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Another weekend.......no ducks.....!?


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Hunted near winthrop Sat. and saw one stinkin mallard for about three hours in the blind. Packed up and went back to my friend's farmhouse and there is a 100 geese sitting in the field across the road. Too flat and open to try and make a sneak, so after cursing them out for about an hour we headed out to chase some roosters. No dice there either... oh well there is always next weekend...and late goose....and first ice....and mid-ice.....and late-ice...and spring crappie and turkey...and Mille Lacs fishing opener..anyway, I digress.

Good luck to all who venture out this week its suppose to get real cold end of this week. Hopefully one final push is in store!

-Lip

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Sounds like my weekend. We were in the Marshall area Saturday morning and only saw a few ducks waaaay off on the distance. Seemed like good weather with the clouds and snow so I thought we would see more.

Packed up around 11:00 and headed west to the Ortonville area. Scouted all Saturday afternoon and didn't see anything. Nothing flying...nothing on the water.....other than geese which we were not set up for.

Decided to chase pheasants Sunday instead of duck and only ended up with one rooster.

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Yesterday, we never fired a shot, passed on a few buffy's just outa range. 2day hit the water at 3:30am, first 5 mins. of shooting we had a hen & drake mergie dead, and a hen & drake ringbill. Saw a few but not much, besides coots, & rudy's smirk.gif

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Saturday got on the water at 3:30am hardly saw anything. shot 2 buffles and 2 mergies. This spot has never failed me so bad.

Today got on the water at 3:45am new spot west of glencoe. Hardly nothing. saw several flocks of mallards up high and had a couple flocks of diver check the lake out. killed one hen bluebill. ONE!!! Where theres one bluebill usually more will follow, but NO!

Im afraid that the rest of my season might stay this way. I was gonna take off work but now i dont know if i should waste my time.

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Surprising lousy weekend for our group as well. Very disappointing to say the least. Usually this time of the year for us its awesome but its been the other way around. This weekend I woke up Friday, Saturday, Sunday at 5:00 am for duck/goose hunting and ended up getting skunked 2/3 days somehow and getting 2 geese out of three that pasted over to close the other day. Just awful. Hopefully this weeks' weather brings in some birds or my season is virtually over....sad frown.gif

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We closed the camp after this weekend. The backwaters are freezing but Winnie and the other big water are open. We saw plenty of birds but they are rafted and have been for over a month. After breaking shore ice, we had a nice little flurry of action around 8:30 yesterday but they were almost all sawbills. They sure do decoy nice. We also saw our first flock of the gray jet fighters. A flock of about 20 immigrant greater bluebills came flaming over us only to join the raft but it was good to see and hear them finally. We went home with 1 nice ringbill.

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Had a Les Kuba ish Sat AM... broke ice,cloudy,spitting snow, a little wind, dekes looked great and we sat and sat and sat and finally packed up around 10am and never pulled the trigger..saw only 3 small flocks of some kinda diver. stopped by the refuge of the way home and she was froze up 90% and the only thing out there was some seagulls and 2 frozen looking bb's..oh well, good season anyways..can't wait till next year

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Wow guys, sorry to hear about all the bad luck. I personally had my best day of duck hunting EVER on Saturday morning. Most of the lake I hunt was iced over, thankfully except for the shore I sit on. Thick overcast, even started to snow in the morning. The mallards just kept coming and coming, and they were loving my decoys!

Sunday on the other hand turned out to be pretty bad. It's like Mother Nature decided I had enough on Saturday. The whole lake thawed, and then the shore I hunt iced over for about 40 yards... figures.... I broke out a bunch of the ice and put out the decoys. I even had my brother and his friend over, expecting them to get some good hunting in. Well, there were lots of geese flying, none coming in to us. The mallards found safer places for sure. We had maybe 4 come in and check us out, most stayed too far away and were afraid of the ice. We had a little shooting at two birds, all misses... My two partners it seems were more interested in blasting the guns than trying to actually hunt...

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this weekend we ended up with 27 mallards and 11 honkers. not too bad for field hunt. the mallards were just sucking us up. it was way too much fun. but the geese were a little skiddish but we got them also. and sunday was our best day. with 5 guys we got 17 mallards and 10 honkers. but i put on alot of miles on the truck to find the birds.

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I got one goose Friday morning and two ringnecks on Saturday morning. For me that was fantastic action.

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get to the fields, lots of mallards, grin.gif west and north west of fergus falls seen big numbers of divers today heading south

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Had a decent saturday shot 7 greenheads for 3 guys should of had a limit but no one seemmed to remeber how to shoot wink.gif. But it was snowing and that's always a plus.

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Used some vacation pay and got out Friday a.m. and saw only two, didn't fire the gun. Got out Sat. a.m. and knocked down 3 ringers and they were the only ducks to decoy and they did so nicely. So little action that i slept in Sunday. Nice to run into a fellow FM'er at Chub Lake Friday as he was a helluva nice guy and as frustrated as I was. Went scouting fields in my area on Sat. nite and followed many flocks of Geese and Mallards only to get the big "NO" from all the landowners. At least i've still got trapping to scratch the itch.

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