Strangest duck hunting setup you’ve tried

[Brottboss]

Hunted a very small lake just out of town, located near an airport.
Joel and I always had a problem finding the woodies in the bramble so we employed his dog to assist on a hunt. Hole was tiny, but the bramble was thick/heavy.
A pair of woodies comes down and boom, the drake hits the bramble.
Dog goes in and has lots of excitement going, howling and such. Joel hollers over for Bear to "come" and he shows up alright.
He's got a great hold of a skunk and pounces right between us and drops the skunk. We all got sprayed. I puked immediately and Joel was saying his eyes burned.
Talk about a terrible ride home.

 

[A5B]

Many years ago when I was younger, we had permission to hunt a peice of private marsh on the backside if a cattle ranchers property.

We hunted that marsh every chance we could but never killed much. Then one day I was sitting in a small pothole waiting for daylight to come on when the sky broke lose and rain started pouring. So I high tailed it back to the truck to wait it out.

While sitting in the truck daylight came on and at the very southwest of the property was a small 10 acre set a side peice of pasture that was now starting to flood.

It looked like every duck for a hundred miles was beating feet to get into that pasture to feed.

Well from that point on we only hunted there when the rains were heavy and caused that soot to flood. But when it did it was magical.

 

[orwfowlr]

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.


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It’s kind of a shame you didn’t also make a grebe call- to complete the experience.

 

[William Reinicke]

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.


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Probably one of the coolest things I've read about decoying birds. A grebe decoy of all things....

 

[orwfowlr]

Hunted a very small lake just out of town, located near an airport.
Joel and I always had a problem finding the woodies in the bramble so we employed his dog to assist on a hunt. Hole was tiny, but the bramble was thick/heavy.
A pair of woodies comes down and boom, the drake hits the bramble.
Dog goes in and has lots of excitement going, howling and such. Joel hollers over for Bear to "come" and he shows up alright.
He's got a great hold of a skunk and pounces right between us and drops the skunk. We all got sprayed. I puked immediately and Joel was saying his eyes burned.
Talk about a terrible ride home.

Definitely the gift that keeps giving- for the next few weeks anyway.

 

[Billy Bob]

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.

That wasn't mud, It's semi composted cow c*&^ and it has undigested feed, worms and other things in it. See it at every Dairy farm around here. Wait until you see Mallards fall on hard ground and they puke up the green slime or red worms from the force of the impact.

 

[DelFowl18]

Brott, that was a great story! I am still laughing

 

[da fowl slayer]

this guy invited me on a goose shoot last day of the:season one yr.
When we got ready to set up I noticed we didn’t have any decoys. Guy says we don’t need any
Said hide right here in these cedars and DO NOT SHOOT WHEN THESE GEESE FLY IN
he got in a canoe and paddled out to a little island on this narrow 20 acre lake.

About 10am geese started fly in to the lake. The geese all landed between us and the island my friend was on .

My buddy once the group landed would raise a 410 a one shot.

The geese would fly straight towards us 20-30 in a group and come over those cedars at about ugh maybe 15yrd high
Was a hoe down beat down
Not very sporty at all thinking back on it
But Lord how I would love to do that again 1 more time

 

[letmwurk]

Shot 7 greenheads while sitting in a hot tub on a deck built in to a cliff about 200' above the Snake River.

 

[William Reinicke]

That wasn't mud, It's semi composted cow c*&^ and it has undigested feed, worms and other things in it. See it at every Dairy farm around here. Wait until you see Mallards fall on hard ground and they puke up the green slime or red worms from the force of the impact.

Well you don't see it much around here. I will say this, and I have no idea if it has any relation to what you are stating, but there was more mallard with rice breast from this area than any other area I have ever seen. No joke (and we killed a good 100+ mallard in this area that season) I bet 1 in every 20 birds breasted out had rice breast. Not all birds were killed in this little water hole, but in the general area there are lots of duck holes we have access to.