Pa. N W zone

[don novicki]

Over here for ducks 12-5 until we get a bonus week Dec 27 to Jan 5 and then done in the NW Zone P.I runs until 1-7-23 and then done. Goose opens again tomorrow and then runs until Feb. Long range weather shows SW wind until forever. Need it to get cold like it used to, when we actually had a winter. Poor duck season overall so far with the exception of a couple of days. Lots of corn still stands so goosing is going to be difficult esp. if we don't get snow. Plenty of geese at a local industrial park eating green grass and loafing on the pond. Glad I hunted hard in the late 80's and 90's when there were fewer guys and no internet. I guess everything changes and sometimes not for the better.

[Duck Engr]

Still standing corn? Guess it’s just not going to get harvested?

[Ricky Spanish]

Still standing corn? Guess it’s just not going to get harvested?

Unusual but I've seen corn get harvested in January before.
There's a guy in Tennessee whose duck blind didn't get flooded because the soybeans crop didn't get harvested because no where to put it. Strange times.

[Duck Engr]

Still standing corn? Guess it’s just not going to get harvested?

Unusual but I've seen corn get harvested in January before.
There's a guy in Tennessee whose duck blind didn't get flooded because the soybeans crop didn't get harvested because no where to put it. Strange times.

Friend in Mississippi relayed a similar story. Said it was due to a low Mississippi River snaring barge traffic. Lucky for him he harvested early enough.

[Ricky Spanish]

Still standing corn? Guess it’s just not going to get harvested?

Unusual but I've seen corn get harvested in January before.
There's a guy in Tennessee whose duck blind didn't get flooded because the soybeans crop didn't get harvested because no where to put it. Strange times.

Friend in Mississippi relayed a similar story. Said it was due to a low Mississippi River snaring barge traffic. Lucky for him he harvested early enough.

It's not even a thing here.
The Andersons has an enormous set of bins for corn here and ADM in Decatur uses a lot of corn and beans so shipping it out? Why when Cargill and ADM buy it.
They ship out processed products like for instance "corn starch".
Syrup and don't forget alcohol.
It looks like Pennsylvania gets a couple feet of snow this week maybe. Yikes

[don novicki]

They'll harvest it but only if the moisture content is below 7%. I'm guessing a lot of it will still be standing in Feb when the season closes. Couple that with the way they harvest corn and it's ruining goose hunting.........

[don novicki]

Come on weather we need snow and a NW wind. P.I. was devoid of birds yesterday, and I mean virtually nothing. That is not good for this time of year........

[Duck Engr]

Hate to hear that Don. From the forecasts, you should be getting your weather soon.

[don novicki]

Out goose hunting this morning with a decent NW wind finally. Set up in a corn field not far from the roost and had birds get up in various waves and they went every direction except to our decoys. Hung around until 10:00 and called it. Scouted for tomorrow and 3 of the fields i have permission on all had geese, with one really loaded I'd guess 2-300. Tomorrow is another day, N wind to continue, and season closes tomorrow until Feb 3-25th. Hope the goose gods are with us in the a.m. because it's a death march for sure.........Hope everyone is doing well.

[Rick]

Sic 'em.

[Duck Engr]

Go out with a bang Don!

[don novicki]

I tried both Fri and Sat and got a big goose egg both days. Fri every bird took off and headed East and never even gave us a look, and Sat, despite there being 2-300 birds there the evening before, we never even saw a bird all morning. Still was great to be out in the wind and snow......,Now we wait til Feb, real goose weather.......

[don novicki]

Feb 3-25 coming up soon. Hope we finally get some wind and weather that is conducive to hunting Branta Canadensis. I'm oiling up the 10ga, and busting out the T shot.....hoping that maybe they'll be a rogue Orange collar on one from the old days....

[don novicki]

Gonna be cold tomorrow for the opener. High is supposed to be 2 degrees. Still haven't decided if I'm going because geese seem pretty sparse right now. A scouting trip this afternoon but today it's 37 and sunny so I don't think they'll be eating corn. I don't know whats going on anymore....

[SpinnerMan]

At the club I hunt geese in late winter, I think the entire club got 2 geese in January. A good day is 100 geese and over 1,000 for the year is typical. 2 for the entire month of January

We just didn't have the weather for the entire month. We had good duck hunting and I think decent goose hunting for a short period at Christmas, when I was out of town of course Then it got 50 degrees and everything scattered.

January 31, I worked from my home. I had planned on being hunting. Geese flew over my house almost nonstop. There should be no geese in the area by that time. The next day I drove across the river where the mallards usually stack up this time of year. A roughly 1 mile stretch of river that I could see was wall to wall geese. There were a couple acres of ducks on the adjacent canal. I guess the geese ran them out. There just aren't supposed to be that many geese in the north zone of Illinois this time of year. But it was 50's and raining two weeks earlier. We haven't had a winter that has froze before January and stayed frozen for quite a few years now. When I first started hunting around the cooling lake, I remember the geese being pushed further south because of too much snow and then come back when we would get some warming, but never 50's and rain. Now, they barely get pushed down and then it warms up and they are right back up north. The season up north closes mid January, but the birds are spread out and I don't have any places that are nearly as good.

Goofy weather the last few years. Today it's 70's and sunny, but I am in Florida though

[Ricky Spanish]

I know a few people up and down the Mississippi flyway.
We are all reporting the same thing.
Geese and ducks in my area have gotten extremely good at knowing where to go to not get shot at.
There are literally millions of HOAs with duck ponds filled with lounging ducks and geese for the entire season and not only that they feed them and aerate the water to keep it open.

I go hunting, look at empty skies, drive home AND THERE THEY ARE...in town on them hoa ponds. It's hard to take

[don novicki]

The hunting season went out this year with nary a whimper. SW wind and warm temps plagued the area all season long, and as I write this, we are looking at nothing but NW winds for the foreseeable future. Would have been nice to have that wind during the season. We got 41" of snow which, for us is nothing. Typically we get double that or more, but that's been changing. I got to hunt Presque Isle a number of times, but it too was really bad, all except 4 days in Dec where the bay froze and brought in fresh birds. There were some beautiful prime Cans and Redheads harvested that I saw pictures of. Of course I wasn't out any of those days because you needed to be at beach 11, and those blinds were in use by their owners. When the bay thawed out again, everything was gone.
Late goose season until Feb 25th was a bust. Again warm temps and that dam SW wind did us no favors. Packed all my stuff away until next year when we do it again. Waiting for Turkey season but that is April 29/30 and a long way away.

Hope everyone here is doing good, get after those gobblers

[Rick]

Friends of mine had a framed piece of calligraphy in their camp that began with "'Too' is the most important word in the waterfowler's lexicon." And went on from there with "too warm, too cold," :too windy, too still." "too clear, too cloudy" and so on down a long list that ended with the promise of "and tomorrow"...

[don novicki]

Well got the invite last night to hunt in the a.m. in the layout that I built this summer. The guys used it on Nov 13th at P.I. and did pretty good. I was in blind 42 the day they were out there, and I missed their call to go with them. Most of the shooting that day was done by them. I'm looking forward to hunting out of something I built. Full report tonight after I get back so I'm hoping we get into them this morning. This is the first chance I've had to do anything other than snow blowing since 11-29 so it will be good to get out of the house and on the water. Come on Blue Bills.....really stoked.