Mississippi selects dates for waterfowl seasons

The Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks recently released its waterfowl hunting season schedule for this year.

The commission approved the dates for the 2017-18 seasons at a meeting in April.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released late-season frameworks in early August providing a “window’’ of dates from which states could select specific season dates.

“Waterfowl breeding populations in 2016 remained high, which will again provide states the opportunity to select a liberal hunting season of 60 days with a six-duck daily bag limit,” Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks Waterfowl Program Coordinator Houston Havens said.

Here are the dates:

Duck, merganser, and coot seasons will be Nov. 24-26, Dec. 1-3, and Dec. 6-Jan. 28.

The duck daily bag limit will be a total of six, including no more than four mallards (no more than two hens), three wood ducks, two redheads, three scaup, one pintail, two canvasbacks, one mottled duck, and two black ducks. The merganser daily bag limit will be a total of five, only two of which may be hooded mergansers. Coots will have a 15-bird daily bag limit. The possession limit is three times the daily bag limit for ducks, mergansers and coots.

Late-season brant, and Canada, snow, blue, Ross’s, white-fronted goose seasons also will be Nov. 10-26, Dec. 1-3 and Dec. 6-Jan. 28.

Canada geese will have a three-bird daily bag limit, and brant will have a daily bag limit of one bird. The possession limit is three times the daily bag limit for Canada geese, white-fronted geese and brant. Snow, blue and Ross’s geese will have a daily bag limit of 20 birds in aggregate. White-fronted geese will have a daily bag limit of three birds.

The possession limit for white-fronted geese is six, and there is no possession limit for snow, blue or Ross’s geese. A conservation order for light goose will be Oct. 1-Nov. 9, Jan. 29-Feb. 2 and Feb. 4-March 31.

The youth waterfowl season will be Nov. 18-Feb. 3.

This story was originally published May 21, 2017 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Mississippi selects dates for waterfowl seasons."