Southwest Playas Duck Migration Forecast

Where Southwest Playas is

Southwest Playas is drawn from 18 counties in Kansas: Clark, Finney, Ford, Grant, Gray, Greeley, Hamilton, Haskell, Hodgeman, Kearny, Lane, Meade, Morton, Scott, Seward, Stanton, Stevens and Wichita. 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 Southwest Playas peaks

DuckCast’s season model puts the pintail peak here around late October. The timing follows the statewide curve; what differs here is how many birds the model expects, below. 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.

Which birds the model expects in Southwest Playas

In DuckCast’s season model, the species that can score highest in Southwest Playas are snow geese, mallards and pintails. Against the state as a whole, it expects fewer mallards in Southwest Playas.

Those weights come from harvest records, survey counts and the kind of water, not from a count taken here each season. They cap how high each species’ score can climb; the weather still has to bring the birds.

What DuckCast watches upstream of Southwest Playas

2 upstream stations feed this region's freeze line, nearest first: McCook, NE, about 175 miles north and Ogallala, NE, about 245 miles north. When those stations ice over, the score here starts climbing before anything changes in the local sky.

Radar over Southwest Playas

Each morning DuckCast reads the night’s NEXRAD data from KDDC, the National Weather Service radar at Dodge City, about 25 miles east of the region’s weather point. That is close enough for the radar to sample the air over the region itself. 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 Southwest Playas are always shown at the region level. DuckCast never collects or displays exact coordinates, so filing a report here never burns a spot.