National Migratory Bird Harvest Survey
Instructions for Completing the Harvest Survey
If you received an invitation:

Go to fws.gov/harvestsurvey and enter your personal invitation code from the letter or email that was sent to you. If you received an email invitation, you may also access the survey by clicking on the "Go to survey" link in the email. An account is no longer needed to access the survey. You will be taken to your survey dashboard where you will see a "card" for the survey for which you've been selected (if you register to hunt migratory birds in more than one state, you might be selected for more than one survey). When you select the survey, you will be asked if you will be hunting during the current hunting season. If you do not intend to hunt, select "I am not hunting." This will record your response and no further action is needed. If you do intend to hunt, select "I am hunting" and it will direct you to the page where you can choose to enter either your daily hunts throughout the season, or just your season totals. For the purposes of our survey, a "daily hunt" is defined as all hunting activity in one county on one day. Season totals just ask for the total number of days you hunted and the total birds harvested (or knocked down but lost).

To enter a hunt, you will be asked 4 questions:

  1. What was the date of your hunt?
  2. In which county did you hunt?
  3. Which birds did you hunt? (hold down the ctrl key and select more than one group)
  4. How many birds did you shoot (either killed and retrieved or downed but lost)?

Please remember:

Only record your hunting activity for that species group, and only in the state for which you were selected. If you did not shoot any birds during a hunt, please enter the date and county of the hunt, and record zero (0) shot for that day. Do not include birds shot by other people - this survey should only reflect the birds you killed, or downed and lost.

You will have the opportunity to edit the information entered before submitting the entry, and even after it has been submitted to the hunt log. You may also add comments about your hunt for your own use. Once you submit your hunt, it will show up in your hunt log. You may add hunts during the season or after you are finished hunting. When you are finished hunting for the season and have entered all your hunts, check the "I am done hunting" box and submit your hunting results for the season.

Identifying the birds you hunted

States have different regulations about migratory bird hunting. In this survey we ask you to tell us about different species groups you hunted. If you are unsure about the species you killed, you can click on the information icon next to the "Birds Hunted" heading in question 3, "Which birds did you hunt?" where you will find regulatory species definitions for each state.

Entering season totals

If you only remember the total days you hunted or the total number of birds you shot, you may enter your season totals instead of individual hunts by selecting the "Report Season Totals" option instead of selecting Add Daily Hunt, even if you have already entered individual day hunts. However, once you have entered Season Totals, you will not be able to go back to entering daily hunts.

Editing your hunt log or season totals

You can easily edit the hunting information in any of your hunt log entries by clicking on the edit icon under Actions to the left of the entry. To edit your season totals, you must first reopen the survey on your dashboard, then click on the Report Season Totals button which will open the window where you can edit your entries. If you still have questions about the surveys, visit our Frequently Asked Questions page or send us an email on our Contact Us page.