2022 Season

[Bailey]

Have they announced any dates yet? I thought they were doing this before the summer now but I cannot find anything.

[Nershi]

Opener 9/24/22. On dnr website. Ywd 9/10-9/11. Not seeing anything for geese or teal.

[Mallard_maniac]

Here's the DNR's release on seasonsform 2021: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/wildlife/wa ... input.html

Nothing really "announced" i.e. limits/etc until late summer though when the synopsis comes out. Guessing the season structure will be identical to the above link only beginning on the 24 vs 25th and carry the same split in south and central zones.

[Fish Felon]

That split is the gayest fukcing thing ever, especially in the central zone. Makes Zero sense. At least in the South zone there's the river.

60 days statewide ran straight through....that's the way to do it. Open it as early as possible.

I still have yet to see a picture of the "late season greenheads" romanced about by Dennis Anderson and every other MN duck hunting phaggot

[Bailey]

Here's the DNR's release on seasonsform 2021: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/wildlife/wa ... input.html

Nothing really "announced" i.e. limits/etc until late summer though when the synopsis comes out. Guessing the season structure will be identical to the above link only beginning on the 24 vs 25th and carry the same split in south and central zones.

There was lots of chatter last fall about the season beings shortened due to the very poor hatch last summer. But I have always maintained the feds do not have the guts to ever lower it from 60 days ever again. All they really seem to care about anymore is making sure what hunters remain stay in the game. If you tried to shorten the season the southern boys would lose their minds.

[Mallard_maniac]

I gotcha... IMO in MN the point is moot. If they trimmed 15 days off the back of the season:
a) there's a few groups of hunters still doing well but the vast majority of mn fowlers have hung up their waders for the season, but hunters would still cry foul
b) on the flip side there's likely so few birds being shot in the last 15 days that it won't affect overall numbers one way or the other.

If they trimmed it off the head of the season there would be a mutiny from our hunters age 60+

Just specific to MN. The further south you get the more political it would become. Personally I have a hard time seeing this happening.

[Nershi]

I'm just curious to see if they keep telling us duck populations are doing just fine to justify liberal seasons. I think they have been in sharp decline for awhile and they manipulate the counts to paint a rosie picture. It is reaching a tipping point that they can't keep blowing smoke up everyone's ass... but we will see if they do.

Sadly, I don't think reducing season length or reduced bags will do all that much. That won't fix the habitat issues.

I agree with maniac, 15 days off the end of the season wouldn't matter much in MN. 30 day season would suck.

[Quack]

Here’s the problem with the duck counts… The survey was designed in the late
1940s - early 50s and the “institution” is too proud to make any changes. They hide behind “changing the survey would basically be starting over and throwing away 70 years of a contiguous data set.”

In fairness… that amount of contiguous data collection is pretty much unheard of. They are so proud of it in fact, one biologist told me “In North America we know more about mallard populations than most third world countries know about their human population.”

Well the problem is North America doesn’t look much like it did in the 1950s therefore the assumptions in the data processing are even less accurate than they were back then.

We know that a drake mallard will hang out by the nest for a few days as incubation starts and then go hang out in bachelor groups before molt migrating. The study assumes that all groups of four or fewer drake mallards have a hen on the nest. Unfortunately we know that sex ratios in the population are even more skewed towards drakes today than they were 75 years ago. Therefore…. There’s too many drakes, not enough hens in reality, and the assumption that all those small groups of drakes have hens is wrong.

Also… how ridiculous is it to count a northward migrating species with a survey that goes south to north? Double count much? The survey crews post reports online. “Sitting in hotel waiting for open water. No ducks in area.” 3 days later “Ponds open, ducks everywhere” wash, rinse, repeat all the way from SoDak through Sask.

[Quack]

As for Bailey’s question about the season… nothing major will change quietly or quickly in duck management at the state or federal level.

Minnesota just made big changes last year so those will stay put for a while.

The only way things will change at the federal level is if a judge issues an injunction due to skipping the survey for two years in a row. Some of the bigwigs do worry about the antihunters but if nothing has been filed yet I don’t think it will happen.

I’d be shocked if the feds made changes to the 2022 season based on the 2022 survey because they just convinced everyone a few years ago that wasn’t necessary. If the2022 survey indicates a major population drop we probably won’t see a season change until 2023.

Bottom line: they’ve set the parameters for liberal season so low it’s practically impossible to have anything else. Looking like a big year for pond counts so 6 & 60 will probably continue indefinitely