been waiting a while for the feb 1 opener. until it snowed. bad bad day. saw a few thousand snows but very few worked. ended up with a big fat zero. probably cause of lack of visibility. white ground and white decoys don't mix well. we never do well in very cold weather with or without snow. start 2 weeks of vacation on monday. please say your prayers for south winds and warm temps or it will be a very long 2 weeks for my wife and kids. i'll post about the hunts and hopefully post some pics.

i was told to take some full body canada decoys and put white socks over their heads, so you can have snows and blues, geese might be able to see them a lil better. do you use a electronic call?

we have plenty of blues out. they just don't seem to work well in this cold weather for some reason. we use 2 e callers one cd player with 4 30 watt speakers and one tape player with an amp and 2 25 watt speakers. today was the same as thursday. tons of geese and some worked a little better but no results. we still have alot of snow in the field and i still believe it hurts us. plenty of noise and decoys 1100. once the snow leaves i think we will start killin. doesn't look like that will happen until late next week. oh well i'll still go.

Even colder today DaveV, hope your cajones are still attached when you are done. I'd like to see some pics of yuor 1100 deke spread.

yes very cold today and our heater ran out of gas around 8am. ended up with 2 birds today. really worked some large groups finally. snow is starting to melt a little. ithink that helped. had about 25 canvasbacks come right over the pit today. tons and tons of snows around. most i have seen all season. i'll get some pics posted when the snow melts and you can finally see our spread.

(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)n, 1100 thats one hell of a spread, do u use mostly full bodies, or sil?, i heard that diapers, plates, and milk jugs work 2

(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)n, 1100 thats one hell of a spread, do u use mostly full bodies, or sil?, i heard that diapers, plates, and milk jugs work 2


White plastic sack on a stick. Light and packable. Least thats what I hear...

Who doesn't have 200 from wal mart or shop n save them self???:D

if you wanna kill snows you better leave the diapers on the kids! when the co first started we used every white thing you could imagine. paper plates. white buckets cut in half. we killed a few but these snows are (I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing)(I'm an idiot for swearing) smart. we don't even use rags anymore. average age of a snow is 12-14 years old. hunted from sept till april these birds are smart. they have seen it all. almost all of the birds around now are adults. they are the first to head back north. they will follow the snow line back to canada. juvies and ross' are the last to come back north. trash bags and diapers will be a little more effective on the dumb ones. but you gotta have movement in the decoys just like your duck spread. we use 400 sillos 550 sillosocks and about 200 shells and fullbodies. not a cheap hobby. but we have been doing it for a while so we add decoys every year. i hope one day IL will do like canada and let you use an e caller during the regular season but you can only put out snow decoys, no blues or darks. then i would sell what little canada decoys i have left. i know i'm sick. but it is addicting having 500-1000 birds tornadoing down on you from every direction.

wheres your pit located, ours is right next to baldwin and we have a ton of snows fly over, just never take the time to hunt them cuz of the rumor of them being hard to get down.

idk i think ure right, just what i herd that they work, last i jumped somewhere around 10,000 off one of my wheat fields, and that alone was pretty amazing. i also herd the are hard 2 get down, mainly the reason why i've never actually hunted them

wow was it cold today. killed 3 snows.wahoo. ya guys snows can be difficult to get down if you don't have a large spread. much like canadas it's easier to work the small groups. hey quack our pit is located about 1 mile north of the super lake at pyramid sp. baldwin is holding a lot of snows right now. you would be crazy no to try and hunt em. we used to hunt em between the prep plant and baldwin and did pretty good. the area usually hold alot and alot of migrators come through the area which is important. hunting near baldwin you have probably seen the great increase of snows and the great decrease of canadas. i finally convinced my buddies last season to start going after the geese you can count on showing up (snows) or you can wait for some migration of canadas that just doesn't happen here anymore. we killed 151 during the co season last year and these guys finally came around. we even run about 150 snows with our canada spread now during the regular season and this year killed more snows than canadas. usually it is good for 25-30 geese we wouldn't normally kill. start like we did we got about 3 or 4 of us together who were intersted in extending your season. we made 400 corroplast snow sillos and bought a couple hundred rags and a decent caller. a guy in freeburg sells the corroplast 4by 8 sheet for about 11 bucks and we traced outlaws and got 20-24 decoys per sheet and used coat hangers for stakes. windsocks are better than rags but rags are cheaper. you have to have movement and wind to kill em.

