weekend of 10/14 success?

[pathogen]

Alas...I am on call this weekend and unable to get out hunting. I've seen tons of birds along the Minnesota River bottoms and so I'm thinking that this will be an outstanding hunting weekend. I'm very interested to know how everyone did? Thanks!

[dukhnt]

It was a great hunt today. My dad and I shot 3 wood ducks, 2 bluebills, 1 ring necked duck, 1 huge greenhead, a green winged teal, and a goose. Pretty good for not having a cloud in the sky. It did take us till 11:00 to fill out on ducks.

[catmaster1557]

i was unable to go out today, but can tomorrow so hopeful there is some ducks around!

[buzzsaw]

Our group (of three) got three Canvasbacks, two Woodies, three Mallards and a Ruddy Duck of all birds. I have a picture of the Cans and Ruddy.

If your hunting the "somewhat" metro area, be sure and string out your divers, they are here! We saw a TON of Cans, ALOT of Woodies, and plenty of Redheads & Bufflehead, a few Widgeon and a good amount of BW Teal. We had seven BW Teal in our dekes five minutes before we could shoot and were as quiet as could be and about two minutes later they exploded and left us. All in all a very good day, we should have done better, but I saw that almost everytime I am done with the hunt. Tomorrow is another day.

[tealitup]

Where you hunting buzzsaw.. I really want to get a bull can to mount

[jeff127]

3 of us hunted in sibley county and shot 2 gadwall, 5 ringbills, a greenhead and 2 redheads. It was pretty consistant until 9 am then it really died off. saw some cans but none decoyed most birds came in small flocks except the gadwalls which were in groups of 20 or so. Had a great time----it should only get better if this weather holds up.

jeff

[Borch]

Pretty good this morning. Not a ton of birds flyuing but the most of the ones that flew over rely decoyed nice. Ended up with two drake mallards, GW teal and a ringneck. My son and I'll be out tomorrow. Looks like the wind will let up and switch to the south.

[buzzsaw]

Tealitup, shoot me an e-mail:

Time to get back out there, I'll post success or dissapointment story later.

[Guest]

I made it out to a metro zoo on friday morning. Seen lots of birds, lots of ducks and geese dropped. I got surrounded by shoreline sky busters so I didnt get much shooting in. It was nice to get out for the 1st time this year.. next time it wont be on a crowded body of water.

[buzzsaw]

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I made it out to a metro zoo on friday morning. Seen lots of birds, lots of ducks and geese dropped. I got surrounded by shoreline sky busters so I didnt get much shooting in. It was nice to get out for the 1st time this year.. next time it wont be on a crowded body of water.

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Rice lake is a bummer!!

[Sartell Angler]

didn't make it out today, but yesterday was fun!

The wind was pretty excessive, even as we just got to the landing in search of a spot. Decided to try the Mille Lacs area figuring there would be some divers around. Did see quite a few (along with some big flocks of mallards) but our spot was less than ideal with multiple other groups on the lake. Even so, we knew we had a chance to bag a canvasback (as we had last year on the same body of water). Around 8:30 we spotted a pair of 'em bookin' it across the bigwater and got on the call...they turned and came right in along the diver dekes (which had a hard time staying put with a hard bottom and high winds)...

My bro shot the big one and I scratched out the younger can...also added a pair of wigeon to the bag. Fighting the wind paid off.

[fishingmike0770]

I think that the cans may be coming back up on a rebound. I have never heard of anybody shooting or even seeing as many canvasbacks as we have been seeing in our area. Its about time. . .

[bassman222]

Didn't get to hunt long on Sat. cause we got out limits too fast, but it was fun while it lasted.

Sunday morning-no wind, all the birds rafted on the middle- a bust to say the least.

Went out in the afternoon solo and killed 4 buffies to make up for the bad morning.

[Borch]

My son and I made it out this morning in the St. Cloud area. Not as good as yesterday with the weather change. We did end up with two gadwalls, 2 ringnecks, one drake can and one honker. Had to break trough a lot of ice with the cold temps and no wind last night and this morning.

[Guest]

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I made it out to a metro zoo on friday morning. Seen lots of birds, lots of ducks and geese dropped. I got surrounded by shoreline sky busters so I didnt get much shooting in. It was nice to get out for the 1st time this year.. next time it wont be on a crowded body of water.

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Rice lake is a bummer!!

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Rice Lake is going to be a lottery area next year. It was supposed to be this year according to the game warden earlier this summer, they must not have got it organized in time to publish to the public.

The word of mouth I have heard(not from CO) is that 4 hunting parties are going to be allowed daily next year.

Rice lake is an incredible place to hunt, it always has been. There always seems to be at least a few birds flying. I have got countless limits from there in the past, but the recent years have really gotten out of hand with excessive hunters with poor hunting etiquette. If you get there early and in a choice location, you still will get respectable results... but you will also witness 100's of rounds daily from the skybusters, and numerous birds hit in the stratoshere tht glide the entire distance of the lake and are not retrievable.

