Migration Alert: Slow Start to Migration Across the Canadian Prairies

As the calendar flips to October, waterfowl are on the move across the Canadian prairies. Read on for more on habitat conditions, status of the migration, and what hunters are seeing on the ground.

For the past several years, large swaths of the Canadian prairies have been experiencing abnormally dry conditions, but rainfall in late spring and early summer brought some relief to localized areas in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. As the 2025 waterfowl hunting season enters its second month across Canada, those varied conditions remain largely unchanged.

The northern Alberta summer was extremely hot and dry, and this lack of moisture helped deliver one of the earliest grain harvests on record, explains Trevor Manteufel, guide and owner of Top of the Flyway Outfitters near Peace River, Alberta. Migrating waterfowl were early to arrive, too.

“The specks showed up in huge numbers the first week of August while the harvest was rolling,” says Manteufel. “That’s the earliest I have seen specks arrive here in those numbers.”

In spite of the heat, Manteufel says that the goose and duck hunting in the area was great for much of September.

“Around September 25, the specks staged up and headed south. Then, we had some big south winds for a few days, and the migration stalled out. When the winds stopped at the end of the month, we finally received our first noticeable push of Canada geese and snow geese from the north,” Manteufel says.

The short-term weather forecast shows little in the way of a major change in temperatures, Manteufel says, so the fresh birds may be around for a while.

“Overall, the weather is too warm. Everything seems to be a bit behind. On what I would call a ‘normal year,’ we’d be hitting our third push of the migration, but right now in the first week of October, we are only seeing just our second push of the goose migration,” Manteufel says.

Similarly, dry conditions and warm temperatures are the story in western Saskatchewan, says Ben Webster with Prairie Limits Outfitters.

“We haven’t received any significant precipitation for weeks, and the smaller sloughs are starting to dry out,” says Webster. “The good news, however, is that the goose migration has kicked into gear.”

Webster says that the region has picked up strong numbers of arctic-nesting geese, including lesser Canada geese, white-fronted geese, and snow geese.

“The duck numbers remain lower than I’d like to see,” Webster adds.

Habitat conditions improve further south and east, and so do the duck numbers, says Tony Vandemore, who spent last week at the Habitat Flats lodge in east-central Saskatchewan.

“Overall, the bird numbers were decent for all waterfowl species, but the ducks seemed to be better than normal,” Vandemore says. “Snow geese seem to be a bit behind, but if they had a good hatch that’s to be expected. The migration seems to be stalled out a bit, but I would expect to see some change with the full moon this week.”