2020 Waterfowl Thread

Solo limit this morning. 3 buddies slept in, Hunted their spot anyways, F em LOL

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I got out on Thursday morning and shot a limit of ducks fairly quickly. Unfortunately the geese weren't co-operating. I’ll be heading out again tomorrow morning. Should be a wet day but i suspect it will be a productive one. The bigger problem is that I gotta be up in 3 hours and I cant sleep. Good times!!!
 
Today was a pretty good hunt. Once again, the geese didnt cooperate but I shot 5 ducks. Lots of duck flying and should have had my limit, but sometimes birds just come from the left when you are looking right and then come from the right when you are looking left. And of course the usual group of geese come by for a look when I’m without a shot gun in hand because I’m either wading in the water to retrieve a bird or collecting decoys. They sure know how to time it right.

On another note, I shot my first Eurasian wigeon. I’ve shot lots of American wigeons in the past, but this was the first time I’ve seen Eurasians on the lake. A group of three flew by, two drakes and a hen. It was great to have seen them

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Been watching 100-200 geese pound this field for a week now. Just chomping at the bit to hunt it. Well me and a buddy had a day off because of weather and absolute perfect wind direction this morning.

Hard rain and 50-70km winds bird weren't roosted very far away and when they hit the field they were commited to land. Looked tiring just watching them lol

Done by 8am, 2 man limit of 10 geese. Didnt see a duck so we packed it in. Rained stopped while we cleaned up and just got in the truck when it started pouring again! Couldn't have asked for a better hunt.


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Today was a pretty good hunt. Once again, the geese didnt cooperate but I shot 5 ducks. Lots of duck flying and should have had my limit, but sometimes birds just come from the left when you are looking right and then come from the right when you are looking left. And of course the usual group of geese come by for a look when I’m without a shot gun in hand because I’m either wading in the water to retrieve a bird or collecting decoys. They sure know how to time it right.

On another note, I shot my first Eurasian wigeon. I’ve shot lots of American wigeons in the past, but this was the first time I’ve seen Eurasians on the lake. A group of three flew by, two drakes and a hen. It was great to have seen them

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Just curious. Whereabouts have you been hunting. It’s been real quiet out towards Belleville/Kingston
 
Just curious. Whereabouts have you been hunting. It’s been real quiet out towards Belleville/Kingston

I usually go up near Orillia. I would imagine that you’ll be seeing a lot of birds sooner rather then later. Im starting to see groups of divers already so birds are certainly moving.
 
I usually go up near Orillia. I would imagine that you’ll be seeing a lot of birds sooner rather then later. Im starting to see groups of divers already so birds are certainly moving.

I’ve seen teals, mallards and others but haven’t seen a wigeon yet out east. Pretty cool.
 
If you have some considerable amount of water for birds in your area and lots of birds in the sky then you will be able to entice them to start feeding with a few dec's set out but don't expect it to be a "set the decoys & shoot at that point in time"...let the flocks build for a couple days after they start feeding then crawl into your blind up for your shoot.

Well I proved myself wrong yesterday. SIL is away working so borrowed a couple dozen goose decoys for a few days.

I set them up in a combined field 150 yrds from my buildings. We have some adequate water bodies within a mile of this field. Lots of geese around a couple of weeks ago but have heard a bit of shooting on the water sources so think most have moved on. To my knowledge no geese have even looked at this field this year , but wanting to test the "decoy to a cold field" theory with the few birds still in the area, I set them up.

I set up at 3 pm in afternoon. Was I sure wrong about the "singles & pairs" comment...the first flock that flew by at about 4 pm had over 50 birds in it and dive bombed the dec's I had set out, supprisingly for this time of year to a cold field, one pass and land on the second. Before the evening was over I must of had 150-200 birds in the field and smallest flock I seen was 6 birds.
Now, as I write this in the AM the birds are starting to come back (2 flocks so far).

I don't have a licence to even shoot one so will give a buddy a call this evening if it still looks like a shoot is possible.
 
I’ve seen teals, mallards and others but haven’t seen a wigeon yet out east. Pretty cool.

