“green winged teal”

A young artist from South Dakota has taken top honors at the National Junior Duck Stamp Art Contest. A green-winged teal by 15-year-old Madison Grimm will grace the 2022-2023 Junior Duck Stamp, which raises funds to educate and engage our nation’s youth in wildlife and wetlands conservation and outdoor recreation.

The USFWS announced the theme "celebrating our waterfowl hunting heritage," for the 2019-20 Federal Duck Stamp contest. Artists will be required to include in their entry one or more visual elements that reflect the contributions waterfowl hunters make to habitat conservation.

North America's breeding duck population has taken a slight dip in 2016, but remains well-above the long-term average, according to the annual Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey released by Delta Waterfowl.

We duck hunters are prone to irrational optimism. How else do you explain a group of people who can spend an entire day freezing our butts off in windy, pounding surf for just a duck or two (if we're lucky), only to go home, convince ourselves tomorrow will be better, and do it all over again? All we need is the slightest indication the duck hunting may improve.

The 2022-23 Federal Duck Stamp goes on sale Friday, June 24. The stamps, which cost $25 and raise about $40 million for conservation each year, are valid from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023.

The 2017 Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey was released in August, and things are looking good for North America’s duck population, considering the 2017 survey is the fifth highest annually reported total breeding duck population since the start of the survey in 1955.

Stuttgart, Ark., and its environs are known for flooded-timber duck hunting. But the region offers so much more to waterfowlers who venture from beneath the canopy.

The breeding population of ducks declined seven percent this spring, while pond counts dropped by nine percent compared to last year, according to the 2023 Waterfowl Population Status report released by the USFWS.