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Waterfowl Reports


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Very good wkd hunt. Our best ever. We shot 20 ducks total. 12 woodies, 5 blue wing teal and 3 mallards. Shot most of them jump shooting. Lots of shooting in the area, so i'm assuming others faired well.

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Hunted up in north central MN. Worst opener in years for me, possibly the worst ever. Not many ducks around, and reports for others on the same lake and another lake near by were that most were coming off the water with 1-2 ducks. I only had 1 or 2 ducks that even flew over the decoys, none in the decoys. Only fired 4 shots on Saturday, with the 3 other groups on the same area shooting very similar. Just did not have many ducks around. A old-timer that has hunted this body of water every year for the last who knows how many years said it was thw worst he has seen.

Plenty of water up north.

I have to believe it was a combination of woodies/teal being pushed south already, not a ton of local ducks around, and not many northern ducks being pushed south yet.

Anyone else hunt up north this weekend?

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Plenty of water up north = north central MN. Here in Northwestern MN we're dry as a bone. Even our major drainage ditches are dry!

Few big flocks of geese around. Seeing some nice bunches of woodies and teal winging up and down the river each morning.

Pretty quiet yet. Highly doubt anything has started moving out of Canada yet, and long term forecasts indicate pretty warm weather for several more weeks.

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Nothing doing this year, so far, never saw a duck and never heard a shot, east central MN must be awfully bad to not hear a shot someplace, but I did locate the first flock of Lesser Canada birds last night in the area, hoping they'll hang in there until Saturday. Friends did very well in western OT. county.

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I won't say it was the worst or the best opener ever as we saw alot of birds in the winni area we just were not on the X and could not get the ducks to decoy this year.

We also had snow on Friday night up this way.

Success isn't always numbers for us as we had a great time the kids learned alot and paitence was one of them. This will help for them when it comes to the deer stand too.

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I hunted near Deer River this weekend. Saturday we limited out with woodducks, mallards, green wing teal and one ring neck. Sunday we had one wood duck come into the dekes at sunrise and then nothing else. After three hours I went and jumped a pothole where I saw a few ducks land and got three blue wings. My partner guarded the decoys with no ducks seen.

Tuesday Central MN was pretty sad. Not much flying but nothing got away that was in range. Ended up with five ring necks, a gadwall and one goose for five and a half hours. Very few teal around in the two places I hunted. Sure makes it hard to get up or more accurately stay up after work, hunt, sleep two hours and repeat. If I didn't love it so much I would stay home and sleep.

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Hunted @ the sanctuary (through MWA drawing) Saturday on Carlos Avery and it was nuts. Birds absolutely everywhere. My semi auto became a 1 shot and we must have shot 10 birds with 2 other guys. All woodies and teal. Best water hunt I've ever been on.

Hunted the North metro Monday and Tuesday. Monday I got there late forgot the decoys and then my gun so I hunted from the launch w/ 3 decoys. Local teal and woodies all over the place but none of them flying all just swimming. Coulda shot my limit on the water. Tuesday different spot in the North metro and shot a woody and 2 teal.

I'm thinking for the most part these were local birds. Geese are starting to arrive, hardly any mallards. Lake levels are low, but the bigger waters haven't dried up. Great hunting so far.

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Lots of BWT and Woodducks shot on Lake Geneva north of Albert Lea.

Water is really low.

Heard a report of a group of 6 guys that split up into pairs.

They shot 72 ducks in 2 days.

34 wood ducks, 30 BWT and 8 Mallards made up their bag.

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Went out this morning pass shooting on the MN river. Only saw about 30 woddies, got one...should have had my limit tho. Saturday Morning we must have seen a couple hundred woodies but they aren't around anymore I guess, or just aren't flying the river anymore.

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Creators

Duck season off to good start; split season closures in Central and South duck zones start Oct. 1

Unseasonably cold temperatures and warm memories were hallmarks of last weekend’s Minnesota duck hunting opener, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Steve Cordts, DNR waterfowl specialist, said hunting was good across most of the state, with blue-winged teal, wood duck and mallard comprising most of the harvest.

“Duck numbers were good,” Cordts said. “Hunter numbers were similar to last year, which was the first upturn in duck hunters in Minnesota in several years. The only downs were the temperature, which was nippier than many hunters expected, and water levels at certain locations.”

With three duck hunting zones in effect in Minnesota this year, Cordts reminded hunters in the Central and South duck zones to be aware of closed dates in those zones, splitting the season into two parts to provide more opportunity later in the fall in those parts of the state.

