1965 Experimental September Hunting Season on Teal

Book excerpt: Hunters in 20 States of the Central and Mississippi flyways participated in an experiment 9-day teal hunting season in September 1965. During this special season, hunters were required to obtain a free permit and could shoot four teal a day (blue-winged teal, green-winged teal, and cinnamon teal (Spatula cyanoptera), singly or in the aggregate) and have eight in possession. Data were obtained by means of a mail questionnaire survey, a teal wing collection survey, and a hunter performance (spy-blind) survey. A total of 201,972 hunting permits was issued, 49,359 in the Central Flyway and 152,613 in the Mississippi Flyway. Of the applicants who obtained permit, 55 percent hunted. Hunters bagged 448,060 ducks, including 404,710 blue-winged teal and 39,610 green-winged teal. The harvest of illegal ducks, not recognized as such, was 3,600 (from the wing collection), but the actual illegal kill, based on the hunter performance survey, was estimated to be 33,736. The species most prevalent in the illegal kill were wood ducks (13,000) and mallards (7,088). Percentages of cripples and unretrieved ducks revealed by the hunter performance survey were added to these totals, which together with a projected kill for the regular season, gave a total hunting loss by species. These totals were converted to percentages of the fall populations and compared with proportions of the populations killed in previous years. These data suggest that the experimental teal season in 1965 provided 111,085 hunters 257,180 days of recreation without adversely affecting the continental population of and waterfowl species. Additional data are needed, perhaps from three special teal seasons, in order to establish whether the bagged ducks add to or reduce nonhunting mortality for the teal species involved.