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Day 45: Same story in Mississippi

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If you are a Louisiana duck hunter, you know the woes of this season. We aren’t alone. If you missed the past two day’s reports on Louisiana and Arkansas, scroll down and check them out. Here’s a near-the-end-of-the-season look at Mississippi. Mississippi hunters are seeing quite a few birds in the northeast part of the Delta, but for the most part hunting is tough there as well.

Things haven’t picked up here much, with the exception of some good results in backwater areas off the Ouachita River. It’s hard to pinpoint the ducks from day to day, though.

Here’s the latest from Mississippi:
The early January Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks waterfowl survey was conducted last week. Waterfowl habitat availability is high across the Mississippi Delta because of rising floodwaters from the Mississippi River and backwater flooding from all of the river tributaries.

Duck estimates increased from the previous survey period, but those estimates were less than the same period for 2015 and less than half the number of birds in the Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 4.26.28 PM2014 January survey. Estimates for mallards and diving ducks were similar to the long-term average for January, however.

The Northeast portion of the Delta contained the greatest abundance of ducks overall. Mallards were more abundant in the region than all other portions of the Delta. Most mallards and dabbling ducks were observed in flooded agricultural fields, driven mostly by the necessity of ducks to feed heavily on high energy food sources because of cold weather during the survey dates. A large increase in the number of geese was observed in the survey, in both flooded and dry agricultural fields.

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