You’ve capitalized DUCK so I assume snows aren’t your priority.
With our climate change the way it is today, that time of the year should be ok from a freeze up standpoint about 60-70% of the time. Meaning I’d give your group a 30-40% chance of having smaller bodies of water frozen. So you need to make sure you have either a back up location or a location with big water nearby. 5 years ago I went at this time of year and everything was frozen over in the northern part of the state that I hunt. I had to move my group south by about 150 miles to find huntable #’s. Now the last four years I’ve been out there too early as the snows/northern ducks have not come through until mid November. I can send you an article written by the outdoor writer from the Minot paper on this subject. How the birds stay in Canada long into the fall as the weather does not push them out.
So here’s two recommendations for your first trip out there.
1) Hire a guide. The PLOTS maps are good but unless you stumble across a honey hole or put in 2-3 days of scouting, all you will shoot in PLOTS are shovelers and teal. All day long and it could be fun, but….a guide will put you on mallards and geese.
2) Split up your hunt. Its quite a chore to get up everyday for 7 straight days at 4:00 am to eat and set decoys. I’ve done it, people do it but……you could set it up to hunt ducks for 3-5 days up north and then spend the last 2-3 days down south chasing pheasants. I may be biased to the northern part of the state, but I think the better duck/goose hunting is there but the pheasant numbers decline the further north you go. Last year we did see a ton of sharptail grouse and partridge and more pheasants than I’ve ever seen.
Give me a pm if you’d like more detailed info. I hunt near Newburg along the J. Clark Salyer refuge and know of several places you can rent. I’ve also hunted south of there near McCluskey and east of there around Rugby.
Eric
