“ It can be really hard to predict what our fall hunting is going to be like from what we see in the May survey ,” he said . “ But throughout summer , we ’ ll have our July duck brood survey , and we ’ ll have a fall wetland survey in September to kind of give last looks at what production was like in the state , and then also what wetland conditions are like leading into the hunting season . It ’ s always important to check back and see what our surveys are showing us that we do throughout the year .” •
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our record-high ,” he said . “ So , we ’ re down considerably and were getting into this realm of a lower average where we probably won ’ t be above 3 million breeding ducks very often based on our landscape conditions .”
He added , “ Coming out of winter , we were quite dry after having a mostly open winter across the state , but it rained a fair bit in the 30 days leading up to our survey , so that kept it from being really dry . At the time of our survey , wetland conditions were considered ‘ fair .’ We had a lot of new water on the landscape during the survey that really wasn ’ t there when ducks were moving through .”
On the bright side , Szymanski said , rains in late May and into June were a boon for renesting opportunities and nesting probability in general for ducks .
“ Wetlands are in much better shape now and there ( should have been ) a really good renesting effort for those birds that had nests destroyed by predators ,” he said .
Szymanski cautions waterfowl hunters about reading too much into survey numbers just yet . He said that while the mid-continent duck populations aren ’ t what they once were , we ’ ll know more once the U . S . Fish and Wildlife Service releases their survey results sometime in late August .
“ It can be really hard to predict what our fall hunting is going to be like from what we see in the May survey ,” he said . “ But throughout summer , we ’ ll have our July duck brood survey , and we ’ ll have a fall wetland survey in September to kind of give last looks at what production was like in the state , and then also what wetland conditions are like leading into the hunting season . It ’ s always important to check back and see what our surveys are showing us that we do throughout the year .” •
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