Punky on the Retrieve.

Throwing Darts at Days

Your guess is as good as ours when it comes to picking good days to hunt.  Friday the 13th, ducks pour into the hole and hunters have very good success, they even got a band.  We went back out on Saturday and only shot 4 ducks.  We did kick anywhere from 500-800 ducks off the lake, but none of them came back until dark.  CJ has been hunting around the Sisston South Dakota area and having very good success.  There are plenty of ducks to come yet, but will we get any weather to push them down? 

Saturday most everyone was very optimistic after the hunt they had Friday afternoon.  We had a great Northwest wind all day.  Around 11:30am we started to see high flocks of snow geese.  We have been seeing snow geese regularly the last couple of weeks, but they have only been in flocks of 20-80.  Today we saw the first bunches of snow geese that average 100-500 geese.  I am not sure howmany bunches we counted, but they were consistant from 11:30am - 2:30pm.  Most of us thought since the geese were migrateing that we would encounter some new ducks.  Well we saw a few high bunches, but nothing wanted to stop.  

Sunday was a bust.  Hunted at the main blind in hopes of getting some honkers, but never saw any.  We did see a few small flocks of snow geese.  After watching a flock of 30 snows ball up on us, we had to throw out some white decoys.  Hopefully the new spread turns our luck around.  I am not sure if anyone had any luck after I left, but it seamed really slow.  

We only have about 4 more weeks of hunting, hopefully something happens in the weeks to come, we are all Jonesing for a good shoot.   

Finally a Wigeon worth putting on the wall

Saturday 10/17/09

There are still some ducks and local geese in the area, but the numbers have decreased from opening day significantly.  Today was slow.  However, a few ducks and a couple geese were harvested.  The majority of the ducks that were observed were very decoy shy, you could definitely tell that they had been shot at more than once.  The good news is that mostly all the geese that are coming by are curious enough to give us a shot.  Congratulations to the guys who hunted Monday.  Those lucky fella’s had a flock of 6 honkers do it right and only one flew off.  Out of the 5 birds harvested 4 of them were banded. 

Sunday 10/18/09

Today was the first time the sun was out for at least a week.  We thought that maybe since the sun was out some of the local waterfowl population would be out for a morning flight, but we were wrong.  Today was by far the least amount of ducks/geese that was observed.  There was maybe a total of 75 ducks observed today and a big fat zero for geese.  Strong south winds and warm temperatures did not help our migration situation by any means.  Despite the low duck population we still managed to harvest a couple ducks.  To date we have not been skunked, “KNOCK ON WOOD.”  With warm temperatures in store for the remainder of the month for the Dakota’s and Canada, the next couple weeks could be slow.  Hopefully this is the calm before the storm.

A few things come to mind for a typical Nebraska waterfowl opener, t-shirts and sunscreen.  This year opening day seemed as if we were in mid-season stride, Northwest winds and snow!  With the changing weather patterns there was an abundance of migrating birds.  From early Friday night until about noon on Saturday it was nonstop white fronts.  No duck migration to report as of now.  The blinds did have success on both Saturday and Sunday, mostly bagging ducks and a couple geese. 
 
Observations:

• Saturday 10/10/09 – Most ducks observed were big ducks, not many teal.  Lots of migrating white fronts.
• Sunday 10/11/09 – Not as many ducks observed.  Big ducks and Teal seemed to be equal in numbers.  Only 1 bunch of white fronts was observed.

We had a lot of water this summer and that is a good thing for us duck hunters. 
Opener is just a couple weeks off and should be a good one. We have been holding ducks for about 30 days now with about 30 Candas stopping by now and again. 


Would like to invite all members up the 4th of Oct. at 12:00 for a cook out and to shoot some clays. 


New members will have time to check out blinds and our setup. 

On August 28th the Nebraska waterfowl seasons were announced.  To view specific informaiton about the seasons, click here.