The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission waterfowl staff recently completed its December 2022 aerial waterfowl surveys for the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (Delta), the Arkansas River Valley and southwestern Arkansas. While mallard numbers in the Delta are about 100,000 below the 2009-22 long-term December average, the 480,846 mallards estimated are the most since 2018.
With a deep freeze headed toward Arkansas and snow to southeast Missouri, and with the recent rainfall that has filled the public hunting areas in state, habitat conditions for duck hunters this weekend should be the best they've been all year.
Mallard numbers picked up significantly in last week’s aerial waterfowl surveys of the Arkansas Delta region, the Arkansas River Valley and southwest Arkansas, according to the report released by Luke Naylor, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s waterfowl program coordinator.