Rolling Plains Duck Migration Forecast

Where Rolling Plains is

Rolling Plains is drawn from 30 counties in Texas: Archer, Baylor, Borden, Callahan, Cottle, Dickens, Eastland, Fisher, Foard, Garza, Hardeman, Haskell, Howard, Jones, Kent, King, Knox, Martin, Mitchell, Nolan, Palo Pinto, Scurry, Shackelford, Stephens, Stonewall, Taylor, Throckmorton, Wichita, Wilbarger and Young. 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 Rolling Plains peaks

DuckCast’s season model puts the pintail peak here around early December. Rolling Plains carries its own pintail timing rather than the statewide curve, because the season here runs on a different clock from the rest of the state. 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 Rolling Plains

In DuckCast’s season model, the species that can score highest in Rolling Plains are blue-winged teal, mallards and pintails. Against the state as a whole, it expects fewer wigeon in Rolling Plains.

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 Rolling Plains

3 upstream stations feed this region's freeze line, nearest first: Altus, OK, about 90 miles north, Lawton, OK, about 110 miles northeast and Elk City, OK, about 145 miles north. When those stations ice over, the score here starts climbing before anything changes in the local sky.

Radar over Rolling Plains

Each morning DuckCast reads the night’s NEXRAD data from KFDR, the National Weather Service radar at Frederick, about 80 miles north of the region’s weather point. That is well outside the region, so treat the radar reading as area context rather than a measurement of this ground. 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 Rolling Plains are always shown at the region level. DuckCast never collects or displays exact coordinates, so filing a report here never burns a spot.