Heading to Dawson ND on Wednesday for 3 days of hunting. I’m going with 4 guys and all of us have no experience hunting this area. We are going to stick to Zone 1. Does anyone have any info as in Lakes to check out, areas to stay away from? I would be fine hunting bigger water and divers all 3 days, but we will also be bringing a small amount of field decoys. Any advise would be helpful thanks IDO brotherhood.
Hunted by Crystal springs Medina area on the 1st-5th. We did well and shot plenty of ducks and geese. Best tip I can give is if hunting public ground scout as much as possible on the ND game and fish website. If you are willing to walk a mile or more you will shot lots of birds the easy spots get beat up fast. As for areas to stay away from. Any Waterfowl production areas with cows in them. They have BULLS!!! My group will never make this mistake twice. If you plan on hunting this area shoot me a P.M. I will give you a few spot to check out.
Biggest mistake guys from out of state make when coming to ND is that they hunt water. Sure you can bang up some birds over water but your truly great ND hunts will come in the field over field decoys.
ND has so many birds guys just pull up on water and hunt, and frankly you do better than you would in most MN/WI areas. So you think you’ve arrived and this is all you need to do.
Couple pointers. 1) Scout for the fields the birds are using to feed. 2) Get permission or stake out those fields that are not posted. 3) Have a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C in case someone else shows up in that field. Plan D you can go back to the water.
ND field hunts offer the opportunity to see hundreds if not thousands of birds piling into your spread all at once. ND water will be ok, but take the time to scout the fields. Follow big flocks off the water and find their feeding grounds!!
Eric
Cougareye summed it up perfectly. 
Biggest challenge with field hunting is the time it takes to scout and find land owners. Even if it’s not posted, make a good attempt to find the land owner. They might have better property somewhere else and it goes a long, long ways for building a relationship and trust. Just cause it’s posted doesn’t mean it is out of the question. If there’s a phone number, call them. Get the oldest guy in the group to call. This is where an old guy comes in super handy. To hunt a field it usually takes a day to find a field and watch it to see where birds want to be. Be where birds want to be and conceal everything you can if that’s an option.
There’s a lot of water out there and water hunting isn’t a slam dunk for big numbers. Flight paths are ubber important, as well as where birds want to be and are using regularly. Roost busting is frowned on. If it’s a roost don’t hunt it early or late if at all possible. You can kill diveres all day long out there.
Good luck with it and let us know how it goes.
When you guys field hunt, how many decoys are you using? That’s my main problem with field hunting, is that I get the impression that it takes so many expensive decoys.
Everyone thanks for your advice. I’m with blank on this one. I always feel like I don’t have enough or the right field decoys. This trip all we could pull together are 2 dozen full body geese, 2 dozen goose shells, I guess we could use my 2 dozen goose floaters in the field. We have no field duck decoy, but I do have a dozen stands I can put floater mallards on, and maybe 2 more dozen floater mallards just to lay in the field. 2 mojo’s as well. Not sure that set up would be very productive. In a North Dakota field.
Actually, that sounds like it may work from a recent report I had heard from a local out there. He said he had a very small spread and had ducks coming in no problem, with the mojos being the key. But then again, he’s a local. Also, I heard a guide recently say that he felt that goose decoys are more important/helpful than duck decoys, for either geese or ducks.
Good question on spread size and it does vary by what you are hunting. My first answer would be this, if you are hunting the same field the birds were using last night a small spread is fine. They are already coming into that field. Ducks and dark geese, small spreads no problem.
Snow geese you do need numbers – 100 or more decoys but many of them can be rags/silhouettes. I put out about 500 pieces with 350 of them being plastic windsock decoys. Place silhouettes and shells around the edges.
If you are hunting just off their feeding ground or in the flight line or worse, a bigger spread is needed to get their attention.
Last piece of info, I know firsthand how hard it is to get out there and scout vs. getting those first shots off. But the scouting will pay off big time. Plan that first day to do both. Get the rust off with some shooting then hold yourself to scouting that first afternoon. Don’t hunt that first afternoon, it will pay off big the rest of the time. After that scouting becomes easy as you should be in the right vicinity to scout each day.
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