Waterfowl Reports

[Scott M]

Poor. 6 birds in 2 days for 2 guys. No ducks around anywhere while scouting. Talked to a lot of guys that didn't fire their guns. Hutchinson/Glencoe/Winthrop triangle.

[Fins-n-feathers]

I got one blue wing teal and two mallards. My hunting buddies shot one wooduck and one coot. We were out for 2 days.

[Breu18061]

limited out opening day. 7 birds today . good opener. Bwack email me [email protected]

[bwack]

email sent

[Quackaddict9]

12 ringnecks and a goose for 2 of us with 1 gun...did not see the mallards that were out there yesterday, so majority of the birds we saw were ringnecks. I did not get out yesterday.

[deerwoody]

30 birds total for 3 guys,limit of mallards each day with teal,woodies,and widgeon filling the rest.Let tons of teal and woodies go if mallards were in the air.

[luckycrank]

A slow start to the morning for our fog was heavy in the area we hunted , but other hunters in the immediate area had excellant shooting. Never heard anything like it in my life ! multiple shots heard every 30-40 seconds for about two hours straight most probally 1/4 mile away. yet we had one woody before 8 am today took till noon to shoot a 3 man limit of woodies. after the fog lifted. birds where kinda decoy shy . We pulled all but 9 decoys and replaced them out of shooting range up wind and killed every bird over the lake after wards.

still cant wrapp my head Around it,

[grey ghost]

Shot limit this morning in 30 minutes. Should have taken half that time but shooting was a little rusty! Saw tons of birds

[Bryce]

No roost busting and no youth scare away day on the private lake in the Morris area where these were taken.

[Farley]

Saturday 3 geese, saw one flock of mallards and that was it. Sunday moved down the road about 2-3 miles and have never seen so many ducks in my lifetime. We ended up with 13 Sunday just because we were terrible shots. More woodys and teal than we could count, also some really nice flocks of mallards. Prbably saw more than 1000 birds sunday before sunrise. I wish some of you guys who say the woodys and teal move out before opener could have been there to see what I saw.

[schr0563]

Good reports guys, especially those who mention the area of the state where they were hunting.

I was near Alexandria this weekend. Got four ducks (2 woodies, 1 bluewing, 1 redhead) and a goose on Saturday between my father-in-law and myself. We only managed 1 redhead on Sunday. Overall didn't see very many ducks but this rates as an above average opener for us.

[ItsaCrappieLife]

4 ducks for three guys on Saturday near MN lake. Lots of ducks moving but were flying a mile high rather quickly. Seemed like there were more mallards than in previous years.

[CANOPY SAM]

Only hunted Sunday morning as we didn't want to move the geese working our field on Saturday with the 09:00 start. This turned out to be a good strategy.

Sunday morning three guns took 5 nice honkers. As always, should have filled, but those darn guns got bent again last winter! The nice weather made birds a little hesitant to totally commit, and they milled around out of range too often.

We've got a few large groups of geese up here in NW MN, but no significant numbers yet. I've heard reports of some nice bunches of ducks up by Thief Lake. We watched several flights of woodies working south along the river Sunday morning. I believe our group only saw one small group of Mallards. A small push of birds moved south out of our area prior to the opener. Now lets pray for the big push!

I'll provide reports as often as possible from NW MN. Going to be an unseasonably warm week coming up, so I don't anticipate any migrational movement for a little while. Beans are coming off the fields fast now. Our Sunday geese came from a harvested bean field.

[Finlander]

48 ducks for 4 hunters! Hunted a flooded bean field that held hundreds of duck and a dozen or two of geese. Well, they all took off when we set up at 8:45 and buzzed all around until 9:00am shooting time and then they were gone! All of them never to return! We thought we were gonna slaghter them!

Should of waited until 9:00am! Hindsight 20/20!

So we went to our backup spot on a lake that held a few ducks and ended up with our limit of teal, mallards, redheads, ringbills, and spoonbills! We were done by 2:30 with our limits! Sunday, 9:30am had our limit of woodies, redheads and teal.

What a weekend. We hunted western Mn.

[169Sportsman]

Six ducks on opener for 3 guys. Limited out on Sunday with 3 guys took until noon. Nice mixed bag of Woodies, Mallards, Teal, Gadwall, and Wigeon. Saw a few ringbills also. Saw a ton of birds just couldnt get them to work. Hunting in the south metro.

[dan z]

finlander: just wondering? 48 ducks and only four guys. 6 is the bag limit.

