Louisiana's First Whistling Duck Season Is Done. Permit Holders Have Until Oct. 26 to Report, and the Big Duck Opener Is Three Weeks Out.

For nine days this month, Louisiana duck hunters got to take aim at a bird most of them had only been watching. The state's first black-bellied whistling duck season ran statewide from Oct. 3 through Oct. 11. The season is over now, but the paperwork isn't.

Every hunter who picked up the free whistling duck permit has to report effort and harvest between Oct. 12 and Oct. 26, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. That goes for permit holders who never went hunting or never fired a shot, too. You file online at LouisianaOutdoors.com: log in to your account, open Licenses & Permits and choose Report BBWD Harvest. Skip it, and you won't be able to get a permit for future October whistling duck seasons.

The department has good reason to keep reminding folks. The season was experimental, and the permit was a monitoring requirement the state agreed to with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Those reports are how biologists find out how many people hunted and how many birds they took. In a statement carried by The Times of Houma/Thibodaux, the department thanked hunters and said that, based on its observations, they "showed overwhelming compliance with shooting only this target species."

That counted for a lot, because the rules were narrow. Only black-bellied whistling ducks could be taken, with a daily limit of four and a possession limit of 12. Shooting started at sunrise, not the half-hour before sunrise that teal and regular duck hunters are used to. Hunters also needed their regular waterfowl licenses, a federal duck stamp, HIP registration and the special permit.

If you've spent any time around south Louisiana rice fields and ponds, you know this bird by its long pink legs and the high whistle that reaches you before the flock comes into view. Whether the special season comes back, and in what form, depends in part on the reports due this week.

Then comes the main event. The state's 2026-27 waterfowl dates open the West Zone first. Youth and veterans hunt there on Saturday, Nov. 7, and the regular West Zone season runs Nov. 14 through Dec. 6, then picks back up Dec. 19 and runs through Jan. 24. In the East Zone, youth and veterans day is Nov. 14, and the regular season runs Nov. 21 through Dec. 6, then Dec. 19 through Jan. 31. Each zone gets a second youth and veterans day after the season closes: Jan. 30 in the West and Feb. 6 in the East.

If you're not sure which zone your lease is in, the line hasn't moved. The Wildlife and Fisheries Commission adopted the same East/West boundary for 2026 through 2030 that it used for the previous five seasons. The West Zone covers everything between the Texas line and a line that runs south on LA 79 from the Arkansas border to Homer, then LA 9 to Arcadia, LA 147 to Hodge, U.S. 167 to Lafayette, then south and east on U.S. 90 to the Mississippi line. The rest of the state is the East Zone. Since the line follows U.S. 90 east from Lafayette, the coastal marsh below it counts as West Zone too, as the department's zone map shows. In practice, that gives hunters around Lake Charles, Shreveport and the coastal parishes south of U.S. 90 a one-week head start on those around Monroe, Baton Rouge and the Northshore.

The daily bag is six ducks. Within that, you can take no more than four mallards (two hens at most), three wood ducks, two canvasbacks, two redheads, one black duck and three pintails (one hen). Scaup are limited to one a day for the first 15 days and two after that. Mottled ducks are off limits for the first 15 days, then one a day. Coots carry their own limit of 15, and mergansers five, two of which may be hooded. Possession limits are three times the daily bag.

Goose hunters open on Nov. 14 in both zones. The limit is 20 light geese, three white-fronted geese (specklebellies) and one Canada goose. Part of southwest Louisiana near the coast stays closed to Canada geese, and the department's regulations spell out the exact area. A few smaller seasons get going sooner, with snipe opening Oct. 31 and rails and gallinules on Nov. 7.

That leaves two jobs before the decoys come out. Whistling duck permit holders have until Monday, Oct. 26, to file their report. Everyone else has about three weeks to get licenses, stamps and HIP squared away and to look up which side of the zone line their blind sits on.

Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, public domain.