North Dakota breeding duck numbers up slightly from last year, Game and Fish says
Jun. 8—BISMARCK — North Dakota breeding duck numbers are up slightly from last year, and while wetland abundance is down 26% from last year, which was the second-highest on record, it's still the seventh-highest on record, the Game and Fish Department said in reporting results from its spring breeding duck survey.
The survey, conducted in late May, tallied about 3.4 million ducks, which is up very slightly from 2022, when breeding duck numbers were just below 3.4 million, said Mike Szymanski, migratory game bird management supervisor for Game and Fish in Bismarck.
The duck index was the 23rd-highest on record.
There were "a few nuances" in the duck numbers, Szymanski said in this week's "North Dakota Outdoors" webcast. Mallard numbers, at about 640,000, were down about 10% from last year, and the blue-winged teal index of 925,000 was down slightly from last year, Szymanski said. On the upside, pintails were up 40%, and shovelers, redheads and canvasbacks also had "strong showings," he said.
Canada goose numbers, at 297,000, were down 27% from last year's all-time high, Szymanski said.
"We still have plenty of Canada geese," Szymanski said. "Canada goose production this year may have been impacted a little bit by the cold spring and the late spring, as well."
Wetland conditions across the state were "kind of spotty," he said, with conditions only fair in some areas and excellent in others.
"That was really the result of 4 to 8 inches of rain that we got during the first two weeks of May," Syzmanski said. "Last fall, our fall wetland survey indicated that we were actually quite dry. We didn't have a lot of precip in late summer and fall, so all that snow we got during winter really helped just kind of catch us back up and get us out of the drought."
The areas with the highest wetland abundance also have the best habitat conditions, he said.
"It will bode well for production, as well," Szymanski said. "Unfortunately, our duck numbers have been waning a little bit over the last few years here, where we're seeing really good wetland conditions and not quite the same response out of the ducks."
Much of that, he says, has to do with the loss of nesting and grassland habitat.
As part of the spring breeding duck survey, four two-person crews travel eight transects across the state from South Dakota to the Canadian border, counting all the wetlands and ducks down to species and social group, along with Canada geese and coots, within 220 yards on each side of the transect line. The survey covers a total of 816 miles.
Game and Fish will do another survey in July to get a handle on waterfowl production, Szymanski said, and then another fall wetland survey to give hunters a better idea of what to expect for habitat conditions going into hunting season.
