Multiple States Proposing Pintail Bag-Limit Increase

The most recent duck seasons have barely come to an end and already the online and in-person conversations are centered around the usual fare of why this duck season was so good, why it was so bad, and what will next year look like?

While it remains to be seen how next fall and winter will look, there is some news out there that should get the attention of waterfowlers all over the country.

That's the ongoing plight of the pintail, the subject of a WILDFOWL Magazine Conservation Corner column back in our October 2023 issue.

Why is an update on the pintail bag limit important? Because as the USFWS recently released a story that was first published by Ducks Unlimited—the story appears on the USFWS (read here)—there is a new era dawning this year for pintail regulations across America’s four flyways.

Written by DU Biologist Dr. Mike Brasher, PhD, along with Brandon Reishus and Rosalie Wetzel, the waterfowling news piece details that, for the first time since 1997, the USFWS is allowing duck hunters in the Lower 48 to have the opportunity this year to harvest three pintails a day.

Texas, for instance, announced in a recent TPWD release that the pintail bag-limit had been recommended for an increase of one bird to three. The TPWD will vote next month, but once something makes it to this stage, it rarely goes the other way in Texas. This is happening in multiple states like California, Utah, and almost every state in the Atlantic Flyway.

Why is this allowed increase possible? As WILDFOWL and others in the waterfowling fraternity noted last year, this is now possible thanks to years of research, new modeling and updated data, and a lengthy monitoring history between USFWS and others.

While nothing is finalized yet; pending state adoption of new pintail regs this year, the table seems to be getting set for the much-ballyhooed uptick in pintail limits to come to fruition in some states later this year as states put together their 2025-26 regulation packages beneath the umbrella of federal framework that has been announced.

"I am hearing rumors of states’ new proposed seasons coming out," said longtime WILDFOWL Editor-in-Chief Skip Knowles, who spent much of the season in duck blinds and goose blinds across North America as he hunted with some of the industry's most recognizable names. "And from what I'm hearing, it looks like all of that is being shaped up with the rumor that the three pintails bag limit news that got everyone excited is looking more realistic."

According to Knowles, his contacts are showing that the idea is being pitched in at least one Midwestern state, while WILDFOWL Digital Editor Ryan Barnes is hearing that some western states are buying in as they start the long road to next fall's waterfowl hunting season.

All of this is intriguing, of course, and made possible after last year's USFWS news that after years of restrictive pintail limits based on the best science available at the time, biologists had come to the conclusion that some of their information needed an update.

Specifically, DU’s scientists noted in their piece that, "The decision to allow a three-pintail daily bag limit for the 2025–26 waterfowl season was informed by the new pintail harvest strategy and long-term data from the Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey—the largest and longest-running wildlife survey in the world. Importantly, the new pintail harvest strategy incorporates an additional decade of monitoring with improved population models that provide a better understanding of the effects of harvest and the relationships between pintail populations and their habitats."

Why the change? Because the new pintail harvest management strategy from the USFWS provides a range of options for state waterfowl managers, everything from a closed season up to bag limits that fall between one and three pintails per day.

"In August 2024, the Adaptive Harvest Management report issued by the Service recommended a three-pintail daily bag limit in all flyways for the 2025–26 hunting season," said the report by Brasher and his DU colleagues. "This came as a surprise to some hunters after the 2024 Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey reported that the pintail breeding population had declined 11 percent from the 2023 estimate and was 49 percent below the long-term average. Some hunters questioned why such a dramatic increase in pintail bag limits had been recommended."

While harvest numbers can impact the survival of pintails and the species' population size, USFWS biologists note that such an effect isn't nearly as large as the annual breeding conditions and resulting breeding habitat.

"The new model allows us to model harvest as a function of the fall flight," said the USFWS in a new release last summer (read here.) "The old model had fixed harvest levels based on bag limits regardless of breeding population. This innovative approach provides more opportunities to understand how harvest impacts pintail populations and ensures sustainable harvest levels in the long term. By incorporating this aspect with the updated model and the 10 additional years of data, the strategy now considers more comprehensive information to meet management goals for the Northern pintail species."

While states can give a green light of approval to all of this, it's worth noting that they don’t have to. And don’t lose sight of the fact that the new pintail harvest strategy from the USFWS is being allowed on an interim basis and could disappear if the new modeling determines that more liberal bag limits are jeopardizing the health of the pintail population. Because of that, sprig numbers will be monitored annually so that any issues that arise can be addressed.

After three years of being implemented (although such seasons do not have to be consecutively) FWS and the Four Flyway Councils will review and determine if goals are being met, and any changes are needed. In other words, even if there is state approval for a three-bird pintail limit this fall, it isn't necessarily permanent.

Objectives for all of this pintail talk, according to the USFWS, includes the sustainability of northern pintail populations and ensuring the population's long-term health under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918; maximizing cumulative harvest as both balanced conservation and hunting opportunities for the long-term are addressed; keeping open seasons on pintails as long as the species' breeding population is above the updated 1.2 million bird threshold; allowing a liberal season length and up to a three-bird bag limit under certain conditions; and a fixed three-bird bag limit in the Atlantic Flyway (which DU notes contributes only 3.3 percent of the national harvest) that gives the nation’s easternmost flyway consistent regs while the pintail season is open elsewhere.

It's also worth noting that according to DU's scientists, the USFWS's new harvest strategy doesn't include any sex restrictions in the pintail daily bag limit. That means that, as currently allowed by the updated harvest strategy, states can choose to allow hunters to take any combination of pintail drakes and hens that totals three pintails.

There's undoubtedly more to come in this ongoing pintail story, a special dabbler that has tantalized waterfowlers for many years, both in the prior years of great abundance when regs once allowed as many as 10 drakes per day under the old point system and  during the more restrictive regulations of more recent years as this beloved puddle duck’s population numbers have dwindled down.
 
Whatever happens with sprig regulations at the state level this year, and at the federal level in years to come, we'll keep you updated here at WildfowlMag.com on the plight of the northern pintail.

---