why would they close the roads down? Bad weather?
Yeah that's what they told this guy. They had a different opinion after a big rig smashed it in a blizzard
.Me and a couple buddies used to go up and hunt back in the mid 90's to early 2000's. Completely and totally different hunting than what I was used to in the "south" of Southern Indiana. The insane numbers of birds and the ability to actually work and have them decoy into the spread regularly was foreign to us public land hunters. Killing a limit wasn't an every hunt thing, but it was a regular thing, and never did we not have tons of action. Back then it was easy to get permission, but towards the end it was getting more difficult as outfitters were sewing up lots of land. The last 2-3 years we ended up in Canada to avoid that, and the hunting there was even better.
Do you happen to remember what time of day y'all typically scouted? Would y'all burn a morning of hunting just to find feeds?
Almost always we scouted in the afternoon/evening. On occasion we would hunt in the afternoon, but very rarely. I don't think we ever experienced not having a field already picked out to set up in in the morning. I will say that we were mostly after geese and not ducks. Ducks were so numerous and easy to decoy that we didn't have to target them. We did do one or two afternoon shoots with only field duck decoys that were epic. Kinda like sitting along the Mississippi River bow hunting in mid September and you can't keep the mosquitoes away. We could literally be standing in the spread shooting ducks. Those kind of hunts were certainly not an every day affair, and it did take a lot of work to find a field and get permission, then you had to pick the right spot in the field and set up correctly…all that stuff, to have a successful hunt.
Unfortunately right beside Devils lake is where we'll be. Since it was somewhat last minute when we planned the trip, that was the only area we could find lodging that would accommodate all of us plus the dogs. I've already warned my friends that we may have to drive a good ways away from our lodge before we find hunts or land that's not already leased up by outfitters.
Is there any way to get a refund for the lodging? Go west to Minot then north to Mohall. That's where our base of operations was since that's where my mom grew up on the farm.
I don't want to discourage you with my previous post. I still think your time spent hunting in the Devils Lake area will likely be far better than a year in Tennessee. There's a learning curve to getting on birds regularly. We had locals that are old family friends going back to the homesteading days who showed us around, and they knew the area and who owned what properties, which made it much easier for us.
What point in the season do y'all typically go up there? We are going the last week of October so I hope we get lucky and get some good migration. I really want to hunt fields because that's not something we typically can do down here but I'm not opposed to shooting them in the potholes either
We used to go in that time frame as well. We've been up there when temps never got above 20* and had plenty of birds to hunt, and times when it never got below 20* and had plenty of birds to hunt. In my experience fields were way way way better than potholes. Careful driving the prairie roads if not frozen though.
