Migration Alert: Snow and Cold Blast Central Flyway

A post-Thanksgiving blast of winter weather put waterfowl on the move across the Central Flyway, and with the cold snap now in the rearview mirror, hunters are gobbling up opportunities created by the arrival of new ducks and geese out of the north.

Leading up to the week of Thanksgiving, hunters in Nebraska were finding a decent number of puddle ducks scattered across the state, explains John McKinney, waterfowl program manager with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, including an abundance of gadwalls and wigeon that arrived in October. The Thanksgiving cold front that descended through the Dakotas changed the game for the state’s waterfowl hunters.

“We certainly had ducks here before Thanksgiving, but there definitely was a good push of mallards that arrived last week,” McKinney says. “We’ve also seen several good pushes of Canada geese and the snow geese have started to pour over us, too, in the last 10 days.”

McKinney adds that in recent days he started receiving reports of Canada geese that were banded in Nebraska this summer that are now being shot by hunters in states to the south. “Just another good indication that waterfowl have been on the move,” he says.

And McKinney notes that the recent cold temperatures have caused birds to be on the move within the state as well. “With that cold snap, wetlands and lakes in the Rainwater Basin and in the Sandhills have pretty much frozen, which is sending ducks to the state’s river systems,” McKinney says. “So not only are hunters benefiting from a migration of mallards into the state, they are also finding those birds concentrated on areas of open water on the rivers. I think our mallard hunters are enjoying the change.”

Change has been afoot in Missouri as well, where, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation’s most recent waterfowl survey, the number of ducks in the state roughly doubled to over 700,000 between November 17 and December 1. Though that figure remains slightly below the five-year average for this time of the year, the arrival of new birds has flipped the script on hunting opportunities.

“The weather was a challenge for most of November, then we had the first change in temperatures and saw a little push the week of Thanksgiving,” reports Tony Vandemore of Habitat Flats near Sumner. “Our big numbers appeared that Sunday afternoon and evening, and the hunting over the past week has been really strong.”

And similar to Nebraska, Vandemore says that enough open water survived the cold snap that both waterfowl and waterfowl hunters in northwest Missouri will have places to go until the next round of winter weather arrives.

“The stage is set for a strong finish to our season,” Vandemore says. “We have great duck numbers; weather warms up a bit next week. Things are looking to be in good shape.”