Pine Belt Duck Migration Forecast

Where Pine Belt is

Pine Belt is drawn from 19 counties in Mississippi: Clarke, Covington, Forrest, Jasper, Jefferson Davis, Jones, Kemper, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Marion, Neshoba, Newton, Perry, Pike, Simpson, Smith, Walthall and Wayne. 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 Pine Belt peaks

DuckCast’s season model puts the gadwall peak here around early January. 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 Pine Belt

In DuckCast’s season model, the species that can score highest in Pine Belt are green-winged teal, snow geese and pintails. Against the state as a whole, it expects fewer mallards in Pine Belt.

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 Pine Belt

2 upstream stations feed this region's freeze line, nearest first: Bolivar, TN, about 250 miles north and Paris, TN, about 325 miles north. When those stations ice over, the score here starts climbing before anything changes in the local sky.

Radar over Pine Belt

Each morning DuckCast reads the night’s NEXRAD data from KDGX, the National Weather Service radar at Jackson, about 55 miles northwest 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 Pine Belt are always shown at the region level. DuckCast never collects or displays exact coordinates, so filing a report here never burns a spot.