Arkansas Duck Season 2026-27: Dates and Migration Timing

Arkansas runs its 2026-27 duck season in three segments: November 21-29, 2026, then December 10-23, 2026, then December 26, 2026 through January 31, 2027. The special early teal season is September 19-27, 2026, and the youth and veterans hunts share the weekend of February 6-7, 2027. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission set these dates in April 2026.

Arkansas is a wintering ground rather than a staging area, so its season is built to cover the weeks when birds are actually present rather than to open early. The splits also spread hunting pressure across the season on heavily hunted public water. The practical effect is that the longest segment, December 26 through January 31, lines up with the part of winter when the most birds are in the state, which is also when Arkansas hunting is at its best.

Because the birds arrive late. Arkansas sits at the bottom of the Mississippi Flyway, and the mallards that fill the flooded timber and the rice country are birds that have been pushed off everything upstream by freeze and snow. The DuckCast season curves put the Arkansas mallard peak around January 14, roughly ten weeks after the North Dakota peak in early November. Opening in October would put a season on the calendar during weeks with comparatively few birds in the state.

Sunrise, not a half hour before. Arkansas is one of the states where the federal framework sets September teal shooting hours from sunrise rather than the usual half hour before sunrise. The reason is identification: only teal are legal in September, and shovelers, pintails and wood ducks share the same water and look similar in poor light. The later start trades prime flight time for a fair chance at telling them apart.

Yes. On Arkansas Game and Fish Commission wildlife management areas, shooting hours during the regular duck season run from a half hour before sunrise until noon, under the AGFC's own 'Hunting on WMAs Ends at Noon' rule, except where a specific WMA's details say otherwise. That is a WMA rule rather than a statewide one, and individual areas carry their own exceptions, so check the area you plan to hunt before you go.

Mid-December through late January, and the DuckCast curves put the peak around January 14, with prime conditions from roughly December 12 to January 26. That timing is driven by what happens upstream rather than by Arkansas weather: the birds arrive when Missouri, southern Illinois and west Tennessee freeze up and push them south. A warm December upstream can leave Arkansas thin well into the season, which is why the freeze line north of the state is the signal worth watching.