Moosetrot your story should strike some young whipper-snaps back to reality.
Only thing now is the phones and access to radar maps for them to know better
Several others have passed when I have been in the marsh.
Your gut wrenches when the Search-and-Rescue planes are flying overhead.

Gone are the days in seeing big flock of divers like Lesser and Ring-bills. We are talking 100,000 birds on a lake at a time. When they start moving from one boreal lake to another is a sight to see. 3-4 hours of tree top flights is something to see with 100-200 birds in a group. It's called Rocket shooting as they dive for a lake from the tree tops. The roar of the wings tells you they are coming.

The Eastern Shore used to have Great Flights of Canada Geese . . . that was long ago, no more. :-(

in 2014 fall , i was out in north Dakota, where we duck hunt , but i was trapping rats , for two days straight the sky was full of ducks and geese from before daylight till after sun set , all the ponds and field were full of birds landing and taking off , it was a site

Fall of '73,I was 16 years old and the weather was nasty with high wind. The ducks were everywhere in the swamp and I just watched in awe and enjoyed the moment.

Not sure if this would qualify as a "Grand Passage" but a few years back a buddy and i went out to do some pheasant hunting and ran into this, mallards thick everywhere. The week prior this area got around 14" of snow that melted through the week leave standing water in every low spot in standing corn, we switched gears and went on a waterfowl hunt without decoys or calls. We slipped out way through the standing corn to one of those low spots jumped a crap pile of ducks and waited for there return, the whole hunt last about 10 minutes.... good thing I had about 3/4 box of steel shot with.

We could always tell when bad weather was coming . . . so we had to get ready . . .

Been in North Dakota and saw it one year just an amazing sight. Everything moved for like 36 hours before a huge freeze came from the north. The next morning not a duck, goose or swan for 300 miles to the south of us. Nothing but solid ice all around us. Just amazing time to be afield.

I have seen big flights. The are an impressive spectacle

Yes a couple times. Both times a huge storm southbound but only to roughly as far as the north Platte river in Nebraska. Being on the next stop to the south, the south Platte river. Roughly 2001 one day in November I was scouting for the next days hunt. @ 3:30 pm, nothing. @3:45 pm the duck faucet opened and birds literally poured from the sky. Looking as far north as I could see with binoculars looking towards the approaching storm cloud. I could see wispy lines of ducks fleeing those clouds by the thousands. Canada geese, snow & cranes mixed in. Went from nearly zero ducks to thousands on the land I hunted, in minutes in broad daylight. Hope to see it again someday.

I also seem to recall reading a story that claimed several large airports were forced to shut down radar while the grand passage occurs. Don't know if that's true or not, but a good story! Most of the time I think it happens at night.

The roar of divers in flight. The sound is something to hear for sure

Yes it is... that reminds me of hunting out of the pumpkin seed on Saginaw bay, good times.

Used to see it quite a bit here with Canadian geese usually when the season was closed some in early winter but most was in the spring when they were going back north when this happens the sky here turns black but they are so high up even if there was a season you couldn’t shoot them, because they are on the jet stream gliding north.

Been in North Dakota and saw it one year just an amazing sight. Everything moved for like 36 hours before a huge freeze came from the north. The next morning not a duck, goose or swan for 300 miles to the south of us. Nothing but solid ice all around us. Just amazing time to be afield.


Got to see that last year in ND. Was the most awesome waterfowl day I've ever experienced.Just before dark it seemed every duck in the world was in the air heading south.The next morning the lake was froze solid and not a bird to be seen. I couldn't have been luckier to have my son and 2 grandsons with!!! We were all in awe!!!

My grandfather used to take me to a friends farm on the east side over looking Horicon. It was amazing each morning when they would leave in huge flocks for their morning feed.

What is interesting that I have seen several times the Giant Canada's leave Winnipeg and go to Rochester Minn. It is always after a cold front has moved in and the skies clear and the north wind blows. Departure 8Pm arrival 8 AM the next morning. Don't know if they still have that coal plant heating the lake in town or not

It happens here quite often not with ducks so much but with geese. They come from the west and migrate eastward, often bunching up by the tens of thousands in Cook Inlet. Then one day it snows or freezes hard and they fly and fly and fly by the thousands but way out of range.
Same thing happens in the spring, tens of thousands coming back in over a couple days.

I am out west As you know a large population of waterfowl nest here on the Yukon/Kuskokwim delta. Its just a big swamp. There is a swan or goose/crane nest on about every small pond The young are just starting to fly now. They will mostly leave here by the end of September. The river sandbars will be black with geese bunched up soon. Hunting is amazing mostly Whitefront ,and Cacklers and lessers. a few Brant and an occasional Emperor We get some snow geese in the spring but fall they are going over way high.

We can start hunting anytime now. I will go get a few for dinner soon.

I have witnessed the snow goose migration in Desoto Bend Iowa. Was truly amazing White tornado.

Yukon Jeff made me remember something amazing about the whitefronts that migrate from his area to the Sacramento Valley in CA. When I hunted moose not far from him, (not far by Alaska standards), I was covered up with migrating geese. In fact they made it easy to make my sneak on the moose because they were so noisy and flying low.

The whitefronts they radio-collared make it from there to northern CA without stopping in a little over 50 hours. That's amazing to me.

Pete