The waterfowl season in the Central Duck Zone (south of Highway 210) will be closed from Monday, Oct. 1, through Friday, Oct. 5, and then reopen Saturday, Oct. 6. In the South Duck Zone (south of Highway 212), the waterfowl season will be closed from Monday, Oct. 1, through Friday, Oct. 12, and then reopen Saturday, Oct. 13. The goose season is also closed in the Central and South duck zones when the duck season is closed.

“These temporary closures translate into additional hunting opportunity later this fall when late season migrants are passing through the state,” said Cordts. “This is just the second year we’ve managed the hunt by using zones and the first-ever time we’ve used three zones,” Cordts said the concept of multiple hunting zones is still relatively new for Minnesota duck hunters, but seems to be appreciated.

“We’re getting good feedback,” said Cordts. “Those who enjoy hunting for wood duck and teal seem to like it because most of the birds have yet to migrate south. Those who like late season diver hunting seem to like it too because they will still have opportunities deep into November.”

South Zone hunters will have opportunities for hunting major rivers and field hunting mallards into early December, he added.

So far the 2012 season is going very well, Cordts said. Duck hunters in north-central Minnesota averaged about 2.7 ducks per hunter on opening day, up from 2.2 ducks per hunter in 2011. One of the better locations was the Mud-Goose Wildlife Management Area (WMA), where hunters averaged 3.6 ducks on opening day.

“Any harvest above three ducks per hunter on a WMA is excellent hunting,” said Cordts. “I consider two fair and three good.”

In northwestern Minnesota, hunter success at Roseau River WMA was about two ducks per hunter, but goose hunter success was very good. At Thief Lake WMA, hunter numbers were down from last year, but those who hunted averaged 3.3 ducks on opening day with dabbling ducks (blue-winged teal, mallard, pintail and widgeon) the most commonly harvested species and ring-necked ducks the number five bird in the bag.

In central Minnesota, hunters averaged two to three ducks per hunter on opening day and by most accounts had a good opener. At Pelican Lake in Wright County, hunter numbers were extremely high. At Carlos Avery WMA in the Twin Cities north metro area, success was 1.3 ducks per hunter on opening day, mainly wood ducks and blue-winged teal.

“As always, results varied throughout the state,” said Cordts. “Harvest was down in some places. We heard best hunting in 20 years from other places. In north-central Minnesota, hunters had fair, good and excellent hunting on lakes all relatively close to each other, the differences being a function of the quality of the rice crop on each lake.”

Cordts said the outlook for the rest of the season remains good, though there will be the typical lull until new birds migrate into the state. He said migrant ring-necked ducks will soon begin to move in to northern Minnesota. Teal and wood ducks will still be fairly common in southern Minnesota this weekend.

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Wow what a day!!! Let me share with you the best day of duck hunting that I've had since I started in '96.

I was hoping to get off early since I was gonna be heading to my parents place by Grand Rapids to hunt the next morning. We met at the shop at 5 am and didn't get back til 6:30 pm, so I just ran back to my apartment, grabbed my gear and a stack of 5 hr energy drinks and ran out the door. As I'm driving right past Devils Lake at about 11:30 I'm thinking, "This is crazy. Im in the duck capital of the world and I'm driving to northern MN to go duck hunting." lol!!

I got to their house at 4:07 am, threw my gear in my dads' pickup and off we go. At this point my dad told me about a little rice pond that he'd been saving for me. It's about 20 acres, packed with thick rice and no pressure. The night before he'd seen around 200 woodies and about the same amount of mallards drop into the pond, all coming from the nw. We found a nice opening to set our dekes in, pulled into the thick rice and got low in the canoe.

At first light we hear wings. LOTS of wings. We look up to see flock after flock of mallards, 100+ strong each, flying just out of range over the lake. They were following a dry creek bed out of the lake. Hmmm...

And we waited. Just when we were starting to wonder "where are the woodies?" they started piling in. Now, I've been hunting woodies & mallards my whole life and have had some darn good shoots, but this was different. Usually they'll come by 2s, 4s, maybe the occasional group of 10. These were coming in flocks, 10-50 at a time and coming in faster than we could reload. I was a little rusty at first but managed to secure my limit of nice drakes in about 15 mins, 20 rds later. Dad was done shooting in maybe 3 mins, tops. We continued sitting there, watching flock after flock pour in and just thanking God for this incredible show. I don't know how many woodies we had fly into range, being conservative I'd say over 1000.

