Kansas duck hunters to get their say

Seven meetings have been scheduled to gather the opinions of Kansas duck hunters.

Speak now, said Roger Marshall, or hold your opinions for five years on the boundaries of the state’s four duck hunting zones.

“We need to know what (hunters) want now instead of the day we have to make our decision (in August),” said Marshall, a Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism commissioner from Great Bend. “This could be the biggest decision that will impact a lot of duck hunters for the next five years.”

It’s only every five years that Wildlife and Parks can ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for permission to change the boundaries of duck zones. Each zone is assigned its own duck season dates.

The state’s southeast duck zone began during the 2011 duck seasons and has created a lot of controversy, since.

The zone that was created to better take advantage of winter mallard migrations to southeast Kansas runs from just south of the Kansas City area and angles southwest to El Dorado and south from there.

There have been annual arguments on when to set duck seasons for the zone. Some hunters in the northern part of the region complain the season dates are too late for their hunting areas.

There has been talk of downsizing the area to better accommodate those hunters with earlier dates. Should areas be removed from the southeast zone, they would probably be placed within the low plains late zone and have an earlier season opener.

Tom Bidrowski, Wildlife and Parks waterfowl biologist, said the agency will probably ask the commission to approve a boundary change at an August meeting near Great Bend.

“These meetings will pretty much set the tone for what the staff will recommend,” said Bidrowski, who also said the agency will conduct surveys online and by mail.

Bidrowski will be sharing facts about average timings of migrations and peaks of hunter harvest at the meetings.

Opinions can also be shared with Bidrowski at 620-566-1456 or tom.bidrowski@ksoutdoors.com.

This story was originally published May 8, 2015 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Kansas duck hunters to get their say."