West MN ducks???

[HUNTFISH69]

We've been hunting the Alexandia/herman area for the past 3-4 years and had very good success, up until this year. We haven't missed a weekend out there this year. Was out this morning and only saw 300 ducks... and shot 2 rings, 1 spoonbill, and 1 goose. Any idea where they are in that region? The last few years we could at least take 10-12 birds for 3 or 4 guys this year our best day was 8 ducks for 4 guys and 6 were teal on opener.

[tearin' lips]

I am in the same boat. On Lake of the Woods, Rainy River, and the Northern Bays of Rainy Lake we have never had any problem getting our limit of ducks in the last seven years. This year has been really hard for us. My theory(at least up in my country) is that the late rains brought the h20 up a little too much and flooded out the food and shelter. I have also noticed that we haven't really had the frosts that we normally do early on either.

I don't know, but last weekend me and two buddies went up and we only managed 8 on saturday, and none on sunday. It was nice that 4 of the 8 were nice drake 'bills though.

I feel your pain HuntFish!

[ironman]

If your seeing 300 birds but not getting much shooting its time to find a different spot. It's not like there aren't birds in the area. I'm having the best season of my life...not bragging...but I've been extremely mobile this year as well. I know that is not always an option..but even moving a few miles might work. A few weeks ago I drove from detroit lakes south to south of Fergus Falls...along the way I noticed birds on the refuge and on private water but literally accross the street on public access...nada. A few more miles offered up some public water with birds and was able to salvage a trip. Just food for thought.

[gurkster]

The local area that I hunt has been real slow as well. Most years it is pretty good. Other than the first 2 weeks, there has been almost nothing around.

[Corey Bohn]

It's been really spotty for us this year too. We have had some good hunts but nothing like the last 3 years. I've been hunting southwest of Madison, MN and south of Kensington, MN and the early hunts were pretty good but not on the sloughs we typically hunt. Tearin' Lips I think is pretty much right.....the slough we hunt southwest of Madison is up about 2 feet this year and we noticed several weeks ago that there appears to be a lack of food in it compared to the last couple years, and consequently, the ducks have not been using it. There has been an abundance of wood ducks in the K-town area this year and that has supplemented our hunting west of Alexandria for the most part. The geese have really piled in this past week west of Alex and there were a fair number of hunters out this morning shootin' them up. West-central MN was very dry this spring and summer unlike past years and I think the ducks flight path adjusted accordingly. There have been some areas that held considerable #'s of birds earlier but it's been really spotty in west-central MN overall. I talked to a buddy last night and he said that as soon as you cross the border and headed west toward Watertown, SD, there was incredible #'s of mallards. He said they were landing in the corn fields by the thousands.

[bb2323]

Last weekend we had thousands of mallards coming in to our decoys on Saturday evening and most of the day on Sunday. We limited out very easy on Saturday evening and Sunday morning was even better except that it was raining and was so dark and dreary that we would have hundreds of mallards right on top of us but we couldn't pick out the drakes from the hens. They would be way up there and as soon as they saw the decoys they would set their wings and down they would come and it looked like a tornado as the circled down with ducks at every level. Also this is when you hear them using the feed chuckle all the time. The three of us finally ended up filling up our 12 greenheads at 12:30 but we had ducks decoying pretty much constantly from dawn until we were done. This was in the areas you are talking about. The birds are there in large numbers but they are grouped up on lakes that don't get hunted and come out to the picked corn fields to feed. We did see some divers flying but not enough that I would get the boat out for them yet. Wish I was up there this weekend but couldn't make it so next weekend it's either deer hunting or back to the mallards. Very tough choice but either one will be fun and maybe will even do both. Good luck out there.

[carpshooterdeluxe]

we had what we thought would be a slam dunk hunt of a life time set up for saturday morning. scouted a private pasture pond holding thousands of geese and mallards. other guys were scouting them too but the birds were going into 5 or 6 different fields; so it was not a big deal. but thanks to the insane stupidity of some (Contact Us Please) trying to drive up to that roost in the dark, load a boat into the pond because he was too lazy to walk around to the other side, and set up 3 dozen duck decoys, he scared away all the birds. they all got up at once and litarally blacked out the moon as they flew between us and the moon. theres no worse feeling than hearing this defining roar of birds leaving while setting up in a field. we scratched out 5 mallards in an entire day of hunting the field, but the majority of the birds have moved somewhere safer. talking to some friends last night, it seems to be the same story in other parts of western minnesota; you can find the birds and scout them for 4 weekdays in a row; but come saturday morning they will move. i guess im going to have to burn up some more vacation days to get some unpressured hunts in.