North Dakota waterfowl hunting prospects look favorable

It’s dry out there, no doubt, but there’s plenty of reason for optimism going into North Dakota’s 2023 waterfowl opener.

The regular duck and goose season opens Sept. 23 for North Dakota residents and Sept. 30 for nonresidents.

“Things look good,” said Mark Fisher, wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Devils Lake. “Waterfowl productivity this year was very good.”

Results from the

North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s July duck brood survey

, released in August, indicated brood counts were up 79% from 2022 and 88% above the 1965-2022 average index. The average brood size was 6.5 ducks, and overwater nesting species such as canvasbacks, redheads and ring-necked ducks all set records for the number of broods observed. Ruddy ducks nearly broke their previous record.

In the Devils Lake area, predator numbers were down, and it wasn’t uncommon to find large broods early, Fisher says.

“I saw plenty of broods there for a while, and then we always tend to kind of forget what the last spring brought us,” Fisher said. “We had good conditions going into the summer. There was water and quite a bit of snow. So, we started out with pretty average — maybe even slightly above average — conditions.”

The dry snap that started after May and persists didn’t seem to affect brood success, he said.

“We’ve got some areas that are pretty dry, north of Highway 2 in particular,” Fisher said. “They haven’t had a lot of rain this summer. These small storms we’ve had here recently haven’t really changed much, but there’s still some habitat out there, still plenty of opportunities.”

Devils Lake, of course, “is in good shape as far as water levels go,” Fisher said, and can provide good waterfowl hunting opportunities, at times. Hunters who can find and access wetlands with water also should do well.

“If you can find water, birds might tend to be a little more concentrated if you’re hunting over water when you have some drier conditions,” Fisher said. “It’s definitely not a ‘drought’ drought, but it’s drier than what I would say is normal.”

Traditionally, Fisher says, waterfowl hunters early in the season encounter the highest diversity as far as duck species. That means puddle ducks such as mallards, pintails, gadwall, teal and shovelers.

Hunters who prefer hunting over water on Devils Lake itself for diver ducks such as scaup might have to wait until later in the season before action really picks up, he says.

“You may not see those birds right out of the gate — it might be a little bit slower,” Fisher said. “And then I think as the fall progresses and you get into mid-October, you start to lose blue-winged teal and probably some pintails, they tend to get out of here. But you still have quite a bit of green-winged teal at that time — green-winged teal and mallards — they’ll stick around.”

By mid-October, scaup usually start “pouring in” to the big water of Devils Lake.

“And then at the end, you’ll end up with mallards and scaup,” Fisher said. “Those will be your last birds that are pretty hardy, and they won’t leave until they absolutely have to and snow covers the ground.”

Anecdotally, it seems goose hunting has been “pretty slow” for hunters who have gone afield for North Dakota’s early Canada goose season, Fisher says.

The “August Management Take” and early September season closed Sept. 7 in the Missouri River Zone, Friday in the Western Zone and continues through Sept. 22 in the Eastern Zone, which includes the majority of the state.

“A lot of folks that I’ve talked to — even folks that complain about goose depredation — have been wondering, ‘Hey, where are the geese?’ ” Fisher said. “They’re just not seeing the numbers of geese.”

It’s only speculation, but Fisher says a couple of dry years might have reduced populations, at least in the Lake Region.

“Whenever there’s consecutive wet years, they tend to do really well, but we had those couple of dry years,” he said. “It seems like the goose numbers — or at least the localized goose numbers — are not real abundant.

“You can find them, but you’ve really got to look for them. Whereas, five years ago, they were everywhere.”

Continental breeding duck populations this year were down 7% from last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in August in releasing results from the

annual spring North American waterfowl survey

conducted in May and early June by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Canadian Wildlife Service and other partners.

Total populations were estimated at 32.3 million breeding ducks in the traditional survey area, down from the 2022 estimate of 34.7 million and 9% below the long-term average since 1955, the Service reported.

While some waterfowl experts were discouraged by the continental population decline, others put the findings in a different light.

“We don’t hunt the breeding population,” Frank Rohwer, president and chief scientist of Bismarck-based Delta Waterfowl said in a news release reporting the North American survey results. “We hunt the fall flight, which is made of the breeding population plus this year’s duck production. Duck production is the key to the upcoming hunting season.”

In North Dakota, the breeding duck index, at 3.4 million birds, was up 1.5% from 2022 and 39% above the long-term average since 1948. The fall flight of ducks from North Dakota is expected to be similar to 1998, 2004 and 2020, the Game and Fish Department reported in late August.

In the Devils Lake area, at least, Fisher credits Delta Waterfowl’s predator management program for helping to maintain strong duck production. In areas where predators are managed, nest success is higher, he says; extensive study in the early years of predator management work has borne that out.

“Whenever you do it, and wherever you’re doing it, you have a higher level of success in that localized area,” Fisher said. “There’s no reason to keep looking at that question because it’s been answered, I think, pretty completely.”

As opening day approaches, small grain crops have been harvested, leaving only corn and soybeans in the fields. Some farmers have already plowed their stubble fields, Fisher says, but if current conditions hold, getting around on backroads and prairie trails shouldn’t be a problem.

“I think it’s going to be a good season,” he said.

North Dakota’s duck season continues through Dec. 3 statewide, followed by a late season beginning Saturday, Dec. 9, and continuing through Sunday, Dec. 31, in the High Plains Unit of western North Dakota.

The daily bag limit on ducks (including mergansers) is six, with species and sex restrictions as follows: five mallards of which only two may be hens, three wood ducks, two redheads, two canvasbacks, one scaup and one pintail.

For information on goose bag limits, season dates and hunting hours, check out the Game and Fish website at

gf.nd.gov

.