Waterfowl season in northern Missouri started Saturday with a bang.  Literally.

Joe Laukemper of Laukemper Motors in Mound City was out hunting Saturday morning, and said it sounded a lot like a war.

“I heard lots and lots and lots of shooting Saturday morning,” Laukemper said.  “It just echoes, like “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, down across the bottoms west of town.

“And then I went out Sunday and it was pretty quiet.  The guys I was hunting with said ‘what do you suppose the difference was?  And I said ‘well I think the people who were out on Saturday were shooting pretty accurate.”

Wildlife Biologist Sean Cleary of the Missouri Department of Conservation says there is typically a slowdown after the first day of the season.   Many hunters get their fill he says, and many ducks are scared off by all that gunfire.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the waterfowl counts for last week were more than 32 thousand total ducks and more than 9,700 total geese.  Another count was planned on Monday, and the results were expected to be posted online by Wednesday.

The duck hunting season in Missouri’s north zone started Saturday and lasts sixty days. Hunting for “light geese,” which include snow geese, blue geese and Ross’s geese varieties, runs through the end of January.