The title of this column is a familiar malapropism believed to have been first stated by the legendary baseball player and manager, Yogi Berra, and of course it’s funny because it’s redundant. Déjà vu already means seeing something again. This is all highly appropriate, due to the fact that each year in this space, I go over the annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat survey, aka, the Fall Flight Forecast, which tabulates the research of a collaborative effort between the USFWS, the Canadian Wildlife Service, and the flyway councils from the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central, and Pacific flyways. Basically, these outfits estimate the ducks on the North American landscape and give us an idea of what to expect this hunting season.
Now to the déjà vu part, essentially the survey just tabulated and published is no different than last year – 2024 yielded an estimated 34 million ducks, and it is the same this year, 34 million ducks. This is stated to be four percent below the long-term average. Let’s go ahead and break the report down by species, and then perhaps I can editorialize a bit about what this might mean for your field spread, river blind, cypress hole, or your stock pond.
Let’s start where we should start, with mallards, everybody’s favorite duck. 2024 saw a mallard population estimated at 6.609 million birds. This season they are off just one percent with an estimated total of 6.554 million ducks.
While this is a tiny change and is likely within the margin of estimating error, mallards remain 17 percent below the long-term average. More mallards remained in southern Saskatchewan this year than last, when they pushed on through to the Yukon and other areas in northwest Canada.
Pintails come with glad tidings this year, and despite remaining well below the long-term average (-41 percent) they are up 13 percent in 2025, which of course comes in the nick of time as the limits have been upgraded to three birds daily in many states, a regulation that remains a head-scratcher for many. (By the way, check your local regulations before you start strapping pintails three deep.)
Gadwalls, and I say this with only love in my heart, are the cockroaches of puddle ducks. They do well when it is wet, and do well when it is dry, they are just overachievers, and I have the feeling that when the nuclear winter comes only coyotes and roaches and gadwalls will be left. They are all survivors. For this year we can expect to see more grey ducks, and they are up six percent from 2.28 million to 2.41 million birds. So, look for more of them to come beeping and dweeping your way this fall.
Even better at production this year was the beautiful American wigeon. There is a belief among waterfowl scientists that they are breeding at better rates in the Arctic than previously supposed. Wigeon are up nine percent for 2025, estimated to 3.19 million baldpates. This is the best wigeon population we have seen since 2016. Good news.
The other ducks that stayed on the plus-side of the ledger are the always stylish and always in demand northern shoveler, up four percent, to over 2.7 million birds; the redhead, which was up 17 percent to almost one million ducks; and canvasbacks, which were up 22 percent to 690,000 cans. All three of these species are also outpacing their long-term average by four, 25, and 17 percent respectively.
There is some bad news. The teal did not fare well in this dry year. Blue-winged teal are down four percent in 2025, falling from 4.599 million birds to 4.432 million. Depending on whether or not your state hosted an early teal season, you may or may not have seen evidence of this small decline. However, you will very likely notice the decline in green-winged teal, which fell 15 percent this year, which equates to about a half million fewer teal dodging down the flyways. That stings. Due to the blue-winged teal decline, it is almost certain that the 2026-2027 teal season will be only a nine-day event.
Also down were scaup, which fell 10 percent and remain 25 percent below their long-term average. The poor scaup continue to dwindle with no end to their decline in sight.
Briefly, looking at the Eastern Survey area, if your duck hunting is on the eastern seaboard, your mallards and wood ducks remain unchanged, the black ducks are down six percent, green-winged teal are down 24 percent, while ring-necked ducks are up nine percent.
Now that we have covered the ducks, let’s talk about ponds. The 2025 May Pond Estimate was 4.2 million Canadian ponds, down 19 percent from last year when it was 5.2 million. This is 20 percent below the long-term average. U.S. prairie ponds fell 34 percent in 2025 as well. From the report, “Notably, this marks the lowest pond estimate since 2024.”
We have now seen several consecutive years of drought-like conditions on the prairies, and some are saying it has been a dry stretch lasting as long as any in “recent memory.” Despite some May rains, which specifically helped parts of North Dakota, parts of Saskatchewan, and portions of Manitoba, much of the Canadian prairie received less than half an inch of rain in April and May. This makes for tough sledding for waterfowl.
Broadly speaking, dry years are not good for waterfowl for obvious reasons and when it is dry, typically production is down. This results in less young ducks in the fall migration. Of course young ducks have little to no experience in the ways of calls and decoys and they tend to be far easier to put in the bag than wily old mallards or crafty gadwall that can tell the difference between real ducks and Higdon decoys from hundreds of yards away, so my prediction – we are in for another tough season, or at the very least a rather mixed season, which will vary largely depending on your own geography. Weather will always be an enormous factor, as even if they are fewer ducks, if you are underneath them on a day when they are moving well or are arriving in a new area, then you may have a great hunt. It is just likely to be hit or miss as many of us experienced last year.
Finally, due to the relatively stable population even given the background of drought, we will see a 60-day season in most flyways (more days in the Pacific), and it is also virtually certain that the USFWS will recommend a 60-day season again in 2026-2027 based on this year’s results. So, if you are planning on getting into a new lease, or buying a new puppy, or making some other investment in the sport, you can pretty much count on having the hunting days that we have now enjoyed for many years.
Good luck out there this season. Please think about safety on every outing and wear your life jacket when you are on the water.
