Tori McCormick

Minnesota duck hunters waiting for sustained cold weather and north-to-northwest winds to jump-start a largely stagnant autumn waterfowl migration are going to have to be patient. 
Waterfowl managers in and outside Minnesota say a meaningful cold front in which temperatures drop and ice forms on waterways isn’t in the short-term forecast and could be two weeks away. Lows in prairie Canada, for example, won’t dip below freezing until early next week.

Opening weekend of the 2025 Minnesota duck season had a little bit of everything for the state’s roughly 50,000 waterfowl hunters.
Lots of blue sky. Unseasonably warm morning weather that turned into balmy, summer-like afternoons. Just enough wind, at least in most areas, to keep decoys listing and ducks moving. And, of course, plenty of hungry mosquitoes. In a state with 87 counties and four distinct habitat types or biomes covering nearly 87,000 square miles, hunter success will vary – and it sure did during this year’s duck opener.

At 82 years young, Jerry Christopherson, of Heron Lake in far southwest Minnesota, knows his way around a duck blind.
Aside from a four-year U.S. Army stint beginning in 1961, Christopherson, who started hunting ducks as a young boy, hasn’t missed a Minnesota duck opener.
“I have a few aches and pains, but I can still get around pretty good, and I’ll be out there with my son and grandson – three generations of us – Saturday morning.”