What is strange is that I haven't seen much of teals. The first couple weeks of the season is usually loaded with green wing teals and some blue wing teals added into the mix. This year has been totally different. I’ve only seen 1 small group of green wings on opening day and that was the end of it.
 
What is strange is that I haven't seen much of teals. The first couple weeks of the season is usually loaded with green wing teals and some blue wing teals added into the mix. This year has been totally different. I’ve only seen 1 small group of green wings on opening day and that was the end of it.

I think ducks were early this year. Teals are usually first to come down and in Early goose season i seen the flocks of ducks i don't usually see until late Sept-early October.

Massive mallard n black duck flocks hitting here now, I was utterly amazed at the thousands I seen last weekend WMU 81A
 
I’m going to head out again tomorrow. Hopefully those big flocks are out east too. Going to take my youngest out for some dad and son time out on the water vs Covid school lockdown.
 
opening day out here in BC tomorrow chasing pheasants in morn and geese at night ,still fun after 5 decades ..
 
Well I proved myself wrong yesterday. SIL is away working so borrowed a couple dozen goose decoys for a few days.

I set them up in a combined field 150 yrds from my buildings. We have some adequate water bodies within a mile of this field. Lots of geese around a couple of weeks ago but have heard a bit of shooting on the water sources so think most have moved on. To my knowledge no geese have even looked at this field this year , but wanting to test the "decoy to a cold field" theory with the few birds still in the area, I set them up.

I set up at 3 pm in afternoon. Was I sure wrong about the "singles & pairs" comment...the first flock that flew by at about 4 pm had over 50 birds in it and dive bombed the dec's I had set out, supprisingly for this time of year to a cold field, one pass and land on the second. Before the evening was over I must of had 150-200 birds in the field and smallest flock I seen was 6 birds.
Now, as I write this in the AM the birds are starting to come back (2 flocks so far).

I don't have a licence to even shoot one so will give a buddy a call this evening if it still looks like a shoot is possible.

This is an interesting experiment so far. After the first 2 days with a bit of success I had a wet day and with the decoys left out, they were shiny as hell & nothing give them more than a "one pass & gone " thing and curiously nothing cam back for 2 days so I reset the decoys about 100 yrds from original set yesterday afternoon. First bunch of birds ( about 75 specs) crashed in after one pass, landed right in the decoys, sat there for 2 minutes looking at each other silently then just got up and left.

Now , this morning I must have 1000 birds in the field happily feeding all around the decoys. All the big Canada's except 3, one mature snow, one immature snow with the motley grey coloring and a real weird one that I have never seen before. This bird has a pure white head and 1/2 its neck but its body is almost black from neck to tail feathers...any ideas...is it something you coastal shooter will recognize?
 
This is an interesting experiment so far. After the first 2 days with a bit of success I had a wet day and with the decoys left out, they were shiny as hell & nothing give them more than a "one pass & gone " thing and curiously nothing cam back for 2 days so I reset the decoys about 100 yrds from original set yesterday afternoon. First bunch of birds ( about 75 specs) crashed in after one pass, landed right in the decoys, sat there for 2 minutes looking at each other silently then just got up and left.

Now , this morning I must have 1000 birds in the field happily feeding all around the decoys. All the big Canada's except 3, one mature snow, one immature snow with the motley grey coloring and a real weird one that I have never seen before. This bird has a pure white head and 1/2 its neck but its body is almost black from neck to tail feathers...any ideas...is it something you coastal shooter will recognize?

Maybe an immature snow or "blue phase"
 
It was a windy day out this morning and the wind had birds doing all sorts of crazy things. Most of the birds I called at struggled to cooperate. I was able to bag a couple woodies and a couple wigeons, but the wind really messed with most of the birds that were trying to work my decoys. Oh well, thats how its goes sometimes. I ended up packing up earlier than usual as the wind seemed to be picking up which makes collecting decoys a little more wet and miserable then I cared to experience today.
 
We didn't hunt this morning with wind to 95km, and rain, so we hunted tonight . The rain had stopped, and the wind had dropped to 60km, and we ended up with 25 specs, 21 snows and 1 Canada.

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