Difficult conditions in Finger Lakes

[fox-admin]

We have had a no duck season. Then the cold came but still few birds. Managed a few down with Super Fox C HE 30019 Dana's gun

[grouse_fan]

Nice pic.

[Woody]

Very nice.

[jolly bill]

Bummer Craig.

Let's hope that this nasty weather that's going to move thru the area the next day or two will bring in some ducks for you guys.

Gotta be frustrating.

Jolly

[Jeff S]

Nice picture and beautiful wood on that gun.

[fox-admin]

Bill there are plenty of birds in the area but they are roosting in Montezuma and feeding in cut corn. Last night we got 11 inches of snow which will move the birds out to the finger lakes. Lows in the 20's will put our marsh out of play
Hope we get a good thaw before the season. Been very disheartening so far.

[Jim Cloninger]

Craig, if the ice gets thick enough, can you hunt with putting decoys on the ice, or is there a lot of snow covering the ice?
Jim

[mc15426378]

Sorry your season has been bad so far but that's a nice mixed bag. Our season opens the day after Thanksgiving. Hope to down a few with Dana's skeleton butt C I bought last year.

Mike

[OH Osthaus]

Craig, if the ice gets thick enough, can you hunt with putting decoys on the ice, or is there a lot of snow covering the ice?
Jim

Jim - the area got more than a half foot of snow last night

yesterday my partner and i made a big hole in the ice in hopes of a hunt - within a couple hours my cork decoys froze into the hole so hard that when when we were picking up, i hooked on one them and i pulled the boat to the decoy rather than the other way around.

unfortunately, Macallan's only retrieve was a dummy after we got done

[jolly bill]

Let's hope that tomorrow/Saturday morning things will turn around for you guys.

You should be rewarded for all the work you put into the marsh.

[Jeff S]

Too bad about your duck season. I know how passionate you are about waterfowl hunting. You've spent all year training your beloved Lucy and planning the hunts, and them Mother Nature doesn't cooperate. I used to dream about deer hunting from a very high vantage point overlooking a wonderful marsh, and then it poured on opening day. It's a bummer.

[fox-admin]

Jeff thanks for the kind words. The forecast calls for lows in the teens for a few days so we are done for at least a week most likely the rest of our early season. Been one of those years had to miss SD and then losing much of the duck season.

[Stan Hillis]

One of the bad things about aging is that I cannot remember where I read things. But, I recently read about someone years ago pouring some kind of black liquid on the snow free ice in front of his blind and just wearing the ducks out for several days. From the air the black circular area looked like open water, and they just poured into it. Heck, I can't even remember what the black liquid was, now.

Maybe someone else here has read it and can remember.

SRH

[Jeff S]

Once I read an article about spreading black mylar on the ice and then setting your decoys on it. I have no experience to substantiate this technique, but it might work.

[Woody]

Jeff thanks for the kind words. The forecast calls for lows in the teens for a few days so we are done for at least a week most likely the rest of our early season. Been one of those years had to miss SD and then losing much of the duck season.

Craig do you guys do any deer hunting around the marsh?