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Just returned from 5 days of waterfowl and upland bird hunting in North Dakota. 
Over those five days we saw only three nonresident vehicles in our area of hunting. None of these guys were serious threats to anyone's hunting. Damn FIBs. We saw about 4 ND vehicles on Saturday and 10 ND vehicles on Sunday. None during the week.
Opening day we got set up early. For the first time since 1983, another party actually edged onto our water decoy spread for about the first hour of hunting. Two guys tried to pass shoot our working birds. :******: They were within about 300 yards away. They moved on. We talked to them later, they were ND men. Before anyone screams NRs taking ops away from residents - let me say that three of the six in our hunting party were ND residents including 2 boys. I was a little surprised that these guys edged onto our spot. They parked next to two trucks (one with MN plates, the other ND plates). Anyone showing up might have thought two separate groups were already hunting out there.
Did really well on ducks (about 1/2 mallards). I did not shoot until the boys had the first shot or two. 8) Picked up some big geese later in the morning.
Next four days provided good hunting especially for ducks (about 60% mallards, rest were greys, wigeon, pintails, and teal) and sharptail grouse. Tuesday was unbelievable hunting in 30mph+ winds.
Only two complaints were :
1) found main mallard field (about 5-10K birds). Ducks were using posted land held by small time guide. They never hunted it because there were no geese in the field. Birds used that barley field every day from Friday to Wed. Water that these mallards were using was holding geese so we did not hunt them on the water either.
2) small Canada numbers lowest in 5 years. Shot a few, but nothing compared to what we did the past 3 years. Ducks made up for the missing geese though.
Finally,
+) Comments on my use of a spinner will follow in another post.
+) Comments on hot topics - small town response to NR hunters to come on hot topics page later.
Over those five days we saw only three nonresident vehicles in our area of hunting. None of these guys were serious threats to anyone's hunting. Damn FIBs. We saw about 4 ND vehicles on Saturday and 10 ND vehicles on Sunday. None during the week.
Opening day we got set up early. For the first time since 1983, another party actually edged onto our water decoy spread for about the first hour of hunting. Two guys tried to pass shoot our working birds. :******: They were within about 300 yards away. They moved on. We talked to them later, they were ND men. Before anyone screams NRs taking ops away from residents - let me say that three of the six in our hunting party were ND residents including 2 boys. I was a little surprised that these guys edged onto our spot. They parked next to two trucks (one with MN plates, the other ND plates). Anyone showing up might have thought two separate groups were already hunting out there.
Did really well on ducks (about 1/2 mallards). I did not shoot until the boys had the first shot or two. 8) Picked up some big geese later in the morning.
Next four days provided good hunting especially for ducks (about 60% mallards, rest were greys, wigeon, pintails, and teal) and sharptail grouse. Tuesday was unbelievable hunting in 30mph+ winds.
Only two complaints were :
1) found main mallard field (about 5-10K birds). Ducks were using posted land held by small time guide. They never hunted it because there were no geese in the field. Birds used that barley field every day from Friday to Wed. Water that these mallards were using was holding geese so we did not hunt them on the water either.
2) small Canada numbers lowest in 5 years. Shot a few, but nothing compared to what we did the past 3 years. Ducks made up for the missing geese though.
Finally,
+) Comments on my use of a spinner will follow in another post.
+) Comments on hot topics - small town response to NR hunters to come on hot topics page later.
