Photo by R.E. Ilg

Paul Sawyer is one of those modern duck hunters who prefer to move from location to location and follow the migration rather than sit in one place waiting for the ducks to come to him. But as modern as he may be, Sawyer still loves tradition, and he was very dismayed last year when his favorite locations yielded very few ducks compared to years past.

Some of the words Sawyer used to describe the current duck hunting situation in Minnesota are not suitable for print in this magazine, though when cleaned up, his personal forecast is fair to crappy.

"I've been privileged enough to travel all around the world to duck hunt, so I don't know if my expectations have changed that much, but it just seems to me that there are less ducks out there," Sawyer said.

Sawyer is the president of Knock'm Down Productions, which recently released its first waterfowling video with considerable critical acclaim. The video titled "Stranglehold" highlights the life of the traveling waterfowl hunter and shows him and the rest of the crew waterfowl hunting all over the country. Even as an accomplished and experienced duck hunter, Sawyer still waxes nostalgically for his days as a kid in the swamps of Carlos Avery.

"I remember hunting with my Dad and it being awesome with a sky full of ducks," he recounted. "We didn't always get our limit of three but we were never skunked, which seems to happen more and more now in Minnesota."

Sawyer spent his 2004 opening weekend in south-central Minnesota near Owatonna on a familiar location where he traditionally had good opening-day wood duck and teal action.

"This spot was so good in the past that two of our guys slept there overnight camped out in their waders to make sure nobody took the spot," said Sawyer. "Imagine our disappointment when we only ended up with half a dozen ducks all day."

What strikes him most about that hunt was the total lack of ducks in the area.

"To not even have the wood ducks whizzing around was goofy, though we had a nice time sitting in the weeds," he said.

His next duck hunt was at the end of October on Thief Lake in northwest Minnesota going after ringnecks.

"A lot of people don't know it, but divers are calendar migrators, and if you get to them on the five days they are going, you'll do just fine," Sawyer said. He and the rest of the video team hunted Leech Lake for divers in mid-November chasing goldeneyes and ringnecks for two weeks with some luck, including the occasional bluebill, which were far and few between.

Sawyer and many other Minnesota duck hunters have a chip on their shoulders right now, and rightly so. A lackluster 2004 season led to a public outcry that culminated in a very well attended "Rally for Ducks, Wetlands and Clean Water" back in April. Over 5,000 people attended the rally to help raise awareness and express their support for better management of the state's wetlands and duck population.

Unfortunately, it didn't translate to a great deal of accomplishment in the state Legislature. Still, many observers are optimistic that change is forthcoming.

"The rally was a great thing, and I was pleased to see all that energy and attention because public outcry will make things change for the better," said Jeff Lawrence, wetland wildlife group leader for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.