3 Pintail Limit for 2025/26 Season

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the Adaptive Harvest Management Report for the 2025-26 waterfowl season, and based on the new interim pintail harvest strategy and the 2024 Waterfowl Population Status Report the pintail bag limit will finally increase from 1 to 3 birds per day.  (Note for the upcoming 2024/25 season, the limit remains at 1 bird per day).

For many years, CWA requested the development of a new pintail harvest strategy that includes a 3 bird limit option; and, in 2018 we submitted a formal letter to the Pacific Flyway Council to that effect pintail-pf-letter.pdf (givecloud.co).  We are pleased that our years of advocacy for increased hunter opportunity and the important scientific work of the USFWS and Flyway Councils has at last helped to produce a regulatory change that will especially benefit California hunters as well as sportsmen across all 4 Flyways.   

We are also grateful for the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife’s considerable efforts on the Pintail Working Group and within the Pacific Flyway Council to help initiate this process. 

As an interim harvest strategy, the effect of the 3 bird bag will be assessed at a later point.  Once 3 seasons of a 3 pintail bag are complete (which could take 3-10 years or more depending on pintail breeding counts), the Service will then determine what impact, if any, the interim strategy had on pintail populations. 

Depending on that analysis, the interim strategy could then be made a longer term harvest strategy (thereby keeping the 3 bird option) or it could revert back to the previous 2010 strategy (which does not include a 3 bird option for the Pacific Flyway).  Or, the interim strategy could also be modified to reflect any new information gained. 

Recent scientific research Pintail limits — California Waterfowl (calwaterfowl.org) suggests that restrictive pintail limits have not helped pintail populations, and that pintail numbers have not rebounded to 1970s abundance because of changes in their breeding habitat (rather than hunter harvest).  Data also suggest that additional pintail harvest opportunity may be sustainable.  The results of the interim harvest strategy implementation will help verify this. 

*This table has been sourced from: Adaptive Harvest Management 2023 Hunting Season | FWS.gov