We all know the feeling of a lackluster, bluebird day when the only sounds we hear in the blind are the dog whimperingor someone telling stories about the “good ol’ days.” Change that up by using these tried-and-true tips to drop ducks or geese right into shotgun range!
1. Breaking out food
When no birds are flying, people get bored. A few hours after seeing nothing but tweety birds, blue skies or jetliners WAAAYY up there in the bright blue, someone breaks out some food. After all, if the birds are not flying, we might as well enjoy the morning. A biscuit, sandwich or whatever else you brought along will help pass the time … and it will bring the birds.
Long time waterfowlers will agree, it's very important that you get all tied up into unwrapping a biscuit or digging through a pack to find that biscuit. Then and only then will a group of birds show up. Sometimes, if they're geese, they'll honk loudly enough to scare hunters into dropping that prize biscuit into the water, the bottom of the boat or into Gunner the retriever’s awaiting mouth. Other times they just splash down and leave you with pieces of biscuit falling out of your mouth and your gun hanging by its sling from a tree. It never fails! Try it and see!
Want to get a cup of hot coffee? Make sure it's very hot coffee, in a nearly full mug. Spit out coffee, camo clothing with a coffee stain, burnt hands and fingers and wasted coffee are the price to pay for an enormous flock of compliant waterfowl.
2. Taking a "business break"
With all that intake of food or coffee, Nature is going to call. Know this: The birds will drop in the minute you drop your pants. So you can either torture yourself for a while by trying to hold off or just go ahead and relieve yourself. Either way, the moment you got away from the blind, it was inevitable: Birds start dropping in and you are in no position to take shots.
The more friends you have back in the blind or boat to laugh at you when you get back from answering Nature's call, the better. They may be taking those great shots now, but their time will come soon enough. Just remember, if the birds flare because of you taking a trip to relieve yourself, you will never hear the end of it!
3. Picking up decoys
This is one that haunts me EVERY trip we have that is slow. I have a lot of chores at the farm to do, so if things are not happening and my time could be better spent getting other things done, I get antsy and after a few hours of little to no action, I make the call to pick the decoys up and head home. This is a wonderful tactic, because ducks will suddenly try to land in the decoys with me in them.
Another blind I hunted required the boat to round up the decoys. I figured with the boat, there was no way the birds would try to land in the decoys given it was much larger and two of us were in it with a dog. I was dead wrong! So, I learned to never use the motor, in order to keep the hunt legal. Instead I pole from decoy to decoy while my daughter and dog watch. We have gotten a few shots like that and have taken a few birds home too.
4. GONE
It hasn't been a great hunting day, but at least you didn't get any embarrassing surprises. You breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that maybe the ducks and geese got away from you, but at least they didn't get over on you. Not so fast! Just so you know, that does not count until your truck and duck boat are leaving the ramp or you have hiked out of sight of your blind. Because--and this is a promise--if you can still see your hunting location, you will see those birds flying low and slow.
Yep, waterfowl hunting is just like this. The ducks and geese know us better than we know them!
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