The Honkers of Rochester

Well after my last outing at the river I saw more honkers than ducks so I did the most reasonable thing……hunt the honkers at silver lake. There are good numbers of birds around and just about every piece of water is holding birds. I’ve been huntin’ in every direction of town and have been gettign birds on every outing so far this year. The one thing I have seen more of is DUCKS, that’s right DUCKS! Whenever we hunt corn we bring a spinner with us and we have been gettin’ a few greens here and there. So now I figure that the crowds, late boat arrivals early/late shooting and people camped right ontop of eachother without shooting anything may not bother me anymore this year because of the success of the hunting around Roch. As far as the migration really goes, I don’t think we’ve even seen a quarter of what is really going to come down south yet. Last year was pretty much the same atmosphere, some cold early with a slight migration and then the season closes and out there in the goose blinds in the late season watching wave upon wave of mallards flock to the corn and bean fields in DECEMBER. When I was up to ND this fall I was talking to a buddy who is a res. and they’re best mallard shoot was on the last week of the season, which runs into Dec. What that tells me is that for years we have been getting the short end of the stick as far as ducks go. This state needs two things—a split season and a north zone and a south zone. Wisconsin does it and so does IOWA, because as far as waterfowling goes, this blows!!

Another puzzling thing hit me the other day Silver Lake had ICE on it, what’s the deal with that???

Good luck to all on the last week of a bleak season

LARS

the GREEN one is the BEST one!!!

I was back in town last weekend and we hunted northeast of town saturday afternoon and sunday morning with very little action . We saw two flocks saturday around closing, neither of which gave us even the slightest look……and never saw a goose on sunday morning. Not sure if they just aren’t making it out of town very far yet or they have been flying the other direction. Haven’t been up there to scout so we were kinda stuck with the land we knew we could hunt .

I was back in town last weekend and we hunted northeast of town saturday afternoon and sunday morning with very little action . We saw two flocks saturday around closing, neither of which gave us even the slightest look……and never saw a goose on sunday morning. Not sure if they just aren’t making it out of town very far yet or they have been flying the other direction. Haven’t been up there to scout so we were kinda stuck with the land we knew we could hunt .

Lars,
you hit that one square on the head

Even this newbie knows that current weather patterns are screwing us on the late flight. I also hunt ND, and heard the exact same thing about the late season shoot.

This idea of shooting early brown birds in 70 degree weather is ‘for the birds’. LOL. I wish that the DNR and other resource entities could react quicker to changes we see in the environment. For example, how bad does the Cormorant population have to get before they put some type of limited season out on them? Killing to kill is one thing, but those nasty SOBS are causing some serious ecological problems all over the upper Midwest.

Lars,
you hit that one square on the head

Even this newbie knows that current weather patterns are screwing us on the late flight. I also hunt ND, and heard the exact same thing about the late season shoot.

This idea of shooting early brown birds in 70 degree weather is ‘for the birds’. LOL. I wish that the DNR and other resource entities could react quicker to changes we see in the environment. For example, how bad does the Cormorant population have to get before they put some type of limited season out on them? Killing to kill is one thing, but those nasty SOBS are causing some serious ecological problems all over the upper Midwest.

Lars & Nubbin’:

I was out on one of the largest bodies of water (Turtle Flambeau Flowage) in northern WI tonight and while I saw numbers of divers and small numbers of puddlers, I never had a duck flying in the backwaters of this lake. I talked with a friend of mine who told me that some were having limited success on divers, but not really any kind of push from the Mallies.

In ND our host told us that farmers in Canada were having problems getting food out of the fields and it would take some serious weather to get those birds to fly this year. I got to believe that Lars is right on with us not having seen on 1/4 of the birds. Well, it is supposed to get cold early next week and that should start to freeze the smaller bodies of water here and hopefully the larger bodies in Canada. Hope we get to see some kind of flight yet this season, even if it is only for a couple of days.

Mark

Lars & Nubbin’:

I was out on one of the largest bodies of water (Turtle Flambeau Flowage) in northern WI tonight and while I saw numbers of divers and small numbers of puddlers, I never had a duck flying in the backwaters of this lake. I talked with a friend of mine who told me that some were having limited success on divers, but not really any kind of push from the Mallies.

In ND our host told us that farmers in Canada were having problems getting food out of the fields and it would take some serious weather to get those birds to fly this year. I got to believe that Lars is right on with us not having seen on 1/4 of the birds. Well, it is supposed to get cold early next week and that should start to freeze the smaller bodies of water here and hopefully the larger bodies in Canada. Hope we get to see some kind of flight yet this season, even if it is only for a couple of days.

Mark