Finding Duck Concentrations

[DSD Addict]

Hi all,
My name is Spencer and I am an avid waterfowler from the Seattle, WA area in the US. I have been duck hunting since I was 10, and it is my biggest passion in life. Here just a few pictures from some fun hunts over the last couple years around here. As you can see and many of you may know, it's just a bit greener and wetter than what you guys deal with up there.





For the last decade plus, I have been dreaming about making the trek to Canada before our waterfowl season kicks off to see what chasing ducks and geese on the prairie is all about. After many years of "I'll do it someday", I put my foot down and said last fall that 2017 would be the year that I would do it for the first time.

I've spent countless hours analyzing maps, talking to biologists, and reaching out to farmers since. This past weekend, myself and a buddy of mine who will be heading north with me flew into Calgary, rented a car, and pounded the pavement between there and SK to see how accurate the conclusions we'd drawn about where birds might be based on our research were. It was a very, very successful weekend, as we were able to find a lot of large concentrations of geese and get a general sense of the areas where scouting would be more or less fruitful when we are back up in a few weeks. I also met some of the friendliest people I've ever encountered in my life.

One thing, however, that we were relatively unsuccessful at, was finding some large concentrations of ducks. I can't even count how many times I came around a corner and was speechless over how many geese I was looking at, but I can't say that this happened with ducks once.

Most potholes were holding a small to medium number mallards,sprig, and teal, which seemed to be feeding very actively. This led me to two conclusions: one, that I was mostly looking at local birds and two, that they were meeting their caloric needs with aquatic vegetation and not using the grain fields like they do in so many of the videos I have seen. Most fields seemed to have a few mallards and sprig in them, but it was absolutely nothing relative to the number of geese.


Most of my scouting was in the immediate vicinity of larger water.
With the drought that SE AB has experienced, it seems like many of the potholes that would normally be key targets for birds are dried up. I was hoping, however, that I could get some general advice for finding some more concentrated mallards. I'm not looking for any specific locations-- I'm more trying to understand what the key things that I should looking for when looking at a ~2-300 km radius to get an understanding of where the ducks may be concentrated within that radius.

Looking at the weather report, it looks like it's going to warm back up quite a bit over the next week and change, which leaves me doubtful that a ton of northern birds will be pushing down any time soon.

Just in case anyone is curious, I won't be breaking the rules of waterfowl etiquette--shooting roosts, snaking fields from other guys, setting up too close, skybusting, etc-- while I am up there. Those things are never okay, but as a guest of your country, I think that I have an even greater responsibility to do things the right way. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to benefit from your guys' incredible abundance of birds.
Thank you very much for any information you can provide and I hope everyone has had a great start to their season!

-Spencer

[fish_e_o]

ducks are greener too!

i always find that big water within a km or two from a goose field and there seems to be a lot of ducks

[DSD Addict]

Thanks man!

And yes, they're dressed in their Sunday best by the time they get down here.

Here's another pic of one of my favorite birds from last year. We don't get a lot of colored up spoonies down here so this one was really special to me.

[Drewski Canuck]

As far as ducks go, the local birds are somewhat staged up, but these are not the huge numbers I assume you are looking for.

Problem we have is that the Peace River - High Prairie areas have huge crops and lots of water. If the crops get rained on like last year, the crops stay on the field.

Until we have a very good cold snap up north, the ducks tend to get stuck where there is food and open water. If there is a blizzard in the NWT, that spills south, the birds will move, but only when the water freezes.

Last year the best duck hunting was late November, up to then the numbers were low with the odd wave moving through. Other years, we have had good numbers starting at the beginning of October.

Try looking further north from where you are. You might be surprised what you will find north and west towards High Prairie area.

Drewski

[whitetail Junkie]

Them are bar none the smallest Canada geese Ive ever seen in my life...very Nice!

[DSD Addict]

Originally Posted by whitetail Junkie

Them are bar none the smallest Canada geese Ive ever seen in my life...very Nice!

We get very, very few specks, and minimal amounts of snows and honkers relative to you guys... but we do have these little pipsqueaks by the thousands!

They did a research project on them for a number of years that included adding hundreds of yellow collars per year in Alaska. The project has since wrapped up and so the yellows are few and far between these days. Oh what I would do to have known what I do now about hunting those things when I was 16! Those were glory years for shooting neck collars in WA and OR.

[Salavee]

Originally Posted by whitetail Junkie

Them are bar none the smallest Canada geese Ive ever seen in my life...very Nice!

Those are Duskies .. one of the smallest subspecies of Canada's.
I believe they nest in the Aleutians and migrate down the western edge of Pacific Flyway. Have seen them on only two occasions in Alberta. Neat little guys.

[3blade]

Not a much of a waterfowl hunter myself, but I frequently hunt big game between edmonton and the sask border. There are ducks around, but not grouped up yet. Every little slough has a few, and it certainly is not dry farther north. Draw an east-west line at Wetaskawin, north of that line has lots of water and lots of pea fields. Good for the ducks but they may not concentrate any time soon, or at all.

You don't really see the big flights in fields until later in October once all the fields are combined and it gets cold enough they need crops for food. If you want to hunt potholes, fly into edmonton and drive east. Pretty sure you could limit out every day, but might have to move around to do it. Good luck.