Me my brother and his bud went out on sunday. Saw tons of snows and cans. But only killed 1 snow. We were using tex rags and some shells. Bad thing is some of the rags blew away. Wind was too strong to keep them in the ground. We had a little spread about 3 1/2 to 4 dozen deeks. Gonna try it again sometime this week or weekend.

wow was it cold today. killed 3 snows.wahoo. ya guys snows can be difficult to get down if you don't have a large spread. much like canadas it's easier to work the small groups. hey quack our pit is located about 1 mile north of the super lake at pyramid sp. baldwin is holding a lot of snows right now. you would be crazy no to try and hunt em. we used to hunt em between the prep plant and baldwin and did pretty good. the area usually hold alot and alot of migrators come through the area which is important. hunting near baldwin you have probably seen the great increase of snows and the great decrease of canadas. i finally convinced my buddies last season to start going after the geese you can count on showing up (snows) or you can wait for some migration of canadas that just doesn't happen here anymore. we killed 151 during the co season last year and these guys finally came around. we even run about 150 snows with our canada spread now during the regular season and this year killed more snows than canadas. usually it is good for 25-30 geese we wouldn't normally kill. start like we did we got about 3 or 4 of us together who were intersted in extending your season. we made 400 corroplast snow sillos and bought a couple hundred rags and a decent caller. a guy in freeburg sells the corroplast 4by 8 sheet for about 11 bucks and we traced outlaws and got 20-24 decoys per sheet and used coat hangers for stakes. windsocks are better than rags but rags are cheaper. you have to have movement and wind to kill em.

we should go out and try to get them sometime at my place. i have family that lives there in pickneyville, PSP has some good hunting spots. we have about 3 dozen fullbody snows out but no caller, and a lot more sills in the shack. those things are expensive. im just a broke college kid. lol yea ive only been hunting there 4 years now and def. can tell the numbers of canada's have decreased. i think it would be so awesome to tear some snows up, especially the amount that fly over us.

I wanna try this. Maybe I can start getting geared up now, and by next season be ready to go...

ben seeing alot a of snows going down into pit 3 lately, just this a.m. saw about 50,000 going down into a field, man what a sight!!!

Well ive been seeing a small amount of ducks landing in a wheat field by my pit. next year i might have to try field hunting for ducks. anyone ever try if so do any good?

finally had a good hunt sat in the worst weather i have ever hunted in. you couldn't turn around and look at all cause of the 30 mile an hour wind and blowing snow. me and a buddy killed 12. could have been 20 plus with a full pit. birds worked great. 1 swing and in you face. josh make sure you use a robo duck in the field. they seem to work better to one in a field rather than water. we used one a few times in our wheat field with 1 dozen mallard fullbodies and killed about 20 ducks. corn field would be the best but you will kill em in wheat. we have a remote on ours to turn it off when geese come cause they don't like em.

Good report dave v. Maybe with the return of warm weather you'll get a hot ending??? If'n you ever have an empty spot on Sun. - Wed. I'm available. :p (will pay for gas...):D

yea snow geese i've ben seein, ducks i've ben seein, killed four last week, had some in 1 of my fields this a.m. so i get out @ 12:30 maybe i'll get some
i agree on the mojo, i'm gettin 1 w/ a remote

finally with the warm weather were starting to heat up. 3 yesterday and 5 today. of course i was at work. will be out on thurs. looks like a good day for migrators. will post results if there are any.

I've been seeing big flocks of just about every kind of waterfowl moving back through. Lots of ducks and canadas...

hunted today alone and killed 6. saw lots and lots of pintails and mallards. a few thousand specks have moved back into superlake also. good day if you love watching waterfowl. saw just about everything. lots of canadas and cacklers too. had a beautiful wigeon drake 10 feet over my head.

well it's been tough. we killed 7 yesterday in the 800 mph wind. most of the snows are in central ill. but there are tons and tons of ducks. mallards pintails wigeon and teal on our pond. we could kill limits of specks and canadas everyday. lots of honks at pyramid now. little late. had 5 sandhill cranes fly over last thursday. starting to get some migrators and were kiliin more juvies. were up to 57 geese. work always gets in the way of the good south wind days. back out sunday. watched a coyote run through a flock of cacklers yesterday with no luck.

the other day me and my buddy were fishing at balldwin and with the millions of ducks and geese and like said with the 800 mph winds i saw like 30 pelikins about 10 ft above us it was pretty sweet to see then they landed that was even cooler:D

yea, usually story, seasons ends ducks come, ever sense the seasons has ended i've seeing alot more birds, most of the snow i've ben seein hav ben extremely high

at balldwin fishing today and found myself not catching anything and just gazing into the sky looking at tons of ducks and geese it was pretty cool about 6:30 when u could barly see anything there were ducks all over in big groups of 50 to 75 maybe even a hundred the hunting club shot at snows in the later evening so they must be killing somthing

yea, u always see birds at baldwin, its just a unwritten law in waterfowl, there's always lots of birds locked up at baldwin