Learn More ‘Waterfowl Weather’

AGFC offers insights for state hunters, anglers across Arkansas

By Randy Zellers

AGFC Communications

Ducks Unlimited continues to step up its media offerings during duck season, and one of its must-listen (or mustwatch) shows just for the educational component for regular duck hunters is the “Waterfowl Weather LIVE” podcast, available through audio-only on the DU website, ducks.org, or with audio/video (the best choice) on YouTube. Click here for this week’s podcast, from Tuesday. It’s hosted by Dr.

Mike Brasher of DU.

Featured on the hour-long podcast this week is Skot Covert, the former THV 11 weatherman who is now at KFSM, Channel 5, in Fort Smith. Covert (at the bottom of the photo right from a screenshot of the YouTube podcast) is an outdoors lover who often hosted the segment with the AGFC’s Trey Reid on Saturday mornings during his time in Little Rock. On Tuesday morning, Covert was out in the field checking out the ducks, having won a permit to hunt Frog Bayou WMA.

Covert offers his forecast for the rest of the season: “For the Central and Mississippi flyways out to the east, we’re going to be cold for the next couple of weeks, at least.

We’ve had somewhat of a mild winter. A week or so ago I hunted and I was slapping mosquitoes the whole time, sweating, trying to lose layers. That’s changed and it looks like this cold’s probably going to stay in place. Of course, it will moderate a little bit collectively across a good majority of the eastern twothirds of the country, meaning by this weekend, temperatures are probably starting to climb back closer to normal, still probably falling shy of it by a few degrees. But it looks like they’re going to be more lobes of cold arctic air being pushed down into the Lower 48. So, I think the last few weeks of the season probably aren’t going to be as warm as they have been in the first half.”

There’s plenty more, include the guest meteorologists’ discussion of the key polar vortex that will push birds further south. Check it out. And if you are at the DU website, enjoy surfing through eight past seasons of podcasts, too, as well as other media, especially if you find yourself snowed in this week.

Photo courtesy of AGFC