Who’s the Sicko Shooting Ducks With Blow Darts in Billings?

The Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Region 5 Office shared a post on social media this week that someone is shooting ducks in Billings with blow darts. Wait... what? Ducks? Cute, harmless, adorable quackers? What kind of twisted individual would get off on that?

According to the agency's post, this has apparently been happening for a while. They wrote, "Wardens have confirmed several incidents in 2025 and 2026 at Shiloh Conservation Ponds and Rose Park, where ducks were found shot with blow darts."

Montana is home to several kinds of ducks, in two categories: puddle ducks and diving ducks. Puddle ducks include the easy-to-recognize mallard, along with teal (cinnamon, blue-winged, and green-winged), northern pintails, gadwalls, northern shovelers, and American wigeons.

Diving ducks found in the Treasure State include scaup (greater and lesser), buffleheads, goldeneyes, canvasbacks, redheads, ringnecks, and mergansers.

Blow darting ducks is not permitted.

Shooting ducks with blow darts is not only cringy, but it's illegal in Montana, for several reasons:

• Ducks may only be legally harvested during the established fall hunting season.
• Hunting is not allowed within city limits.
• Blow darts are NOT a legal method for taking migratory birds in Montana.

But wait, there's more.

In addition to the ducks in Billings getting blow-darted (is that the correct word?), FWP shared a similar post just a few hours earlier that someone killed a mule deer fawn with a blowdart in Roundup. This incident also occurred inside city limits.

Tips that lead to the successful apprehension of the individuals responsible for shooting ducks or the mule deer fawn with blow darts could land you a $1,000 reward. Visit TIP-MONT to report a wildlife violation.