Season is almost half over and I have not fired a shot...

I started seeing sprig in courtship flights on Saturday. I've seen it every day since. We already hunt later than we should.

 

For every person on the internet I see saying there are no ducks up north, I see another one or two saying they’re still loaded up in parts of ND, SD, NE, MI, MN, North IL, etc. and dozens saying they’re not seeing what they should down south. I don’t know who to listen to.
I guess I should probably stop believing people in the internet all together.

 

You're welcome to come up here to MN, SD, ND...and look for them! Put the rumors to rest.

I'd even invite you out ice fishing for a day or two, if you're OK driving a full size truck on a frozen lake. You know, the same lake all the ducks are using for a roost.

 

I’m telling you there isn’t many ducks at all up here. Divers on the Great Lakes. A few mallards here and there but that’s it. Tons and tons of Canada’s. They are everywhere. But the ducks have Been long gone for a while now. Lakes are all froze now. People are walking on water up here.

 

Everyone I've talked to in KY has said it's the worse season in years. I haven't been able to hunt this year, but from what I'm hearing it could be the worse season in my lifetime. Even on years when we got froze out for alot of the season, we still had plenty of great days in between. Most everybody in a good spot has had 2 or so good days, and the rest not worth going. One spot I knew of has went 5 days without firing a gun, and the rest 1-3 duck days. That spot in particular killed over 300 last year, and they're around 125 this year, and that's including a good teal season.

 

It’s taken me 25 + years of watching and studying the migration to figure out my home area and where the ducks sit at different times of the years and why . Luckily I can hunt within 1-5 minutes of my house and that helps with seeing them daily . And just when I think I got them figured out they leave me scratching my head .. but for the most part you can still set your watch by a lot of things at certain times of the year .

 

Many days "no joy". Somebody lied.....

 

I'm "up north" on Lake Ontario, and we have open water on the big lake, but are almost barren when it comes to ducks. The smaller lakes are all frozen, which used to give us some of our best hunting at the end of the season on Lake O. Whistlers, buffleheads and a few bluebills used to give excellent gunning late season, but not in the last few years. Even oldsquaws, which we don't shoot, used to number upwards of 40,000 at the east end of Lake Ontario, where I'm located. I doubt we have a quarter of that number the last couple of years. Been hunting and scouting all week, with our season ending tomorrow, and seen almost nothing. Three of us out today shot a total of one whistler and one bufflehead. Other than a few oldsquaws, that's all we saw. The late season downward trend, I believe is a result of a severe winter about 4 or 5 years ago when the Great Lakes pretty much completely froze over. There was a massive die-off of ducks, geese and swans over the winter and into the early spring, as the birds that survived were in terrible condition. Locally, people were finding oldsquaws and other ducks dead on roads, probably confusing them for open water during the night. I was finding many swans and bluebills dead as the ice was going out in the spring. These birds had grown used to wintering here, and, many I think, had lost the instinct to migrate when things got bad. Previous warm winters with lots of open water had encouraged generations of birds to remain, so once they were taken out of the gene pool, we've paid the price since.

 

There are thousands of ducks in my area by the river.

 

I get so tired of reading the posts that say, “I’ve only killed 125 ducks and it ain’t even worth going if we can’t kill 300”!!!! I haven’t killed anywhere near 125 ducks and feel like I’ve had a pretty decent season. Some of these people need to lower their expectations!