Arkansas Coverage
Ozarks and Ouachitas Duck Migration Forecast
Mountain country. Beaver, Bull Shoals and Ouachita hold some divers and a few mallards on the upper White, but this is not duck ground.
See today’s live scoreAll of AR
Season dates: Arkansas duck season 2026-27, dates and migration timing
Where Ozarks and Ouachitas is
Ozarks and Ouachitas is drawn from 19 counties in Arkansas: Baxter, Benton, Boone, Carroll, Crawford, Franklin, Fulton, Garland, Izard, Madison, Marion, Montgomery, Newton, Polk, Scott, Searcy, Sebastian, Stone and Washington. Those are the counties its shape on the DuckCast map is built from, so a hunter in any of them reads this region’s score.
When Ozarks and Ouachitas peaks
DuckCast’s season model puts the pintail peak here around mid December. This follows the statewide pintail curve. That is a modelled typical curve, not a prediction for any single year. The actual push depends on cold fronts and freeze-up upstream, which is what the daily score tracks. Always confirm season dates with the state wildlife agency, linked below.
What DuckCast watches upstream of Ozarks and Ouachitas
3 upstream stations feed this region's freeze line, nearest first: Springfield, MO, about 80 miles north, Columbia, MO, about 210 miles north and Quincy, IL, about 290 miles northeast. When those stations ice over, the score here starts climbing before anything changes in the local sky.
Radar over Ozarks and Ouachitas
Each morning DuckCast reads the night’s NEXRAD data from KSRX, the National Weather Service radar at Fort Smith, about 70 miles southwest of the region’s weather point. That puts the radar just outside the region, near enough to see birds lifting off and passing close by. Radar sees every bird in the air, not only ducks, so it confirms or questions the score rather than moving it.
Locations stay generalized
Hunter reports for Ozarks and Ouachitas are always shown at the region level. DuckCast never collects or displays exact coordinates, so filing a report here never burns a spot.
Also covered in Arkansas
Nearest first. Distances run between the regions’ weather points.
- Arkansas River Valley, about 75 miles southeast
- Central Arkansas, about 120 miles southeast
- Cache and White River Bottoms, about 140 miles southeast
- Grand Prairie, about 160 miles southeast
- South Arkansas, about 175 miles south
- Northeast Delta, about 185 miles east
- Mississippi Delta, about 190 miles southeast
- Southeast Delta, about 200 miles southeast
Across the state line
- Northeast, Oklahoma, about 95 miles west
Season dates and regulations change. Always verify with Arkansas Game and Fish. DuckCast forecasts conditions, not legal seasons.