Southern Illinois

[migrator00]

Headed to Marion on Friday the 6th of January...wanted to know if anyone had beed down in that Crab Orchard/Horseshoe Lake area hunting in So. Illinois recently. Got a callin' contest in Marion on Sat. so i'm gonna try to squeeze a little hunting in also. Let me know if you guys have heard about brids there recently or heard about it recently!!!

[Max4Gooser]

Last I heard from my hunting buddy down south, their are very few geese down their, but they are killing ducks. His son is in school down at carbondale, and keeps him posted, but the info is a several days old. Check out the Illinois forum on The Refuge. Let us know how you do, we are waiting for the birds to show, then will take off work and head down for a weak or two.

Max4

[migrator00]

Well I figured I gotta go to the contest anyway..a little gridin' may be worth tryin'. I kinda figured it might be slow due to the weather. The reports i'm getting is that the geese are STILL stacked to the north. But if anyone has been or knows about so. il. right now...please fill me in!

[black feet down]

jason just came home from tenn. tuesday afternoon, came through marion and was gonna stop but didnt see any birds so we just came on home. were is the contest held at? greg.

[migrator00]

That's not what I wanted to hear but it's what I figured. I figured the birds were still north. Where's the WEATHER??? The contest is in Marion..i'm not sure on the local..i'm just buddyin' along down w/ cole foiles probably. He's blowin' in the junior goose deal...and he's tryin' to get me to blow in the open duck...but the old strait street hasn't been getting much practice due to hunting..so I don't know if I can hold my air or not. I'll probably go home and crank a routine or two out tonight and make my decision later. Either way i'll probably get roped into blowin'. It will probably be rough though considerin' I haven't blown since foiles waterfowl weekend when I stuck a reed on my triple comeback! Gotta love it :)

[GOOCH]

I live in the south-western part of Virginia and we have a TON of black ducks this year....my usual hunting friends and I have killed our limit of black ducks every day (which is one here) but could have killed about 150+ if we wanted to....There arent many geese here at all...Still getting some big migrating groups of Mallards...on some big lakes around my area they are getting some migrating groups of about 300+ at a time...seeing alot of wierd ducks this year too...weird being ducks we dont see regularly....(very little of them but about 5 pintail,redheads,teal, and weigon)Killed alot of banded ducks and geese this year too...3 goose and 7 duck--very rare for this area...and since we are in no major flyway we are suprised and happy to get these ducks and geese that we are getting...our count for this season so far with about 4-6 people hunting whenever we can is about 45 wood ducks....40 mallards.....30 blacks....and about 60 geese....I'm only 14 so I have to go to school and can't hunt as much as I would like....I know this was sposed to be a S. Illinois post but just letting you guys know how the ducks and geese were around my area...

[Hecht08]

lots of birds in Carlyle and kecks, never seen so many snows and blues here either.

[Killer Miller]

Me and my dad were whacking ducks and geese near Nauvoo Illinios last week until the damn quota for north and central zones got filled. They closed the goose season down last Wednesday and ducks ended the day before that. There were thousands of ducks and geese around. Lots of the geese were going to Iowa though until the late season started on the 24th. Im sure all those birds are chilling in Illinios now cause we cant hunt there now.