Minnesota Waterfowl Hunting

Tough year. I blanked more times than I care to admit. Often I see more Eagles than ducks, but this year I saw 54 Trumpeter Swans on a day I blanked. Early season was best for me. My Central Zone late season spots were totally void of ducks.

reno's ronin wrote:I'd say also it is the worst in my recent memory and I've been hunting ducks on the miss river since 1980. since the second opener i killed 3 drake mallards (i'd say i usually average 25 by looking back at my logs). I mostly hunt backwaters but i had very few birds to work with and mostly had low water levels(the past 2 weeks of season had med-high to high water briefly).
. ND was rough as well. We really had to work to put 2 decent hunts in and the rest were mediocre or poor at best. (first and last week october). Bird numbers in barnes county didnt seem to happen till november 6-8th and prob peaked briefly on november 17-19th.
Even my beloved GWT didnt appear in numbers on the miss and they were supoose to be up 18% this year. I had several hunts where we never fired a shot and the last few hunts i rarely saw greater then 10 ducks (of any species) on many hunts. definately bald eagles was the number 1 bird species i saw. (or maybe swans to). rough year for me. heres to next year lads.

Rochester Geese seems to be going ok though on the few hunts ive been on. We get some more snow or bad weather and it will be game on.

I hear you. I saw more bald eagles then ducks when I hunted the river last week.

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Between early goose, duck season, and the late goose season, I made it out hunting 16 times this fall so far, In MN. With 130 birds killed. Hunted out of state too. The season started good for the first 3 weeks, then the typical lull started, few small fronts had some birds. the middle of season was slow. thousands of ducks and geese got here the last week of the central zone. Late fall gets busy with deer hunting, so we hit it hard the first month of the season, shooting teal, and other brown ducks is fun as hell. Usually when the "big push" gets here, getting permission can be a real bitch, but overall it was a good year. -- And another thing, the August goose season sucks and pushed all the country, pot hole birds to towns with-in the first day of hunting, what a joke. NO water hunting..

^^^ I was wondering to what degree the Aug season would have on the local geese.

Have others seen the same thing?

h2ofwlr wrote:^^^ I was wondering to what degree the Aug season would have on the local geese.

Have others seen the same thing?

Don't live in the area and likely will never travel there to hunt it but being able to hunt water to me is a joke, also. Same goes through the September season.

Based on travel last week:

Saw between 750 and 1,000 geese heading south from Fergus to Alex. They might have been the Fergus winter residents that spread out once the thaw came, but it was a pile.

Watched gulls migrating this morning.

Had a good season with a few missed opportunities. Only blanked once, but some new opportunities worked out well.

Old spots: saw more widgeon than before. Redhead numbers seemed the highest ever.

New spots: had wood ducks flying over while I was in my tree stand deer hunting.

The freeze we got week of Thanksgiving we typically get the last week of Oct. Birds that fly on the calendar boogie, but there's always some around. it seemed from reports more guys shot specs this year in MN.

Shooting less birds at the end of the season is nothing new..... problem seemed to be the end of the season lasted for two extra weeks since we didn't get the early freeze.

Climate change, Hilary's got cankels, don't take my assault rfle, I ain't got time to bleed..... all in, 100% of the migration is out of our control.

I went into the season with expectations set exceptionally low on purpose, and it made for an outstanding year. I wanted to see how bad at duck hunting you had to be to only shoot 6 ducks a year. Turns out you have to be flocking terrible. I shot over 6 ducks ducks walking in to areas to pass shoot wearing tennis shoes and shorts (this was in October) in five mornings where I would leave by 7:30. Hunted the metro in general much harder than I have the past ten years, and it was much like I remember. Terrible days were easy to come by, but if you don't try to hard- use a small spread, only stay out for an hour or two- and set expectations low, like hope you can shoot A duck for dinner that night, you will be pleased with the hunting. And thanks to good shooting I even shot back to back to back limits a couple weeks ago. The ringbill migration up north wasn't as predicable for me as it had been the past 5 years, but still managed a few good hunts. Besides a couple days in the rice up north, this was by far the fewest geese I have seen since I started paying attention. It was so few, that even I noticed how few it was.

So overall, even with the warm temps, the season didn't go bad, I learned I am not dependent on weather to shoot ducks. The splits still blow donkey balls. A teal season sure would have made things better.

Had some really good hunts. Had a few blanks. Had some mediocre hunts. Welcome to duck hunting.

My only gripe is still and always has been early goose seasons over water...........

Michigan.... loaded with Redheads.

Big water, late/shallow freezes, and accessible food sources.... birds no need to move all that far. For everything AR says MO short-stops them, there are bigger reasons they no see the ducks: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1050858474934348.1073741895.567782319908635&type=3

When the boys in Arkansas start talking about redheads, it ain't ducks they are talking about. Dem boys only see green [WINKING FACE]