2018 Waterfowl reports

Use this thread to post anything from Waterfowl migration updates to current hunts. Pics are always a bonus.
DT

I’ve been hunting early goose the last 2 weeks and doing good. I got access to a private water tomorrow morning so I’m hoping for the best. Ive seen so so many ducks I’m excited. Chisago mn area

Was out on water in North Hudson Tuesday morning. Lots of ducks on water at first light. Saw about 4 geese too.

Limited on geese this morning. 2 guys could have shot many more

Had the kids out wild ricing this past week… About to start the youth season and opener in the north. Brought the rice in to dry had lunch and sent the kids out on a paddle. They probably kicked up about 40 woodies… its always great to see that many in the early year…

Mark

As expected it wasn’t gang busters for us. Saturday morning I got 2 geese, 3 woodies and 1 teal. Not a lot of birds around, but I shot really good to get my birds. Nelli got a good workout finding them in the cattails. Sunday was even slower with only one woodie and one teal for me. The other 2 parties got zero on Saturday and 1 on Sunday.

Had a strong opener. All 4 limited out on Saturday with including a perfect limit of mallards! Sunday sucked.

First year in a long time we didn’t shoot our limits within and hour or two out in west-central MN. However, we shot quite the variety of ducks. Generally we shoot mostly teal, this year was about 40% teal and the rest misc puddlers compiled of Mallards, Shovelers, Pintails and a gadwall. All-in-all, the shift produced about the same amount of meat for us. Couldn’t have asked for better weather. Saturday and Sunday were equally productive.

Someone just north of us decided that 6:05AM was a good time to start blasting…guessing they were done and packed up by sunrise…

My son and I hunted in the NE Metro and got the usual 1.5 birds (three woodies) more geese then ducks and they were very educated I’m sure from being shot at from early season..all in all a pretty normal opener..I would like to have stock in Federal Ammo though after all the shooting come out of Carlos Avery Saturday AM, must be up 10 pts this morning..Swear some people have machine gun shotguns. lol

I did pretty good on opener. My party of 3 got 10 ducks and coulda had 12 or 13 with some better shooting. We had a nice bag of woodies, mallards, teal, and even a shoveler. It was significantly better than the last 2 openers not only in terms of ducks seen, but also in terms of conditions. All the geese we saw had no interest in us, presumably because they had already been hunted in the early season.

Shot a 5 man limit near Fergus falls on Saturday by 8am. All teal with a mallard, pintail, gadwall. Sunday was slow as always. Hunted a WMA. Also did some fantastic smallmouth fishing. We had two triples.

I would like to have stock in Federal Ammo though after all the shooting come out of Carlos Avery Saturday AM, must be up 10 pts this morning..Swear some people have machine gun shotguns. lol[/quote]

I hunt a private pond near Carlos in chisago area. One of the sunrise pools. The amount of shooting I heard was crazy. So when we were done with our morning I drove by and there had to of been 40 trucks near the north pool. And 90 percent of them had tickets from dnr being there before 4am

So your saying it was a good fund raiser?! hahaha.

Very good morning hunting in this snow. My partner and I were limited out right after the snow started to fall

Lots of birds flying Saturday in south central MN. Lot of shooting and birds were consistently flying all day. As the day went on they did become harder to decoy.

We planned on going Sunday as well but the rain/sleet mix kept us home.

Buddy up west of St. could about 50 miles has gotten their limit for 2 guys both of the last 2 days by 9am. Mostly ringbills, but some puddle ducks too. Gadwalls moved in this morning. Could be a good weekend with the NW wind and the cold front moving in tomorrow night!!

With the Mississippi being so high, it’s tough to find an area with any sort of cover tall enough to hide a boat or shallow enough to stand in…

Got up to duck hunt for only the second time this season. Wind was blowing 30. Back to bed. Lol
DT

Up on Winnie this weekend. Son and I got our limits of divers and some mallards. Cold this morning with snow and plenty of wind. A lot of divers around this morning..

Buddy and I got our limits of woodies tonight hunting flooded timber off the river this evening

Just got back from North Dakota west of Jamestown. Put on hundreds of miles scouting to locate concentrations of birds. Then set up on public water for our hunts. In four morning hunts we bagged 85 ducks, 13 different species. Also attempted to do one evening field hunt, which was anticlimactic until we called a flock of about 500 snow geese. We had no snow goose decoys. We had some pour shooting and only got 5, but to have a flock that big decoy to 20 to yards was something I will never forget. Another high light of the trip was that I filled my swan tag for the first time trying. I made 2 floating decoys out of giant Canada shell decoys and had a pair come right in. One shot kill with 3 inch 2 shot. Another good trip to ND, and excited to go back in 10 days.

More pics…

Only letting me send one at a time…

Good report and congrats on the swan.

Good idea with the big shell decoys!

Nice work. I leave in a week. Can’t wait.
DT

Swans are so awesome we decoy them every year…amazing how big they actually are up close and how fast they actually move… what did yours weigh Jeff? I can’t wait until a few more show up on the pond I hope to get a group of guys together and make a pile

I would put my swan at 20 lbs. They are very cool and decoy quite well. We had numerous flocks and doubles come check out my 2 decoys.

With such high water on the Miss, it makes finding cover with good water a challenge, but we managed to make it work this weekend. By next weekend, we may be able to wade in the timber. Lots of Mallards starting to arrive in southern MN with quite a few large flocks of Buffies and Bluebills. Haven’t seen much for Cans yet, but I’ll be expecting them this weekend hopefully. Still saw a few small groups of woodies but the teal are almost non-existent.

This weekend we saw a very large push of Mallards in SEMN on Saturday, with less than 1/4 the birds on Sunday. Hoping for another push of Mallards before I make the switch to divers for the last few weeks of the season. Birds were incredibly call shy, possibly more than I’ve ever experienced. We stopped calling and they came down in droves. It’s incredible to see flocks of 50-75 mallards circling your decoys over water.

With the water quickly coming down on the Mississippi, cover is becoming even more of an issue. Reeds and slough cover are folded over from the high water, making it hard to find anything tall enough. Lots of water that was in the timber was only ankle deep, meaning it will be high and dry in just a day or so.

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Great report