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Last updated 1:29 am CT September 06, 2010.
Change in Duck Hunting Season
Instead of starting on Thanksgiving, this year's season began 12 days earlier and will end 12 days sooner.
That shift is upsetting business owners that cater to duck hunters.
"As you can see, we don't have the ducks here and we have hunters that are very dissatisfied....it was the first time in 20 years I've ever had somebody duck hunting that they didn't see a duck," says Randy Meyers, owner of Arrowhead Hunting Lodge in Wolf Lake.
Officials with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources say hunters asked for the shift in the season.
"It simply went to the majority of the hunters wanting to start earlier, probably because in the 2008 year, we had a very early freeze and they lost a lot of opportunity in a lot of parts of the southern zone," says waterfowl biologist Ray Marshalla.
This year is just the opposite. The warm weather has kept the ducks up north.
Marshalla says he sympathizes with Meyers, but the shifted season is fair to hunters across the state.
"The ducks are on their way. If you could predict the weather when we have to set our seasons in the summertime, it would be a lot easier," says Marshalla.
For Meyers, the warm weather and the early hunting season mean most of the ducks won't be in southern Illinois until it's too late.
"In January, all the surrounding states will still be hunting and our hunters will go somewhere else to hunt and we will lose the hunters that usually come to southern Illinois."
Duck hunting season in Illinois ends January 12.
By; WSIL-TV Staff
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