ducks by the 100's

[walleyewizard]

Just wondering if anyone else saw all the ducks feeding just north of Coates yesterday? We were on our way home around 2:30p.m. on Hwy.52 and saw clouds of ducks in the sky. Since I was driving it was hard to tell what kind they were. My wife got nervous after I drove off the road a couple times watching them. I don't know if they will stay in the area, but if you live around Coates it may be worth a drive out there just to see.

[FOOT]

Walley, the ducks you saw were most likely the ones from the Cannon Falls area lakes. YES they are in the thousands, mostly Mallards. They have been a sight around CF for several years and they love to feed in the picked/plowed fields around Coates and CF.

I've thought many times I should try to get permission to hunt the fields in that area but was told by someone who should know, "the ducks don't come down until just after the end of the season, or mid-December".

Sure is a pretty sight.

I've seen the same thing, on a lesser scale, just east of Rochester about 7 years ago. The only difference was, there was 3 days left of the season and I was lucky enough to get permission to hunt one field and had SUPER shooting for 2 mornings.

[k9medic]

Wish they would have been here a moth and a half ago....not many mallards down at the river this year

[MattKeller]

Where is Coates? Must be in southern MN.

We were lucky enough to have that this fall here in northern MN. I never have saw so many mallards in 1 field even when out in the dakotas every spring. We guessed that there were maybe 10,000 mallards within a mile of us. We ended up hunting that field 6 times and each time was an unbelievable experience.

There's just nothing like those HUGE flocks of mallards all coming in at once. Kinda intimidating...

[Roosterslayer05]

Thats so fun when you have that many birds around. There were about 8,000 ducks around where i hunt the last weekend. 5 years ago I had a weekend where 30,000 mallerds were in the area it was nuts. The goose season was closed and there were prob 15,000 geese also. The ducks would fly from before you could shoot till 10 oclock constantly in flocks of hundreds, sometimes thousands. The sky was black in the morning. It was like one of those hunting vidoes with all the snows but they were mallerds, and this was in MN! We had a couple flocks that were so big we could shoot at them, reload, and the shoot at them again because the flock kept coming, they would flare for awhile but the end of the flock would come over you because the flock was so (Contact US Regarding This Word) big. I havent had hunting like that since, but my dad said the hunting when he was a kid around there was like that every day. He said in the 70's there would be 100,000 mallerds in the area at times. But the way things are looking theres a good chance ill never see 30,000 ducks in that area again. The duck hunting has declined so dramaticly the last 5 years alone.

[lawdog]

Is Jake's still open there? It may be worth a trip to look at those ducks and look at some other type stuff there too for a good double...

[toughguy]

Sad to say but Jake's is still closed. I drive down 52 everyday and the only thing you'll see are the ducks and the oil refinery. Funny.... you don't see the ducks in October or November.

[FOOT]

Matt, Coates is just south of Mpls/St. Paul (maybe 15 miles) on Hwy 52 toward Rochester.

It's claim to fame use to be The House of Coates where a driver could get a "great bar burger" or one of the strongest mixed drinks in existance.

The House of Coates was relegated to lesser status when Jake's opened. Jake's was a gentlemen's club (if you know what I mean. The locals were not too happy about it and tried to get rid of it. That's when Jake's owner registered every patron and dancer as residence of Coates, something like 2000 people. Needless to say it didn't hold up and Jake's is now just an empty purple building.

[fishface5]

OVER!!! It shoulden't be OVER 'till 12/31!! Keep the duck season open "WHEN THE DUCKS ARE AROUND!" A week in late Sept., and then again mid Nov. 'till the end of DEC. But then why would they let us in Minn. shoot some ducks now? They realy haven't for the last... how many years?