Kansas Duck Season 2026-27: Four Zones, Four Schedules

Kansas hunts four duck zones for 2026-27 and splits every one of them. The High Plains Unit runs October 10, 2026 through January 3, 2027, then January 22-31. The Low Plains Early Zone runs October 10 through December 6, 2026, then December 19 through January 3. The Low Plains Late Zone runs October 31, 2026 through January 3, 2027, then January 23-31. The Low Plains Southeast Zone runs November 7, 2026 through January 3, 2027, then January 16-31. September teal is separate: September 19-27 in the High Plains and September 12-20 in the Low Plains. The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks publishes all of these, and you should confirm your own zone against their map before you hunt.

No, and this catches people out every year. They sit about 35 miles apart and they are in different zones. Barton County, which holds Cheyenne Bottoms, is mostly Low Plains Early Zone. Stafford County, which holds Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, is mostly Low Plains Late Zone. That means the Bottoms closes December 6, reopens December 19, and finishes for good on January 3, while Quivira runs straight through to January 3 and then gets another week from January 23-31. Kansas zone lines follow highways rather than county lines, so if you hunt near a boundary, check the Kansas Wildlife and Parks zone map for your exact spot rather than trusting a county-level summary, this one included.

Late December for mallards across most of the state, which is later than people expect. Kansas Wildlife and Parks puts it plainly: mallards are the last of the five most common ducks to arrive, after blue-winged teal in September, pintails in late October, and green-winged teal and gadwall in the first half of November. The DuckCast per-region curves put the peak around December 24 on the northeast reservoirs, the east central lakes and the southeast timber, around December 12 to 15 through the north central reservoirs and the south central Arkansas River country, and around December 9 at Quivira. Cheyenne Bottoms is the outlier at about November 15.

Because in Kansas the kind of water matters more than how far north it is. Kansas Wildlife and Parks says so directly: a shallow marsh near the Oklahoma border may peak in late October while a reservoir near the Nebraska border does not peak until late December, and within the state habitat type influences timing more than location. Cheyenne Bottoms is 41,000 acres of shallow water over clay, so it fills early and locks on the first hard freeze. The southeast timber and the big eastern reservoirs are deep, they stay open, and they collect what the shallow water pushes out. The clearest illustration is that Cheyenne Bottoms sits a full degree of latitude SOUTH of the north central reservoirs and still peaks about four weeks earlier.

Yes, and the two units run on different weeks. The Low Plains Unit is September 12-20, 2026, and the High Plains Unit is September 19-27, 2026, both at six teal a day. That is worth checking against the unit you plan to hunt, because the weeks barely overlap: there is exactly one day, September 19 and 20 aside, where a hunter could be legal in one unit and not the other depending on where the line falls.

Nebraska, and Nebraska is a state DuckCast already scores. That makes Kansas the bottom of a four-state chain: one Arctic front can be followed from prairie Canada through North Dakota, then South Dakota, then Nebraska, and then here, meaning something different at every stop. In the Dakotas it ends the season. In Nebraska it fills the Rainwater Basin. In Kansas it is the push that puts mallards on the reservoirs in the second half of December. DuckCast watches eight Nebraska stations at two latitudes for that reason, because a freeze in central Nebraska is two or three days out and the same freeze on the state line is about half a day.

Not really, and it is better to say so than to imply otherwise. Wichita, Topeka and Dodge City radars sit directly over the south central, northeast and southwest regions. Northwest Kansas has none of its own: the nearest NEXRAD to that country is Goodland, and it returned no data when we probed it, so it is not in our site list at all. Northwest Kansas reads Dodge City at about 180 kilometres, which DuckCast labels as distant and treats as area context rather than a measurement of the air over your marsh.