Atlantic Flyway

What if you could follow a mallard throughout its entire year and see exactly where it goes? When it moves, how long it stays, and what finally triggers it to migrate? Well, researchers are doing exactly that.

Today I'm joined by Cassidy Waldrop from the Eastern Mallard Project, where researchers have fitted more than a thousand hen mallards with GPS transmitters and followed their movements across the Atlantic Flyway.

We're going to talk about what those birds are teaching us about migration, weather, and hunting pressure, some of the interesting movements they've documented through Pennsylvania, and and one of the biggest questions facing the Atlantic Flyway.

Why Eastern Mallard numbers have declined.

There's a lot here that challenges some of the things we think we know as duck hunters, so stay tuned.

Uh, crazy bag limits, uh, as I talked about before, eight ducks a piece, you can shoot.

Um, I shot, I think two hunts, maybe three, two or three hunts last year up there.

I limited on mallards, had eight mallards on a strap, which is just insane for a guy from the Atlantic flyway.

And since 2008, when they implemented this plan with the cooperation of about 40 partner organizations and agencies and NGOs, oyster catcher numbers have risen about 45%.

We've gone from about 11,000 to about 15,000 along the Atlantic Flyway.

And this is an area where most sure bird numbers continue to fall.

Right.

So go have a look and find that cool graphic.

The summary is that the average numbers of days a duck hunter takes to shoot a hen from 1999 to 2022 was nine days for the Atlantic Flyway, 6.4 days for the Central Flyway, 5.5 days for the Mississippi Flyway, and 4.1 days for the Pacific Flyway.

Also, every flyway saw a statistical increase in the numbers of days of duck hunting it took to shoot a hen mallard during this period.

At a 3.14% increase per year for the Atlantic Flyway, a 1.52% for Central, 1.49% for Mississippi, and 1.48% for the Pacific Flyway.

All right, I got to go take a break here.

My dogs are playing outside the office.

So as Brian said, I live down here in Georgia.

I'm in the armpit of the Atlantic Flyway.

If you could imagine the Atlantic Flyway, as a lot of y'all know, probably listen, this is the weakest of the four, in my opinion.

And then when you come on down the coast and you get down here around Georgia, we're in the armpit of it.

So we have to do a lot of traveling around here to get on a lot of ducks.

Really nice getting to know you.

And we have a lot of similarities.

You know, we're both in the Atlantic Flyway.

In the Atlantic Flyway, less than 2% were wild mallards.

Wow.

The Atlantic Flyway, there was an estimated 500,000 game farm mallards released.

So it's the

high fence version of duck hunting.

percentage i ain't sure

about the percentage but some a lot of our ducks come from the great lakes okay so what about you mean our

ducks as in united states or the atlantic flyway gotcha okay so missouri being is in the mississippi flyway okay so they're coming where are they coming from Most of those come from the Prairie Pothole

We can even say back towards even portions of Illinois.

arkansas all the way into northern portions of alabama georgia to kentucky even into the eastern flyway the atlantic flyway we typically will see almost a sphere in that area of drier than average conditions then the jet stream forces a lot of that moisture to the south so when we start to think about kind of splitting california in half all the way down towards mexico and you draw a line pretty much from california through new mexico uh texas all the way back off to the east towards florida everything there in south is typically wetter than average so this is a typical pattern for el nino like i said this can change depending on other stuff such as hurricane forecasts and other stuff in the atmosphere that are at play that's a typical pattern we see and this year the significance is it could be one of the strongest one at least it's looking like the forecasts are pinning out that way that we've seen and one little caveat of that is we can see some variances sometimes it gets a little wonky so this normal pattern that we typically see on average can sometimes have some variances in that and and this looks like it's going to be the thing that kind of holds steady through at least the second half of this year so we're talking into december uh and that's really going to influence what we see in terms of temperatures uh what your fronts could be uh because we're looking warmer and you know a lot of times we need that cold weather now this doesn't mean that we're not going to be seeing some very impressive you know cold fronts that come in some cold snaps and i've actually talked to some other meteorologists that do some really good research based off of uh el nino lenino patterns and they think later winter there is a possibility where we could see uh i know it's a very polarized term but polar jet stream the polar vortex that could snap that cold air across areas that can become a little bit more increasing towards the second half of the winter so we're talking maybe towards january uh in that later portion especially areas to the south that are thinking about duck season uh but this is a typical el nino and it's looking really strong which points towards that's a better chance that we're going to be seeing this pattern across much of the area

okay All right, Matt, I'm looking at this map, right? I'm looking at this here.

I see warmer than average temperatures forecast for like pretty much the entire Midwest.

And one other thing I want to touch on is going to be this drought monitor that we're seeing across the United States.

Super dry off into the Mountain West and off to the southeastern portions of the United States.

know the eastern flyway the Atlantic flyway there uh this could be beneficial for you guys here the next several weeks in terms of if you're thinking about flooding some areas we're seeing a little bit more activity in those areas that really need to to see that water because they've seen so much drought so there is there's some good news in the near term future

okay this is good I wish I had a bigger computer so I could like really blow these blow these images up here yeah You're good.

Black ducks were roughly, you know, down 6%, roughly unchanged, and a little bit above that long-term average.

Wood ducks is the only place, or the Atlantic Flyway is the only place where they do a ... uh, where they attempt an estimate of wood ducks unchanged from last year and the long-term average.

And then real quickly, what does this all mean for harvest regulations? I do wanna emphasize that the 2026-27 harvest regulations that are gonna be in place, or well, actually, that are already, that are already in place, are unchanged by any of these numbers.

Uh, the Canada, uh, Canada and the US set regulations separately.

Uh, the number for pintail came in at a level that is going to allow a three pintail daily limit for all flyways again, so that would be the third year in a row for which that three pintail dai- daily limit is allowed.

Uh, the blue wing teal number is still at a level which will, which will prescribe a nine-day early teal season for next year.

And then in the east, in the Atlantic Flyway, this is a notable change for the people that are tuning in from the Atlantic Flyway.

This past year there wa- or earlier this year, there was a change in the eastern mallard harvest strategy such that they're going away from the, the AHM model that they had been using, and they're going to a three mallard standard bag limit with no res- sex restriction for any year during which there is an open duck season in the Atlantic Flyway.

So, okay.

So this should be a good, you know, should be a bright outlook for Canada geese and the Atlantic Flyway this fall.

Yep.

I guess now staying in the east, greater snow geese.

Those seasons are intentionally timed.

So that you're just targeting, just removing residents, managing that population and not immigrant or migrant Canada geese.

So what does it look like? Can you kind of summarize? I've seen, you know, Atlantic Flyway and the Mississippi Flyway publishing, you know, breeding pair results, each over a million birds.

Don't see one for the Central Flyway.