John K. Flores: Duck season optimism runs high, but numbers are low

Despite warm weather, despite swarms of mosquitos, and despite low duck numbers, Louisiana’s West Zone duck hunters went to the marsh this past weekend to open the 2024-25 waterfowl season.
Per usual, waterfowl hunters went to the field with high expectations. They always do. They read and gobble up, good or bad, information during the off season. And, honestly, it wasn’t good.
Just prior to the September special teal season, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service released their annual Waterfowl Population and Status Report. The 2024 report revealed duck numbers were up 5% from 2023’s survey and down 4% from the overall long-term average. In all, there were 33.9 million breeding ducks estimated in the U.S. and Canada.
To the average person who doesn’t duck hunt, this might seem like a large number, but one only has to go back to 2016 when the same survey estimated 48.3 million breeding ducks. Essentially, duck numbers have been on an eight-year decline.
The reasons for these declines are many and complex. Changes in agricultural practices, ethanol mandates in gasoline, hunting pressure, coastal habitat loss, a falloff in Conservation Reserve Program participation, and climate change all have played a part. None the less, waterfowl biologists agree, the breeding duck population isn’t what the fall flight ultimately will be once little ducks are hatched and become big ducks; those that survive the nesting season that is.
This ultimately brings us to November’s Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries aerial survey conducted just prior to last weekend’s opener.
The 2024 November estimate of 510,000 ducks in Louisiana’s coastal region and Little River basin is again, the lowest on record, and 12.7% lower than last November’s previous record low estimate of 584,000, the report says.
The report goes on to say this year’s estimate is 37% lower than the most recent 5-year average of 809,000 ducks and 58% lower than the most recent 10-year average of 1.2 million.
As far as coastal habitat, the aerial survey points out marsh conditions in the Southwest as being generally good and were good to very good overall in the Southeast.
So, how was opening weekend? Bayou Guide Service’s owner/operator Bill Lake hunts the marsh south of Gibson. According to Lake, his normally lush marsh that’s usually full of subaquatic vegetation is void of grass this year.
Lake said, “We have no grass on the lease. Hurricane Francine pushed saltwater via the Intracoastal into the lease and killed all of the vegetation. We only shot three ducks Saturday and didn’t go Sunday. This season may be over already.”
Troy Lefort hunted an area known as the Burns opening day just west of the Mermentau River and Creole on Sunday in Southwest, Louisiana.
Lefort, who resides in Lake Charles, said, “Everybody who hunted, there were three blinds on our section that were hunted limited out. Me and my daughter hunted in Creole on Sunday. A friend of mine who hunted Creole on Saturday said they killed 30 teal in 32 minutes opening day. We were late getting to the blind on Sunday, but still killed our 12 birds in 40 minutes. It was an absolutely insane opening weekend.”
Most of the birds Lefort and his daughter killed were both blue-winged and green-winged teal he says. But, unlike Lake’s ponds south of Gibson, Lefort said his ponds in Creole were absolutely covered in duck weed, which he says he hadn’t seen the likes of in many years.
Further west in the Johnson Bayou area, Steve Stroderd from Carlyss hunted with his son and a family friend opening day.
Stroderd said, “What a fun opener we had this weekend in spite of the heat and mosquitos. We managed a decent mess of birds. We were a couple short of our limit on Saturday. Sunday was another warm one, but we tamed down the mosquitos and ended up with another nice mess of birds — mostly blue-winged — but some green-winged teal too.”
Britt Cavalier, owner/operator of E&E Machine Shop in Houma, hunted close to his home in Chauvin opening morning.
Cavalier said, “Opening day was pretty phenomenal. There were plenty of hunters in the marsh and the teal flew great. We were done around 7:30 in the morning. Day 2 was much slower, still had plenty of hunters around, but nowhere near as many birds in the air.”
Teal reports pretty much reflect the LDWF’s aerial survey where blue-winged teal numbers made up the bulk of birds (229,000). There were 26,000 green-winged teal estimated along the coastal parishes along with 87,000 gadwalls.
This Saturday, duck season opens in the East Zone, which represents much of the Atchafalaya Basin and farm country North and Northwest of I-10 to the Arkansas state line.
It’ll take some cold snowy weather in the mid-continent prairie states to push ducks down to coastal Louisiana. For now, hunters will have to settle for teal and mix of other puddle ducks they have until then.
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.