Since my lab died and I got old I haven't duck hunted in a couple of years. I live on a chain of lakes and across the road from a large wildlife area named Thunder Marsh. In the 30 years I've lived here I have never heard less shooting in a season. We had a drought so there were a lot fewer local mallards and wood ducks but usually this time of year we get lots of divers stopping by. None this year. Are other people experiencing the same thing or is it just an off year locally? I'm wondering if the bird flu has hurt populations a lot worse than the DNR is letting on. It doesn't seem to be affecting the turkeys.

The duck hatch around me was way down. It was dry here this summer. I have sloughs around me that are dry that I have never seen dry. On they other hand there is a load of snow geese moving by.

We had a lot around here, but it was a very wet year, since the last cold snap the locals have left and I haven’t seen anything coming through yet.

I have seen way less Canadian geese this year too. Fields that should be loaded either have nothing or very few. I have seen fields with 20 plus trumpeters though.

Pretty sure where I am at the birds have changed migratory routes as destinations have been developed or otherwise disrupted

Just the other day I was thinking about how many flocks of geese I used to see in the fall, can't remember seeing or even hearing any for past few years

lots of ducks and geese here, seen lots flying thru,

I am in SW AR and have duck hunted all my life. For some reason, I am still in a duck lease. I built my house where it is, in part of the good duck hunting. The decline started in 2015. There are about ten percent of the ducks coming through here now there were in 2015. I agree with you.

Nobody wants to blame the low value coon market? Would there maybe be more successful clutching if there were less nest predators? With 2 mild winters and early springs, the coon, possum, and skunk numbers have exploded in my little area that I operate in. I understand that habitat and weather are the ultimate factors but gotta think that the lack of any real effort to control mink, otter, coon, possum, skunk cant help.

same here but I would say about 1 percent that I saw prior to 2000.

Extremely dry conditions in central WI. A lot of little potholes have dried up. Very few ducks around this year. One of the worst years in a long time and I'm 70 years old.

I honestly feel duck populations are collapsing and the counts are not accurate. We've had zero nesting success here on our farm for atleast 5 years. Migratory ducks don't seem to show up or atleast not in large numbers. My friend in the Yukon said 20 years ago there was millions of ducks in the spring and now hardly any.

The birds that are left are concentrated in the best habitat, a couple bad years of drought in the Prarie region and I feel we may see ducks on the brink

I noticed a trend in that when windmills started going up. In 2012 , I came home from R&R from Afghanistan . On the drive home from the airport I asked my then-wife , "What's that ?" . I was referring to the multitude of blinking, red lights on the horizon. All those had gone up in just the eight months I had been gone. They,also , just happened to be around the wheat fields where I goose hunted. Never shot another goose off those fields.

No question that the overall goose and duck populations are on a downhill slide. Last few years the amount of dead birds that have been left behind during migration from Avian Influenza has been staggering.
Throw in drainage and habitat loss and there is a very good chance the populations never recover to what we consider “the good old days”.

Our migration is running late this year and we seem to be in a pattern where it gets later every year, warm conditions up north aren’t forcing the birds down early. I do have buddies in Saskatchewan hunting right now and they said birds are everywhere up there. So we have a lot of migration still to come our way.