ND Duck Hunt

Its been a couple years since I hunted in North Dakota and even longer since I last duck hunted. The last couple years I went on the trip I would drop my buddies off at a slough and then head to some adjacent land to pheasant hunt. With the pheasant numbers down in the area we hunt, I decided to throw my hat back into the waterfowl ring.

We hunted the SE corner of the state near Forman, Milnor, Rutland, Lidgerwood, and areas inbetween. The weather was great, except we were there for ducks and the 60 degree temps and sunny days made the window of activity very small.

Some hunts were better than others, but the highlight of the trip for me was getting a few flocks of 30-50 mallards to drop right into our decoys. One time I was out adjusting our land decoy spread when the “tornado” began. I crouched down and watched as birds landed within 10 feet of me and others went whizzing by my head. These usually weary birds wanted into our decoys bad!

Last weekend we went back to ND in search of big flocks of migrating birds. We found them, but for the first day and a half we just couldn’t get anything to commit. We hunted fields and water and never had the chance to squeeze the trigger. On Saturday afternoon we set up in a cut corn field between 3 lakes that were all holding birds. During that last hour of shooting time we had waves of 20-50 mallards dropping on top of us. The next morning we set up in the same area and had a repeat of the day before. Within an hour, we had our limit of mallards.

I will try to post some video once I figure out how to get it off of my GoPro camera.

WTG Fife!!!

Mark