John K. Flores: LDWF approves 2026 black-bellied whistling duck season

“It’s sort of a long time coming,” said Jason Olszack, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Waterfowl Program Manager, while discussing the upcoming special season for black-bellied whistling ducks (BBWDs) that will take place Oct. 3-11.
Over the course of the past two decades, black-bellied whistling duck numbers have increased exponentially. The most recent aerial survey conducted in coastal Louisiana back in January estimated some 385,000 BBWDs in the region.
The duck has also become an aggravation to both homeowners and businesses because of their high tolerance for human activity. They are comfortable in urban settings and are found on golf courses, parks, and subdivision roof tops. If you didn’t know already, a few ducks can be messy, but a few thousand — that can present a huge problem.
In the wild, like wood ducks, they are cavity nesters and often compete with them for nest boxes.
They’ve also been known to spend winters in settings like Audubon and Lefreniere parks in New Orleans, where across the Mississippi River are grain elevators loading ships headed overseas with a ready-made food source. Olszack mentioned how companies like Cargill spend quite a bit of money just to trying to keep BBWDs out of barge holds.
In a Louisiana State University Agriculture Center report issued in August 2024, titled, “Impacts of Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks on the Louisiana Rice Industry: A Summary of a Producer Survey,” says, “The total estimated economic impact (increased costs and/or reduced revenue) associated with the BBWDs averaged $49 per acre across all rice acres reported in the producer’s operation.”
For hunters, a special BBWDs season in October provides an additional harvest opportunity and has been welcomed with great enthusiasm.
Initially, when a BBWDs season was considered, the thought was to hold it in conjunction with the early September teal season. However, there were several factors the Mississippi Flyway working group had to contemplate and deal with when making the request to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Recently (2025), the early September teal season went from a 16-day season to a 9-day season due to a significant decline in blue winged teal numbers. Any connection to the blue winged teal season would have seen BBWDs season days reduced as well. What’s more, if blue winged teal numbers drop below the 3.3 million estimate, the early season is canceled entirely.
Olszack said, “Having a black-bellied whistling duck season tied to blue-winged teal that has a population that’s potentially on the way down, wasn’t something we wanted to pursue.
“Additionally, if we added species to the teal season,” Olszack continued, “it would be reduced anyway, because the other states within the flyway that have a wood duck/teal season, during those years when the teal season opens for 16 days, those states with multiple species only get 9 days.”
In short, as the blue winged teal season goes collectively in the Mississippi Flyway states, with its state-to-state regulatory tweaks, so goes the BBWDs season for Louisiana.
Another BBWDs season consideration was how there is still some late summer BBWD breeding going on. Studies have shown by mid-September that 75 percent of monitored nests have hatched. Olszack says this was part of the counsels’ deliberations, where essentially it was determined there wasn’t a large percentage of BBWDs population that was breeding in October.
Olszack also says the Mississippi Flyway counsel and State were careful to not go in and frame the October hunt as some kind of depredation or conservation order to control the population.
He added, it was just the fact that there was a growing population of BBWDs where additional recreation opportunity could be taken advantage of.
What’s more, at the same time a side effect might be reducing BBWDs population growth and possibly alleviate some of the issues both urban and industrial.
Olszack said, “It might not happen, but the goal is to achieve a 15 percent harvest rate, which for most species that would control the population growth or kind of plateau it. I’m not even sure with a 9-day season and 4 bird bag limit we can even achieve that. But we’ll be monitoring that, and we’ll continue to band black-bellied whistling ducks and we’ll assess that too.”
Another concern biologists discussed was similarities fulvous whistling ducks and BBWDs have in common. Both species of birds are present on the landscape during the fall. In flight their looks, pattern, and silhouette are similar, where hunters could possibly have trouble identifying them.
During the March LDWF commission meeting, the LWFC amended the Hunting Regulations for the upcoming 2026-27 hunting seasons.
One of the amendments was setting the shooting hours for the inaugural BBWD season for sunrise to sunset instead of the usual ½ hour before sunrise time.
One of the things Olszack pointed out was how banding return data shows that 75% of the bands being put on BBWDs in Louisiana are harvested in Louisiana. Additionally, how in a recent study of 100 percent of BBWDs fitted with light-level geolocators showed the birds did not make any long-distance movements out of Louisiana.
Olszack said, “These are essentially Louisiana birds that we’re shooting and that was part of the justification too. Some of that data was used favorably like this isn’t hardly affecting any other state. We’re not shooting Florida birds or Texas birds. These are Louisiana birds.”
The news of the BBWDs October season has been well received by Louisiana’s waterfowl hunters.
Now it is just a matter of waiting seven months for the seasons to get here!
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.