Another Pile of Ducks In MN

Logan and I woke up to clear skies, a 10 mph wind out of the south/southwest and temp of 32 degrees on Thursday morning. We decided to hunt the Honey Hole slough since it hadn’t been hunted in nearly three weeks and a good number of divers had been reported in the area. I set out 3 dozen duck decoys and a few geese for the mornings shoot. The first duck to arrive on the scene was a hen Red and she took a hot load in the face for her kindness. For the next 30 minutes we had flock after flock of Greenwing teal dropping in and out of the slough. I put four of the little guys into the bag before the flight shutdown at 8 AM. After that the skies cleared of birds and we hung it up for the AM. The morning total was 4 Greenwings and 1 ginger head.

The wind switched to the northwest in the afternoon so Logan, Oshie and I picked up the morning spread and setup on the opposite end of the slough. The duck flight was almost nonexistent in the afternoon. We called in one flock of Greenwing and I scratched a nice drake out of the flock. Oshie made a very nice 60-70 yard retrieve on the downed bird after the wind blew it out into the middle of the slough. With that bird we had our limit for the day. We sat until sunset in hopes of a goose shoot but every goose that was in the area piled right into the north slough. A great sign for our Saturday hunt.

Saturday morning found us in the East Bay hunting with Joe and Tony P. The wind switch back to the south over night and was suppose to blow at 10-20 later in the AM. The temp was back near 32 and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The morning started off very slow as far a shooting was concerned. There was plenty of ducks flying around put we got burned a couple times from people shooting on the state property as ducks were about to set into our spread. We made a couple setup changes and the wind started to blow around 9 AM and just like that the killing began. The air filled with geese and we pulled several flocks into our spread of 36 big foot floaters and 6 snow geese floaters. When the smoke cleared we had 8 geese in the boat and three of those where cackling geese. We also added 11 mallards (9 drakes) and 2 drake green wings to the bag. We called it a shoot around 12:15. We did hunt the evening but it was mostly a bust. I added one gorgeous drake wood duck to the bag and that was it for the afternoon hunt. Of course the ducks and geese poured into the slough 5 minutes after shooting closed. Another great shoot in East Bay!


Sunday was a very strange morning. We hunted as far east on the north slough as possible. We had a west/northwest wind at 5-15 mph, cloudy sky and a temp around 48 degrees. The bird movement for the morning was near zero. Logan and I left at 9 AM because we had to be home early Sunday afternoon. We left without firing a shot on the slough. Tony and Joe hung around until 10:30 and ended up killing one mallard. On the way back to the cabin Logan spotted a rooster pheasant sitting along side the dirt road the leads from our sloughs to the cabin (200 yards from the cabin). The bird was kind enough to sit within 15 yards of the car for a good 2 minutes while I got my gun, then stepped out the car and loaded up. As soon as I was loaded the rooster gave me a nice little chip shot and we had the first pheasant of the season and got the skunk off our back for the day. A great end to Logans duck season at the cabin this year .