There comes a weekend in late September when Justin and I put our bows down and pick up the shotguns. Wisconsin duck opener has been a tradition for us since the first year we hunted. Unfortunately, Justin was asked to film a bear hunt up north that weekend, so I had to round up one of our good hunting buddies, Logan Veenendall.
Day 1: On opening day, we can’t start hunting until 9 AM, but we had a great spot picked out and we knew the ducks were thick in there. We wasted no time, at 8:30 we got out there to set up decoys and get ready. We kicked up a bunch of ducks off of the flooded hay field that we were setting up in, so we knew the ducks were still there.
We settled in and right as the clock struck 9:00 we heard geese coming our way. We quickly ducked down into the standing corn we were using as a blind and a pair of geese wasted no time coming into our spread. We both pulled up and let them have it! It was exactly the way we wanted to start the morning. It didn’t take long after that and we had ducks coming in from all over the place. A flock of teal landed right in front of us in our decoys. We jumped them up and started blazing. Five shots rang out and 4 ducks were down! We quickly picked them up and got ready for me, and believe me, it wasn’t more than 5 minutes before nearly the same thing happened! Another flock of teal came in and landed in the same place. This time, 4 shots rang out and 3 teal were down. Within 10 minutes we had 7 of our 12 ducks and 2 geese! We got in the corn again as we spotted a flock of mallards over the field. We called and they locked right in on our spread. I yelled take em! We both took one shot at the exact same time and 2 drake mallards fell to the pond. We had a hen pintail come in as we were picking up our mallards, and because we had never shot a pintail, we decided to take her out. We now had 10 ducks and 2 geese and decided to pick up so we didn’t scare any more ducks so we could come back and do it again tomorrow.
Day 2: We had high expectations for day 2, so we invited a buddy along that had never been duck hunting before. Justin also came back home and was able to make it out with us, and we were glad he did! The morning was slower than expected. We had another flock of teal repeat what the teal did the day before and with the same outcome. We then had a couple mallards come in that we decided to take. As the geese started flying, we managed to call a flock of 4 in that we cleaned out as well. That was about all we had for action in the morning though, which disappointed us compared to the day before.
We had been watching the ducks though and we knew where they wanted to be, so for the afternoon hunt we switched up our strategies and set up our decoys in a different pond. It seemed like the night was going to be slow too. The last hour of light the action picked up though. We had a small flock of teal come in that we cleaned out and a few wood ducks. Just about as we thought the night was over, we had ducks raining down on us from every direction! It sounded like WWII! After shooting seized, we picked up our ducks. We had 20 ducks and 4 geese on the day with 4 guys! It was a hunt we will never forget. Seven mallards, 7 wood ducks, 6 teal, and 2 geese was by far the best we had done in that area in one day and we introduced someone new to waterfowl hunting in the process! I think he is hooked!
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