Exhilaration takes flight on duck opener

[Fish Felon]

For some, tradition is more important than numbers....others, not so much. The tradition of hunting with the same people is important, but the location is not.

No one is knocking tradition. Traditions are great but tradition isn't the reason for that horrendous blind, that can only be attributed to incompetence.

Complete and utter incompetence.

Their blind looks like they took a section of scaffolding, set it at the edge of a backwater, that gets the most sun in the morning, and tied a camo sheet across it. The bright green bucket, really? Picking up a couple cans of spray paint and taking two minutes to camo up a bucket isn't worth your time? If I got invited to hunt a similar shit-show I'd tell them "thanks but no thanks" once we made it to the blind and grab a couple decoys and walk/wade to the end and hunt from the cattails. At least I'd have a chance of shooting one or two of the ten ducks we'd probably see that morning.

Their blind is so bad it actually pisses me off. Why? Because it represents these guys and how their mentality was created perfectly. These are the same type of dbags that affect waterfowl hunting in MN. These are the type of guys that go to rallies, symposiums and write letters when higher limits and more opportunities to shoot ducks are offered and scream 'No!' because we have dwindling duck numbers.

They think guys like me are greedy. The reality is I'm not the asshole, they're the assholes.

They're so incompetent and lazy that the only ducks they can shoot are a few retarded opening day wood ducks. Then they look at empty skies the rest of the season from their blinds. If they go out of state they are forced to hire a guide or freelance hunt from temporary blinds made daily and not a giant piece of crap visible from miles away, so they actual shoot something and they draw the conclusion, "MN has no ducks."

Nope, we have ducks....and we also have a shitload of incompetent and lazy hunters.

[Mr. Lee]

No one is knocking tradition. Traditions are great but tradition isn't the reason for that horrendous blind, that can only be attributed to incompetence.

Complete and utter incompetence.

Their blind looks like they took a section of scaffolding, set it at the edge of a backwater, that gets the most sun in the morning, and tied a camo sheet across it. The bright green bucket, really? Picking up a couple cans of spray paint and taking two minutes to camo up a bucket isn't worth your time? If I got invited to hunt a similar shit-show I'd tell them "thanks but no thanks" once we made it to the blind and grab a couple decoys and walk/wade to the end and hunt from the cattails. At least I'd have a chance of shooting one or two of the ten ducks we'd probably see that morning.

Their blind is so bad it actually pisses me off. Why? Because it represents these guys and how their mentality was created perfectly. These are the same type of dbags that affect waterfowl hunting in MN. These are the type of guys that go to rallies, symposiums and write letters when higher limits and more opportunities to shoot ducks are offered and scream 'No!' because we have dwindling duck numbers.

They think guys like me are greedy. The reality is I'm not the asshole, they're the assholes.

They're so incompetent and lazy that the only ducks they can shoot are a few retarded opening day wood ducks. Then they look at empty skies the rest of the season from their blinds. If they go out of state they are forced to hire a guide or freelance hunt from temporary blinds made daily and not a giant piece of crap visible from miles away, so they actual shoot something and they draw the conclusion, "MN has no ducks."

Nope, we have ducks....and we also have a shitload of incompetent and lazy hunters.



Hold on a minute!! Even though I agree DA is a douchebag…….this was one of his better opening day articles. Who cares about the blind? I don't think it is that bad. It even looks like the have some trees partially overhanging the blind. They know it is mainly just a teal spot and thats what they were hoping were around. How can you tell where the best spot for the blind is from that picture? You have no idea what is the other way. On top of that…he didn't even say how many ducks they shot. He just said wood ducks were all they killed. They may have shot limits of wood ducks for all we know. Maybe you have more info?

He didn't even go on and on about how horrible Mn duck hunting is. He mentioned one group of ten and another of nine that limited out.

[Fish Felon]

Hahaha that's rich! Maybe my perception of DA has been warped to the point where I can't help but be negatively biased towards everything he writes.

He didn't even go on and on about how horrible Mn duck hunting is.

