Strangest duck hunting setup you’ve tried

[WOODIE13]

Hunted a golf course and vineyard, dress in camo and the birds would be very spooky, dress khakis and a bright polo shirt, they paid you no mind, even with the dog

 

[Rick Hall]

Couple of times I hid under an orange tarp like rice farmers often use on levees.

Never for ducks, but under orange, or yellow, water control curtains and in whites next to yet-to-be-installed PVC water control pipes for specks. Lot more of my seemingly "strange" hides have been for specks than ducks.

 

[Tailfeathers]

I heard a story( or was it a dream?) of a couple of fellas who had an adjacent farm that had a field near theirs, and those guys sprinkled some yellow fertilizer on that other farms field. So the fellas I heard or or dreamt about, I don't remember, supposedly set up a couple of 10 foot electrical silver conduit poles with shiny aluminum pie plates with a foot of string each tied to them a swaying in the wind right near the yellow fertilized areas on the two farm's border line. This kept the birds away from the fertilizer way yonder and sent them back towards their blinds like God intended them to do. Good day a hunting, spoiling the fertilizer boys wishes and pleasing God all in one morning.

 

[bill cooksey]

I heard a story( or was it a dream?) of a couple of fellas who had an adjacent farm that had a field near theirs, and those guys sprinkled some yellow fertilizer on that other farms field. So the fellas I heard or or dreamt about, I don't remember, supposedly set up a couple of 10 foot electrical silver conduit poles with shiny aluminum pie plates with a foot of string each tied to them a swaying in the wind right near the yellow fertilized areas on the two farm's border line. This kept the birds away from the fertilizer way yonder and sent them back towards their blinds like God intended them to do. Good day a hunting, spoiling the fertilizer boys wishes and pleasing God all in one morning.

I've tied aluminum pie plates to tomato stakes many times to keep stale ducks from landing where I didn't want them. Works great without blowing them off the whole farm. Once they get used to them, and they will, you titrate up. Next step is wrapping the wings of a couple of spinners with aluminum foil, and that usually gets you another day or two. Next step goes up a couple of notches. Back when I had a Toyota pickup, I occasionally drove it into a flooded rice field to keep ducks out of a spot.

 

[GUNNERX2]

A farm I hunted had two places where ducks wanted to be with a hill in between the two. When I hunted the farm, I would stake out a pie plate in the spot I wasn't hunting and it would usually work. I hunted the farm infrequently as it needed heavy rain a few days before the hunt to flood out a smallish piece of ground that contained moist soil plants. Hunting the moist soil area sporadically, the ducks never really got accustomed to the pie plate flapping in the wind.

 

[William Reinicke]

I've tied aluminum pie plates to tomato stakes many times to keep stale ducks from landing where I didn't want them. Works great without blowing them off the whole farm. Once they get used to them, and they will, you titrate up. Next step is wrapping the wings of a couple of spinners with aluminum foil, and that usually gets you another day or two. Next step goes up a couple of notches. Back when I had a Toyota pickup, I occasionally drove it into a flooded rice field to keep ducks out of a spot.

I have seen or heard of guys using big beach balls with lots of yellows and blues and reds and anchoring them into certain parts of lakes to keep ducks out of those areas. Leaving them to find their duck decoys and land where god wanted them to. Then you go and pick up the beach balls after the hunt and birds never get used to them. Just word of mouth, never witnessed it before.

Now when I was hunting the dairy a lot for pigeons. There was a section of the dairy that was just too close to houses. The birds wised up one summer and stayed only in that section of 6-8 pens. I found these yellow beach balls on amazon with a big silver black red eye that was supposed to imitate an owl eye. Sounds ridiculous but I set 3 of them up on PVC poles so if there was a slight breeze, it would bounce and sway and twist. There wasnt a pigeon on that dairy for 2 weeks. It worked too good. I pulled them because I still wanted to hunt some of them, just didnt want them on that section of dairy.

Worked well enough because the birds were out of tune of that spot when they came back, and where I set decoys, they decoyed much better.

 

[Tailfeathers]

I've tied aluminum pie plates to tomato stakes many times to keep stale ducks from landing where I didn't want them. Works great without blowing them off the whole farm. Once they get used to them, and they will, you titrate up. Next step is wrapping the wings of a couple of spinners with aluminum foil, and that usually gets you another day or two. Next step goes up a couple of notches. Back when I had a Toyota pickup, I occasionally drove it into a flooded rice field to keep ducks out of a spot.

I like that aluminum foil spinner wings idea.
I once had a dream that a guy ran his red Miata across one field to suggest to a bunch of geese to get up and fly over another field.

 

[GUNNERX2]

I have seen or heard of guys using big beach balls with lots of yellows and blues and reds and anchoring them into certain parts of lakes to keep ducks out of those areas. Leaving them to find their duck decoys and land where god wanted them to. Then you go and pick up the beach balls after the hunt and birds never get used to them. Just word of mouth, never witnessed it before.

I know a fellow that had a season long blind on a WMA and was having a problem with gadwall landing 200 yards from his decoys. His solution was taking a basketball, crudely drawing a human face on it and anchoring it where the gadwall were landing. Didn't have the intended result. There was so much trash floating down the river that the birds paid absolutely no attention to the basketball.

 

[orwfowlr]

I heard a story( or was it a dream?) of a couple of fellas who had an adjacent farm that had a field near theirs, and those guys sprinkled some yellow fertilizer on that other farms field. So the fellas I heard or or dreamt about, I don't remember, supposedly set up a couple of 10 foot electrical silver conduit poles with shiny aluminum pie plates with a foot of string each tied to them a swaying in the wind right near the yellow fertilized areas on the two farm's border line. This kept the birds away from the fertilizer way yonder and sent them back towards their blinds like God intended them to do. Good day a hunting, spoiling the fertilizer boys wishes and pleasing God all in one morning.

Now that’s some good old Gordon McQuarrie shenanigans there!

 

[Tailfeathers]

I know a fellow that had a season long blind on a WMA and was having a problem with gadwall landing 200 yards from his decoys. His solution was taking a basketball, crudely drawing a human face on it and anchoring it where the gadwall were landing. Didn't have the intended result. There was so much trash floating down the river that the birds paid absolutely no attention to the basketball.

Wilson