Joe Imel/Daily NewsGreg (left) and Yankee Brown, both of Bowling Green, leave Kohl’s early this morning after shopping for post-Christmas bargains. “You know where I should be this morning? I’m supposed to be hunting. I should be in a goose blind right now with my buddies,” Greg Brown said as he pushed a cart with Christmas wrapping paper to their vehicle.

Kay Dyer doesn’t often shop on the day after Christmas because she is usually relaxing at her winter home in Florida.

But this year, the Bowling Green retiree isn’t heading south until next week. So instead of sleeping in the Sunshine State this morning, she was looking for bargains on a cold, gray Kentucky morning.

“I found something for everyone – too much,” said Dyer, who shopped for her three grandchildren at Kohl’s department store. She showed off three Christmas ornaments she picked for them.

Discounted Christmas decorations and supplies were a popular find today at many stores in Bowling Green. The items are heavily discounted in the days after the holiday, and shoppers said they wanted to snap them up to put away for next year.

“We kind of went overboard on the gift bags,” said Lisa Edwards of Rockfield.

She and her husband, Bobby, were at Kohl’s for the bags, along with wrapping paper and blue jeans, she said.

“The shelves are empty back there now,” Bobby Edwards said, gesturing toward the Christmas displays.

Across the country, shoppers waited longer this year to buy presents, and also turned more than ever to gift cards. This has created angst among retailers, who are relying even more on the post-Christmas season. They hope consumers will buy the discounted holiday leftovers as well as new, regular-priced merchandise.

Stores are also counting on customers to spend their gift cards quickly because the cards are only recorded as sales when they are used.

The Kohl’s parking lot was full when the store opened at 6 a.m., personnel operations manager Mika Whitten said.

Inside the store, an employee worked on shifting the focus from the holidays to bargains by replacing signs featuring Christmas themes with posters offering a $10 Kohl’s coupon for every $50 spent.

Tonya Bewley of Scottsville did some shopping for herself this morning at JCPenney’s in Greenwood Mall. She was looking for clothes.

She hit the store before 8 a.m. to take advantage of sale prices that were offered only until noon.

Bewley is no stranger to early morning bargain hunting. On Black Friday this year – the day after Thanksgiving – she went out to shop for her three children.

“I got up earlier that day for the toys,” Bewley said.

Most of the people in the stores this morning were shopping, not returning unwanted or ill-fitting gifts, JCPenny store manager Rick Abercrombie said. Usually, people who want to exchange presents wait until later in the day to do so, he said.

In addition to Christmas items, winter clothing like coats and jewelry were selling well this morning at JCPenney’s, Abercrombie said.

“They’re coming in with gift cards and Christmas money and are purchasing jewelry that they may not have gotten for Christmas,” Abercrombie said.

According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., the week after Christmas accounted for 10 percent of holiday sales last year, but analysts expect that period could account for as much as 14 percent this year, given gift cards’ soaring popularity.

The National Retail Federation estimated consumers will spend $18.5 billion on gift cards this holiday season, up 6.6 percent from a year ago, based on a survey conducted by BIGresearch.

At Sears in the mall, postal employee Willie Carver of Scottsville was looking through the clearance bin in the tool department. His wife and daughter, who were out in the mall, are the serious shoppers, he said.

For Carver, the after-Christmas sales were “just a way to get out of the house.”

Greg Brown of Bowling Green also had plans to get out this morning. He was at Kohl’s with his wife, Yankee. But that wasn’t his first choice.

“I am supposed to be hunting,” he said as he hauled bargain-priced wrapping paper out of the store. “I should be in a goose blind right now with my buddies.”

— Joe Imel of the Daily News and The Associated Press contributed information to this article.