The 2018-19 duck hunting season concluded in late January and, to hear hunters’ tales, it was bad enough to make grown men cry.
Arkansas’ status as one of the premier duck hunting destinations in the country has been earned over decades, but a combination of factors produced a tougher-than-expected hunting season that some worry could portend a long-term trend. In Arkansas’ Delta, the heart of the duck-hunting region, the concern goes deep.
“There were no ducks all year,” said Luke Duncan, a co-manager at Webb’s Sporting Goods in DeWitt. “With no ducks, there is no industry. It goes hand in hand.”
Officials within the industry caution against any doom and gloom about the future of the sport in Arkansas. Luke Naylor, the waterfowl program coordinator for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, gave a short presentation earlier this year at a public meeting in which he tried to “take a bite out of the elephant in the room,” i.e., the maligned 2018-19 duck season.
“It turned out to be a little bit different,” Naylor said. “The biggest message that a year like this can teach is [that] variability should be the expectation. Things constantly change from year to year, but human nature is to want things to be the same all the time, year after year and decade after decade. The past few years have been a slap in the face that [that] is not true.”
The actual results of the 2018-19 hunting season, which started in November, won’t be known for a couple more months when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service releases a comprehensive report, said Randy Zellers, assistant chief of communications for the AGFC. AGFC officials are confident that Arkansas will still rank as one of the top states for harvesting ducks.
Arkansas’ usual spot is No. 3 and it was fourth in the 2017-18 season. California, with its extra-long 107-day season, and Louisiana, at the end spout of the Mississippi River Flyway funnel, are consistently the top two states for duck kills.
One of Those Years
When Duncan complained about no ducks, it was clearly hyperbole, but he echoed a complaint made by many hunters about this season.
The truth of the hard hunt is more complex, though. There are, indeed, statistics that show there were fewer ducks this year and, of those ducks, many were more mature.
“In a bigger picture, duck populations have been declining over time continentally,” Naylor said. “Anticipation was really, really high for the last duck season. Whenever you have high expectations, unfortunately it can set our brains up for failures. When we have high expectations and they aren’t met, it seems worse than what it may have been.”
This year’s winter was milder, which meant the northern ducks had less pressure to move south to find water and food. Zellers joked that ducks, like humans, only go as far as they need to find provisions and comfort.
This meant fewer ducks to blacken the skies above happy hunters’ heads.
Arkansas’ season was impacted most, experts said, by the heavy winter rains, which also affected crops in the Delta. All the water and flooding gave the ducks traveling through Arkansas plenty of options for where to land and find forage.
Translation: There were lots of ducks, they were just spread out all across the Delta instead of just in a few prime hunting zones. Many areas that haven’t been hunted for years turned out to be quite nice accommodations for ducks.
“We had a lot of water, and duck hunters complain if it is too dry and we complain if it is too wet,” said Zellers, referring to the 2018-19 season. “If there isn’t enough water to hold the ducks, they’ll fly on past the state. If you have too much water, that is great for the ducks, but they spread out quite a bit. Ducks aren’t going to wad up in key areas like they do before. They’re going to spread out, which makes it harder to hunt.”
Naylor said people also need to remember that ducks flying south cross eager hunters in Iowa and Missouri and other states before even reaching the Arkansas Delta.
Still Popular
The season may have turned out to be less spectacular than hunters wanted, but apparently few knew that before the 60-day season started.
To clarify, Arkansas had a 60-day season and has had for the past two decades, a season that starts with a week in mid-November and then skips ahead for most of December before Christmas before resuming after Christmas until late January. Hunters have a six-duck daily limit.
The AGFC said a record 104,741 duck hunting stamps were sold for the 2018-19 season, 112 more than the previous record in 2014 and only the fourth time sales have topped 100,000 since 1992. Arkansas residents bought 51% of the stamps in the most recent season.
“It shocked me; I thought it would drop this year,” Naylor said of stamp sales. “You think about the level of pressure out there that is literally as high as it has ever been in Arkansas, the number of people trying to hunt ducks.”
For the Delta, the number of hunters is a good thing since they come to the region and spend money. A loss of reputation in duck hunting could have a devastating effect on some of the small towns in the Delta that depend on duck hunters’ money.
Duncan said Webb’s sold more than $100,000 in shotgun shells to hunters a year ago. This year, pallets of steel shots were still in the store at the conclusion of the season.
“People pay money to come shoot ducks, and when there are no ducks, they don’t come,” said Duncan, who said he skipped duck hunting this past season. “The economic impact is very, very big. If that continues on that path, it is just going to get worse.
“I’ve seen some ups and downs. This is the worst year I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Naylor said one year doesn’t make a trend and there is no reason to think next season will not be better.
“This is not any reason to get alarmed about anything; it’s just a recognition that we are in a changing environment,” Naylor said. “Things are constantly going to be in flux. Expectations should be for things not to be the same. One thing that has been consistent for a lot of years is Arkansas is still the destination for ducks and duck hunters.”
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