What gun and ammo are you shooting at them things Clay?

I like shooting Teal, but I love eating them more!!
Shooting Teal was always fun as long as I let someone else shoot first. After that first shot the flock would go almost straight up and once they reached their peak they were easy pickings.

Especially greenwings
You can really wack ‘em on that exit climb.

We shoot light steel loads Jayme. 6’s or 7’s.
Most of us shoot 12 gauges.
Couple guys shoot 20’s.
They’re not tough to kill if you’re on them.

I was using my Yildiz Legacy HPS 20 gauge over and under with 2 3/4 Kent dove steel #6. Bought it last and just getting it broken in. Had to drive to your state Clay to buy it, Academy wouldn't ship to a FFL and only they carry it.

Well fellas to our south, this past weekend we had some temps in the 30’s. That should help push any local stranglers to you and get the northern cousins down to us to play with for a weekend or two hopefully. Enjoy!!

Nebraska has been slow this season. Finally notched out our first two-man limit on Friday.
The number of woodies is astronomical. Gotta be extremely careful as some are very, very immature yet and about the size of a teal.
Also have a weird amount of resident big ducks here yet this year (mallards, spoonies, and pintails)

Great pictures, awesome job. No teal population worth hunting here, we do have an early teal season but it only encompasses about 10% of the state. East of HWY 17 only, which is the beach/Outer Banks

Getting out this Saturday to catch the end of our early teal season in Michigan. It’ll be more of a goose hunt, which presents challenges for picking shot sizes to kill both.

South Dakota is one of the largest producers of teal in the U.S. and yet I don't ever remember having a teal-only season. I guess we're just too barbaric up here to do it properly. However, I do see that they are starting the general duck season for most of East River on Sept 21 which is 10+ days earlier than the very late Sept/early Oct (wherever that Saturday falls) that the season normally starts. At least normally back when I used to go out for an opener a decade or more ago.

I never know why people think teal taste so good, to me all ducks basically taste the same and are the equivalent to muskrat (or muskrat is equivalent to duck). The only real exception is later season mallards that have been eating corn for two or so months. Full disclosure, I've never eaten a shoveller (too many times I've seen those white stripes that I think are cysts or whatever) or mergansers (which only play a duck on TV). I've tried coots but had a bad experience with them. Maybe if I was hungry enough...

I feel like part of it is teal are easiest for me to soak/bleed out because of the smaller size of the breast. They are less red/bloody comparatively so some other species which is where the "game" taste comes from.
Prepared correctly, I would agree with you. I really don't notice much of a difference in taste.

If you don’t like duck, then someone doesn’t know how to cook it. I’ll agree some of the divers don’t taste the best and forget Mergansers, but every puddle duck I’ve eaten had been great.
Teal are smaller so we’ll breast them, take one breast and split it longways, throw in some cream cheese and a jalapeño in the middle of it and wrap it in bacon and cook until bacon is done on the grill. The duck should be med rare and will melt in your mouth. Got a neighbor that loves to shoot woodies but will not eat them. He just calls me when he leaves his kills at my front door.

South Dakota allows us 2 bonus BW teal for the first 16days of the season, so we can technically shoot 8 ducks during that time. Most years we get less then a week of good teal shooting before they move out, this year the way they calendar fall it’s a early start so we may get a little longer shot at them unless a big cold front comes thru.

Interesting way to allow extra bluewing harvest.

Congrats.Mostly green winged teal up here with a few blue winged teal.

GWT are tougher than BWT. Or green wings nest further north in Canada so take longer to fully come through. The only fully colored drake teal I've shot was a green wing about Thanksgiving time while I walked along side of a dammed up little lake. It was hanging around a couple of mallards, ice was on most of the lake but about 10 feet next to the back of the dam was still open.

A college friend of mine did some gonzo taxidermy on the side and charged be $15 to mount that little GWT drake standing on a piece of a log. I think I had that mount for about 30 years before the head fell off. They can be tough little birds...

Save some for me down here would ya!