For What it’s Worth:

Gentlemen I just want to share something I’ve learned over the past 27 years of waterfowl hunting.

Now I’m no expert but I’ve done more than my fair share of trial and error experiments, and not every duck hunting trick works every day, but things have change and the Ole Wiley Duck has figured it out.

One of my newest and fairly productive tricks when I hunt is; I move the decoys AWAY from the pit: in some cases as far as 100 yards. I do this to get the ducks attention away from the pit and focused on the decoys. Call it pit shy or what ever you want, but I think the ducks get tired of getting harrassed everytime he flies over a hole in the ground.
A man told me once to put a bird feeder out, let the birds get use to it, then shoot at them everyday with a pellet gun. It won't take but a couple of days and the birds will stop using it, I don't car how much food is out there. Ducks are the same way.

I also keep the Robo’s on the outside edge of those decoys, and use as many as I can get my hands on. We used 11 this weekend, and had the others been up and running we would have had close to 20. Now my distance varies on how strong the wind is as to how far I move the decoys. The stronger the wind the further out I move things away from the pit. I always move the decoys into the wind. By doing this I catch the ducks on the swing as they circle to look at the decoys, or on their approach. I know we all love feet down in the decoys at 30 yards, but let’s be honest here, that rarely happens and usually only occurs in timber, or when you find the spot ducks have been using for several days, but in an Arkansas rice or bean field, pass shooting is often all you get. and really all you need. Hunting ducks in the morning and afternoons also limits them ever finding a spot to return to, get comfortable with, and use over and over and this leads to just flyby shooting.

I can only imagine what the duck sees from his perspective flying overhead. The south farm has 6 pits within ½ mile of each other and some only 300 yard. The ducks are curious and in fact social animals and often will buzz every decoy spread out of curiosity, but finishing ducks can be tuff, especially when every shotgun blast in the distance flares them. The way our club is set up, we hunt a different spot each day, and we lose the ability to catch ducks in a roosting or feeding location. Because of this we have to work harder,smarter, change things up, and be more creative.

These "new ducks" to us in Arkansas have been shot at now for 6-10 weeks already and I assure you we have nothing new to show them that hasn’t been tried from Canada on down. Far better callers than I have worked hard trying to coach the weary duck into submission so I doubt I have anything new for them. But the majority of duck hunters do the exact same thing. Decoys set up the exact same way, the ever classic "J" hook or "horseshoe" method, calling the exact same way and using one or two spinning winged decoys. Showing the ducks something different I think is the key. Make your spread stand out from the hundreds he's already seen.

A friend of mine and I hunted one day and both of us forgot our duck calls and you know what? we killed ducks, a lot of ducks! We sat there and let the ducks be "ducks" We often give ourselves too much credit in thinking we have what it takes to trick Mother Nature and change the minds of wild animals. Oh we have the tools: calls, decoys, camo etc...but our arsenal of weaponry has a time and place and truth be the ducks are going to do what the ducks want to do regardless of our efforts. I've seen ducks that wouldn't finish over other wild ducks, why? because they didn't want to. We can make duck hunting more complicated than it has to be by over thinking things. A duck in motivated by two things, food and shelter.

For the past two years I have adopted some of these changes and if you’ve followed behind me in a pit rotation you probably looked at the decoys and said to yourself, “What the heck happened here”, but more often then not our group has a pretty high success rate at killing ducks everywhere we go. Last year we were hunting from the levees more than in the pits because the ducks wouldn’t go near them. The "local ducks" got wise and knew better and we just couldn’t seem to get teh weather to get new ducks in the area.

Not trying to preach, act like I have all the answers or change how you do your thing. I just feel we are successful more than not in our attempts as a group. I just thought I'd share. Hope you all have a wonderful year at Three Rivers !