Waterfowl Reports

[H0LE HOPPER]

Hunted around Bemidji area over the weekend for a day shot 26 ducks for 5 people all of them being divers. Shot mostly goldeneyes and buffleheads. Bluebills were there but not in big numbers yet biggest flock was prolly 150. Maybe next two weeks it should be peak numbers.

[dan z]

Sat all day today seen ring bills migrating. A flock of pintails. And some other big ducks V'd up. I ended up shooting my 3 geese and a healthy greenhead.

[BrdHunter01]

Saturday - Monday

Saturday was ok, enough birds to keep us interested. Four of us ended up with a mixed bag of mallards, cans, pintails, widgeon.

Sunday we never fired our guns. Saw some ducks but had a bad setup and the rain pushed us out by 9am

Monday the cans were gone, lots of divers. Ended with 5 including 2 buffleheads and a blackduck which were the highlight of the weekend!

[BoxMN]

Got back from Thursday to Monday NoDak trip yesterday. Had a great time, but not as good of hunting as we would have liked. Just not as many birds around (NE ND). Still shot 60+ birds, but average to the number of hunters, and we each had fun and shot some, but no limits... which is fine.

Had great time with our farmer friends, the kids had fun running around in the farmer Gators, and we had a nice mixed bag of mallards, redheads, still lots of BWT and some GWT (two nicely colored drakes), ringbill, ever present gadwall, a couple pintail, a single goose, and we also weren't afraid to say hi to a few spoonbill

Just really there were not that many birds in our area. Missed out on one good field when my buddy didn't get there early enough. Oh well. Pretty wet out there, and the old half ton Silverado had to pull out another new SuperDuty 1 ton, haha!

Good trip, good fun, fun hunts, no so many birds... sums it up Thank you once again North Dakota folks! (Fatheads in Lankin made it hard to get up a couple mornings for some of our guys, haha!)

[onthefly]

Box... How far north? Was thinking about Langdon area Nov 1-6, but concerned about freeze up. Anything frozen up that way?

[BoxMN]

onthefly, yep, that general area, about 25 miles south of the border. I was going to go back up that same weekend, but not sure now. Friends are going to give me the heads up if something starts coming through. He said it was supposed to get a bit warmer for a week or so, and then who knows. Once that area freezes up, birds can go through in a day without stopping. But if it doesn't I bet that time could be great, there is lots of feed out there for them!

The edges and small sloughs were frozen Monday morning, but we just broke through fairly easy, and the dog could break getting birds. But a calm night of 13 lows could be an issue. Good luck if you go!

[onthefly]

Thanks, Box. We hunted it for nonresident opener and found really good numbers of ducks and geese. But, there isn't any really big water to stay open when the weather turns cold. We figured the migrants would just keep moving.

Oh well - I'm sure Devil's Lake won't freeze up too early! So, that's plan B.

[Stringerless!]

Northern Washington County in afternoon yesterday. Field that had 150 geese in it on Sunday. Set up at 3pm, Never saw or heard a single goose the whole time. Heard one single shot in the distance. No high flying migrators seen. One small flock of about 12 ducks spotted far away.

[Gordie]

Box we had the same results out on Devils lake last week Fun times, got birds but not the bird numbers on the big water. We shot more birds in the potholes than the big water.

Wed decided to fish Saturday after noon and did really well on perch eyes and crappie.

So it was a good cast and blast week.

[BoxMN]

Gordie - Ha - my farmer buddy just texted me and told me we left too early, that new and lots of birds have been moving in the past two days. I hear it all the time, fishing and hunting - "shoulda been here last week"

[bmc]

I've been out scouting (by vehicle) the last 3 days here in western Itasca County.

One word will sum my report up.........DISMAL!!!

I haven't seen more than a handful of ducks and even less geese in the last 3 days. Not sure what the heck happened.......hard to imagine this colder weather has chased them out.

Hoping for some birds to show up this weekend as I start a stretch of 6 days off.

Brian

[Gordie]

Just watched over 500 geese go over the house looked like they were headed to the Sand Dunes refuge.

[Stringerless!]

Carlos Avery this morning. Kicked about 100 geese and 300 ducks out on our way in. Had a few teal in the dekes and woodies buzzing us about ten minutes before legal. Never picked up the gun. Saw one guy drop a duck way in the weeds with no hope of recovery. Only duck we saw. Not many shots heard at all. No high flying migrators seen either. Discouraging.

[icecold]

minnesota river valley fort ridgly area , very poor, saw 15 ducks total, hunting a very good slough no ducks, really discouraging.

[tracker x-2]

Scott Co.

Very few ducks around there are some geese flying though

[Stringerless!]

Greenhead this morning. Saw about 8 woodies and a hoodie drake. Another pair of mallards flared as I lunged for my gun like a fool. Most seen just flying over lake, not working us at all. NO geese seen or heard. Big water. Well, big for Chisago county. Another morning of sitting in the boat wondering what in the world is going on ? Where are the birds now ? Stayed out till ten and bet we did not hear 20 distant shots all morning.

[icecold]

worse than yesterday saw 2 teal .got 1 and no mallards to be seen or wooducks here in brown county along minnesota river

[Smuts]

10/27/13 Hutchinson Area

Cold front Friday moved a new wave of divers through. Five guys bagged twenty-four ducks and two geese on Saturday, including a limit of both cans and redheads. Two guys on Sunday bagged eight ducks of five species, all divers but one. Mallards and geese are still in low numbers in central MN, with mostly educated resident birds. It appeared that many of the divers that came down Friday and Saturday kept moving through--had to be there at the right time to get them. Still waiting for cold and snow in Canada to move down mallards, bluebills, goldeneyes, and big geese.

[dan z]

Nice hall of white bellies

[Skjefte]

Went to SE North Dakota this weekend and have never seen so many birds flying in my life! Now getting them to decoy was another thing. Due to there being no cloud cover all weekend all the mallards were extremely high and on a straight path south. We did however do pretty well during the evening. We actually had a few hundred come all the way down and tornado in on us! In all we got our 4 man limit everyday consisting of mostly greenheads. We had to work for them though a lot of hours in the blind.

[Proskier2038]

North central nodak was slowwwww last week- everything pushed south and nothing came in from the north- snows were in though- what was around was very decoy/call shy

[CANOPY SAM]

What Skjefte says, that right there tells you an awful lot about what route the birds are now taking south.

We've got a fair number of big geese up here in the NW region, but not huge numbers by any means. A few flights of ducks buzzing around, but again, nothing to get very excited about.

Spent Friday and Saturday on the east end of Lake of the Woods. Fair numbers of divers around, but surprisingly few geese.

On a promising note, the long range forecast calls for colder then average temps, and above normal precipitation, so at least we should see some of the push get moving our way a little earlier this year. Maybe?

[Stringerless!]

Field tonight. Never saw a bird in the sky till I started wrapping it up. 6:07 first pair of geese. Gun already unloaded and car in the dekes. Couple minutes later there were flocks of geese everywhere. Why would geese that were pouring into field at 4 pm a week ago suddenly start coming after legal ?

[Finlander]

Taking lessons from deer!

[CANOPY SAM]

Nice mild weather....at least to a goose.