NEW ORLEANS — An estimated 400 duck hunters, including many outdoorsmen from the Teche Area, spent opening day of the special teal hunting season a week ago Saturday on Wildlife Management Areas, which are open to the public.

They harvested more than 400 teal based on estimates made by state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries staffers who were in the field at Atchafalaya Delta WMA, Pass-a-Loutre WMA  and Pointe-aux-Chenes, Shane Granier reported in a Hunter Participation / Harvest Summary released Monday. Salvador WMA wasn’t surveyed on opening day.

There were an estimated 145 duck hunters on the Atchafalaya Delta WMA, a popular WMA in St. Mary Parish, 98 of them on the Wax Lake Delta, where they harvested an estimated 187 blue-winged teal, Granier said. Sixty-seven Wax Lake Delta waterfowlers who were checked bagged 1.9 blue-winged teal per person.

The actual kill per duck hunter on Atchafalaya Delta WMA was 1.5, Granier said in his report.

Overall, harvest numbers on the first day of the season on those three public area were average, Granier said. The survey reported an estimated 416 ducks were harvested by an estimated 375 duck hunters on Sept. 14.

LDWF staffers personally checked 232 waterfowlers that day on the three WMAs and those duck hunters had an actual kill of 1.1 teal per duck hunter, according to the survey.

“Obviously, it wasn’t one of the better weekends we’ve had. I would say overall a good number of people saw a bunch of birds. Some said they couldn’t get them to decoy. Some said they should have shot a limit but missed a bunch, just needed to knock the rust off,” the veteran wildlife biologist supervisor said Thursday morning.

The 2019-20 special teal season opener harvest was far off the pace set for the opener in 2012-13 when an estimated 1,000 duck hunters harvested an estimated 1,718 teal on the coastal WMAs, including Salvador WMA. On that day, 627 waterfowlers who were checked had an actual kill of 1.7 teal per duck hunter.

Last weekend’s first-day estimate wasn’t the worst opener for the past decade, either, considering an estimated 485 duck hunters bagged 64 teal on opening day in 2016.

“Opening day was only slightly above the long-term average,” Granier said. “It was half and half. Half the people didn’t see anything, or didn’t see as much, and are kind of disappointed.”

He believed the rest of the season, which ends Sept. 29, will be more of the same. Hovering around average.

“It’s hard to say. We could get a big flux of birds come in. (But) during the teal season, the birds, they’re migrating no matter what the weather,” he said, noting teal often pass through the state quickly, and if they arrive at mid-week in an area they could be gone by the weekend, when more duck hunters get out.

With that in mind, he said, “It’ll probably be a 1.5 bird per person on average. Guys who saw a bunch (opening day) will hunt pretty hard.”

Those who didn’t see as many teal probably won’t participate down the stretch, he said.

Pointe-aux-Chenes WMA’s opening day was a little less productive than at Atchafalaya Delta WMAb for an estimated 205 duck hunters who bagged an estimated 155 teal (96 percent blue-winged teal, 4 percent green-winged teal). The 123 duck hunters checked averaged 0.8 birds.

Some of the best action there the first day was on the Montegut Unit Limited Access Area (internal combustion engines prohibited), where the water is fresher and habitat more appealing to ducks, Granier said. Eleven duck hunters there harvested 2.8 teal per person.

Three waterfowlers had five teal apiece on the Montegut Unit LAA, the biologist said.