Duck Depression

This is a strange year in that duck depression usually sets in after the season. This year it was during the whole season instead. I couldn’t wait for it to end. I don’t have it in me to just give up no matter how bad it is so I just kept suffering and suffering through bad hunt after bad hunt.

There’s no doubt it was my worst season since starting to waterfowl hunt. Some of that is weather patterns, some is current habitat issues in where I’m choosing to hunt, and some was just really bad luck even after good scouts. Whatever the combination, I was absolutely over it. There were times that I was only going to make the dog happy and no other reason.

So much local habitat is poor or gone. Due mostly to low water, development, or another thing I’ll point the finger at…invasive mute swans. I’m still betting it is an extremely low percentage of people that even know they are invasive in Michigan and I could go on and on about that. But the tough conditions combined with where the ducks where and being handcuffed by so many rules in how to hunt them was just crushing. Not to mention I had ammo that was not achieving full powder burn or firing a squib load that I could see fall out the barrel way to frequently when there were shot opportunities. Luckily there was quite a bit of deer hunting to make up for my overall dissatisfaction with waterfowl season this year. I do wish there was more fishing but with the warm weather not kicking off the perch and walleye migrations and the big lake constantly being rough. That wasn’t too intriguing either. Luckily that is all changing now but we seem to be in a very up and down temperature pattern.

For all the frustration that occurred this year, it did end on a high note. We finally got the weather, the ice, the uncomfortableness, that makes for great hunts in west Michigan. Trevor and I had one of those hunts to end the season on. Fat mallards bombing the decoys (and then cooked skin on to perfection), classy divers moving about, and in my opinion a crown jewel of Michigan waterfowl. An extremely plumed out December Drake shoveler for the limit bird. You couldn’t have drawn up the hunt any better if you tried especially given the location. It’s also funny how things work out because if it wasn’t for a couple rounds of poor shooting on a day that we shot good overall. We’d have been long gone before that bird got there.

That hunt made my season for sure the only bummer was no Hutch. But I am not a fan of hunting him in snow/ice and mid 20’s conditions out of the boat blind. It was cool though to be killing some birds over decoys I made including the first drake common merganser killed over there. These are specialty decoys after all and that is the target “duck”.