North Dakota Report 10/10-13

[walleyeking19]

Sorry if this gets a little long, but it was an amazing trip and I don’t want to forget anything! Well this is my 2nd year going to North Dakota with my brother and a few friends, and this year was nothing short of incredible! It didn’t start the greatest, but ended with the best hunt of my life. So here we go:

My brother and I left Wednesday night after work, and met the other 3 guys when they passed through on their way up from Wisconsin/Iowa. We got to Fargo about midnight and after getting gas, we were headed to our final destination just north of Devils Lake. At about 1:30 am, and about 35 miles from Grand Forks, the other truck pulling a trailer blows a tire on the trailer; thankfully it was a double axel because there was thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff in there. Without a spare, we were in quite a predicament, because no one is open at that time and we couldn’t see any sign of civilization on the horizon. We were able to limp into Grand Forks and find a 24 hour tire repair service to fix it, and $97 later we were back on our way.

We got into town about 4:30 and slept till sunrise in the truck and went out scouting. After scouting for about 3 or 4 hours, my brother and I jumped a pond and shot a duck a piece, just to cure the itch after seeing so many ducks.

We met the other group for lunch and to discuss the plan for the evening hunt. After dropping all our stuff at the farmhouse we were staying at, we hooked up the trailer and headed out to a wheat field that had thousands of ducks fly over going from their loafing ponds to feed. After getting set up, and the ducks not finishing how we wanted, we moved all our decoys and blinds and set up; but now it was about 5 so we only had about 2 hours left to hunt. Thankfully we had ducks buzzing our heads in minutes and they didn’t stop circling and landing in our spread until we had our limit of mallards and a bonus pintail with 15 minutes to spare of shooting light! As soon as the last bird fell, we took a few pics and cleaned up and left so we didn’t spook every duck flying over. We instantly decided to call this field the Traffic Jam, because we had been working traffic birds into our spread, and planned on coming back to it.

The next morning, we tried another field and got 10 mallards, and even that felt like a slow day out there. After doing some scouting we headed out Traffic Jam again and only got 4 ducks. It didn’t help that our shooting was awful and we had 2 big storms blow through with some nasty winds that really limited the ducks in the air.

After striking out there, we decided to hunt water the next day and our results weren’t that much better than the day before. My brother found a pond and shot some mallards and teal, while the other guys went to a flooded field they hunted last year; those guys shot their limit; I think it was 6 different species of ducks in their bag, so it was a good morning for them. That afternoon, 3 more guys came up from Wisconsin and joined us, my brother and I went to the same pond that afternoon and finished off our limit with mallards and pintails while the new guys shot a few ducks themselves. It all worked out well because the 3 guys who limited out that morning went scouting and found a wheat field with 1500 ducks feeding in it, so we knew where we were going to hunt the next morning.

We got out to that field they found at 3 am since it was gone take a while to dig everyone in and put out all the decoys out and we timed it perfectly. About 20 minutes before shooting light we climbed into our blinds and had ducks landing in our decoys before shooting time. We turned on the mojos at 7:20 and the rest is history! Ducks were piling in and circling and landing all around us; we even had one guy get [PoorWordUsage] on and another duck landed on the feet of one of the blinds! Exactly 1 hour into the hunt we had 47 ducks on the ground, a mix of mallard and pintails. Action slowed way down after that but we finished our limit mallards by 10 am. The last hour or two, we only shot drake mallards so we got very picky. We shot 54 ducks that morning, 16 pintails and 38 mallards, and ended up with 132 total from Thursday night till Sunday morning! It probably helped that 2 of the guys with us have won the Wisconsin State Duck Calling Championship before!

No geese this year which was weird, but we didn’t see too many anyways. We did shoot a big variety of ducks including mallards, pintails, widgeon, bufflehead, bluebill, shovelers, gadwall and blue and green wing teal. All in all, it was an amazing trip and I cant wait for next year to get back up there!

[fishersofmen]

Sounds like a blast! Thanks for the story....

[Stringerless!]

Nice work !

[Finlander]

Awesome story! Wish I was there!

[Sifty]

Wow we leave on Friday my days have seem to be 48 hours instead of 24 that story is just going to make the days seem longer.

[NAMASafetyDirector]

We were out there about the same time with about opposite results however I could see the potential for that happening with the amount of ducks we saw!! Great job, I am officially jealous as heck as we spent 3 days hunting north of D.L. and really had a tough time getting the birds to decoy in. The more reports I hear from that week the more I think the guides we were with really didn't have thier S%$&IT together. Definitly learned from our mistake on that one. Congrats!!

[Gordie]

Wow we leave on Friday my days have seem to be 48 hours instead of 24 that story is just going to make the days seem longer.

I leave in 6 hours and I heard from a little birdie that the divers are filling the lakes up.

All I can say is with the government shut down and the default looming the only thing I'm worried about is what ducks will be shot down.