Migration Alert: Mild Temperatures in Alaska and Prairie Canada Keep Pacific Northwest Waterfowlers Waiting

Wait and hope is becoming a familiar refrain for waterfowlers in Washington and Idaho who are hoping for colder weather to drive birds south from Alaska and Canada.

“There are still plenty of birds left up there,” says Dr. Mark Petrie, Ducks Unlimited director of conservation science and planning in Vancouver, Washington. Petrie just returned from hunting on Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where he saw impressive numbers of ducks and geese, including pintails and cackling geese.

Petrie’s report echoes those from northern Alberta, which is still rife with waterfowl. Long-range weather forecasts are just now predicting daytime temperatures below freezing across much of Alaska, while freeze-up likely won’t occur in Prairie Canada until November.

In the meantime, hunters will have to make do with locally produced birds and early migrants, whose journeys south are dictated more by day length than by temperature. An early pulse of teal recently arrived in the northern reaches of Washington and Idaho before moving south, and a wet week in the forecast for Washington may give more migrants a reason to stop.

 “People are harvesting birds,” says Kyle Spragens, waterfowl section manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), “but hunters are spending most of the day in the blind to do it. They are having to work for it.”

Along the coast, water conditions have improved from the Skagit River Valley south to the Chehalis River watershed. Closer to the Columbia River, many of the ponds are still dry or at low levels on Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, but the bird-per-gun average is slowly rising despite many ducks lingering in British Columbia.

“We've had all these storms slamming into Vancouver Island,” Spragens says, “and the interior of British Columbia has quite a bit of water, so a lot of birds have hung up in the Kamloops area.”

Dark geese began arriving before the season opener, Spragens affirms, but while snows also are piling into the fields, “there are few young birds in the flocks.”

Populations of both snows and cacklers are down in the flyway, but regulations won't reflect that until next fall.

WDFW waterfowl specialist Matt Wilson also notes the arrival of snow geese in south-central Washington in the Columbia River basin, along with “some whitefronts.”

Wilson reports decent hunting in the state's northeast corner, thanks in part to habitat work by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Nation. Both Moses Lake and the Potholes region also have more water this year than last, he says.

In Idaho, waterfowlers in the panhandle fared well on the opener, says Jeff Knetter, upland game and migratory bird coordinator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Not so much in the east. “Backwaters and management areas are dry except for the Sterling Wildlife Management Area, near American Falls, where hunters did surprisingly well,” Knetter adds. 

Also on a positive note, Knetter says hunters at southern Idaho's popular duck-hunting areas had fair to good success, bagging both local mallards and green-winged teal. Overall, the opener was “similar to last year, but a little better,” Knetter notes. 

Hunters in eastern Idaho should be aware that the Snake River is closed to all activities between Pillar Falls and the Twin Falls dam due to treatments to eradicate invasive mussels.