We continued to wait for more mallards to show but none came. I did drop one real while we wee waiting. This whole time there were woodies flying all around us, circling the lake and dropping back down. At about 9:00 we packed up our dekes. We were gonna find where those mallards went!

We paddled the canoe to the dry creek bed, grabbed the rest of our shells, threw 4 dekes in a duluth pack and started walking. After 2 miles of fighting tag elders and brush we found em. Around 2000 mallards, all in a space maybe 100'x100. Since we have hunted numerous beaver ponds, we knew what to do. We made just enough notice to get them to clear out, went into the pond to check depth to make sure we could retrieve any ducks, and threw out our 4 dekes. Not 5 mins later they started coming back.

Talk about committed. These mallards were dropping in from 100 yds up. No circling, no flaring. We were picky, only dropping ducks in a small area we could retrieve em. It only took maybe 45 mins to get our 5 drakes. And it was only 10:30. Sadly none of the mallards had very good color, but that didn't really matter. I had just had an incredible day of duck hunting, a great time with my old man, and made some memories that I will never forget.

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Went out yesterday evening and this evening on the Miss. Saw a lot more birds yesterday, but only had a few pass shots at teal which i missed. Today I set up better and had 1s,2s,and 3s working my spread all afternoon. Ended up with my limit with about 40 minutes of shooting time left(that's a first for an afternoon hunt). 1 greenhead, 1 gadwall, 4 BW Teal. Whiffed on a nice drake woodie and another mallard before I had my limit, but most of what was moving was Teal.

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My dad and I went out this morning and had a great shoot. One pintail, 3 mallards, and 5 teal. Should have limited for sure but oh well. Was a great time!

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The corn and beans are coming out fast in this area and the geese and ducks are starting to show up on those picked fields.

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Much slower action this saturday than last. We only saw a few flocks of ducks. We shot 3 drake woodies, which was cool though.

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Pretty slow this AM three mallards about 10min after shooting time and seen a few right after but other wise not a darn thing! South metro area

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Talked to a couple groups of hunters when I stopped by the access at Pickerel Lake on my way to a different lake to fish.

1 group of 3 guys had 8 Woodies and 3 Ringnecks and a Mallard

the other group of 2 had 6 Mallards and 4 Green Wing Teal.

They saw a lot of ducks in the first 45 minutes and then it was empty skies.

Lots of rice in the lake this year after being none last year because of the high water.

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Not a bad day today for watching ducks, too bad I wanted to do some shooting. Got 2 woodies between me and my brother. We saw probably 150 ducks within the first 30 minutes. Only shot 4 times between the two of us though. They were all staying way to high to shoot, so that kinda sucked. That was in the west metro

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RRR, did we chat today? We had the red Dakota and didn't shoot anything. It was pretty sparse for us out there this morning. But that lake is hard to get good cover and good decoy location.

Good luck everyone!

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Late start this am ( dead battery) at landing. Lots of shooting for 1st hour. So there must be ducks around. After the dead battery incident we got set up just short of 8am sat till 11 and finally made a mallard fall and that was it. .

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Cold nights the last week definately put a bite on the fair weather ducks near Grove City. Still some woodies around, but significantly less than last weekend. Plumage is filling out nicely with the early cold. Got 2 trophy grade drakes between my cousin and I. BW Teal and Widgeon completely absent from last weekend. I picked the wrong pinch point on the beaver pond yesterday morning, managed a couple woodducks and lost a big drake mallard. My cousin across the creek had better shooting.

Lost 6" of water since last weekend. Beaver pond is the only small water around now except for a couple springfed potholes. Poor prospects for the rest of the season in this area if we don't get some significant rain. Puddlers seem to be bypassing this area now as there were no signs of fresh migrants. Didn't hunt any big water to see if any divers were around. Lots of geese hitting harvested beans and corn this weekend. All the ducks seemed to be still local as they really knew their way around our guns.

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Pond and feild hunted ducks out in Buffalo this morn 4 people we managed 19. First time feild hunted in minnesota managed 10 out of the feild mainly mallards and 6 wooducks. I couldnt beleive that i saw prolly a flock of 50 snows come by us today too, thought it was a little odd but i know there is a ton of picked corn and soybeans around so they got the food. Have been scouting a place in the chisago county area turned out to be only 2 min from my house took 2 boats out limited out for 6 people in 25 min best goose hunt ive done! Passed at shooting ducks for the first 25 in order to get the geese but still managed 4 woodies. Havent seen any teal around and i know my buddies up north havent seen much either only few flocks. Just wish this streak wont end for me, opener didnt treat me to well.

