How was the season?

I know the southern zone isn’t closed yet but I can’t make it again until it’s done. How’d Did everyone do? Good, bad or ugly? My best hunting was in Mn for sure. We did a ND trip that was not productive at all but the metro and western part of the state were excellent. This was probably my best year of hunting but I’ve only been chasing waterfowl for 5 years now.

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We had another great season in MN this year. I gotta start taking more pictures when I hunt…opener in western MN was not like years past, but we still did alright. I’ve got two more hunts coming this weekend that should produce some good results with divers. The last two years have been outstanding for me. The early season high water made hunting an incredible challenge, but we managed to find areas that produced very good numbers of Mallards. It was much more work than normal, but the work paid off very nicely.

One memorable hunt was in the flooded timber of the Mississippi backwaters. We had our 8 Mallards in the first 20 minutes of shooting!

I’ve got broken decoy lines, wonky trailer lights from ice at the landing, a bufflehead decoy with a blown off head, leaky seal on the motor, banged up and dirty boat and a pair of waders that need attention…I chalk all those issues up to a successful season of duck hunting. In my mind, if you aren’t breaking something, you aren’t working hard enough.

296 days until Duck Opener 2019…next weekend will be a cleanup and repair weekend…

Unfortunately this was our worst year every at our farm near Fergus Falls. Dad has kept records for the last 40 years. In 2000 we took 505 ducks at our farm for the season. That was our record high. Last year we hit rock bottom with 56 ducks coming to the table. This year we shot 15 ducks for the entire season. Hi water in the entire area made for another very poor rice crop and obviously more places for the ducks to spread out. I actually took a couple morning shoots off to bow hunt because the duck number were so poor. Not trying to be debbie downer, that’s just what we saw in our area. Glad some of you guys are doing well, gives me hope for next year.

I absolutely love breaking ice to shoot whistlers, never even tried this year and never shot at one whit.

This was my worst season as far as time spent in the blind. I hunted MN 3 days and ND for 5. ND was a bust for us. We got there 4 weeks after the first freeze/snow in Canada and a week before the big freeze at the beginning of November. My buddy who hunted almost everyday of the MN season had a great year. I’m usually super excited about the late season but got ripped off buying 5 dozen diver decoys off of FB and that kind of put me in a bad mood for the rest of the season.
DT

Started off with opener shooting a 3-man limit in SW MN. It was a weird slow start at sunrise, but then steadily built the next two hours. Sunday after opener is rarely as productive but we did shoot some birds.

Only got out one more time in north central MN. On a lake I recently scouted and bought a new jon boat (but didn’t have time to build a blind on it yet). Only shot one duck on that hunt, but saw quite a few ducks so that made it enjoyable.

Wish I had more time to try new areas. Would love to get access to some private stuff and/or hunt more of the Mississippi backwater areas like Merican Eagle does. But between having a young family and making time for a couple pheasant trips too that’s all I could do.

Looking forward to making a sweet blind for the jon boat this off season… have to find power for it too.

I mostly hunt central MN about an hour north of the metro and it was the best season I’ve had in the past 5 years. I think it was mostly because of the cooler weather combined with a lot of rain. I didn’t go a lot but the times I went were productive. I spent most of November deer hunting and pheasant hunting but I saw a ton of ducks/geese during that time period too.

We’ll be banging away on mallards right through the end of the low plains season here in eastern SD. few million snow geese still staging keeping holes open.
Not sure how the Missouri river will do for holding birds the next 5-6 weeks with the high water levels in many of the traditional areas.