The thing I ask my fellow hunters to south keep in mind is this; You're at the end of the flyway, what you see is the rest of the continents population. I live in the prarrie region of western MN. Traditionally prime nesting....the birds weren't here, even during the nesting season....I drove thousands of miles covering my area. The overwhelming majority of the wetlands were bare......So I would ask that you keep in mind where you sit in the flyway....and guage the population by what it was 10-15 years ago. If the Northern tier ie the nesting portion of the continent has fewer and fewer birds....something is drastically wrong