Daily Limits and Possession Limits

Ask any serious waterfowl hunter in the United States to list their top five destination waterfowl hunts and odds are the “Duck Factory” of North Dakota will be somewhere on that list. Because North Dakota is such a waterfowl hunting hotspot, every fall my job affords me the opportunity to meet waterfowl hunters from California to Virginia and Minnesota to Louisiana.

Because ducks and geese are migratory birds, they fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The USFWS sets the parameters for states to hold their annual waterfowl seasons and the states must work within these parameters. These parameters include, among other regulations, how many and what species of ducks hunters may take per day (daily limit) and how many ducks a hunter may have in their possession (possession limit).

While most hunters are fully aware of how many ducks and what species of ducks they may shoot in a day, a few are unaware how many ducks they may have in possession. Federal and state law allows a hunter to have no more than three times a daily limit of waterfowl in their possession, including at their home, at any given time. Occasionally I encounter waterfowl hunters who are fully aware of the daily limit of waterfowl but are not aware of or do not care about the possession limit.

A couple years back a hunter from Louisiana called and inquired about duck hunting in North Dakota. When he asked what some of the violations I encounter were, I told him I occasionally check hunters with an over possession limit of ducks. His response was he did not know there was such a thing as a possession limit. After explaining the possession limit law to him I like to think I potentially saved him from receiving a ticket for such a violation from a game warden. Other groups I’ve checked haven’t been so lucky.

A few years back I check a group of hunters from the southeastern part of the country. While I was checking their cleaned ducks, I inquired how many birds the group had. I was told in a rather nonchalant manner by one of the hunters they did not know and hadn’t counted them yet. Another member of the group then asked if North Dakota had a possession limit. Hearing that, I did not have a good feeling about the group being at or under their possession limit. After all the ducks were counted, it was determined the group of five hunters were 36 ducks over their legal possession limit. This resulted in some rather large fines for all members of the group.

Finally, last year I checked a group of six hunters from the Midwest and East Coast as they were preparing to leave North Dakota. While conversing with the group I was told some members had been coming to North Dakota for 20 years. When I asked how many ducks the group had, the hunters proudly told me they had 172 ducks they’d shot during their weeklong hunt. Some quick math in my head told me the group could only have 108 ducks thus putting this group 64 ducks over their limit. It quickly became evident to me that the group didn’t know they had committed a violation or didn’t care. After speaking with the group about the possession limit and the violation at hand, I learned the group was aware of both the daily limit and the possession limit. Then one of the hunters said it: “we honestly thought it was something the state didn’t enforce.” Unfortunately for him and the rest of the group, they found out it was something the state did in fact enforce to the tune of a rather large fine and the loss of their hunting privileges for one year. I’ve wondered since then how many over limits of ducks this group took home from North Dakota over the past 20 years believing the state didn’t enforce that law.

- District Game Warden Erik Schmidt