All you northern boys, fess up

[Farley]

Are any of you guys up north seeing any big rafts of ducks around. Just wondering if you guys are seeing birds flock up yet. There is nothing around my area, and am waiting for that first push of northern birds. I have my fingers crossed with this cold front comming, I am planning on being out all weekend but dont have high expectations. They might be a little late for the weekend hunt, maybee I'll have to call in "sick" sometime next week.

[snowgoose]

Farley
I'm crossing the border this weekend into Manitoba. I'll try to scare them your way.
Seriously, I hope 1/10th of the Mallards I have seen in Manitoba and Sask come this way this late fall. I have never seen so many ducks up there.
It is unheard of to hunt ducks in the middle of the day like we did. We hunted pea fields from noon to 2 a couple of times. Filled out on Mallards both times.

[Farley]

Nice! I've heard of the hunting up there but havent had the privlige of actually going. From what I've seen on videos and shows it can nothing but birds. Good luck.

[Guest]

I hunt an hour northwest of Bemidji.

The weekend of the 2nd and 3rd only local ducks. Mostly gadwall, teal, mallards, widgeon and ringnecks.

I was a little surprised when we shot a couple of bluebills too.

Heading up again this weekend after catching nothing but frustration and heartache pulling cranks on mille acs saturday night.

I can give an update next week.

[TrashDux*]

They're moving now! This is the time divers will start to move, and other early migrants...regardless of species and weather.

We saw piles of Cans this weekend, found a pond Saturday night that had 8000 plus ducks iin it, moslty ringneck's but there were lots of others.

Plenty of other ducks around yet...just too muuch water and they are in the sheetwater yet. It's still pretty easy to shoot limits...you just got to be adaptable, and ready to work.

[Farley]

TrashDux- are you in the northern part of the state?

[duckbill]

TrashDux,

Telling me about 8000 ringers sitting on a pond heading our way is not something I want to hear on Monday when I have to work until Friday. It will motivate me to get everything done during the week so I can spend the whole weekend hunting. Very good news!
Duckbill

[stayman79]

Second hand information: Guy told me that the DNR count for the Leech area is over 100,000 diver ducks. He was also fishing on Winnie and they kicked up a "cloud" of several thousand divers. Those ducks are basking in the sun now, but wait for this weather to push them down.
Kind of makes me wish I wasn't committed to pheasant hunt this weekend, but I love that too.

[Roosterslayer05]

Snowgoose- I have had plenty of hunts like that in MN, one day last year we hunted from 11-2 and shot our limit of mallerds, got a bonus ringer, and shot our limit of geese. Then the rest of the day we had to wait for other ducks to come into our spread and the only thing we could decoy was flock after flock after flock of mallerds! It was fun watching them though, should have easily limited out all together but I was a horrible shot on those tiny green wing teal buzzing the spread.

[TrashDux*]

This was all 140 to 170 miles west of the twin cities.
As typical with nice weather...the birds WILL migrate...but seem to migrate longer and faster. The bad thing is it is in smaller concentrations.
When the weather is really snotty...they'll move in larger groups, and often not be able to outrun bad weather...and be forced to sit.

THAT'S when hunting the ol' trashducks gets going strong.

Me...I like nice weather...I kill more ducks when it's 60 degrees and sunny. Just wish we had a drought going!