North Dakota Waterfowl Season Preview & Changes For 2025

The North Dakota Game and Fish Department has released its 2025 waterfowl season preview.

The preview shows North Dakota hunters may have to work a little harder to put birds in the bag this year, but overall, the news isn't terrible.

Spring was overall quite dry across the state, particularly in the central and southern portions of North Dakota. This led a lot of ducks, especially Mallards and Pintails, to pass over the state this spring looking for better nesting conditions in Canada.

Even though the state received a lot of precipitation towards the end of May, which certainly did help, many species of ducks had already vacated North Dakota for other areas.

Overall, the spring duck index was down 8.7 percent from last year.

Some notable species include Mallards down 26 percent, along with Green Wing Teal and Pintails down as well.

The good news? Some diver ducks, such as Canvasbacks and Redheads, were up significantly.

Some more good news: The July Brood surveys conducted by the Game and Fish showed a 28 percent increase from last year.

The North Dakota Game and Fish then combines the spring duck index numbers with the July brood survey to come up with their fall flight forecast each year. Thanks to a good spring brood index, it basically cancelled out our poor spring duck numbers.

The 2025 Fal Flight Forecast shows we should see similar duck numbers to 2024 and 2021.

Overall, there will be plenty of opportunities out there for hunters willing to do some scouting to find birds.

As far as goose numbers go, arctic geese such as Specs and Snows look to be good. Canada Geese, however, are down 15 percent statewide.

According to a video from the North Dakota Game and Fish concerning the Waterfowl preview shows the state is down two million acres of CRP from the early 2000s, which is important for many nesting waterfowl species such as Mallards.

Also, the loss of wetlands due to drain tile continues to be a problem for North Dakota ducks.

3 important changes to North Dakota Waterfowl hunting regulations.

All waterfowl hunters, both residents and non-residents, are required to have a state waterfowl stamp.

There are zone changes for non-residents.

The Pintail bag limit has increased to 3.

You can find out more about waterfowl regulations from the North Dakota Game and Fish here.