Teal season puts a target on same old questions
Updated 11:09 am, Thursday, September 13, 2012
Teal generate a lot of buzz for such a small duck.
And that's not limited to the buzz - more a high-pitched hiss, really - waterfowlers hear when a compact squadron of bluewings makes a low, full-throttle pass over the decoys, their wings shredding the thick, humid September air.
Blue-winged teal and the special hunting season built around these early-migrating waterfowl create considerable interest and conversation among Texas' waterfowling community as September arrives, bringing with it the first big pushes of bluewings and the brief hunting season designed to take advantage of that abundance.
Most of the interest focuses, of course, on bluewings, the smallish (most weigh about a pound) ducks that begin their southward migration from northern prairie nesting grounds as much as two months before other duck species. How's this teal season shaping up? How many birds are heading south? What are habitat conditions and where will the birds likely concentrate?
But teal season also triggers talk and questions about other issues.
When, if ever, will the daily bag limit of four teal be changed to reflect the booming bluewing population?
And why aren't black-bellied and fulvous whistling ducks, Texas native ducks whose populations have thrived and expanded during the past couple of decades but mostly migrate out of Texas before regular duck season opens, allowed to be taken during the September season?
Ahead of Saturday's opening of the Sept. 15-30 teal-only season in Texas, here's an attempt to address those questions.
The 25,000 or so Texas waterfowlers heading to coastal marshes and coastal prairie wetlands for the teal-only hunting season are likely to see outstanding numbers of bluewings.
North America's blue-winged teal population is riding a streak with this year's breeding population estimated at 9.2 million birds, the highest since such estimates began in 1955 and almost double their long-term (1955-2011) average.
Those adult bluewings enjoyed another in a string of successful nesting season.
That could mean as many as 20 million to 25 million bluewings migrating south, Kraai said.
Those bluewings traveling down the Central Flyway are not likely to tarry in the middle part of the flyway as they sometimes do.
"Severe drought in the Midwest means the birds have nowhere to stop on the way to Texas," Kraai said.
And much of Texas, while it is wetter than it was during the record-setting drought a year ago, is still pretty darned dry.
"A lot of the inland areas of Texas are still dry. The coast is pretty much it for teal heading south," Kraai said, noting Texas coastal marshes are in generally good shape and holding enough food and water to support teal stopping off for a bit of rest on their southern migration to wintering areas in Mexico and Central and South America.
Reports indicate outstanding numbers of bluewings are holding on Texas coastal marshes and coastal prairie wetlands. And waterfowlers on a "hot" marsh pond, flooded second-crop rice field or shallow "moist soil" wetland just about anywhere between Sabine Pass and Port Isabel are likely to get plenty of opportunities to take the daily limit of four teal.
Limit unchanged since 1965
That four-teal daily bag limit has been standard through the history of the September teal-only hunting season.
That four-teal bag limit is an artifact left from teal season's origin in the mid-1960s. When the first "experimental" teal season was held in 1965, federal waterfowl managers set the daily bag limit at four birds, the same daily limit as for that year's regular duck season.
And that's never been altered, even as bluewing numbers have varied.
Federal waterfowl managers have allowed some liberalization of teal season. In 1998, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a 16-day teal season when bluewing populations are 4.7 million or more. When the bluewing breeding population are 3.3-4.6 million, a nine-day season, which was standard until that time, is allowed. And teal season could be closed if the population dropped below 3.3 million.
But the four-teal bag limit never changed.
It may, soon.
Waterfowl managers in Texas and some of the 20 other (mostly southern) states where a teal-only season is allowed have pushed to allow liberalization of the teal-season bag limit. Their argument is solid: Bluewings are the second most-populous duck in North America (behind only mallards), and hunters take only a tiny fraction of that population.
"(Bluewings) have the lowest harvest rate of any of the ducks - around 21/2 or 3 percent," Kraai said.
Federal waterfowl managers in 2009 set out a series of steps necessary for consideration of an increase in the teal bag limit, including assessments of teal populations and impacts of harvest on those populations. Those reports are scheduled to be presented during flyway council meetings this winter or spring.
"I'm very optimistic that we'll be talking about liberalization," Kraai said. "I think there's an excellent chance that this time next year we'll be talking about some kind of increase."
The only sticking point could be reticence of northern states and Canadian provinces that are not allowed to have an early teal-only hunting season to support southern states liberalizing their hunting regulations without those northern states getting something in return.
There has been talk of perhaps allowing northern states to take additional teal during a short portion of the regular season.
"There are a lot of possibilities, and nothing's off the table," said Kraai, who has been intimately involved in the effort to modify the teal season rules.
What is off the table, at least under current constraints, is the possibility of allowing Texas waterfowlers to take fulvous or black-bellied whistling ducks during the September teal season.
Both species of whistling ducks, tropical species that nest in Texas, have seen their populations increase during the past three decades.
Most of these resident whistling ducks, which are most common on the coastal prairies and marshes, typically migrate out of Texas ahead of the opening of the regular duck season in early November, and Texas waterfowlers have limited opportunity to take the tasty "Mexican squealers." Many have urged including whistling ducks as legal quarry during the September teal-only hunting season, when the ducks are most available.
But getting federal waterfowl managers to even consider adding whistling ducks to the teal season would involve a "monumental" amount of research and data collection, Kraai said. That research would include intensive, multi-year banding efforts and similarly long-term population monitoring and development of population models and harvest strategies.
It also would require Texas to get back into the "spy blind" business where trained observers surreptitiously monitor waterfowl hunters to gauge how many "non-target" birds are taken.
All this data is necessary to biologically justify recommending adding whistling ducks to the teal season bag limit, and, perhaps even more important, defend the decision in court should someone challenge the legality of the move.
Such a time-consuming and expensive effort is impossible or at least impractical given the funding and staff limitations facing waterfowl scientists and managers, Kraai said.
"It's just an insurmountable amount of work," he said.
And even if the ponderous amount of research and data supporting adding whistling ducks to bag during teal season were somehow collected, there's still the challenge of gaining crucial support from northern states that have been reluctant to back liberalized migratory bird hunting regulations for southern states without getting something in return.
"The reality is, (adding whistling ducks to the teal season bag limit) is not something that's likely to happen," Kraai said.