The 2025-26 Texas duck season is in full swing but the weather has not been cooperating in the lower Texas Gulf Coast.
Unseasonable hot temperatures and low tides have been contributing to a slight decline in the number of puddle and diving ducks, hunting guides said.
However, some hunters are finding decent numbers and shooting limits. One difference this year is the number of pintail that can be harvested, up to three from last season’s one-bird limit.
Limits in this part of the state are three pintail, two redheads, two canvasback, one scaup and one mottled, or dusty, duck. Six ducks is the limit per day.
Duck hunting generally takes place off Port Mansfield and Arroyo City and in the South Bay areas in this part of the Laguna Madre.
Aaron Cisneros, a guide from Brownsville, said hunters have been able to harvest more pintail thanks to the new limits. Cisneros said the tides have been impacting hunting.
“November is usually high tide (month),” he said. “But this year it has been slow from the start. Don’t normally see that till December.”
Capt. Gus McGarraugh with Saltwater Adventures said the season has been so-so, thus far.
“We go one day and the ducks are there,” he said. “But they are gone the next one.”
McGarraugh said the big migration has not started. Nevertheless, he said hunters have been getting gadwall, scaup, redheads and pintail.
“It’s a little slower right now,” McGarraugh said, “but there still are plenty of birds.”
In the South Zone, the season started Nov. 1 and goes through Nov. 30. The second split opens from Dec. 13 through Jan. 25, 2026.
