Overall, how was your season?

I’ll start. Overall, ours was slow. The mild January temps did not help. Divers never really showed up in numbers. Very few scaup, normally thousands fill our coastal bay. Plenty of bufflehead, and normal amount of scoters. Puddle ducks on the ponds and creeks were average. Lots of black ducks, handful of teal and mallards mixed in. Very few pintail, gadwall, few more wood ducks. Average amount of Canada geese. Killed two banded ducks, a black duck from Maine and a mallard from Quebec. Season ended yesterday.

Had fun! Training a new pup, “Lady” is a year old and really doing well.

Was just starting to goose hunt canadas here and the game and fish are finding alot of the bird flu in the state. Im not worried about it but I dont want to bring it home to our chickens. So I called it a season. Got a few in the freezer .

We had geese and ducks but Maryland's WF seasons, laws and regs suck.

I'm still waiting for the snow geese to show up here in NJ.

Our season was lackluster, more because we just did not get out enough, and the days we did always seemed to be bluebird days and calm.

We've got our one pup who is about to turn 2, it was her first season and just brought our 2nd bird dog home right before Christmas.

We shot a lot of local geese on a year not many other people did, I just happened to have "the field" but lost it to someone who leased it, we set up one field over and ran traffic on the leaser and we got most of the birds, they will probably try and lease both fields next year but it was fun while it lasted.

Very few ducks but I did very little duck hunting, there are ducks here but not many. My dog retrieved around 10 ducks in his first year which was awesome.

We had a great season for mallards. Geese not so much. We hunt only in corn so don’t get the variety like on water but get the occasional grey duck wood duck and pintail. We hunt right next to the river though so we see divers migrating.

I hope you were far enough away that the guys who leased that field couldn’t see the birds you got. Lol that is funny and bet it was fun.

I’d give our duck season a B.
Located in NC Missouri.
November was very good. December was hit and miss.
One thing that stood out was the tremendous numbers of GW teal this year.
We killed 916 ducks out of our pit. We killed 11 divers. We kill almost exclusively puddle ducks.

Great season overall. Hunted from Florida to California and for the first time in 8 years or so didn't hunt the Midwest. Shot piles of resident geese here at home and had a few good wood duck shoots. Also shot some gadwall and wigeon here at home which is fairly rare for our neck of the woods. Best part is we still get to chase the geese a couple more weeks

We quit after the holidays when we found an alarming amount of sick and dead birds. I enjoy hunting but I don't want to eat it or have my dog exposed to it. Mostly in the canada geese along the north platte river.

Gun Nut

Probably the worst season I have experienced in 45+ years of hunting...very few decent ducks...mostly Bufflehead...First year that I didn't at least bring one goose home....Might be re-thinking waterfowl hunting next.

Nope, they got to watch us shoot a pile of geese while they shot at pigeons. They got a few, we got 58 during the 3 early season weekends. Not many birds around this year and I was thrilled with 58

Good stuff guys, and great pics! I love watching a good dog work. Clay, out of those 916, what was the breakdown roughly per species? Just curious. That’s a pile of ducks. We kill a few hundred each year and I know it takes work and dedication! My wife is glad season came to an end lol.

Our duck season was a bust several day of not not pulling a trigger sent me packing early I ain’t wasting my time. Our goose season on the other hand picks up on the last split and had a good one . Got my pups first full waterfowl season under his belt and he did great with the geese just wish the duck hunting was better for him.on to upland birds for the rest of the season

Worst season ever for me.

Might be botulism as opposed to avian flu out your way. Be nice to know for sure.

Whatever can your group do with over 900 ducks even including a lot of teal? Must be a lot of you.

Not hard to eat that many. We have a group of 8 that splits everything and we kill 800-1000 birds per season. We turn about 500 geese a year into snack sticks and summer sausage. Gets eaten by us and distributed to landowners and neighbors as Christmas gifts. That always goes very quick

The remaining 3-500 ducks of our yearly total are plucked whole if they're puddle ducks or redheads/canvasbacks. Bluebills, buffleheads, etc get ground into duck burger with pork added. I donated 100 whole plucked birds to our church for the wild game supper this year. Usually do 3 or 4 big cookouts every year. By the time September 1st comes back around my freezer will be next to empty. If we didn't have a way to eat them all and thoroughly enjoy doing so I wouldn't kill them

we havent had ducks here in the past 18 seasons. It appears the flyway shifted to the west of Bryan College Station. Most birds never make south of Oklahoma. We didnt see but very few woodies. another thing of the past.

Our season ended a couple months ago. Was a good season with the highest number of Pintails we have ever had, some days decoyed several hundred. Of course a guy shots the first shabby drake that comes in then watched primo drakes land all morning long afterwards.
Biggest change for us has been the skyrocketing population of Specks, not sure if numbers are way up or if migration lanes have changed.