# Teal Weekend at the Flats

_Nine days, two legal ducks, and a DNR marsh with no gate and no permit lottery — here is what to know before the early teal opener at Houghton Lake Flats._

Six-thirty on the first Tuesday of September, the light isn’t up yet over the Houghton Lake Flats North Unit, and you can hear teal before you can see them — that quick clatter-wingbeat that sounds more like something falling than something flying. Nobody’s grandpa is out here yet. The regular duck opener is still a month off, and half of Merritt hasn’t heard there’s a season on at all.

Michigan’s early teal season runs nine days, September 1 through 9, statewide, and it only lets you shoot two ducks: blue-winged and green-winged teal, nothing else in the bag. Shooting hours start at sunrise, not the usual half-hour-before scramble of the regular season, so for once you get to drink your coffee sitting down. You still need a base license, a waterfowl license, a HIP endorsement, and a federal duck stamp, same as any other duck hunt — daily limit is six birds, eighteen in possession. Know your teal before you go. Two species, no do-overs, and a wood duck coming in low at first light looks a lot like a blue-wing if you’re not paying attention.

The flats themselves sit in Lake Township, Roscommon County, split by Yeager Road into a North and a South unit and cut again by US-127 — about ten miles and fifteen minutes east of [Merritt](https://roamstays.com/location/merritt/), straight out M-55. No gate, no permit lottery, no daily draw like the state runs at its seven flagship “Wetland Wonders” downstate. You show up, you find water, you hunt it.

Point yourself at the North Unit specifically this year. The DNR spent the summer rebuilding the South Unit’s water-control system — a new dam, pumphouse, and buried pipe to replace one that failed years back — and the gazebo and fishing platform there are closed for the work. The North Unit, 335 acres of managed marsh against the South’s 350, stayed open through the whole project and is where the water’s actually being held for birds this fall.

> Nine days, blue-winged teal, and a marsh the state built for exactly this — nobody’s grandpa is out there yet.

Pack the waders, not the alarm clock. Bring polarized glasses for the flat gray light, decoys you don’t mind losing in flooded timber, and enough patience for a season that rewards people who can actually tell a teal from everything else with wings.

Stay in one of our [cabins in Merritt, Missaukee County, Northern Michigan](https://roamstays.com/location/merritt/) — [Paradise Pines Retreat](https://roamstays.com/properties/paradise-pines-retreat/) sleeps up to twelve across three bedrooms, room enough to park the trucks and hang the waders before the short run back out to the flats at first light.

---
_Source: https://roammgmt.com/teal-weekend-at-the-flats/ — a machine-readable copy of this page. Prices and availability, where relevant, are live on the site._