Odd year with the incredible amount of water and little harvested crop, then an early freeze. Methinks the early blizzard pushed a good number of local ducks out and then the cold last week (my truck read -8 at one time near McKenzie when I went out on Monday morning) finished it off. ND got cold at the same time as Sask so I think it was a pretty good blow-by. When I was deer hunting last weekend there were lots of little V's of ducks going south, a guy just often doesn't notice them as they don't make noise. As always, there were some pockets and probably still are near the SD border. I was surprised to see a good 1500 ducks swarming an unharvested barley field near HWY 200 on Monday evening. Farmer said they had been there a while - no idea where they were roosting as everything had locked up nearby. They got up that evening and headed south, farmer said they were gone the next day. A lot of people think of Canada as an endless supply of ducks - I don't think that is necessarily the case anymore. Quite a few of the snow goose hunting reports from Canada I read mentioned the lack of ducks they had seen - Sask and MB were drier than average for the nesting season.