Your Thoughts on 2015 Duck Season...

[Bailey]

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.

As long as landwehr is in charge we will never see a teal season. Gotta save those teal for the southern boys.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[Mallard_maniac]

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

Have others seen the same thing?

Yes and no, its all hindsight.... Prior to the august season, we saw the same thing in my area when the september season hit, now it just happens a month earlier.

I can remember all the septembers of hard scouting the summer prior only to lose my birds 1 week before season too, knowing for a FACT that birds banded in my area that year were being killed in ND from the end of summer molts taking off to the north. We shot a bird in ND (prior to MN having an august season) over the august opener that had been banded by our local wildlife manager that summer (about a month prior).

I hunt, and will continue to hunt this season as a way to extend my fall, end a otherwise uneventful summer and kickoff hunting season. It's generally feast or famine, not incredibly successful and not for everyone. It's a great way to get the dust out of the barrel though, have some fun with buddies, and sometimes get into some phenomenal shoots. The older I get, the more opportunistic I get with hunting, and going as often as possible be it big game out west, whitetails in MN or waterfowl all over. I used to wait for the "big migration" but was severly dissapointed about as often as I found incredible success. At the end of the day, you're at the mercy of a wild animal to show up for the party and if you wait until conditions become perfect, you might not make it out at all. Every hunting season is one you'll never get back, make the most of it.