Is anyone seeing ducks....

[Savage30L]

....in KY or the greater Ohio Valley region?

I live in Central KY, and I am still not seeing migratory ducks. A few flocks of geese have shown up just in the last week. I've never, in my 64 years, seen KY go this far into the winter without ducks appearing. I hope that the cold air settling into the midwest this week will drive a few down, but there is still a lot of open water everywhere in the Mississippi flyway, apparently. Let's hear from anyone in the region who is seeing any and/or having successful hunts.

 

[jmorris]

We are in Texas but I had a friend and his son down at the farm last weekend to duck hunt. Said they had seen 16 deer but no ducks. After lunch they went to the rifle range in the back and jumped them from every tank they past on the way, including the one they hunted that morning...

 

[Art30/30]

Up here in Montana and surrounding states we haven’t had a “real” winter until a few days ago. We have been in the -20 to -30 degrees for a few days. Lakes are finally freezing up so they should be heading your way!

 

[jmorris]

If it stays as cold as it is here now, they will just keep going. However, I have lived in Texas my entire life, 50% chance I'll need shorts and flip flops by the end of next week.

I think "climate change" originated here, its all over the place...

 

[buck460XVR]

Up here in Montana and surrounding states we haven’t had a “real” winter until a few days ago. We have been in the -20 to -30 degrees for a few days. Lakes are finally freezing up so they should be heading your way!

Same here in West Central Wisconsin. Lakes just started to freeze hard last week. Benn pretty common to still see Canadian Geese flying back and forth to the picked cornfields surrounding the local lakes every morning and evening. Guy I work with just commented on this a few days back. Told him with open water and available food, they are crazy to head south because hunting season here is done. same thing with woodcock this fall. Our season ended on Nov. 6th, long before any Northern birds flew down. Woodcock main diet consists of earthworms, so they don't head south till the ground freezes. So basically, without the ground freezing to the north of Lake Superior, woodcock season for us was a bust.

 

[Savage30L]

Same here in West Central Wisconsin. Lakes just started to freeze hard last week. Benn pretty common to still see Canadian Geese flying back and forth to the picked cornfields surrounding the local lakes every morning and evening. Guy I work with just commented on this a few days back. Told him with open water and available food, they are crazy to head south because hunting season here is done. same thing with woodcock this fall. Our season ended on Nov. 6th, long before any Northern birds flew down. Woodcock main diet consists of earthworms, so they don't head south till the ground freezes. So basically, without the ground freezing to the north of Lake Superior, woodcock season for us was a bust.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen any woodcock this season, either. Or northern doves. Or northern anything. All I've bagged since deer season ended is one dove....

 

[WestKentucky]

West Kentucky has been too warm so far. I have a lot of windshield time and have been looking for birds, and so far the eagles still outnumber the quackers. I have been seeing geese for about a week, the ducks will be here soon.

 

[Chuck R.]

I was seeing some small ducks and ringnecks up until a couple weeks ago. Mallards and gadwall's started showing up, just before we got this artic blast, now the small water is solid and they've either hit the big water or moved on. We've also got snow with a crust, so it makes it difficult for them to feed in the corn fields.

 

[Armored farmer]

I hunted Marion, Illinois Green Acres hunt club yesterday.
We saw a large flock of birds fly over early before daylight, but only a few pairs and singles throughout the day. We only killed two birds. Another blind killed four. That was it. We quit early and drove home.

Temp is hovering at 0 today with 1inch of snow. That should lock everything up here in south central Illinois and north.
There SHOULD be some birds heading south today.
There are 0 birds here though.

 

[nick22]

Skinny in west central Ohio as well some geese but can't get permission to hunt them as the ground they're landing on has been leased up for deer hunting. Leasing ground makes me wish deer didn't have antlers!

 

[Armored farmer]

Track the Waterfowl Migration!

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migrationstationusa.com

https://huntillinois.org/waterfowl#aerial-surveys

 

[entropy]

Most the ducks were gone from here (WI-MN border) back around Xmas, I saw one small flock of bills since then. Lots of swans, and the ubiquitous Canada geese. We get plenty of them wintering , and some swans stay too.

 

[NIGHTLORD40K]

I see dead ducks..... they're everywhere.....

 

[Aqua400]

In the waters of the south shore of Long Island, I’ve seen lots of sea ducks, and some mallards, black ducks, and geese
Most of the geese are still resident geese
I haven’t seen or heard a lot of flocks traveling.

 

[lightman]

I rode down through my old stomping grounds (England Arkansas) last week and every puddle of water had Ducks. Its much colder this week, so I don't know if they are still here or not.

