30 minutes before sunrise. Several of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s public hunting areas have had good amount of available food and cover for migrating waterfowl,…
LITTLE ROCK — According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s report “Waterfowl Population Status, 2022,” released in late August, total duck population estimates in spring 2022 declined 12 percent from the last recorded survey taken in 2019, but that doesn’t necessarily sound an alarm with waterfowl managers who have seen similar fluctuations in the…
STUTTGART — Set among a backdrop filled with the sounds of soft greeting calls and the smells of a duck blind breakfast, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson joined the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation and Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to unveil the 41st annual state duck stamp in front of the crowd gathered in Stuttgart…
POCAHONTAS — The only thing people are breaking out the shotguns for may be turkey, but that doesn’t mean Arkansas Game and Fish staff aren’t hard at work laying the groundwork for next year’s duck season on public hunting areas and waterfowl rest areas. It’s planting season for most farmers, and the same holds true…
PINE BLUFF, Ark. – Rocky Thornburg has been flying duck surveys long before any of the current Arkansas Game and Fish Commission biologists conducting surveys were on the agency payroll. A pilot based in Pine Bluff, Thornburg began flying low-altitude aerial waterfowl surveys in 1992 to allow AGFC staff to count ducks in the state.…
Little Rock, Arkansas – With a deep freeze headed toward Arkansas, snow expected to be covering southeast Missouri, and with the recent rainfall that has filled the public hunting areas in state, habitat conditions for duck hunters should this weekend be the best they’ve been all year long. Friday and Saturday morning, waterfowl hunters may…
Little Rock, Arkansas – As this week’s Waterfowl Report was being composed Wednesday morning, an usual sight was occurring: A steady rain was falling. Tha’s the best news for duck hunters in some time around these parts. The hope among most hunters is that this first line of rain passing through Arkansas at midweek won’t…
LITTLE ROCK – Duck season restarts for waterfowl hunters on Saturday, Dec. 11, and those hunters maybe facing worse conditions than when the 60-day season officially opened Nov. 20. “It’s doing nothing but getting drier on the landscape,” Luke Naylor, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission waterfowl program coordinator, said Wednesday. “Conditions may be declining,…
Little Rock, Arkansas – Arkansas duck hunters face the same conditions for the second weekend of the 2021-22 season as they did during the first: Little water can be found around the state. Anecdotal reports from around the state the past week indicated that where hunters had water in fields and timber, ducks were there…
LITTLE ROCK – The opening day of duck season is finally within reach, and for some that means a lot of gear shuffling and a last-minute dash to make sure boat motors and equipment are in working order. Biologists with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission urge all hunters and anglers alike to pull the…
Pine Bluff, Arkansas — With less than a month until Arkansas’s regular duck season, many excited hunters are going through old bags of decoys, looking for a reason to freshen up their spread. Instead of pitching those old, shot or faded decoys into the trash, let the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission rehome them and…
CALION — When you harvest a wood duck wearing a band around its leg and report it, you’re helping biologists gather critical data needed to make waterfowl management decisions in Arkansas. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission bands hundreds of wood ducks across the state each year. This year, biologists and other staff trapped 460…
LITTLE ROCK — The 2021-22 Waterfowl Guidebook will soon be arriving in AGFC regional offices, nature centers and local sporting goods stores and license vendors throughout the state. An electronic version also is available for those who want to carry a copy on their smartphone, or simply want to get a sneak peek at what’s…
LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will host a series of public meetings in October and November to explain recently announced changes to some of Arkansas’s most popular duck-hunting areas. The meetings will be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the following dates at these locations: Oct. 26 — White County…
LITTLE ROCK — Five private rice fields that are part of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Waterfowl Rice Incentive Conservation Enhancement program are being made available to public hunters via draw for next weekend, Sept. 25-26, during the state’s special early teal season. Four of the WRICE fields are in Monroe County, while the…
LITTLE ROCK — Gov. Asa Hutchinson unveiled the artwork that will appear on the 2021-22 Arkansas State Duck Stamp today at his official proclamation of Sept. 25 as National Hunting and Fishing Day in Arkansas and the week leading up to it as Arkansas Hunting and Fishing Week. The proclamation, which took place at the…
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Director Austin Booth announced last Thursday at a special press conference that the AGFC will make changes to existing water management schedules on three of Arkansas’s popular wildlife management areas to protect critical habitat for wintering waterfowl. Henry Gray Hurricane Lake WMA, George H. Dunklin Jr. Bayou…
