The requiem for the 2009 duck season will be held with cheers or jeers resounding from the choir loft. Which of those sounds you are singing will depend on your perspective. Younger hunters may look back and say it was fair to good. Middle-aged waterfowlers might describe the results as spotty. But if you've been tromping to the swamps as long as I have you'll be harmonizing with my assessment: duck hunting in Minnesota continues to be a cruel joke.

I saw 21 Minnesota sunrises from behind the cattails this season and, were it not for a trip to North Dakota, I couldn't invite you over for much of a duck dinner. Would you like some hamburger helper with that teal breast?

You can tell me about the day you were lucky enough to be in the right picked corn field.You can tell me about all the canvasbacks there were in the river bottoms. I hope you plucked with care the one bull can you were allowed to take. And you can tell me about all the woodies your kid shot during the youth weekend in September.

I'm long enough in tooth to remember when you actually saw plenty of ducks during a Minnesota season. Every weekend. In the 60's and 70's you could take a possession limit of ten ducks most weekends if you cared to. I find it puzzling that our limit now when we have no ducks is twelve. But when we had ducks the limit was ten.

So when you ask me how my duck season was, I answer "compared to what?"