Teal Depart Early

Hunting

“Teal” is not merely a trendy color. Teal are compact ducks that can be spotted during spring and summer, but most of them pack their bags and leave the region before the October hunting season opener.

Few hunters in the Inland Northwest get a chance to add a cinnamon or bluewing teal to their taxidermy collection. But Texas hunters have a special September season to target teal.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shot down Texas’s request to add a week onto the early season this fall. The denial was for political reasons, not biological.

States without early teal seasons resent that Southern states are granted an early duck season. Making the early season longer would create even more ill will, FWS officials reasoned.

But no one’s denying that bluewinged teal are near their highest population level on record. According to FWS, bluewings number around 6.4 million, up 25 percent over last year, and last year was a good one for teal.

With their rapidly beating stubby wings, blue-winged teal are the first ducks to stage a mass migration.

Most waterfowl start south when weather turns cold on their Northern nesting grounds. Bluewings are different. They’re the original snowbirds, heading south at the first hint of frost. Bluewings don’t even hang around in Texas for long.