John K. Flores: Black-bellied whistling duck season reported to be success

When Hunter Marcel and his two boys Fisher and Fin went into woods last week to make history by participating in Louisiana’s inaugural, black-bellied whistling duck season, they thought they had it in the bag.
Avid waterfowl hunters, Marcel and his sons were able to make two hunts during the nine-day season.
Marcel said, “Man, were we humbled! With the number of tree ducks we had been seeing, we honestly thought we had it in the bag. It turns out these birds are a whole lot smarter than we gave them credit for. From the experience we got, I’d almost compare hunting them more to goose hunting than traditional duck hunting.”
“I think realistically,” Marcel continued, “most hunters are going to have to learn how to traffic these birds and that’s where the real challenge will be. We definitely learned a lot in those two hunts and already have a much better idea of how we’ll approach next year’s season.”
The 2026 experimental, black-bellied whistling duck season is the first of four that will take place annually in early October. At the completion of the four seasons, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will evaluate the program and its impact on black-bellied whistling duck populations.
Hunters who participated in this year’s hunt were required to obtain a permit and complete a mandatory harvest report that records their harvest numbers and how many days each hunter was in the field. Note that if you hunted black-bellied whistling ducks in 2026 and haven’t reported your outcome, whether you hunted or not, you will be receiving an email reminder. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, asks you to not delay. The information is critical for the department to access and evaluate objectively.
Houma resident Britt Cavalier and his son Rowan hunted their crawfish pond where they had been seeing good numbers of black-bellies roosting. In one of Cavalier’s Facebook posts he mentioned, “My son’s been putting a hurting on the population.”
By contrast, Aaron Snatic, from Elizebeth, Louisiana, said, “I tried twice. My first hunt was a long shot, but I knew at least one brood hatched out there this summer. It was at my in-law’s old dairy farm in my wood duck hole. I also tried at our goose lease in Thornwell, but only saw teal, mottled ducks, and a few other big ducks. I didn’t harvest a duck on either hunt, but at least I had a chance.”
Damon Hebert from Hathaway, owner of Chenier Shotshells, hunted his lease in southwest Louisiana. According to Hebert he and a friend set silhouette decoys on mudflats near the water’s edge that resulted in mostly passing shots he says.
Hebert said, “I definitely want full-bodied decoys and thought about using speck decoys, but I will definitely have some next year, and also, some G&H floaters.”
Hebert says the black-bellies he and his partner harvested were feeding on rice and seeds from marsh plants, but also the nut-like seeds from American Lotus plants (AKA: The French name Graine a Voler).
From a calling standpoint, Hebert confessed that he hadn’t figured them out or the sounds they make yet. He also mentioned that the special season gave him an opportunity to utilize Chenier’s No. 4 and No. 5 shot non-toxic waterfowl loads.
Hebert said, “They put the smack on them!”
Up in Winnsboro, Taylor Gilley and his crew of hunters that ranged from 6 to 10 hunters per hunt, hunted 6 days of the 9-day season. Gilley and his friends harvested 206 birds during the season.
Gilley said, “We were hunting agriculture fields in Ouachita, Richland and Madison parishes. We have a strong background chasing speckle belly geese in dry fields, so we took what knowledge we had from that and put it to use. For decoys we took speck silhouettes and painted them with spray paint. We were also using Mojo Decoy’s new black-bellied Mojo.”
I reached out to LDWF Waterfowl Study Leader Jason Olszak to ask what his first impressions were concerning this year’s black-bellied whistling duck season.
Olszak said, “First impressions were, it was a great success! We’ll have a much better idea in another week or two with the mandatory reporting. Most of the folks I’ve talked to kind of across the state have said it’s been great.”
“It’s been great for a lot of hunters and if you’ve got ‘em you got ‘em,” Olszak continued. “If you’re in the wrong spot, well time to move on, because they’re mobile birds. And the other thing about the species, it’s not like they’re evenly distributed across the coast. They’re in distinct pockets here and there, but definitely a huntable population across a broad geography.”
Olszack says he had a few negative comments as well – comments like, “It’s too late, it (season) should have been during teal season.”
Also, “They migrated out after the teal season – the shotguns scared them all off and they migrated.” None of which is true of course. The fact is black-bellied whistling ducks have a well-established and growing population now in Louisiana and biologists know they’re not leaving, which is good news for hunters going forward.
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.