Youth Waterfowl Day Yea or Nay?

[bisonthunder]

Youth day is a great opportunity. I was able to participate with my dad growing up and hope this will be around when I start having kids. Great opportunity and IMO does not affect duck opener any more than people blasting geese off the sloughs during early season. Weather plays a way bigger role than a 1 day hunt by a couple of kids.

[honker23]

This has been more of an issue lately because our duck numbers have declined in MN, as have our hunters. So the ways of operating get a second look when things are down.

From my perspective in southern MN, we used to have 2 weeks of good hunting all year. The first weekend used to be great with teal/woodies/sporadic mallard here and there. Then it turned into a waiting game, watching the weather, hoping for a good 2-3 day front with strong NW-W winds sometime in late Oct to early NOV. If you were lucky to get in on one of the pushes late in the year BEFORE ice-up, you considered yourself lucky.

Lately the weather and water levels in the Dakotas have messed up #2 and opener has been poor over the last few years, so youth day and early goose gets more scrutiny because we can actually change those two. Let's hope the weather cooperates and helps us out this year!

[NR]

Tyler S hit two huge points in his last post. Everybody thinks "that kid is hooked" but obviously these kids are falling off the hook. "hooked" is a catch phrase that is getting way over used and it just isn't the reality.

He's also dead on about how youth are treated during the rest of the season. If you don't treat em right the whole season, they'll hang it up when they outgrow youth day.

That's my biggest observation. We're hitting these kids with a bait and switch. We're selling them on the big hoorah and then they find out that duck hunting is a lot of work once they hafta start pulling their own weight AND there's a lot of sittin around lookin at empty skies. Obviously, due to the quitting rate, duck hunters of all ages want more stimulation than MN duck hunting provides. Some of us are stubborn and will stick it out waiting for those couple great days per year. Some of us are happy to just be out there. The majority "have better things to do" whether we agree with it or not.

[brittman]

Maybe YWD actually mitigates what would be an even steeper loss of waterfowl hunters in Minnesota. In other words, YWD may help attract and retain hunters and without it participation rates for MN waterfowl hunters would be even lower.

Even if some of these kids only hunt once, maybe they had a good time and now appreciate hunters ... as they reach voting age they support conservation efforts, hunting legislation, etc.. rather than oppose it out of ignorance.

[dillrodd]

jp Instead of calling it quits in Mn why don't you come to SE Douglas county to hunt? So many people on here are so sure that that the youth day scares all the birds out I laugh. I drove past at least no less than 12 WPAS on sat morning and I saw not 1 person out for the youth hunt. These are WPAS that 20 years ago were stuffed with ducks so I'm sure since nobody hunted them they should be just covered with ducks, come check it out. I bet you go out there and work your rear off and you wont come close to your limit. Tell me this if you go out on a saturday and get a limit of ducks, do you never go back there till next year? I'm sure you would not because according to you guys one day of hunting clears all the birds from the state. Alot of people have to hunt public lands and don't feel that safe taking thier kid there on his or her first hunt on the opener. So maybe you guys should quit whining and leave the kids alone

[BrdHunter01]

Youth day is a great opportunity. I was able to participate with my dad growing up and hope this will be around when I start having kids. Great opportunity and IMO does not affect duck opener any more than people blasting geese off the sloughs during early season. Weather plays a way bigger role than a 1 day hunt by a couple of kids.

+1 a BIG 1

[aland147]

I was "hooked" until youth waterfowl day and a combination of many other things ruined duck hunting in north central MN. Take your kid out hunting with you on opener, like my dad did when i was growing up!

[chillincarp870]

well i was out today for the first time this year after taking kids on the same body of water 2 weeks earlier and the ducks didn't seem to be scared away cause i filled out in about 2 hours. keep YWD

[RiverRunner]

Nothing wrong with Youth Waterfowl day. Its good to have kids out on low pressure hunts, without all the goofy stuff that happens opening day. It do think youth waterfowl day could be geared more towards non-hunting adults and their kids that wants to try hunting together. Get the parents and kids out with mentors. After the youth hunt these kids need people to keep taking them, without that there not very likely to get hooked.

For those of you that say it impacts your duck hunting in your area. I would take a look at goose hunting over water first.