6/60: Part 1: EARLY | A Duck Hunting Season on the Upper Mississippi River

[Music] my name is Jake Grasso I'm 31 years old and I live in Winona Minnesota and I'm one of three owners of white rock decoys along with my buddy Adam who I've known since middle school and James who I met in college but this isn't really about the decoy company it's more about who we are where we come from and how we live our life every fall it's what we do so in the end I guess it all kind of ties together [Music] actually I don't think anybody our dentists crap is it the first day or what [Applause] [Music] the last three years we've had a special appeal season here in Wisconsin on Pacific River and some years abducts and some years we don't this year we zipped around before the season found a bunch of teal decided to give them a bill [Music] I said a lot of people think that when they're landed on far again we would be quite closer but not a little harder they kind of split the difference you know a lot of times with the word give that a try [Music] right here [Music] you [Music] let's go fog lifts did it it really started to work a lot better 50 coins out a lot better 18 feels actually kind of hard to do it again it's like I don't know if I've ever done that 18 feel anywhere on for it I remember it was just a wave after wave like you couldn't even hardly load your gun class I'll never fit in them you just you'd hear them and then you see them come over the trees like 50mm you chew you load up oh there's like 25 of them boomer will sustain that's why we do it I'll never forget that we live and hunt on the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge I'm not going to act like I know exactly how big it is but it's hundreds of miles long it starts up by the Twin Cities and goes well in Iowa during the course of a season we'll typically cover pools four through nine maybe an eighty to ninety mile stretch depending on bird numbers the time of year and pressure the best part or maybe the worst part is it's almost all public land there's no blind draws there's no private holes there's really no miss dating where you are there big clothes there is refuges on every pool that are closed at hunting and designed to keep birds around but other than those areas you're pretty much free to roam so we're out here scouting now it's about a week before the season starts and just see what we got going on and we got a bit of wild card this year Rivers high makes the duck kind of hard to find actually the wood ducks start swimming through the woods and really no concentration so what duck numbers were high just a couple weeks ago but now I'm driving around I'm only seeing a couple here and there so I assume in the back in the woods with this high water to get out a boat start walk and just see if we can't find a concentration more than just you know a handful and there's some of these ponds so it'll be an interesting opener this year for sure different very different to Tuesday before the season it started to rain and it didn't stop the three days the river was already high but now it's expected to kill three or four feet practically overnight now things are going to get wild [Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] French toast bacon [Music] [Applause] good morning it's not a work for Charlie here it was a nasty nasty ground over there there's a lot of water yeah ten feet high and rising [Music] from your local National Weather Service office in the cross this is meteorologist Dave Lawrence bringing you an update regarding the potential for additional heavy rainfall across much of the area as we go through the overnight hours tonight we do anticipate several additional periods of heavy rain similar to what we saw just last night from an impact standpoint additional flooding and mudslides will be possible in fact we've already seen quite a bit of that in some areas given how wet our soils are recently how much rain we've seen and given the fact that many rivers are already well above normal or even at flood stage in some spots once again though two to four inches of rain expected in many areas with these storms that is not good news additional flash flooding and/or river flooding is expected as this rainfall materializes so we're out here it's the week for the Wisconsin regular season duck opener and we got a bigger problem this weekend the water jumped even more this last week we're in Minnesota and it jumped about two or three feet since then so we at least had something to work with last weekend this weekend it's just sheet of water right through the woods the Ducks are scattered all over the place you can't pinpoint any sort of concentration out here on the main river so we're going to try to get off the edge of the main water I don't even know if I have a decoy anchor that's long up at the bottom out here there's been a lot of flooded fields around but haven't really found birds using them yet we will keep looking and see what we can come up with for another Saturday morning opening day [Music] [Applause] [Music] on the way off the river James called and said he found a flooded field with some teal in it we should go work out a little bit we almost never see birds using fields around here but we pulled up and saw maybe 50 or 60 teal bust out of these beans and thought hey that looks more promising little did we know right then we were stumbling into the holy grail duck spots [Music] we're going to kill some ducks memory [Music] you okay this is really where so others you see them just like eating the cobs off and on here now we were flushing feeldog i kicked up right 25 30 deal just very cool thank you awesome [Music] [Applause] [Applause] the mall step right up we got people the spittin a in Tommy where's Lana OB use the cloud [Music] Mariana is circus air away this is insane this was a dog don't know what to go for okay okay [Music] well the caster's they can oust a lady just a pissed-off fish all the seasoning yeah back with welcome to a priest oh right and now we got me the beam and Families trams oh yeah the trapeze gatherer of cocaine to say back from her we train we for the FM everybody know Reglan yeah we had beautiful Shafi okay stay back I be and Sammy sadly though obviously we knew this is going to be pretty good who have no idea it was going to be that that was what he lost no more ducks at ten feet than I've ever had [Music] palm full bodies and the Nomad folders are life that one thought that we're running them without any sand in there without the caps in there so I mean they're just super lightweight easy for us to carry back here easy for one guy to carry this over your shoulder along with the stuff that he means the shell is called and it's gone it just works really well it's easy easy to pack it back and it's easy to get out of here because now we're going to carry 36 docks left - so it's go mad floaters white rock full bodies checking off you the lighted 24 decoys you ever had under your arm it's just only 2014 play with [Applause] helping flock that was why you know they're going in response memory can't see you ducks Wow and I see them we're going into the split of one of the most insane hunts we've ever been on so many unique circumstances coming together so much luck to find that spot the days beforehand it was like shooting a boner the first week of the season and not even knowing he was around or that you were hunting for him but that's why we live here and that's the great thing about duck hunting we're not tagged out of the woods for the year we've still got two months left to go it was an incredible start here's hoping the rest of the seasons can live up to it [Music]

Channel: White Rock Decoys

Views: 32,196

Rating: 4.8646617 out of 5

Keywords: White Rock Decoys, Duck Hunting the Mississippi River, Pool 7 Duck Hunting, Pool 9 Duck Hunt, Nomad Chronicles Waterfowl TV, Duck Hunt White Rock Decoys, Waterfowl Hunting Mississippi River, Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Refuge, Upper Mississippi Duck Refuge, Wisconsin River Duck Hunt, Minnesota Duck Hunting

Id: g5_3EIc8Lk0

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2017