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When the term "fair weather" is used to describe someone, it's usually intended in a negative way. A "fair weather friend" is someone who may stick by you when things are going well, but will disappear when the going gets rough, when there is adversity - foul weather, so to speak - to be faced.

Literally, of course, fair weather is pleasant weather. In waterfowl hunting, it's not a character flaw to be a fair weather hunter. Some limit themselves to hunting during the balmy early part of the season, when the weather-sensitive local wood ducks and teal have not yet migrated, and are a large part of many hunters' bags. This is a time when you might even be comfortable in a tee shirt, or get a sunburn on a cloudless day.

Perhaps the hunters who only know this part of the waterfowl season have other hunting priorities, like pheasants, and redirect their energies and dedication to other game after the curtain falls on Act I of the Minnesota duck hunting season. Fair enough.

But there is another duck season that is just over the horizon. It's the time when the real biological reason for migration - life-threatening winter - begins to flex its muscles. The peak of the autumn color show is then behind us. Gardens have been put to bed. Insects that still hum, buzz or chirp are living on borrowed time. In the pre-dawn there may be a skim of ice along shorelines. It's a time, as essayist Gordon MacQuarrie once put it, "...when the wild, free things are abroad on the wind with the storm."

One of the reasons this "second season" of duck hunting is appealing is that it typically recharges the duck population, which has been thinned by the departure of local ducks, their southward migration having been accelerated by early season hunting pressure. Until nature moves more waterfowl down the funnel of the flyway, the skies may be comparatively bereft of birds.

Part of the fascination with the later days of the duck season is the romantic stereotypes of the sport, created by the artists who have painted, and writers who have written some of the best prose on waterfowl hunting. Often the images on canvas and on the printed page depict leaden, wintry skies, white-topped waves, wind-driven snow, and hunters braving all this in their quest for a duck or goose.

Late season hunting typically features a different cast of waterfowl characters, too, especially on the larger waterfowl lakes where I prefer hunting. The species known as "diving ducks," like bluebills, redheads, ringnecks, or canvasbacks, are named for the fact that they dive underwater to feed. They often travel in much larger flocks than "puddle ducks," like mallards, wood ducks or teal, and can provide thrilling shooting.

Whatever first sparks a hunter's fascination with the raw-edged later days and weeks of the waterfowl season, experiences either extinguish that spark, or fan it into a flame. When I think of the most memorable events in a span of more than four decades of duck hunting, those challenging, wintry conditions are the ones I'm most likely to recall when turning the pages of my scrapbook of memories.

One late October my hunting partner and I were forced by early ice to change our destination, when a favorite, shallower lake was ice-bound. Even this deeper lake was "making ice," in temperatures barely in the 'teens above zero. We witnessed a phenomenon that I have seldom seen, as waves that would normally form a chop instead moved in swells that looked more the consistency of oil than of water. The stage was set for its freezing; any drop in wind, perhaps when this day drew to a close, and it, too, would be locked in ice.

Already, ice had formed along the shore behind the long point of bulrushes jutting out into deeper water, just off which our decoys were bobbing. The most memorable duck on this day was a beautifully-plumed drake goldeneye, or "whistler," a species that is one of the latest of waterfowl migrants. My partner made a difficult shot, and the trajectory of the falling goldeneye took it behind us, where it crashed onto the ice with a sound that reverberated from shore to shore like the impact of a mallet on a bass drum.

Snow has been a common denominator to some of my most memorable late season hunts.

Under snowy conditions waterfowl typically fly lower, are more eager to join your "flock" of decoys, and are less likely to be alarmed by an imperfect duck blind or decoy setup. Apart from these practical advantages, snow adds an element of atmosphere, or mystique, and raises expectations that you will fare better than on a "bluebird day."

One of the uncontrollable elements of late season duck hunting is access to open water. The largest lakes, lakes better known for fishing than for hunting, tend to stay open until well after the season ends in late November. But many of these deeper lakes lack abundant food, and are not especially attractive to ducks. Rivers are likely to remain open later too, and may have abundant food. This is commonly wild rice, especially where these streams widen into slow-moving expanses that are more like wetlands than rivers. Many waterfowl hunters overlook rivers, unknowingly leaving their share of the ducks to the hunters who've discovered them.

The Minnesota duck season may already be nearing the halfway point. But to some, the best part of the season is just beginning.[[In-content Ad]]

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