I have been seeing mallards and wood ducks all over the damn place lately, looks like they are coming  home  for the summer, should be a good early season this year.

Instead of taking off time for deer hunting I am going to take the entire first week of early season and smack as many locals as I can get during the nice weather before they get skittish.

Same here, but there's not much open water yet. Only rivers, and channels between lakes where there's a current, have open water.... all the lakes still have several feet of ice. I saw hundreds of ducks and geese this morning, in a channel between two lakes about 1/2 mile from home.

I've been taking off work the first two weeks of duck season for the past 6 years or so. The deer population got so low due to severe winters and too many doe tags over the past decade, that I gave up bow hunting altogether 7-8 years ago, and gun season is only 9 days, doesn't start until after duck season ends. I now spend all that time I used to spend in a tree stand, in a duck blind (or hunting grouse). We have a 60 day duck season here, and my goal has been to hunt on at least 40 days. Not too hard when you hunt within a 20 minute drive of home, and don't need to go to work until noon (if I go at all... I'm self employed, and I "semi"-retired 2 yrs ago ).