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John Cross

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September 26, 2009

Area duck hunting could be slow

For the last 32 years, Bruce Kramer has taken the pulse of Swan Lake from his home on the lake’s north shore.

And as usual, he’ll be going duck hunting when the Minnesota waterfowl season opens next Saturday.

Way out in North Dakota.

A combination of low water and a scarcity of ducks on the 10,000-acre Nicollet County lake in his own backyard has prompted him and his hunting buddies to pull up stakes and head for more favorable hunting grounds.

“They had more than 100 inches of snow up there last year ... the sloughs still have a foot of water in them and probably about a foot of ducks, too.”

“Here, it’s kind of a bad set-up,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot better years.”

Kramer said he recently had to go out more than 200 yards to find enough water while creating a path through the thick rushes to launch his canoe.

“The guys with mud motors will have fun,” he predicted.

What’s more, ducks seem to be about as scarce as the water.

“Right now, there are more geese out here than ducks,” he said. And if the small amount of shooting he heard during the youth opener last weekend is any indication, there haven’t been too many ducks calling the lake home.

“I heard only a few shots ... you know, you’d hear three shots and of course that probably meant the duck kept on flying.”

Leighton Swenson, who has based his hunting from a shack on Block’s Point since 1965, echoed Kramer’s observations of too little water and too few ducks.

“There are just not many ducks out there ... it’s about as bad as it’s ever been,” he said. “I don’t know where they’re going to come from.”

Joel Anderson, a Department of Natural Resources Area Wildlife Manager based in Nicollet, said low water conditions hampered DNR efforts to open up some accesses on area lakes with a “cookie cutter.”

“We managed to get the south access on Middle Lake open but the water was too low to get into the north access with the machine,” he said.

Anderson predicted that low water conditions would hamper hunters elsewhere, as well.

“Hunters on Rice Lake in Faribault County will have problems getting to the water at the public access,” he said.

As for the ducks, it seems to be a similar story.

While he hasn’t personally been on Swan Lake in recent weeks, other DNR personnel from his office have reported only small numbers of waterfowl, mostly teal in the area.

Noting that Iowa’s early teal season already is open, Anderson said many of the local teal probably have moved on but that migrating teal should continue to come through.

The opening day bag usually consists mostly of teal if they are around in any numbers along with a few mallards, he said.

“But right now, there doesn’t seem to be many birds out there, but that can change a lot in a week.”



John Cross is a Free Press staff writer. Contact him at 344-6376 or by e-mail at jcross@mankatofreepress.com.

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