Is a 3-Pintail Limit Coming in 2025?

Many waterfowlers target pintails, which are one of North America’s most beautiful, graceful ducks. Now, future seasons might allow a slightly higher bag limit. Photo by Thomas Torget

Thanks to improved science and a new federal strategy, duck hunters could have the chance to shoot three pintails per day beginning next year.

In May, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Regulations Committee adopted an interim northern pintail harvest strategy to help set regulations for the 2025-26 waterfowl season. The strategy is based on banding, population survey and harvest data, and it allows four harvest options: Bag limits could be one, two, or three pintails daily, or a closed season for the Mississippi, Central, and Pacific flyways. The Atlantic Flyway will have a three-pintail daily limit every season unless the model recommends a closed season in the other flyways. Under Adaptive Harvest Management, which began in 1995 and was updated for pintails in 2010, pintail harvest currently has three regulatory options: one or two birds per day, or a closed season.

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“This strategy aims to ensure the long-term health and sustainability of the pintail population, better understand how different harvest rates influence pintail populations, and to provide more hunting opportunities when the pintail population is high enough to sustain it,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a press release. “This new pintail harvest model uses newer data than the previous model and is capable of better describing the species population levels as habitat changes drastically on the breeding grounds.”

In an online article by Paul Wait of Delta Waterfowl, Chris Nicolai, waterfowl scientist for Delta, said the new model factors in harvest rate, which is the percentage of the population killed by hunters, instead of just looking at the total harvest from the previous year as a predictor of the upcoming season’s harvest.

“The new model makes predictions based on the observed proportion of pintails shot, not on the estimated number of what hunters shot the previous season,” Nicolai said.

It’s important to note that the bag limit for future seasons will still be based on pintail populations and breeding ground habitat conditions, so the change does not guarantee a three-pintail limit. Waterfowl regulations for 2024-25 are already set, and the daily bag limit is one pintail for all flyways. The Fish and Wildlife Service will use 2024 breeding population survey data obtained this spring to determine 2025-26 regulations. Those numbers will be released in August.

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The Fish and Wildlife Service considers northern pintails to be a special concern species. Specific pintail harvest strategies are recommended by the four migratory bird program administrative flyway councils. The 2024 breeding duck survey counted almost 2.22 million pintails in North America, which was up about 24 percent from the 2023 survey (1.78 million) but still 43% lower than the long-term average.

With the previous pintail management model, hunting seasons would close when the breeding population falls to fewer than 1.75 million birds. The new model updates the season closure threshold to 1.2 million breeding pintails. The Fish and Wildlife Service did not list exact population thresholds that could allow a one-, two- or three-pintail bag limit.