Click here to return to Tim Kelley’s Waterfowl Outfitters Unlimited.

No crying fowl with these new rules

Six-duck daily limit to include increase in pintail taking

August 29, 2010

Texas’ waterfowl hunters will see a slight liberalization of the duck bag limit, statewide, and the Canada goose bag limit in the western half of the state during the 2010-11 seasons.

This season, Texas duck hunters will be allowed to include as many as two pintails in the six-duck daily limit. It will mark the first season in more than a decade that Texas waterfowlers can take more than one of the highly regarded pintail per day.

In the West Goose Zone, which covers the western half of the state, the five bird daily bag limit of “dark” geese (Canada and white fronted) may include as many as five Canada geese. The increases were part of the package of regulations governing migratory game bird hunting adopted Thursday by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission during its meeting in San Antonio.

The increase in the pintail bag limit is a result of changes in federal waterfowl management strategies for the popular species and a slight increase in the breeding population of pintail.

Population grows

This spring, waterfowl managers estimated the breeding population of pintail at 3.50 million birds, up from 3.22 million in 2009 and the highest since the 3.55 million birds in 1997, the most recent year in which hunters were allowed to take more than one pintail per day. “Pintail numbers and habitat conditions are pretty good, this year,” Dave Morrison, waterfowl program leaders for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, told the TPW Commission.

This duck season will see a repeat of this past season’s delayed opening of the hunting season on “dusky” ducks. While the general duck season in Texas’ North and South Duck Zones will open Oct. 30, the season for “dusky” ducks (mottled, Mexican-like and black ducks) will open Nov. 4.

The five-day delay is designed to reduce harvest of mottled ducks, a Gulf Coast resident duck that has seen a slow, steady population decline. Making “dusky” ducks off limits to hunters for the first five days of the season is aimed at reducing harvest of mottled ducks by about 20 percent, a target set by federal waterfowl managers.

An expanding population of some species of Canada geese which use the western portion of the Central Flyway triggered the slight increase in the bag limit for dark geese in Texas’ West Goose Zone.

TPWD received about 600 public comments concerning the agency’s proposed waterfowl season regulations, Morrison told the commission.

About 350 of those comments supported the regulations package, with about 250 voicing opposition to parts of the proposals.

Duck season dates were the focus of the majority of opposition to the proposed regulations, accounting for about 120 of the comments.

The majority of those comments —113— wanted TPWD to set duck season to close on Jan. 30, the latest closing date allowed under the federal frameworks states must use when setting seasons for migratory birds.

TPWD recommended, and the TPW Commission approved, closing the duck season on Jan. 23.

Most of the push for the latest-possible duck season closing came from waterfowlers in North Texas. Hunters there argue their hunting success — particularly for mallards — is best during January and want the season to run as late as possible.

Dates debated

For more than a half century, until political pressure from Mississippi’s Sen. Trent Lott in the late 1990s pushed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to extend the latest closing date for duck season to the final Sunday in January, duck seasons closed no later than Jan. 20.

The late-January closing date has been available, nationwide, only since 2002.

Waterfowl managers almost unanimously prefer to close the season earlier in January, citing benefits to ducks with little or no impact on hunter opportunity or success rates. Amid-January closing allows duck more time to forage and feed unmolested, building necessary body condition for the grueling northern migration and the rigors of breeding and nesting. One of the limiting factors in duck productivity is body condition of ducks when they leave wintering grounds. Many duck species begin pair bonding during January and late-season hunting can impact those pair ponds or, if a mate is lost, force the surviving duck to unnecessarily expend precious energy looking for a new mate.

Harvest data indicates duck hunter success in Texas, as gauged by the average number of birds taken per day of hunting, is not better in January than October, November or December —in fact, January almost invariably sees the lowest ducks-per-day average of the season. And data reflects that to hold true over seasons with mild winters as well as those with severely cold winters, Morrison said.

shannon.tompkins@chron.com