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Teal season could be a mixed bag
Texas hunters will get 16 days but might not have high bird counts

June 30, 2008

The question whether Texas will see a nine-day or 16-day teal season this September was answered late this past week when federal waterfowl officials announced the 2008 blue-winged teal breeding population index was estimated at 6.6 million birds.

That figure is well above the index of 4.7 million bluewings necessary to trigger a 16-day hunting season for the early-migrating ducks. The number was derived from surveys in May and June of major duck nesting regions in the north-central United States, Alaska, and central and northwest Canada.

If the bluewing index had been below 4.7 million, federal policy would have dictated a nine-day season.

Texas waterfowl managers this year proposed Sept. 13-28 as statewide dates for the teal-only season, should a 16-day season be allowed.

This will be the third consecutive year bluewing numbers have been high enough to authorize a 16-day season. And this year's bluewing index is almost as high as the 6.7 million-bluewing estimate from 2007.

Forget last season

The springtime bluewing numbers look great — about 45 percent above the long-term (1955-2007) average — but waterfowl managers caution that the high breeding population doesn't mean waterfowlers are likely to see as many bluewings this autumn as they did a year ago.

And that's because bluewing nesting success this year is all but certain to be far below that of a year ago.

"Last year, we saw one of the best production years we've seen in maybe 10 years," said Dave Morrison, waterfowl program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "We're not going to see anything near that kind of production this year."

A year ago, the prairies — where the majority of bluewings gather for courtship, nesting and brood raising — were fairly wet and grassland habitat healthy and available.

Bluewings pulled off a great hatch in 2007, tripling their population or more before the little ducks headed south.

That incredible "bubble" of bluewings from a year ago is why this spring's breeding population estimate remains so high — those 6.6 million are carryover from 2007.

But this year, most of the bluewings' core nesting range — the prairies of the Dakotas, southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan — was extremely dry when the birds arrived, and continued so through the birds' nesting season. (North Dakota's wetland count was down 70 percent from a year ago, for example.)

The decline in crucial wetlands and grassland nesting cover from a year ago means fewer bluewings pulling off successful nesting efforts, or even trying to nest.

"When you don't have the habitat, you don't have the production," Morrison said.

The number of bluewings heading south this autumn will be much reduced from a year ago — that's a given. But how reduced, and how will that impact waterfowlers?

The answers, I'm guessing, will be "considerable" and "depends on where and when you hunt."

Not as many younger birds

This past year, juveniles dominated the bluewing population. And that abundance of young birds was reflected in hunters' harvest.

Data from the annual "wing bee," in which waterfowl biologists sift species/sex/age information from thousands of duck wings waterfowl hunters collected and mailed to the survey project, showed hunters took 2.91 immature bluewings for every adult bluewing they bagged during the 2007-08 season.

That's an incredibly high immature-to-adult ratio. Normally, that immature-to-adult harvest ratio is 2-to-1 or below. And in poor production years, it's a lot closer to 1-to-1 than 2-to-1.

Juvenile bluewings are more susceptible to harvest than adult birds. So years with high numbers of juvenile ducks generally means higher success for hunters.

That was the case this past year. It probably won't be this year.

September outlook better

But this year's poor production might not have that great an impact on Texas waterfowlers participating in the September teal-only season. The real impact could come later, when the regular duck season opens.

Bluewings have a staggered migration, one that drags out over more than two months.

The first bluewings to leave the northern prairies are the adult males. They begin trickling south around the middle of August, hitting Texas in force by the middle of September.

Just behind those adult males, or mixed with them, are adult female bluewings who did not raise broods.

Those two groups of bluewings — adult males and adult females without broods — constitute the bulk of the teal in Texas during the September season.

Because the number of adult male bluewings is probably about the same as a year ago, and because more adult hens are not raising broods this year, the early "wave" of teal — the ones that hit Texas during the September hunting season — could be as large, or maybe even larger, than a year ago.

So September teal hunting could be good.

Second wave could be thin

It's the second wave of bluewings — adult females and their broods — that promises to be awfully thin this autumn. And it's that group of bluewings that typically arrives in Texas during October and sticks around through at least the first couple of weeks of the "regular" duck season in November.

Those late-arriving bluewings are hugely important during the first part of the regular duck season, particularly on the coastal prairies and marshes. In many areas along the coast, bluewings normally are the most common duck in hunter's bags during the first two or three weeks of the regular duck season. If this year's bluewing production is as poor as predicted, things could be a lot tougher for duck hunters this November than they were a year ago.

And if this year's bluewing nesting success is as depressed as experts expect, waterfowlers should savor this September's 16-day teal season. Odds are good they will be looking at a nine-day season in 2009.