Prairie Breeding Grounds Soaked, Duck Population at All-time High



Duck hunters will find plenty to cheer about in the annual breeding population and habitat survey, which was released earlier today.

Conducted each May by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service, this year’s survey reveals the second-highest pond count and a record 45.6 million ducks, the most since the survey was started in 1955. Blue-winged teal, shovelers and redheads soared to record levels, and if that’s not enough, mallard, pintail, canvasback and gadwall numbers rose substantially from 2010.

But not all is well across the U.S. and Canadian prairies.

While water is great for ducks, excessive snowpack and heavy spring rains produced extreme flooding across much of the prairie breeding grounds. From the Canadian prairies to the Dakotas and eastern Montana, tens of thousands of homeowners have been displaced by swollen rivers, millions of acres of cropland remain unplanted and hundreds of miles of roads are under water.

“Our hearts go out to all those affected by flooding this spring,” says Delta President Rob Olson.“This has been an indescribable hardship for the people living in the Prairie Pothole Region.”

The closely watched May ponds total, the second-highest ever, doesn’t do justice to the unprecedented flooding still terrorizing residents of the breeding grounds. Across the U.S. side of the region, the last three years have been the wettest since pond counts began. The 3.2 million ponds inventoried in the U.S. this spring were the most on record.

The 4.9 million ponds in prairie Canada were 43 percent more than the long-term average, which dates back to 1955, and brings the total pond count across the traditional survey area to 8.1 million, second only to the 8.3 million recorded in 1974.

Not surprisingly, all that water attracted a record number of ducks. The 12.5 million breeding ducks that settled in the eastern half of the Dakotas was the most ever, and was 172 percent above average.
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cant wait....

That duck fever i have just bumped up to im about to die if i dont kill a duck soon

I'll try and save some ducks and geese for you guys as they pass through Minnesota!