{"id":2291,"date":"2010-10-01T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/?p=2291"},"modified":"2015-03-13T17:00:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T22:00:57","slug":"duck-hunting-in-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2010\/10\/01\/duck-hunting-in-minnesota\/","title":{"rendered":"Duck Hunting in Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This weekend marks the opening of waterfowl season in Minnesota. Due to soccer, baseball, and Irish dance with the kids, I won\u2019t get up north to hunt until the middle of next week, and it\u2019s likely that there won\u2019t be many ducks left. Sure, there\u2019s a cold front coming over the weekend which will push ducks south, and once ducks have been shot at, they tend to get pretty skittish about landing into a group of decoys.<\/p>\n

But the bigger reason is that ducks don\u2019t migrate through Minnesota anymore. There was a day when tens of thousands of ducks that summered in Canada would fly south along the Mississippi River \u2014 what\u2019s called the Mississippi Flyway.\u00a0 But no more.<\/p>\n

Migratory Flyways<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Decades ago, there was lots of standing water in Minnesota in the fall.\u00a0 More primitive farming techniques meant that cultivated fields were left with both leftover corn in the fields and potholes with three to six inches of water.\u00a0 This is exactly what ducks need as they make the long journey to the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n

But as margins got tighter for farmers and irrigation technology advanced, farmers left little corn on the ground and made sure they weren\u2019t losing any acreage to standing water.\u00a0 As corporations have taken over family farms, those trends have only reified.<\/p>\n

The ducks have responded by moving west, making the Central Flyway now the favored path for the favored species of Minnesota hunters: the mallard.<\/p>\n

But, regardless of the lack of ducks, I\u2019ll head up to our family cabin next week, just miles from the Mississippi River.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get up early, lay out a spread of decoys, and hunker down with my Mossberg 500<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And the reason I\u2019ll do it is for Albert.\u00a0 My one-year-old yellow lab is still a pup.\u00a0 He\u2019s not ready to hunt upland birds yet \u2014 if I took him out this fall, he\u2019d take off after a pheasant, flush it far out of my shooting range, and keep running till God knows when.\u00a0 Next summer will be spent teaching him to quarter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But he can retrieve.\u00a0 It is, as they say, what he was born to do.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll take him out to the duck blind and hope that I can coax a duck or two into the decoys and make a decent shot.\u00a0 Then Albert will get the chance to fulfill what millennia of evolution and centuries of breeding have wrought, and bring a bird to his master\u2019s hand.\u00a0 Maybe with one or two ducks in the bag, we\u2019ll hike back to the cabin, clean the bird, wrap it in bacon, throw it on the grill, and enjoy it with some wild rice on the side.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend marks the opening of waterfowl season in Minnesota. Due to soccer, baseball, and Irish dance with the kids, I won\u2019t get up north to hunt until the middle of next week, and it\u2019s likely that there won\u2019t be many ducks left. Sure, there\u2019s a cold front coming over the weekend which will push […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,22],"tags":[197,381,447,692],"class_list":["post-2291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dog-training","category-minnesota","tag-duck-hunting","tag-labrador-retriever","tag-mossberg","tag-yellow-lab"],"yoast_head":"\nDuck Hunting in Minnesota<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This weekend marks the opening of waterfowl season in Minnesota. 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