Anybody Heading South?

Should only be a couple weeks and they’ll be bangin em in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. Anybody headed South to chase the white geese?

Been going to MO since ’03 not gonna stop that streak this year!

If I were to plan a trip that 1st week of March, where would I want to be? If anyone’s headed down that way and needs someone to ride……shotgun and lend some gas money, let me know.

Eric

Missouri or Southern Nebraska…..Should be at or around peak by then.

Lars, do you guys usually do good down there? For some reason I get the feeling MO tends to be tougher than the dakotas. Could be because of pressure, or just lack of accessible land? I’ve never been, so I don’t really know.

Jake—We do as good as the flight is, what I mean is obviously if we hit the flight we do good like anywhere else. On average I would say that yes, we do pretty good down there. As far as land goes, my buddy went down there with his old man years ago and got in with a landowner and he actually does some scouting for us now, which is nice. But we usually hunt the saem field year in and year out. There’s a 30 acre roost pond they use every year and we hunt to the north of it about a mile. Its nice because they bring the birds down and if they want to eat they come over to us and if they want water they sit with the live birds and come out to feed at night.

It is a longer drive than SD, but about the same as ND. As far as the pressure goes, the only thing I will say is we hunt NOWHERE near Squwa Creek, so the birds are actually prtty soft and landowners don’t mind that much about hunting or driving on the fields. Also, there isn’t a spread in every field, I had some buddys hunt in the Squwa area last year and they said it was a gong show, people everywhere, trucks driving everywhere, they could hear shooting everywhere, etc, etc.. But when they were at the hotel comparing numbers with some other hunters, they actually did better than everyone else and even had a guide give them some clients, which was weird to me, I think he was a little shady.

If you want a great juvie hunt, the word around there is after the guides leave wait 2 weeks and then go down there and hunt, I’ve heard from people who have been down there that they average 100 bird days.

Squaw creek in the spring is waaaay down the list on places I would ever want to hunt. I can’t imagine hunting snows with that many other spreads around. Talk about frustrating. We’ll go a whole spring (15-20 days) in South Dakota and only see a couple other decoy sets.

I also like the availability of fields out there. Never have we hunted a field that we’ve hunted in previous years.

Sure would like to get a month jump on them though! February is gonna drag

Will be in SW Iowa the 2nd and 3rd week of March. That should be about right. Got alot of snow and Ice in Iowa this winter though so it might be a little longer. Going to try to hit them up also in southern Illinois.

Birds starting to push North already……

Giggidy Giggidy

My neighbor just called. The ponds around our house are full of snows this morning. I’m so ticked I’m sitting in the office.

suppose to get up to 6 inches of snow in SW iowa and Northern MO don’t get to excited they will head back south!!!!

I’ll be moving into SW Iowa the last week of Feb. for the season. Looks like this year will be free of mud and flooding so far. It’s getting close, but I think winter will make some noise, before the fun begins. Anyone else in that area?

We are heading down to Missouri second week of march….cant wait.

My buddy went down to MO last weekend and they shot 2 had 4 volleys. Not very many birds around, no migration, and they had 60 degree temps and south winds. Arkansas is the place to be right now.

Got a first hand report from a contact in SD last night. Yesterday (Tues Feb. 24) was the first sighting of multiple flocks crossing over I-90. Although it was only a couple small groups, and far between them.

It’s warm again today…I would expect huntable numbers in extreme Southern SD by this weekend, baring snow totals for tomorrow. Should only be days after that (mid next week) before it’s really ON!!!

I’m offically done trying to hunt those first arrivals stemming from a bad experience from last year, HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of birds around us and we only shot 5.

I’m heading down to Mizz. on Wed and hopefully some juvies will have piled in.

yikes, that sounds rough Lars!

Birds in MO and NE are gonna push hard now that the weather has turned favorable. SD will have very huntable numbers by this weekend.

As ready and rarin as we are, we’re going to patiently hold off until the 14th to head out for the first time….trying to avoid exactly what you described.