experimental September season suggests a rate of kill of about 15 
percent or about the same magnitude as that during the 1950's. 
Thus, the additional kill effected by the experimental September 
teal season on greenwings was considerably less than that on blue- 
wings and will certainly have little measurable effect on the 
population of that species. 
In "The Green-winged Teal (Anas carolinensis Gmelin ): Its 
Distribution, Migration and Population Dynamics" (a Doctoral Thesis, 
Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec), Moisan estimated average 
annual mortality rates of green-winged teal in North America to be 
about 50 percent for adults, and 70 percent for immatures. Here 
again, it seems that all hunting in 1965-66 might account for only 
a small proportion of the total annual deaths. 
The effect of the hunting kill during the experimental Sep¬ 
tember teal hunting season was measurably less on most other species 
of ducks. The total estimated kill of wood ducks was about 13,000 
birds. This estimate can be compared with an estimated total kill 
in the Central and Mississippi Flyways of about 400,000 birds during 
the 1964-65 hunting season or approximately 3 percent of the total 
kill of wood ducks taken during the 1964-65 regular duck hunting 
season. The kill of mottled ducks during the experimental September 
season was estimated at 3,103. These birds were taken in Texas and 
Louisiana and may represent the highest proportion of total populations 
of any of the kills of illegal birds during the experimental season. 
Even so, this kill was less than 5 percent of the 1964-65 harvest. 
At this time, we cannot determine whether the additional kill 
of ducks increased total annual mortality or merely replaced a 
fraction of the mortality attributable to nonhunting causes. Data 
such as those presented in this report from two more September seasons 
with complementary data from regular seasons, banding, and breeding 
ground surveys, should allow evaluation of the effect of the experi¬ 
mental season on annual mortality in these ducks. 
The September 1965 experimental teal season provided 111,085 
hunters with 257,180 days of hunting recreation. Data obtained from 
this first experimental season, when viewed in relation to previous 
regular season kills, suggest that the continental population was not 
adversely affected for any waterfowl species. Additional experimental 
seasons should be conducted to test this and to measure more closely 
the effect of the special teal season on local populations. 
18 
