Marsh Bear wrote:Out best hunting weather - lows mid 50's highs mid 60s partly cloudy with a south to southwest wind - 1 to 2 days before a cold front.
For me, I want a very specific weather pattern.
Between now an 9/1 (opening day of early goose), I need a good cold snap. A few days with lows in the low 40's. Then it can warm back to normal. This is needed to get the local geese moving right now most have left the area for the molt migration or took their fledglings and left. Those that haven't are mostly loafing around eating park grass and fly very little. The first cold snap gets the ones here moving more and starts bringing back those that left. This often doesn't happen until the season is over. And it changes from famine to feast seeming in a few hours, if that happens before 9/15 I have a good year if not I may not get a goose if I hunt every day. As soon as I start seeing birds flying at my house or work I hunt everyday I can. Before that, I hunt weekends mostly just to work out the kinks and make sure I have everything in order while doing a little bird watching and very little to no actual goose hunting more just goose hoping for a random bird to come by.
After early goose until early November it needs to stay nice. One cold snap at the wrong time and the wood ducks leave. The first couple weeks, wood ducks really determine whether I'm going to have action most days or not. The local mallards get shot up opening day and the geese have typically transitioned to where they are a lot tougher where I hunt. Also I do a lot of hunting before work and by now they tend to not fly until I have to leave for work anyways.
Then it needs to get cold, enough to freeze to the north but not freeze us out. This pushes the mallards through. The right weather we can have a couple really good weeks until we start fighting the ice. One cold calm night in the 20's and we can go from open water to a real pain to break and set decoys, plus most everything in the area freezes so not a lot of ducks stop. Local geese are now very hard to hunt.
At this point it needs to get arctic, snow, cold, really really cold, freeze up the rivers and everything in the area and put a good dose of snow on the ground, but not too much. Then I hop to hunting by the cooling lake. If the weather is right there can be 100,000 Canadas and 10's of thousands of mallards there. Then it can warm back up to freezing, but not much more. A few ups and downs when the birds start getting stale to push bring new birds back from the south or push new birds back from the north and we are golden. Warms up too much and it goes from 100,000 to near zero quickly, but they can come back almost overnight if the weather changes.
Most years I will kill birds everywhere from the mid 80's to well below zero. And what is best really depends on the weather to our north and what has happened the last few weeks. Best hunting can be in the 80's, bluebird 60's, or minus 20 windchills. They can also all suck.
Very weather dependent and it needs to be very specific weather at the right time. When it is good it can be great, but a whole lot of days where the total number of bird seen is under a dozen.