Minnesota Waterfowl Hunting

Fairly lackluster season numbers wise for me.

I did have a couple good hunts and I have plenty of duck in the freezer to where I'll be eating duck for a while. I also have a nice amount of pheasants and geese. All MN birds.

As always it was great hunting with family and friends...many memorable times.

Hunting with an old friend!!

I will remember this as the worst duck season of my life. Not Kidding.

Just remember..."near record duck populations"!

It was a much tougher season but I shot birds pretty consistently from start to finish (well hopefully, one more weekend to go). I agree the "record duck numbers" are bogus.

What made it memborable for me was introducing a couple new guys to the sport and getting them on some excellent shoots. Watching new guys get fired up reminded me how excited I used to get about this sport. Shooting my first Scoter in MN was pretty cool too.

This last Saturday having a Trumpeter Swan land in-between the geese and the mallard decoys. Hang out for a good half an hour... sucking every duck within site distance, to it. Picking out a beautiful mount of a Redhead, stand up fire, hit the Redhead and follow up with a drake mallard on the second shot. That and my youngest son finally coming into his own this year, he out shot me on several outings.

Harold Houck wrote:This last Saturday having a Trumpeter Swan land in-between the geese and the mallard decoys. Hang out for a good half an hour... sucking every duck within site distance, to it. Picking out a beautiful mount of a Redhead, stand up fire, hit the Redhead and follow up with a drake mallard on the second shot. That and my youngest son finally coming into his own this year, he out shot me on several outings.

If swan decoys weren't seventy bucks a pop I'd have a few to throw in the spread.

your mom...

I got a few firsts this year that I'm thankful for.

First canvasback
First mallard
First time being part of mopping up a whole flock that came in
First time double tapping a bird that I'm certain we would have lost into cattails

First time I put the decoys away before the season closed...

Dropped 3 geese in one shot...never done that before.

Been nice to get a couple girls into the sport a little bit...my buddies cousin came out several times with us and my GF made it out 3 or 4 times.

Went to nodak- shot a tundra swan
-got my first drake pintail
- got 2 drake bills in one shot