As someone who enjoys participating in just about any outdoor activity you can come up with, waterfowl hunting is one I absolutely love doing but don’t have a ton of experience with.
The thing I like most about it is that it’s more social than other types of hunting because you can go with a few buddies and chat in between the action.
As well, if you get some birds flying around, then you get the opportunity to do a bunch of shooting, which is fun. We all like action.
The weather we experienced across Northwestern Ontario over the weekend was pretty awesome. I even was reading somewhere that Fort Frances was the hottest spot in Canada on Sunday.
Now while this weather is much more enjoyable than the cold stuff that’s coming, the warm weather usually doesn’t really help hunting activities at this time of year.
What I do know about duck hunting is that they like flying a lot more on the days that are windy, rainy, and crappy. I think when it’s nice out, they just like to sit back and enjoy it—much like we do.
Despite the weather, a couple of friends and I made plans to head down on Lake of the Woods to spend an evening and morning duck hunting. We had a cabin to stay at for the night so it would be a good overnight trip.
The weather actually was the appeal to heading out on the lake; the hunting was really the secondary thing (who am I kidding!)
Early in the afternoon, we got set up at the cabin, then hopped in the boat to go look around for some birds. We drove into a couple of shallow bays and saw small groups of ducks take off—good to see but not the mother load we were looking for.
Eventually we got to the back of a large, shallow bay that was loaded up with wild rice. Hundreds of ducks started lifting from the water and we knew we had located a good spot to set up to hunt.
We quickly arranged a couple of dozen decoys, pulled the boat up on shore, and got set up in the long grass that surrounded the lake.
We had a few hours before dark so we hunkered down for the rest of the afternoon. Many times when you jump a lot of ducks like we did in this particular spot, they trickle back eventually, but that didn’t really work out that well for us on Saturday.
We had some birds come by to check out our decoys and we managed to get a few, but we did not get the action we were hoping for based on how many ducks we saw when we arrived.
We packed up just before dark and decided to try the same spot again the next morning. We got out there early and got all set up before it was even light enough to see.
Pretty soon we could hear ducks flying over us—it was pretty awesome. When it’s dead calm, these flocks of speedy ring bills sound like little fighter jets going over your head; it’s really incredible.
That made the whole trip for me.
Watching the sunrise on a beautiful day with all these birds flying overhead really made my day. It was one of those moments where I thought to myself, “This is one of those great feelings that you never experience if you don’t hunt.”
We had a great morning. There were a lot of birds flying around until the action slowed around 9 a.m. One thing I learned is that I need to practice shooting at moving targets!
Still, it was a fun trip with some good friends!
There are a lot of northern ducks making their way through Sunset Country right now so if you like to waterfowl hunt, we probably will get at least a couple more weeks of solid action.
Let’s cross our fingers that this nice weather will linger around a little bit longer!