Wisconsin and Minnesota Openers

[Northern_Edge]

Wisconsin opener was exciting for lack of a better term, and though we had some problems with other hunters, we had a good time. My friends and I are residents of Duluth, MN, and we have the luxury of having the St. Louis River nearby where you can hunt on the Wisconsin side, so that we can buy non-resident Wisconsin licenses and Minnesota licenses and hunt in both Wisconsin and Minnesota. Shooting time does not start until 9:00 am on opening day in either state, but because we hunt public property we get up early to hold our spots in either state. We got out there very early on the morning of the Wisconsin opener to hold our spot on an island that is public property, but has a permanant blind on it. The wind was blowing especially strong that morning, and we were a little whacked in the head to even be out there, but we got to the island at 6:00 am to hold our spot. We planned to and did set our decoys at 8:00 am(legal decoy deployment time) on the side where the wind was not blowing because the island was sheltering it. Ducks were flying over left, right, and center, and we were getting pumped up for 9:00 to get there. At 8:15 the guys who apparently built the permanant blind showed up and came over and yelled at us for being there and said we needed to leave. The regulation book says, "Remember:Placement of waterfowl blinds on public land does not restrict others from using or hunting on the public land where the blind is located. Remember to be courteous of other hunters while in the field. I told them that we had been there since 6:00 am, but he didn't care and said we should not have been there because there is an, "established," blind there. We were nice and held our tongues though we would have liked to tell them off, and it ended at words. I was under the impression that the early bird got the worm, but I guess that guy had never heard that expression before. Anyway, we stayed, and so did the other hunters. They set their decoys less than 20 feet away from ours, and sat in the permanant blind about 100 feet away from us. We won out in the end when we shot 5 ducks and they shot none! I have no remorse for people who think that because they built a blind on public property that they some how have dibs on a spot and can come out 45 minutes before shooting time and take over. It might sound mean or uncaring, but when you don't own the land and there are very few good spots to set up you have to expect other hunters to try and beat you to the good spots. Anyway, we set up in a different spot the next morning and added six more ducks and 4 huge honkers to our bag. Andrew, the guy in camo with the geese is 6'6", so you have to compare those geese to him. I shot my first Widgeon ever and my friend Jon shot his first Goldeneye and Wood duck ever that weekend!
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Minnesota opener at my cabin was fun, but we didn't get anything. I roasted up some of the ducks from Wisconsin opener for my buddies on Saturday night, and we worked on my garage a lot. We saw more ducks than ever before on Saturday morning, but no ducks would decoy even to all of my beautiful GHG dekes. They were on a mission to get somewhere. Geese were decoying, but we seemed to be having some major difficulty hitting the targets. The geese have been responding very well to my new GHG LS floaters. If we were better shots, we would have had our possession limits of geese by now. Probably saw 350+ ducks and 500+ geese on Saturday. Substantially less on Sunday. Not much shooting going on around us either.
Hopefully, the birds start to decoy seeing as I am going out in the morning. Thanks for reading, and I hope everybody is shooting lots of birds!

[Eric Wolf]

Way to go! congrats!

[Cory Johnson]

Sounds fun.Congrats on the birds.

[Aaron Hitchins]

Congrats on the openers!!!

Aaron

[CuppedAndComitted]

:eek: Whistlers already:eek:

[Duckslayercam]

Awesome, congrats!

[Zach Byron]

Sounds like fun man, good shooting...congrats on the golden eye too...i am yet to get one of those

[SMIGRATOR]

Looks like you had a good time, congrats on the diver.

[tupe]

NE,

Although what you did was legal, it was a poor judgement call. Public blinds work on sort of an honor system and to snake a mans blind ON OPENING DAY? That is a bit much in my book.

In the future consider putting in the work yourself to build a blind so that you have a place for opening day, and hope like heck some kid doesn't camp out in your blind and take it from you.

Like I said, legal yes, ethical, maube, very poor sportsmanship at least though, particularly since it was opening day. What if this had been a father who was taking his son out for thier first hunt? What kind of impression would that have left?

Just something to think about before your next outing.

Tupe

[shawn boudry]

all you minnesotans should stay on your side of the border.just kidding nice pics. and congrats.you all had a better opener than me.all i got was a suntan.

[olemissduckhunter]

Talk about getting out there early last year on opening day down here we got to the blind that we had built at 4 am just to claim our spot some dude did end up showing up and instead of having him set up on the other side of the pond competing for ducks we invited him to hunt with us. i will never make that mistake again every time ducks got within 80 yards he was poppin shots off. not to mention shooting right over my head at the only greenhead of the morning.

[Stuart McCullough]

Congrats on a good hunt. I get my chance on a couple of weeks. You folks who start early are just getting me all fired up for our opener.

Stuart McCullough
Avery Outdoors Inc.
Pacific Flyway Pro-Staff Manager
RNT Calls Pro-Staff

[David Rearick]

Way to go guys!

[Northern_Edge]

Thanks for commenting guys. I don't want to get into any arguments with anybody about ethics. We didn't steal anyone's blind. We didn't sit in their blind for the reason that they could still come if they wanted to. I don't think sitting on the same island as somebody else is wrong especially if you get there first. The thing that upset me was that they acted like they owned the whole island and had the right to tell us to leave. Anyway, I appreciate your comment even if you and I disagree.