Welcome to Waterfowler.com’s state-by-state hunting report page. Hunter Report posting is FREE but restricted to registered users and MEMBERS of Waterfowler.com. Login or register to post your report and use the comment form below for your hunting update.
Sad. Waterfowler.com is dead. The format change was the death of this site. I was a long time member but will not be renewing my membership this year. Last post 3/17/14 for Iowa…..put a fork in it!!!
Hunted two days and picked up the pieces for one day.in SW Iowa. The wind picked up Saturday evening and ruined a lot of spreads. 30 mph sustained winds and gusting to who knows what. Plenty of very wise adult birds in the area. Groups over water and on land had very little success. Talked to several groups. Everybody is shooting a few. less than a bird per hunter average for all day.
The show is awesome though. Ducks swarming ten feet off the ground. Specs and honkers by the dozens cruise in right on the deck. More birds than you can count. Why is the northern migration such a great show but the southern migration is a battle to get large numbers to migrate enmass.
I have been waterfowling for over thirty years across three different flyways and I have never seen that many birds in one day. Not even overlooking a refuge. Total waterfowl in the area has to be in the millions.
Saw a string on snows/blues three miles wide and a half mile deep.
Don’t have any secrets to share. If you want to shoot lots of birds you will need to sneak em or Cow em. Decoy action is slow.
Do you still have some snow cover in your area?On 3-5,Squaw Creek hot line said they had 90% ice from one to three inches,no snows,thye said this could change in the next few days with warmer temps. Grand Pass hot line on 3-5 reported over one million plus snows on the refuge with some 200,000 going out each morning to feed in surrounding area. Here in Columbia Mo. still seeing good numbers of snows as of today.Looks like migration will be late this year.Anyone else still use this web site?
I traveled from Des Moines to Omaha. to Columbus, back down to Lincoln, then up to Sioux Falls.:
Snow cover stops on I-80 about the Atlantic area. Snow on I-29 is clear up to about Onawa. Everywhere I traveled in Nebraska was open ground.
The Platte River from Columbus to Omaha is an ice flow. There are a few open stretches that the honkers are sitting on but 90% ice covered. I did not see any open water ponds or lakes.
I did not see a single flock of snow geese. No ducks either.
The honkers have some holes in deep or moving water but nothing else. Some of our group tried to set up in SW Iowa on Thursday. The ground is still frozen and they could not drive stakes. Had to use only rings. No open water to speak of.
Sorry guys, no good news yet.
Hunted the Chichaqua area again on Thanksgiving morning and Saturday after. Very cold on Thanksgiving. Set out a 20×12′ blue tarp on the ice and surrounded it with dekes. Looked great, but no chance to test my experiment since I saw no ducks. Went home early to start prepping food for later. On Saturday, I drew the blind that had open water in front of it. It was a beautiful day. Saw 12 ducks, all before 9:30am. A flock of 9 buzzed my dekes twice, but I didn’t shoot, trying to get them to commit. Some guys in another blind shot at them as they were checking out their decoys, and the ducks were too high and flew away. Oh well, next year!!
hunted chicaqua on Saturday. made a 20 ‘ hole in the ice and put out only 6 dekes plus a spinner. tried to get warm. was trying to cut a hole in my energy drink since it was frozen too, and looked up to see 25 mallards landing in my dekes. threw everything on the floor and clicked off the safety. picked out a greenhead and fired. nothing. my safety was frozen on. Finally got a shot off, but ducks out of range. They were tired migrators, and went to the next blind that had open water and those guys dropped 2. I went home at 9am to get a hot shower and football by the fireplace. Brrrrrr.
That is Chichaqua
I live in iowa but own a duck club on the Illinois river. there are over 600,000 ducks in the Illinois river bottoms. we bagged 20 mallards this morning by 930am, a five man limit. We have been doing very well on our hunting club. Good luck to everyone and be safe.