 

[sage5907]

I live in Oklahoma and I have been seeing lots of ducks lately and yesterday while driving down to the boat ramp I saw a pair of Goldeneye and they were really pretty. The wind was blowing creating rough water and they were riding high and bouncing up and down on each wave. I have never really been a duck hunter but I have always been a duck collector and I have 14 different kind of ducks mounted. The central flyway here in Oklahoma has a good variety of ducks and over the years I have collected mallards, wigeon. gadwall, pintail, goldeneye, redhead, canvasback, ringneck, sculp, northern shoveler, hooded merganser, woodduck, buffelhead and greenwing teal. I always see bluewing teal in the spring but never in the fall, and I see common merganser on large lakes but never where I can hunt. The only duck that I really consider good eating is a mallard and if I am hungry for duck I fillet the breasts, pound them out on a meat board and chicken fry them. Really good eating. I don't try to take ducks any more but I sure like to watch them. I quit duck hunting when the regulations for steel shot came out. Ducks are some of God's finest creations.

 

[Savage30L]

It's a balmy -1 here this morning. I'm still not seeing ducks! All of our ponds and lakes are frozen over after a week of very cold weather. We may not have a duck season to speak of here....it ends in 10 days.

 

[Savage30L]

I finally saw ducks yesterday....a flock of mixed divers, mostly bluebills, sitting on a pond that always holds ducks when they are in.

 

[HB]

Weather patterns are certainly changing, and it seems like duck seasons will have to change too. I recently moved to Northern WY from Central MO and it is interesting to note the changes.

I didn’t even buy a duck stamp this year because I don’t have a lay of the land here. But the story was pretty similar to MO. Early season there are small ducks hanging around. They leave then nothing for a month. We had a snowstorm in early October and it pushed tons of geese down. Then nothing… Last 2 weeks temps dropped to -20 and everything locked up. Mallards appeared out of nowhere and packed into fast moving streams as everything else froze solid. I saw and heard tons of ducks moving day and night. Of course this was nearly a month after the season closed here.

Typically in MO we would shoot a 6 bird limit opening day of teal and wood ducks. November and December would be pretty quiet. Then around New Years we would get a big push of mallards, wigeon, and sometimes pintails. The refuges are most full the day before opener and the 2 weeks after the season closed. Winter is becoming a thing of the past with more days in the 50s than days in the 20s.

I have heard Stugart is kind of the end of the line for migration now. Things change. Western MO is now goose country, and the old timers in eastern IL say goose hunting there has dropped off massively since the 80s-90s. In general I think the last 20 years have been much drier as well. I imagine ag practices, climate, and changes in the levee systems all play a part. Trapping and coon hunting are dying as well, and I imagine there are a lot more ground predators today.
Not to mention the comeback of birds of prey, increased urbanization, and a higher percentage of “park” ducks that rather land on a golf course.

 

[Frulk]

Not that it helps the OP in Kentucky. Just adding to the discussion. Was on the Bighorn River in central Wyoming Thursday through Sunday this past week. Low Wed was -19. Thursday was -9. Friday was in teens. Saturday low 20’s and Sunday got up to 40. River was clear of ice and flowing pretty good. Lots of mallards on the section I was at with a few Canadian geese tossed in. Was surprised to see that even the edges of the river were clear of ice considering those temps.

 

[Milt1]

I have read these post several times, not that I'm a duck hunter, but moreso to understand what was happening. I didn't think I'd be adding to this but happened to see a lone duck flying toward me this morning as I was returning from walking my dog. I initially thought it was a dove but as it came by I realized it was a duck and flying much much faster than a dove can fly, it was like a dove with jet assist! Color me impressive!

 

[JeffG]

I live in Wisconsin on a river. We still have an abundance of mallards and teal, and Canada geese flying daily here, from farm fields and back to semi open water. I just don't think there was enough cold weather to convince them to fly south.

 

[.308 Norma]

Weather patterns are certainly changing, and it seems like duck seasons will have to change too. I recently moved to Northern WY from Central MO and it is interesting to note the changes.

Yep, I haven't paid much attention to the duck seasons in a long time, but my wife and I went for a drive with some friends yesterday over to the Jackson Hole Elk Refuge (south of Yellowstone and Grand Teton Park in Wyoming) to see the elk and bison. Much to our surprise, we didn't see but maybe 250 head of elk in the refuge (there's usually thousands this time of year), no bison, not more than a couple of feet of snow, and it wasn't even all that cold.
About the only thing that was normal was the wagon load after wagon load of tourists riding in the big sleds going out to feed the elk in the refuge. Whoever runs that business must be rationing how much hay is being hauled out to the elk. Because what few elk that were in the refuge would be getting fat this winter if someone wasn't rationing how much food is being hauled out to them.
Oh BTW, I hope the word "wolves" doesn't spark any arguments (like it often does), but we didn't see any of those either. It might have been the wrong time of day for spotting wolves though.

 

[WestKentucky]

I saw 1 small flock of ducks flying near Lake Malone in Muhlenberg county yesterday afternoon. That’s the first ducks I have seen flying, and I immediately thought of this thread. The geese are around in various places because I see them in corn fields eating leftover grain. What I saw in the air was small and fast, maybe about a dozen or so of them.