Here is some good information about Teal season for duck hunters. Published by Joe Balog's "The Duck Blog" at www.realtree.com/hunting/realtree-hunting-blogs/the-duck-blog.
EARLY TEAL LIMITS SET TO INCREASE IN 2013?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has approved recommendations from the Mississippi, Central and Atlantic Flyway Councils to increase September teal season bag limits from four to six. This means, with approval from the state agencies, quite a few hunters could see a large increase in the number of early season ducks allowed in their bag. Flyway Council decisions were based on the research of a joint venture Teal Assessment Group, with over 60 years of research and data on North American teal and teal seasons.
Ken Rinchkos is the Chief of the Population and Habitat Assessment in the USFWS Migratory Bird Management Division. Rinchkos reports that the official USFWS counts are soon to come, but that the USFWS believes teal numbers are as high as ever on record.
The USFWS is the governing body that determines the overall “take” for each season, so it’s reasonable to think that most state agencies will reflect their liberal viewpoint and allow hunters the chance at bagging the extra birds. Breeding counts in the spring determine if there will be early teal seasons across the South at all, how long those seasons will last, and how many birds per day can be killed.
In the past, a count of about 5 million blue-winged teal was needed to reach the maximum allowable 16-day season. Last season’s counts hovered around 9 million, and most experts agree that, with current water levels, the count for 2013 should be similar. That should result in approval for another 16-day season. The big news for this year, though, is the increase in bag limit from four birds to six. The four-bird limit has been in place since the beginning of time for early teal seasons, 1965 (note: a few states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, only have five-day teal seasons, but hunters may bag two wood ducks during that five-day season; there is talk of also extending the September season in those states, but for teal only).
Not all states offer special early teal seasons. It's largely a "Southern thing."
In Michigan, where I'm at, experimental teal seasons were in place in the mid-'60s, and they even included undercover game officers dressed as hunters to research potential problems and effectiveness of the hunts. Their results showed a fairly high rate of violations involving hunters shooting the incorrect species of ducks. Ducks of all species are mostly brown in September, and since a variety of later-migrating species both breed and stage in the northern states in September, the potential for a mistaken ID while teal hunting is high. This core argument against early teal seasons in the North notes that these locales are “teal production states" instead of “teal migration states." Rinchkos educated me to the basic principle that, with all of the waterfowl present around here in early fall, a teal season just isn't reasonable. In his words, teal seasons can only exist where teal populations are "geographically isolated" from other species.
In any case, the idea that duck season lengths or bag limits are increasing anywhere makes me happy. The basic idea behind duck hunting in the U.S. is that habitat is our number one priority, and increasing numbers are a good sign that we are beginning to prioritize things correctly, and that we were, once again, blessed with rain. I just hope both trends continue for quite some time.
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