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.
The New Year's Day rainfall and other rain events of the past week brought many of Arkansas's public waterfowl hunting areas up to levels needed to draw ducks.