Expect good duck hunting, like last season, officials say

The number of ducks Utah hunters see opening morning — Oct. 7 — should be about the same number spotted on opening morning last season.

Which means hunting on opening morning should be very close to what happened in 2005. Which was: The general consensus of those out for the opening last year was that hunting was good.

Translated into numbers, it means that few hunters left the marshes without at least one bird and in most cases the average was around three birds per hunter.

According to reports from opening day, the No. 1 duck taken by hunters was the smaller green-winged teal. There were also a lot of cinnamon teals and mallards in the bag checks.

There were very few shovelers checked.

Estimated were 487,000 ducks in Utah prior to the hunt last year.

Tom Aldrich, migratory bird manager for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, pointed out that a fair number of ducks are produced on Utah's marshes every spring, but most of the ducks hunters see in the fall come from areas far north of Utah, especially from the prairies in southwestern Alberta.

"Pond conditions in southwestern Alberta are improving after years of drought, but it will take a few more years of good rain before the marshes will be in the condition they were in the late 1990s, when many duck populations reached all-time recorded highs," he noted.

Utah hunters can expect to see an average number of birds, but Aldrich expects the bird to stay longer.

The reason, he said, "Is the Great Salt Lake rose another foot this year. That one-foot increase has created thousands of additional surface acres of water for ducks to rest on when they leave the marshes to escape the hunting pressure."

According to a report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it estimates a total duck population of more than 36 million; or a 14 percent increase from last year's estimate and 9 percent above the 1955-2005 average.

This, said the report, is an indication of the improve quality of waterfowl breeding habitat in the United States and Canada, helped by above-average precipitation, warm spring temperatures and good summer conditions in 2005.

"There's a lot of good news in the survey this year for the total duck population and waterfowl breeding habitat," said H. Dale Hall, director of USFWS.