All I can say is.. the careless hunting tactics have to STOP one way or another. If restricting a good lake is what it takes to stop 100's of birds being wasted over the course of the season at ONE location.. more power to the lottery. If I am lucky enough to be able to hunt the lake next year a time or two, I know its going to be a quality hunting experience with only 4 boats on the lake.

I really wish the CO's would get down there and bust some of these shoreline hunters skybusting and not making any effort to retrieve birds that dont drop right at their feet.

Sorry for the rant guys... I'm done.

[buzzsaw]

I'm with you 100%! I think that was well written.... I was down there last week and counted 19 cars in the lot under the bridge and talked to one guy who said it's crazy how many people skybust and are shooting at ducks WAY out of range... but he added that thats what you expect when you hunt there.... looks like the expectations will be changing for the better.

[tealitup]

Buzzsaw you have mail

[buzzsaw]

Got it, back at ya.

[Mossy19]

Not as good as the past two weekends (not good shooting by the hunters part). Managed 4 Sat. afternoon and got skunked Sunday. A lot of birds flying around southern MN. I have a question for you guys, this happened to us on Sunday morning. We got the decoys set out and 15 to 20 minutes we had ducks coming into the decoys left and right, but once shooting time came around, we could not get a bird to look at our decoy spread. We thought maybe we left some decoy line wrap around them, but that was not the case, we were set up perfect for the wind, still we could not get a duck to come over the decoys. Has this happened to anyone? As we (my brother and I) are still a little puzzled as to what went wrong.

[Abrams]

Didn't hunt this weekend - my once a season family weekend.

Anyway, I drove down to the Rice lake landing with my son and daughter . . . . .22 cars at the landing on Saturday morning! I wonder how many acres that lake is 300~ maybe. Guys must be every 50 yards on the west side of the marsh. A cap of 4 guys would be a great idea, that's about what the place can hold.

[Guest]

That lake is capable of holding more than 4 hunting parties.. 6 would be a better estimate and nobody would be competing. There is a lot of water out there, but its a long ways to paddle across that lake in most duck boats... especially for those who dont bring a paddle/push pole to propel the boat, they wade the boat around in knee deep+ muck... get tired and sit right in front of your spread coming in... and skybust at 150 yrd geese above their(and your) head.

When I stopped out there friday morning, there was close to 20 vehicles at about 5 a.m. Much to my surprise, I got on the water and there was maybe 7 boats.. the rest were shoreline skybusters, or maybe a bow hunter(maybe). The only thing making it difficult to get a spot well away from other hunters was the sustained 40 mph+ winds.

I will still hunt the lake mid week on occasion when I only have time for a close trip.. but if/when I do, I will get there early and paddle across the lake to get away from the shoreline competition.

My question is, with this lottery, are they going to stop the shoreline hunters. If they dont, the lottery system isnt going to do any good for the waterfowl.

[Volare]

A lone goose came over Rice Lake on Saturday morning pretty low. Watched 25 shells fired at the goose by at least 4 different hunting parties before it flew off (unharmed). My group of 3 was on the far south shore. We didn't fire a shot all morning. Too much skybusting going on...

[Borch]

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Not as good as the past two weekends (not good shooting by the hunters part). Managed 4 Sat. afternoon and got skunked Sunday. A lot of birds flying around southern MN. I have a question for you guys, this happened to us on Sunday morning. We got the decoys set out and 15 to 20 minutes we had ducks coming into the decoys left and right, but once shooting time came around, we could not get a bird to look at our decoy spread. We thought maybe we left some decoy line wrap around them, but that was not the case, we were set up perfect for the wind, still we could not get a duck to come over the decoys. Has this happened to anyone? As we (my brother and I) are still a little puzzled as to what went wrong.

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Seemed like the early flying birds were pretty wary for us too. Later in the day the birds locked up even though the wind was wrong on Sunday for us. I'm guessing it was a local vs northern bird thing.

[HunterLee]

We smoked the geese on sunday morning 8 for 4 guys. We were hopeing for the northeren duck flight, but it will probly be this coming weekedn or maybe late this week. Did see some snow's mixed in with some canadians, but they were in the group we couldnt get in. The geese werent locals, as the swamp we hunt is part refugee and part WMA. They hit the signs and turn around, not a good deal. Best part is that there is a bout 2 to 3000 using are swamp, so there are a few dumb one s that cross over. Ducks were slow though got a couple ringers a teal, a greenhead and one redhead. Ducks wouldnt decoy at all, they just happen to fly in our little opening between the larger parts of the water. Going out Thurs-Wed so hopefully some northeners but we dont need any to cold of weather. Had to break enough ice on Sunday morning.

[fishingmike0770]

we managed to get all of these ducks to decoy but not really until later in the day, i know what you mean about the cold weather but with cold weather comes more ducks. . we had to break through about 1/8" of ice on our lake. . . we had quite a mixed bag-bluebill, canvasback, gadwall, gw teal and a young widgeon. .

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