That's because his article Friday 'Some Local Gloom Amid National Boom' and Wednesday's 'Six is Still Enough for Minnesota's Duck Hunting Season' were devoted to that because he knew he wouldn't have nearly enough space on Sunday.

I noticed the branch too but it's not a lot of cover and doesn't appear to go the depth of the blind anyway even if it was. Aren't you the guide that wouldn't even let guys bring dogs on hunts and was big on concealment?

There's not many spots where you could get away with that blind and shoot a limit. Whether it's a stacked pothole or slough in the Dakotas, down in the timber or bayou, it'd work out East on divers...or anywhere else for that matter....but if you think you're getting MN mallards to circle down from over a hundred yards up you're dreaming.

The article read like they're too slow for teal and if they had shot a limit of wood ducks don't you think he would have spelled that out?

His group shot 2 to 5 wood ducks. I'd put money on it!

[sd_man]

Just a few things to point out.

1) who the eff carries their shit out to the blind in buckets?
2) we had 5 guys in our party and limited out rather easily.
3) maybe you can't sit out in a red plaid coat on a rock pile and shoot ducks, but it's still not that hard.

[lanyard]

The article he wrote when him and the kids headed to a WMA in Western MN was worth the read. Tipping his cap to other's success is an improvement, but it seems he needs the trip to the dead zone to simply affirm his supposition: there's no ducks in MN.

The DNR harvest reports will come out and, amazingly, some areas are going to have 2+ birds per hunter, others are going to be .24 birds per hunter.

And maybe the blind and the bucket aren't that bad; but within the context of "we didn't really see many ducks" I don't think anyone is getting the impression they really worked at it.

And Mr. Lee might be right, they may have shot limits of wood ducks. But admitting would do two things: 1) show his party didn't use voluntary constraint and limit themselves to a 2 per each mantra; 2) would kill the underlying tone of the article.

His lack of perspective the last say, 10 years, indicates he knows what he knows. Other knowledge has no value and no matter the evidence shown him he will not change his mind. He surrounds himself with like minded people that reinforce his views and rather than break down statistics and analyze them, he posts them in cryptic columns with a slant, trying to encourage a reader to come to his side of the coin.

1) The mantra he supports is a contributing factor into the declining numbers of duck hunters: if Michelle Bachman can convince people that immunizations are bad, so they stop, how hard is it to believe that the chief writer for the region's largest paper doesn't get people thinking "well, if there's no ducks....." It's bad marketing and worse PR, and it's killing interest.
2) Who leaves first? If I had to guess, it's people with the deepest pockets. See, cash in hand gives you choices. If you're broke ass, you stay close to home and aren't likely to take that time to get season tickets for football instead.
3) We need money from hunters: yes, but see number 2~ you now have less hunters and those that left took the highest amount of available cash
4) Policy and habitat need to change: Yes~ so how about working to affect the things that there is more control: moist soil management, noon closures, etc. Bitching you aren't shooting ducks in the MN River Valley? Not likely going to affect ag policy.

There is a quote from Mark Twain that fits DA a bit, "'Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts." Does he hunt ducks the rest of year? Goose hunt? Travel the state to do so?

I've hunted the west side of a line from Lake of the Woods to Windom in this state. I've been blanked on days I'm surrounded by 1,000 mallards and scratched a limit on days when I only saw 10 ducks. With a partner we put down a 2 man limit of mallards in 30 minutes within a 20 minute drive to the airport. I've hunted the sloughs during drought and high-water and see what the transitions do to them and how it affects the ducks. I don't spend a lot of time pondering the algorithm used for determining duck populations. But I can't help but feel that this set of experiences aren't dissimilar to first hypotheses that started the conservation movement and the bogeyman was market hunting.

I guess that's my thoughts, but I'm open to new ideas. Would love to see some "new" things tried like moist soil management. The WIA program was long over due. But in a state that thinks these are "ground breaking" I'm disheartened. Because I have travelled I have seen that other states use these and other programs with success, my mind may not be so narrow to think I really know everything.

[MNREAPER]

Hard to say... I decoyed some awfully retarded gadwall and widgeon yesterday and after the inevitable shelling the area took opening weekend (which I thoughtfully avoided) I was pleasantly surprised.


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