[Jordyn Kaufer]

Im pretty sure that that was his weekend bag limit. cause it did say "not a bad weekend"

[Breu18061]

169 sportsman if you dont mind me asking where did you hunt? my email is [email protected] if you dont want to talk on here

[RumRiverRat]

Poor. 6 birds in 2 days for 2 guys. No ducks around anywhere while scouting. Talked to a lot of guys that didn't fire their guns. Hutchinson/Glencoe/Winthrop triangle.

Strange, I know of 2 groups that shot 3 and 4 man limits by 9:30am on Saturday and by 8am Sunday. They were in that area.

I hunted near Svea and did Ok 14 for 4 guys on Saturday.

Hunted alone in Isanti County on Sunday and got 3.

[Swampbusters]

sunday was the day for us. We got eight with two guns. Very excited about the bull can that came out of nowhere, im surprised he didnt hear us announce his presence haha. It was a fun morning, made up for saturday. We got one drake mallard, bull can, redhead and the rest teal.

[Finlander]

Dasn Z, saturday 4 hunters limit = 24. Sunday 4 hunters limit = 24. 24+24 = 48!

[Musky Buck]

Never thought about this but the last 2 nights on the farm with a river running through it and ponds around etc. I saw 0 ducks, roughly 300 honkers, but 0 ducks and I even yes waited until that wood duck time, heard no wings, saw no ducks. Tonight I'll walk the bank of that river full of flooded timber/logs etc. but I'm not optimistic, then again this area of the state likely isn't well known for ducks, but with zero hunting pressure near my farm I'd expect to see a few, maybe tonight's the night. I know, night hunt is this Sunday, but I will be holding the heater as the skunks, oppossums, raccoons, and coyotes are plenty thick in the area, maybe that has a bit to do with few if any ducks around, I don't know.

[fishnhuntnboy]

Hunted alone in Isanti County on Sunday and got 3.

Where bouts in Isanti? I was hunting around here both saturday and sunday. You can email if you dont wanna say on here. I didnt do to well around here. They were flyin but wouldnt come in.

[Maxxed Out]

I hunted North of Appleton and saw lots of ducks. We only shot 5, which was more due to poor shooting than anything else. We did take 5 canadas, 4 blues as well. Sunday was a honker smack down with 8 guys and 24 honkers down.

[RumRiverRat]

Tuesday Morning Hunt in a Flooded Corn Field in the Winsted/Howard Lake Area

5 man limit of Mallards and GWT with a Pintail, Woodie and Widgeon. A few of the ducks are not in the picture apparently.

[CANOPY SAM]

NW MN: Still not huge numbers of birds moving yet. Weather is beautiful, and wind has primarily been out of the south in our area, so waterfowl are pretty content to bask in the sun, and enjoy abundant water and food.

Observed roughly 2000 geese milling around TRF this morning. Also saw a flock of probably 500-700 ducks of mixed species. Seeing more birds zipping south on the river - likely teal and woodies.

If your in the right field, this weekend could be a decent shoot.

[Quackaddict9]

Shot 9 geese for 3 guys in a pasture field that was holding good #'s in the past week and shot 6 ducks as well. Lots of geese, had a flock of snows/blues come over when we went and park our vehicles. Pics will be in the Photo thread sometime later.

[hunter322]

Anyone huntin around the hugo area?

[B@ssmaster]

4 guys hunting in the north central part of the state. Best opener in a decade or more! Hunted Sun-Wed. Easily could have taken limits every day, but showed a bit of restraint so we didn't have to eat duck morning, noon and night to keep under our possession limit.

The variety was the most amazing part for us. Our normal fare of mostly ringers was present, along with our standard smattering of mallards, woodies and widgeon, but in addition we took redheads, cans, bluebills, green wings, blue wings and honkers. Even saw a few snows (rare on our waters). Add to that 3 rounds of golf and 4 trips out bass fishing (lots of fish too), it was a GREAT opener!

[Lunker]

Hunted Itasca county the last sun-thurs with my brother. Hit or miss.

Sun- 4-1 woody,1 ringer,2 mergansers.

Mon- 2 Mergansers

Tues- Nothing

Wed- 2 woodies, 1 ringer, 1 merganser

Thurs- 9 Ringers

Hunting mostly lakes with wild rice and a couple of ponds. The ponds usually hold a lot of ducks but aren't producing. Doing better in the rice. Headed back up sunday for another few days at it.

Not seeing many mallards, though we did wiff on a couple flocks.