Strangest duck hunting setup you’ve tried

[orwfowlr]

A few seasons back, heavy hunting pressure pushed birds off the farmland area of a local river. On a scouting trip, I found some 500 mallard in a small 20yd by 50yd patch of burr-reeds along the shoreline of a deep & swift section of the river, where it cut through steep rock bluffs. The next morning I set a dozen decoys in the reeds (just a bench that quickly dropped off), anchored the boat several hundred yards up the shoreline, and went to work to figure a blind for the dogs & me. All I could come up with was a tiny bench some 60 yds up the steep shale slope above the decoys (likely only 25 yds horizontal). I piled up rocks for an hour, ending with bare minimum cover. At daylight they came, small groups of 5 to 10, diving right in for the cockle burrs. My shots were all down hill, trying to get under a fast dropping target. It proved to be a low percentage shot, and was even a tougher deal for the dogs. They had to navigate the steep shale down, retrieve in swift current & get back up to the blind. A box of shells & a couple hours later, it became a successful hunt, but definitely the strangest I can recall.

 

[William Reinicke]

Was scouting an area with lot of farm land. It was a scouting mission. Nothing else. I went speeding by a dairy when a big group of mallard caught my eye. Couldn't believe it. They were all settled on a run off area in that dairy. No joke, there was only a 2x2 foot of water/**** pond and everything else was that dried cracking mud. There were probably 2000 mallard sitting in this one little area. I pulled into the dairy, asked for permission, he said don't shoot over the cows and have at it. I had my dog with me, 4 full body decoys that had fallen out of bags over the course of the season, my shotgun, muck boots, and 14 shells that I could find that had fallen out of boxes from previous hunts. I slowly pushed the birds off, set up my 4 decoys, dog and I hid in a little dead brush patch and it took less than 20 minutes and I shot my mallard limit. We went back for 3 more weekends (with a few more decoys and layouts) and to this day, I cannot figure out why so many mallard were sitting on that little dried up mud depression with such little water. I will see if I can dig up an old picture of it but it was fantastic.

 

[ripline]

Many years ago, after hunting the same local birds three weeks in a row, the birds finally would even look at me.
I placed one drake wood duck decoy on the shore of the river I was hunting and one bigfoot goose decoy along side of it.
Filled up ducks and geese for three consecutive hunts.

 

[thekillerofmallard]

My old hunting buddy painted a lawn ornament of a duck to make it look like a huge drake mallard. We killed a lot of birds just using that stupid decoy. I looked like crap but worked well on the edge of a pond.

 

[Tyee]

During a very hard freeze I found bluff overlooking a public hunting area and watched with a pair of binoculars for quite a while. Every so often a single or double would fly into the same spot. Came back the next day and after some looking found a culvert with just enough moving water to keep from freezing. Proved a reliable limit of greenheads over the years when ponds froze solid. Never saw another hunter.

 

[William Reinicke]

Might of exaggerated the size of the water hole a little bit. Didn’t realize this pic was taken almost 8 years ago, so my memory was a little off. But water hole is more like 8x8 in this picture. Two man quick limit. Ol dog was licking her chops with quick easy retrieves and not even getting cold.

 

[cootmeurer]

As a member of a hunt club in NC we leased 3000 acres, most of which was pine plantation.

While sitting in an elevated deer stand i had a flight of geese pass directly above me, but was only armed with a .270
The next evenings they did the same.
By the third evening I ad brought along the SBE.
Only managed one because the overhead shooting window was very tight. And it took forever to find a goose in 10 year old pines

 

[Woodduck31]

probably my craziest idea would be western grebe decoys. We had been hunting our usual spot on the snake river many years ago. We weren't having much luck getting the wigeons to cooperate. There was a pair of western grebes across the river from us out of range and every wigeon that passed by wanted to land with them, probably to steal whatever they drug up off the bottom. After a frustrating day I went home and went to work on making a pair of western grebe decoys and 5 days later this was the result. Caleb and I both limited on wigeons that day. After that season I've hardly ever seen western grebes in that area and have never used those decoys again, but they sure worked that day.

 

[Grif]

4 of us did a "Hatfield/McCoy" set up with 2 guys on each side of a 50-60 yard slough. The ducks were splitting the slough so we did too. Not recommended....but deadly. I doubt I'd do it with many folks.

 

[orwfowlr]

Many years ago, after hunting the same local birds three weeks in a row, the birds finally would even look at me.
I placed one drake wood duck decoy on the shore of the river I was hunting and one bigfoot goose decoy along side of it.
Filled up ducks and geese for three consecutive hunts.

Often wondered about this, after watching birds avoid my decoy spread just to key in on a single duck across the river & next to the brush.