2022 Waterfowl Reports

Hope everyone has a great season! Please keep yourself safe and always be courteous to the other Hunters.

This past Tuesday night after dark, heard migrating ducks for hours pushing south down the Mississippi Rvr passage. Mostly mallards, spoonbill and relentless amount of wing noise. 

Annual occurrence last week of Oct and/or early Nov. They definitely like to move at night. Years ago this would occur for days/nights at a time. They would push thru partial daytime and all night long. Clearly shows to me we have a significant bird number drop or a migration shift westward. Slow change I've noticed over the last couple decades at the same location. 

They do exist.

I have seen plenty lately.  Here is a huge flock of loafing geese I took a pic of yesterday.  Also, I snuck up on a small, hidden forest pond this afternoon and there were 6 mallards in there....4 of them very nice drakes.  Too bad I didn't have my shotgun with me as I could have easily harvested 3 on the wing when I kicked them up.

anybody seen a duck or goose???

Waupaca:

Hunted buddys field yesterday for geese some in the area and we bagged one, very slow. 

Wood duck hunting was a bit slow this week, but I did manage to bring one home this morning.   Had the geese flown a bit lower, I would have bagged one.

I did see a pair of deer scrapes while duck hunting.

Hunted a Friday before the weekenders! Managed a wood duck,mallard, and spoonie. Pulled up on another mallard and click! Forgot to load the chamber!?? Not much for divers seen. Geese would not play today!.

Hit up the pond last night after work with a buddy for a quick hunt, downed 3 geese shoulda coulda woulda had more but o well, had 1 mallard dump in out of range but geese were plentiful and somewhat wary. SE WI

Beautiful evening and the dog got wet, hope we get some weather soon to push in some new birds. 

Goodhuntin all!

Mostly divers seen by me lately.  The vast majority bluebills, with a handful of redheads and canvasbacks mixed in.   A few buffs and goldeneyes also.

Pic of a drake greater scaup limit (coming out of eclipse plumage yet), and then a size comparison of a lesser scaup to a greater scaup.  I wish the bluebill limit was greater than the 2 early in the season (then 1 later in the season), but it is what it is.

Went out for the first time since breaking ice last week. Only saw about 20.

Mostly divers and saw my first couple of teal this year.

That is a shame igor I agree, as a kid growing up hunting the "hill" in theresa for geese with my dad it was incredible to see the thousands of geese that would get up out of there, and the amount of ducks that were in there too was awesome. Not much of a refuge for the past 20+ years.

Hunted Theresa area Saturday and Sunday morning.  Saturday 1 flock came in, dropped 2. Sunday say a couple groups too far out to call in.  Other than that, nada.

Is the DNR ever going to do anything with the refuge on hwy. 28?  Years ago, it was wide open water and filled with ducks & geese.  Now it's completely overgrown with cattails with little-to-no open water areas to attract large flocks.

ice?     SE WI  hunted pond sat and sunday and got geese, fun times but not much at all for duck activity the singles, doubles, and triples of geese dumped right in but any bigger flocks were wary and educated it seemed, this warm windy weather pattern we are going to have for the near future isnt going to help much. O well time to fish!

Goodhuntin all!

Broke ice this am.  Couldn't get to the water. Saw one flock of Mallards out of range.

Finally had mallards decoy into my setup. Unfortunately, my shooting skills were not good in the 20 mile an hour Northwest wind.

Have that day at least once every year.