Your Thoughts on 2015 Duck Season...

[Nershi]

There were a few on here complaining about the south zone split in the past year or two. Do you guys still feel the same way? There were a lot of birds to kill down there the last couple of weeks. I suppose if you don't field hunt it could have been tough.

The only draw back of my season was finding guys who were willing to hunt. Some of my friends have turned in to pussies and my brother has a new kid and lady which has really limited his time. It seemed like my old man and some of my buddies only want to come after I have located the birds and they felt it was worth their time. They got stung by that this year. There were a few days I shot my limit and the next day when everyone decided they wanted to hunt it was super slow. The birds didn't seem to hang around long this year but there was some nice pushes on most of the decent winds.

Other than that, I had a great season! I'm hoping to extend it with a trip to the Texas Gulf Coast in January.

[9manfan]

Diver hunting was good, Mallard hunting not so good, had a few great hunts but also had some where it sucked, about norm there I guess, the mild fall didn't help out the migration much at all, 2 years ago on slug opener was some of the best duck hunting we had, last year was just OK and this year sucked for the same weekend, just the way it goes I guess......

and as far as the split, I hate this split we have now, liked the first one we had a few years back, similar to the central split now, 5 days off, and with all the snow down here now I'm thinking most birds have pushed thru.......

[Hansen]

I was there the weekend after Halloween. That Saturday we drove from Clark to Webster to Henry and found 2 mediocre bunches of mallards. There were two other roost lakes that has some mallards but not what should have been. I'm not angry at the grey duck anymore they 95% of the time get a pass from me. We hardly even saw many divers where typically this area is covered up in them. One morning we even set up for honkers something I swore I would never do in SD that's how bad it was. The honkers flew out and landed in the field behind us and we shot 1 mallard. It was pitiful.

[Mallard_maniac]

I'll echo many other comments on here, only to add that it was simply "tough" this year. We had great hunts, good hunts and poor hunts. This was my 1st year in 3 years hanging an egg on a hunt. Our birds never really showed where im at and usually from halloween on I can expect it to be pretty fantastic. To summarize:

August honker: tougher than they have been in the past
Sept Honkers: late to the party but once they showed we had incredible hunts
October Mallards: really spotty, did well but had to be flexible with work schedule and get on them once you found em as they might not be here in a couple days
November Mallard: got into some good groups but overall, slower than the past.

The weird part was, even though it was a mild fall, I can remember milder and we did get some good cold weather during firearms deer season. Days I would have though would be banner, turned out to be a flop and days I didn't really expect to see much ended up being pretty good.

Lastly I'll 2nd Nershi's comment, if I lived in the zone with a long split, I'd be writing the DNR a letter of thanks this year....

[Bailey]

I was there the weekend after Halloween. That Saturday we drove from Clark to Webster to Henry and found 2 mediocre bunches of mallards. There were two other roost lakes that has some mallards but not what should have been. I'm not angry at the grey duck anymore they 95% of the time get a pass from me. We hardly even saw many divers where typically this area is covered up in them. One morning we even set up for honkers something I swore I would never do in SD that's how bad it was. The honkers flew out and landed in the field behind us and we shot 1 mallard. It was pitiful.

Yeah it was void of divers. Buddy had great mallard hunting last week until Tuesday until the snow pushed them all out.

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[Bullet21XD]

Amazing...and there's more ducks now than ever before!

[gimpfinger]

The split can lick my balls. There was more birds around when closed than in the extended late season.





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[ducksmuggler]

Hunting is pretty tough when you don't have decent cold fronts to motivate the ducks.

First year observing the "mn waterfowlers" group on bookface and wow... Never seen so many people jacked up about "first" duck species killed, mounting everything, and hunting on good fishing spots.

No kidding maybe that's why I got banned from it!!!! at least my feed is not full of CRAP anymore or 8 minority's bragging about shooting 4 ducks

[h2ofwlr]

I'm with Gimp on the south zone split as it is set up now. (where is the barf smiley when you need it?). The DNR needs to resubmit a new framework to the USFWS so that they can do multiple splits within a zone. (right now only 1 split per zone is allowed in MN by the USFWS ). But they really need to to make the S zone into a SE zone as the shallow water lakes in the SW 1/3 freeze just as soon as the deeper central zone waters do.
And to be clear on why we need more splits is this, it gives more opportunities on weekends which the majority of the hunters do their hunting. for example using this years calendar: for the south zone, after the 1st 9 days, close it for 5 days, reopen for 2 days (Sat-Sun), close it for 3(M-W) reopen it on MEA Thursday. , Close it the Sun after Thanksgiving, reopen it the following Sat-Sun. Reopen next Sat for 1 day as that would have been the 60th day this year. That is 4 splits. It gives more days afield in early AND late season. I don't mind giving up 3 early days for 3 Dec hunting days. For the late season guys, wouldn't it be nice to hunt yesterday and today and again next Sat? And yet the early season guys get to hunt the 3rd weekend of the season? Well if I was the waterfowl Czar, that's what I'd propose.

Back to the topic: If you hunted the front weather days it was a decent year again as usual. If anything the bagging of Honkers has been off again this year.


What I find interesting is reading above a few guys did not even start hunting until late Oct. because it was so warm out and yet a few guys on other topics are whining about no early teal season for the 1st part of Sept. when it can be quite hot. Oh well.

And for those looking for something to do until the good ice comes for ice fishing, try fishing the creeks and rivers for walleyes. A friend of mine hammered them yesterday.

[reno's ronin]

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.