Its duck eve here in the north zone. Are there any other HOers out there getting out for opening day in the north? The weather doesnt look too promising, a little warm and not enough wind, but either way I am pumped and Friday cant get over fast enough!!
Very excited!!! Where I hunt we have been seeing lots of Pintails. WNW winds at 15mph. Full of water and feed and ready to go!
When putting the decoys out Wednesday we had the spoonies landing on us.
That is real neat buckz. I assume your hunting private land? What part of the state are you in? NW or NE?
Majority is private, but we have some great public areas near me as well. I would say we are in North Central IL. Right at the North/Central zone border line smack dab in the middle of the state.
Well good luck Buckz, let us know how you did after the weekend!
Had a pretty decent opening day, shot 17 ducks, but didnt recover 3 of them. Shot mallards, GW teal, BW teal, wigeon, and a spoony. All was fun except for the typical public hunting B.S. Had some real idiots to the North of us, the worst sky busters i have ever seen. Confident we would have had our limit if there would have been some respectable hunters. They wouldnt even let the birds work themselves, one pass of a working bunch and they would take a whack at them. Seriously shooting at every bird withing 80 yds. They must have shot 6 boxes of shells and still didnt kill as many as us. Frustrating, but we still had a lot of fun.
We had a decent shoot Saturday. A little bit rusty though! Picked up 4 teal, a gadwall, and two spoonies. There was a lot of action going on from what we heard (there are many clubs where i’m at). The birds weren’t really working too much and we prefer not to sky-bust either. Our decoy spread might have been a little too long and had lots of groups land on the outside.
Sunday it was slow going but we got 3 teal and a beautiful spoonie drake…we didn’t waste any shells on those. Then we had the only group of mallards come in and land outside the decoys.
Going to enjoy the indian summer this week and maybe head out Sunday again!