Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Madison Sheahan have asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services to expand hunting opportunities for black-bellied whistling ducks.
Sheahan says they’d like to either add the ducks to the existing teal season, which runs mid- to late-September, “or a separate October season, or its own bag limit — separate — during the big duck harvest that everybody gets to enjoy here in Louisiana.”
Black-bellied whistling ducks can currently be hunted during the regular winter waterfowl season, which runs from November to January.
LDWF is proposing the black-bellied whistling duck season start as early as early September, since, according to Sheahan, “as many of our hunters know, you don’t see the black-bellied whistling duck as often later in the year, and so [we want to be] able to kind of bring it to the forefront, potentially adding its’ own season.”
Black-bellied whistling ducks are a nuisance to hunters and farmers alike: they show up earlier and earlier in larger numbers each year, they confiscate wood-duck nests, and they wreak havoc on rice farms.
Shehan estimates they cause $500,000 to $1 million worth of damage to rice farms every year.
“It’s really affecting the supply chain from start to finish, whether it’s when the farmer puts the rice into the fields, all the way to the harvest and into the grain elevators,” she explains.