North Dakota Duck Season 2026-27: Dates and Migration Timing

September 26, 2026 for North Dakota residents, and October 5, 2026 for nonresidents. The regular duck season runs through December 6, 2026 in the Low Plains Unit, and the High Plains Unit in western North Dakota adds a second segment from December 12, 2026 through January 3, 2027. A youth waterfowl weekend and a veterans and active-military weekend both run statewide on September 19 and 20, ahead of the general opener.

North Dakota reserves the opening stretch of waterfowl season for its own residents, and for 2026 that window grew from seven days to nine. It runs September 26 through October 4, 2026, and nonresidents may begin hunting waterfowl on Monday, October 5. If you are planning a trip from out of state, this is the single most expensive detail to get wrong: the opener you read about in the news is not the opener that applies to you.

No, and this is a common point of confusion. North Dakota is a duck production state, and states in that position may take a bonus teal allowance during the regular season instead of holding a separate September hunt. North Dakota allows two extra blue-winged teal per day, on top of the six-duck daily limit, from September 26 through October 4, 2026. That window is the resident-only stretch, so it is closed to nonresidents. The bonus is also not available during the September 19-20 youth weekend.

They are North Dakota's two duck zones, split roughly along the US Highway 83 corridor with jogs described by highway in the proclamation. Both open September 26 and run to December 6, 2026, but the High Plains Unit in western North Dakota gets an extra late segment from December 12 through January 3, 2027. In practice the late segment matters most on the Missouri River system and the western reservoirs, which hold open water after the shallow pothole country has locked up.

It is a long-standing North Dakota rule and it catches visitors out regularly. During the regular season, goose and sandhill crane hunting runs from one-half hour before sunrise to 2 p.m. each day, not to sunset. There are exceptions: Saturdays and Wednesdays from September 26 through November 28, 2026 run full sunrise-to-sunset hours, and from November 29 onward goose hours go to sunset every day. Duck hunting is not affected; ducks run to sunset all season.

The DuckCast season curves put the mallard peak around November 3 across all nine North Dakota regions, with prime conditions from roughly October 22 through November 30. That is a staging-ground pattern rather than a wintering one: birds build up while the potholes stay open and leave more or less at once when those potholes freeze. The regular season closing December 6 in most of the state lines up with when the birds are typically gone anyway.