I sat hidden yesterday afternoon at one of my ponds to get a feel for how many ducks have migrated in so far. I have two ponds; one is a flooded timber roost pond and the other is a pond that I plant in corn and milo each summer before flooding it in November. Usually by January I have 500-700 ducks feeding in the pond twice each day as they work back and forth between my two ponds. As of yesterday, there were approximately 175 ducks there. That is up from the 25 or so of a couple of weeks ago, and with the cold fronts coming in this week, I hope to see the numbers continuing to improve. I suspect we'll hunt it for the first time this season next week.

Not many in Middle Tennessee. Killed 3last week.

urdubob:

Ever since the anti fur people succeeded in ultimately causing trapping to become a really losing proposition in Canada the fur bearing predators are killing ducklings in breeding grounds like you wouldn't believe. (You, in Tennessee are on a central flyway) Duck populations, in my view, will continue to fall and here in the States, duck hunters will be shooting ducks that stay over instead of continuing to migrate south and you can shoot "natives" only so long. I would say in another 15 years large numbers of Canadian bred ducks going south will be a memory. (BTW, where are the hunters when PETA and other nuts are getting publicity all over TV? Doesn't anyone want to point out that in Nature, everything comes with a penalty? Don't like DDT? Welcome to malaria!)

We are not seeing very many here on the Texas coast. A few guides are getting 6 bird limits, but having to really work their butts off when a good year would have them back at the dock 1 hour afrer sunup. Some people blame our wet fall leaving a large number of small ponds spreading them out...I haven't been inland and north enough to verify that.

We have had a very good year here in Michigan and southern Ontario. Our season will be closing in 2 more days, so maybe some of these ducks will be showing up further south soon. I think there has been a late migration due to the mild temperatures we have seen thus far.

Geronimo

We killed 3 limits (3 guns) of gadwalls last Sat AM in MS. No greenheads. The week before, 2 ducks for 4 guns.



A friend's dad slaughtered greenheads in AR late last week, but a friend (his son) went this am and yesterday to the same club, and killed five yesterday and only one today. Seems hit or miss.



The #'s are building, just slowly.



I am hunting again the weekend of the 1st in MS so we'll see.

I'm hunting in Louisiana this passed week and the monday am killed 1 and monday pm killed my limit of green heads. Then the next day didn't kill anything. And then yesterday only killed 2 wood ducks but saw a lot of greenheads.

It's been a kind of weird year for us here in MA/southern NH. Early season was OK, but did not see the numbers of early birds we normally do. Just in the past few weeks have things been heating up, what with the recent freezes locking up inland waters and forcing birds to the coast and big rivers. So far, I've killed about 85 birds, which is a bit lean in comparison with other recent years, but then, we still have almost a month to go.



Birds bagged include black ducks, mallards, GW Teal, red-breasted, common and hooded mergansers (for mounting), canadas, brant, bufflehead, goldeneye, ww scoter, surf scoter, eider, and just the other day a spoonbill of all things, which is *very* rare in these parts. Also have seen a few pintails (also rare and very sought after here), bluebills, gadwall, American widgeon and maybe one or two others I'm forgetting.



Leighton

Hunted Central Louisiana 12/18-20/04 and we killed mostly teal with a few mallards and grey ducks, not the numbers they usually have. Moved on to Northern Mississippi for Tues-Thurs. 14 Mallards on Tues, mostly bluebills and a couple of mallards, grey ducks and lots of rain on Wed. Woke up to ice and lots of ducks on Thursday but they were feeding and we were hunting loafing areas, think we picked up another 14 between several boats. On the way out at noon (had to go home...damnit), every puddle, ditch and wet area had a duck in it with their heads down feeding .