Anybody interested in doing some hunting in the morning?? I normally hunt on the weekends but have tomorrow off for my birthday and would like to kill some ducks……I plan to hunt boxcars till about 11ish or so……PM me if interested. i am bringing my boat, dekes, heaters, and dog…….just looking for some company!
There are ducks here, but the numbers are still low. WMA ducks know the refuge lines pretty well. A trickle of new ducks allows a few opportunities. Calendar ducks will probably continue to trickle in with no significant weather systems on the horizon. Mallard movement in the next few days will probably be minimal, with ample uncovered food sources North.
Where are all the duck hunters? Figured there’d be all kinds of reporting this week.
me and my great uncle went Saturday and sunday there were four of us out and we all limited out on Saturday with 3 pintail, 1 greenwing, and 20 bluewings it was some great fun sunday we all went out again and shot three woodys and 4 bluewings
Excellent opener. Lots of ducks in north central Iowa, & relatively low hunting pressure.
Finished the early season with a pair of mallards tonight. Young dog did a nice job of retrieving. I think she is starting to put 2 and 2 together. Early season totals 2 GW, 3 BW, 5 Mallards.
On a sad note, the waterfowl community lost a fine gentleman yesterday after a 4 year battle with cancer. Chessyman contributed to this site in the early years and was always positive. Rest in peace Chuck.
Took the 10 month old pup out for an hour. Managed 2 greenwings and 1 bluewing. It is really fun watching a young dog experience some of their first retrieves. She has more energy than the Everyready Bunny.
This weekend there were a number of reports of limits on Saturday with mallards and teal making up the bulk of the bag. Sunday was little more difficult. Tally for my son and I was 7 mallards and 2 teal for the weekend.
I hope whoever is monitoring this site is listening to the people who are trying to post here. You have made it tooooo cumbersome to use this site with the “CAPTCHA” codes. If you don’t get it just write it rejects your post. They are too hard to read and interpret, get rid of it and you will have more posters. This used to be a great site to visit and now it is terrible. Please listen to your posters.
Captcha system has been changed to address this problem.
It’s now a simple match question. We wish we didn’t have to do it at all but spam issues are an ongoing battle.
We’re always listening. Let us know if this is easier.
I have tried to post reports and the only time you can see them is after posting. When you come back to the site they are gone. Somebody better fix your problem.
Problem resolved. We’ll be making additional changes to address the page break issue.
Some people have been camping at the public accesses since Wednesday in an effort to reserve their honey hole. Pretty rediculous.
We have a fair number of teal and local ducks in the northern part of the state. Water levels are o.k. Some potholes have dried up, but others are holding decent amounts of water. This is much improved over last year.
We have had some good numbers of teal move through since Labor Day and was typical when the temps hit the 40’s a couple of days they moved on.
Everyone have a good and safe hunt this weekend.
You guys have made this site a total pain to use, no wonder people are not post anything. You need to change this or you might as well close your doors.
In northern Iowa we have decent water this year, which should mean some better hunting. I have seen good numbers of teal, spoonies and woodies and fair numbers of mallards. There are some really late hatches because of the wet spring conditions and so some ducklings are really small yet. The goose population was dramatically affected by the spring rains and I have see much fewer broods this summer. Finishing up the last touches on the duck boat. Time to work with the pup out of it before the 21st.
This site activity has really diminished ever since they changed the site. They no longer have the field editors, the site is full of gliches, and they dont respond to your emails when you email them with comments, questions, and/or concerns. Did they just stop caring about the site?? Was it their goal to have this site die??? As a 6 year dedicated member to the site and 3 years serving as one of Iowa’s VFE’s I am very dissapointed and am looking for the next best site to contribute my efforts to. I guess if they do not care enough about it I shoulden’t either. It has been a pleasure meeting, talking, sharing info, and even hunting with some of you. @klobkilzduk , Jon Donelon, and old man Howard, Keep in touch. jefkilzdux at gmail.com