Tori McCormick

If you spoke with enough waterfowlers and waterfowl managers across Minnesota in the last handful of days, the message you heard was as clear as moonshine: The duck hunting has gotten a little stale.
Some early-season local birds have left the state, or have dispersed to other parts of Minnesota, many avoiding heavily hunted public lands and finding sanctuary in those “out-of-the-way places,” as one hunter on social media put it. A stiff northwest wind last Friday did push some new birds (ducks and geese) into the state, state officials say, but it wasn’t anything significant.

The traditional Minnesota duck season opens 30 minutes before sunrise this Saturday, Sept. 26, and Jerry Christopherson, of Heron Lake in southwest Minnesota, will be in the marsh, boom stick in tow.
Christopherson, 83, who has hunted the celebrated waterfowling lake since he was a boy, is a member of Duck Inn, a longtime North Heron Lake duck club – a club that, just two years ago, was completely flooded out in the spring, then gutted and more or less refurbished by the opener. “I haven’t missed too many openers over the decades,” said Christopherson.