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Marsh Finder home ยท
Search an address or tap My location. You'll see the marsh, flats and ponds within 5 miles where puddle ducks are most likely to feed and rest, ranked, with how to get in and what's around them.
Covers New York State. This app reads habitat only. It shows where the marsh suits puddle ducks, not whether birds are there today; that depends on migration, weather, tide, ice and hunting pressure. Scout first, and check who owns the spot and whether hunting is allowed.
Habitat only: these are places ducks like to use. Migration, weather, tide and pressure decide whether they're there today. More
Drop a pin wherever you see ducks working, flush birds, or hunt. If the map works, most of your birds land in the shaded habitat.
Pins are saved on this phone.
This app reads habitat. It finds the places puddle ducks (black ducks, mallards, teal, wigeon, gadwall and wood ducks) like to feed and rest in fall and winter: shallow marsh mixed with open water, salt marsh cut by creeks, tidal mudflats, beaver flowages and impoundments, quiet ponds, with bigger water nearby to roost on. It does not detect or count birds.
Whether ducks are there on a given day depends on things no map can see: migration, cold fronts, wind, tide, ice, food that year and hunting pressure. Use the spots to decide where to scout, and let the birds you see decide where you hunt.
For every patch of ground and water it scores food (marsh, flats and aquatic plants), the mix of open water and cover ducks prefer, how close bigger water is for resting, how much wetland surrounds it, and how far it is from buildings and development. Checked against about 15,000 places across New York where ducks were reported in fall and winter, it does best in marsh country and weakest on big rivers, open bays and in cities. Use it to pick where to scout.
New York law: you may shoot a shotgun over water for waterfowl only if no house, building, livestock or person is within 500 feet in your line of fire. Each spot shows the nearest building. You also need a hunting license, HIP registration, a federal duck stamp, nontoxic shot and a plugged shotgun, and many towns (especially on Long Island) require permits for bay bottoms and town wetlands. Seasons and bag limits differ by waterfowl zone, so check the current DEC regulations for yours. A spot on this map is not permission to hunt there.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wetlands Inventory, National Land Cover Database 2021, FEMA USA Structures, USGS PAD-US public lands, U.S. Census TIGER roads, USGS National Map imagery. Address search by the U.S. Census geocoder and OpenStreetMap Nominatim.