Minnesota Waterfowl Hunting

The warm weather this year squashed a lot of my interest for it. It wasn't until late October before I started. I had a couple of great shoots, but nothing like previous years. The migration numbers just didn't seem to be there. A couple of my favorite late season spots were completely void of ducks.

Oh well, I have another month to try and harass some Honkers.

Your thoughts........

It was pretty darn poor. Even south Dakota was really slow. I may try a Canada trip next year as the mallards and darks don't seem to hit the Dakotas anymore until totally frozen our in canada. South Dakota didn't get the mallard push until 10 days ago. The miss river had the lowest ducks numbers I've seen in 10 years of hunting it.

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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.

Like chuck I also didn't start until late October due to the weather

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Bailey wrote:the mallards and darks don't seem to hit the Dakotas anymore until totally frozen our in canada.

The last two years had brutally mild Octobers. Good fronts will still shake loose some wimpy mallards early. Heck, Bemidji mallards bailed out on October 28th and there wasn't any ice. Too bad that front didn't come from the north. The Pas was at least 20 degrees warmer than MN

Minnesota was borderline awesome. South Dakota sucked, it was in the 50's every day I was there and the mallards had not showed up. North Dakota was really good but not great.

The mallards really just showed up in Minnesota 2 weeks ago in mass I think.

Worst ever for me simply due to lack of hunting that I did but I hardly saw birds flying the entire fall while working until about a week and a half ago. Normally there are flocks just about every night while combining corn.

Quack wrote:
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.

There's a kid that graduated about 6 years after me from my high school that started hunting this year. I saw on FB that he plans to mount 7 different ducks. He also busted two of the biggest and really only roosts around here and then posted on that FB page bragging about shooting 2 ducks. That page can be ok at times but usually rather annoying.

The whole fishing where I hunt thing is really annoying to me when they're hunting, most likely, in a well known/successful fishing spot/lake.

Little slower than last couple years in our fields. I didn't get out in Nov. like I would have liked. I'd say about average this year for me.

Saw 500 mallards coming off a small lake this morning right by my house as I left for work. Looking at the weather there will be ducks here for a while yet

Hansen wrote:Minnesota was borderline awesome. South Dakota sucked, it was in the 50's every day I was there and the mallards had not showed up. North Dakota was really good but not great.

The mallards really just showed up in Minnesota 2 weeks ago in mass I think.

I think you were in SD right after me. We had days over 60 degrees and shot grey ducks. No mallards around at all. If we had been after mallards the trip would of been a bust and no divers to speak of either. Mallards just showed up 11/20.

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