Lowell Washburn Special to the Globe Gazette

When the days grow cooler and autumn winds shift to the north, Iowa duck hunters can expect to encounter good numbers of waterfowl during the 2025 hunting seasons. Although six of the 10 key surveyed species showed a slight to moderate increase, a combined survey total of 34 million ducks (in traditional surveyed areas) remains essentially unchanged from 2024, according to the results of this year’s North American Breeding Duck and Habitat Survey released this week by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Conducted every year since 1955, the continent-wide annual survey measures trends in duck breeding populations and monitors wetland (pond) indexes across the northern U.S. as well as for large portions of prairie and boreal Canada. Plagued by con

See Full Page