Arkansas Game and Fish officials predict over 100,000 hunters will be hitting the duck blinds during the 2023-2024 duck hunting season.
Jim Harris, managing editor of the AGF Wildlife Magazine, said deer season tends to bring out more hunters, but the state is still known for its duck hunting.
Harris said he thinks duck season has a lower number of hunters because of the expenses that come with it: equipment and land for hunting.
AGFC said this year, like last year, is fairly dry, but the ducks will still be flying into Arkansas from the north to get out of the cold because it is in their DNA.
“It goes all the way back to prehistoric times,” said Harris. “They come down from the upper regions of what is now the United States, back then it was that pothole region around Canada and the North Dakota and South Dakota areas. That is where they breed during the spring and summer and then they make their flight, their migration down and it happens to coincide. There are different migration patterns. There are some (migration patterns) that go down the East Coast and West Coast, but the big major ones, the Central and the Mississippi flyways go through Arkansas. It is right there in Arkansas County, around that area where the White, Arkansas, and Mississippi Rivers all come together.”
Harris said nearly a million ducks are harvested every season.
Many people come from out-of-state to hunt ducks in Arkansas, bringing in a lot of money to the state.
“The estimates are that it probably brings in a little over a million dollars a day in economic impact to the state, probably around 70 million dollars I think was the last count.,” said Harris. “That has been studied by economic researches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It “duck hunting” is big. It definitely impacts certain areas like Arkansas County. Stuttgart lives for duck season.”
Duck hunting season begins Saturday, November 18th, and runs until January 30th, 2024.