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  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

    • Brianf.
      I'm not there, so I can't tell exactly what's going on but it looks like a large area of open water developed in the last day with all of the heavy snow on the east side of wake em up Narrows. These two photos are from my Ring Camera facing north towards Niles Point.  You can see what happened with all of snow that fell in the last three days, though the open water could have been wind driven. Hard to say. .  
    • SkunkedAgain
      Black Bay had great ice before but a few spots near rockpiles where there were spots of open water. It looks like the weight of the snow has created a little lake in the middle of the bay.  
    • LakeofthewoodsMN
      On the south end...   Thanks to some cold spring weather, ice fishing continues strong for those still ice fishing.  The bite remains very good.  Most resorts have pulled their fish houses off for the year, however, some still have fish houses out and others are allowing ATV and side by sides.  Check social media or call ahead to your favorite resort for specifics. Reports this week for walleyes and saugers remain excellent.   A nice mix of jumbo perch, pike, eelpout, and an occasional crappie, tullibee or sturgeon being reported by anglers. Jigging one line and using a live minnow on the second line is the way to go.  Green, glow red, pink and gold were good colors this week.     Monster pike are on a tear!  Good number of pike, some reaching over 45 inches long, being caught using tip ups with live suckers or dead bait such as smelt and herring in 8 - 14' of water.   As always, work through a resort or outfitter for ice road conditions.  Safety first always. Fish houses are allowed on the ice through March 31st, the walleye / sauger season goes through April 14th and the pike season never ends. On the Rainy River...  The river is opened up along the Nelson Park boat ramp in Birchdale, the Frontier boat ramp and Vidas boat ramp.  This past week, much of the open water skimmed over with the single digit overnight temps.   Areas of the river have popped open again and with temps getting warmer, things are shaping up for the last stretch through the rest of the spring season, which continues through April 14th.   Very good numbers of walleyes are in the river.  Reports this week, even with fewer anglers, have been good.  When temps warm up and the sun shines, things will fire up again.   Jigs with brightly colored plastics or jigs with a frozen emerald shiner have been the desired bait on the river.  Don't overlook slow trolling crankbaits upstream as well.   Good reports of sturgeon being caught on the river as well.  Sturgeon put the feed bag on in the spring.  The bite has been very good.  Most are using a sturgeon rig with a circle hook loaded with crawlers or crawlers / frozen emerald shiners. Up at the NW Angle...  Ice fishing is winding down up at the Angle.  Walleyes, saugers, and a number of various species in the mix again this week.  The bite is still very good with good numbers of fish.  The one two punch of jigging one line and deadsticking the second line is working well.   Check with Angle resorts on transport options from Young's Bay.  Call ahead for ice road guidelines.  
    • CigarGuy
      With the drifting, kind of hard to tell for sure, but I'm guessing about a foot and still lightly snowing. Cook end!
    • PSU
      How much snow did you get on Vermilion? 
    • Mike89
      lake here refroze too...  started opening again yesterday with the wet snow and wind...  very little ice left today...
    • Hookmaster
      A friend who has a cabin between Alex and Fergus said the lake he's on refroze. He texted me a pic from March 12th when it was open and one from 23rd when it wasn't. 🤯
    • SkunkedAgain
      I don't think that there has been any ice melt in the past few weeks on Vermilion. Things looked like a record and then Mother Nature swept in again.   I'll give my revised guess of April 21st
    • leech~~
      As I get older it's really not just about sending bullets down range.  Some of it's just the workmanship of the gun and the wow factor. The other two guns I have really wanted which I'll never have now because of their price, is a 8mm Jap Nambu and 9mm German Luger.   Just thought they always looked cool!  
    • jim curlee
      I had a guy hit me with a lightly used 1969 BAR, he wanted $1650 with an older Leupold scope. More than I think they are worth, I made an offer, he declined end of story.   You know if you look at the old brochures, a grade II BAR sold for $250 in the late 60s, $1650 would be a good return on your investment.    Why would anybody want a 50 year old gun, they are heavy, have wood stocks, and blued metal.  I guess mainly to keep their gun safes glued to the floor. lol   You can probably buy a stainless rifle that you never have to clean, with a synthetic stock you never have to refinish, is as light as a feather, and for half as much money, perfect.   I'm too old for a youth gun, although I've shrunk enough that it would probably fit. lol   No Ruger 10/44s.   Jim      
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