05 waterfowl season

[Riverratpete]

Your absolutely right about hunting public areas, thats why I'm going to start this year by confining myself to 2 maybe 3 weeknds of QUALITY hunting as far west as I can go rather than messing around with in 2 hours of the cities.

[icecold]

Im not saying that I had a bad season, I did quite well with woodducks and mallards, But the hunting is no way as good as it was 20 years ago when I was a teenager, The sky used to be black with mallards coming through southcentral minnesota, but that isnt the case, The sky is black with ducks in Northdakota were my inlaws are from,And thats not going to happen anymore in minnesota.I hate to be negative ,but da good old days are over. But Im still going hunt until they put me in the old duck hunters home.

[Stratosman]

My uncle has a two person plane and when we went flying on Sunday I took notice of all the potholes and such as we flew over and I don't think I counted more than 5 or so ducks on the 10 or so potholes we flew over. I don't know what the deal is either, but I was expecting to see a few more than that. I will have to plan at least one trip this year out of state, just to keep my dog sane!

[GullGuide]

Hunting was awesome 20 years ago?

That would have been the late 80's right?

The duck numbers during that time were at their lowest...Can't you remember 3 duck limits?

I sure can.

[eyepatrol]

I personally feel that there has been a shift in the flight pattern of ducks. The Dakotas have prime habitat for ducks right now, the same prime habitat that MN used to have. Even though back in the late 80's and a part of the 90's there was low duck limits due to low populations, I remember seeing all kinds of ducks come through the lake I hunt. 1000's of bluebills, 1000's of mallards and so on. For the past 5-6 years though, it's been getting more bleak every year. If numbers are so much improved from the 80's and early 90's, then where have the ducks gone, because I'm just not seeing them.

The opening weekend for the past 7 years or so has been horrendous on the lake we hunt. Each opening weekend for the past 7 years we will get anywere from 1 to at best 6 ducks. We used to limit out within the first 1.5 hours of each day.

So, what is the problem? Again, in my opinion, it has been a shift in the flight pattern. But another contributing factor is water quality. The lake I hunt has only seen 3 new houses go up on it in the past 20 years or so. The lake has a fairly large watershed including a ditch/stream which drains water into the lake from some 20 miles away. Considering the amount of farm acreage that takes, that is a lot of chemicals coming into one lake. The lake association has found this out too, plus there are septic systems from homes in the watershed which probably don't meet code either and may leak sewage into the drainage system.

With that being said, the water quality of the lake I hunt has gone down and the association is trying to do something about it. That will help for the local birds, but doesn't make much of a difference on the numbers of birds that move through in the late fall flights.

Regardless of what happens though, I'll still be out there cackling away. It's in my blood to stay. The one thing I HAVE noticed though is the canada geese population around here and the numbers that move through is WAY up since previous years. That's nice to see, but I like to have the best of both worlds (ducks and geese).