Get ready for Waterfowl Season
The world’s finest shotgun, shells, and gear doesn’t matter a hill of beans if you can’t hit the broad side of a barn with them. Wing-shooting is challenging even in the best of conditions, but throw in cold, wet, dark, dogs, swamps, marshes, and backwater with boats and you have the makings of a typical waterfowl hunt. It is going to be tough, so you had better bring your “A” game since waterfowl rarely fly in a straight line. Twisting and turning mid-air, then zipping past your decoy spread with unexpected speed, waterfowl will also flare and bank hard - rarely in the spot you were aiming - so being able to master tricky angle shots makes a difference. You have to be proficient with your gun and gear to consistently kill waterfowl cleanly. Practice and repetition make the difference between heavy straps or tall tales.
Scout and Study. To hunt waterfowl, you have to get to where the birds are. This may seem easy, but it almost always requires a duck boat to get there. But scouting ain’t a pre-season boat ride in your new duck boat with that fancy mud motor. You have to study the area and observe the patterns of the birds. Some of the best spots I have ever hunted came about because I scouted an area, sat still in my boat (maybe ate a baloney sandwich), and observed with a pair of binoculars while taking notes and spotting the highlights of each location. Waterfowl, like all species we hunt, want safety and food. Hydrilla, thick week, and water plants are great duck food and backwater areas that make them feel safe are good places to start. No matter how much we talk about it, nothing can beat time spent on the water studying habitat. The key is studying, not joy riding.
Duck boats. Get the boat that fits you best – rugged, not fashionable. If you are hunting from your boat and blind, you will have more opportunity to get to where the birds are. That makes it even more critical to get properly setup, outfitted correctly, equipped with the right gear, and a stable platform from which to hunt. Remember that a slight movement of the barrel when shouldered, turns into a lot offline at longer ranges. Your waterfowl boat may look good and feel solid sitting on the showroom floor, but it will probably be moving and rocking a little when you and your buddy get ready to shoot. Get situated, stow gear away, be comfortable, and make room to safely swing through the flight line in a stable boat platform to increase the odds of bagging your limit. The right boat with the right options makes a difference.
Stop moving! This is one of my pet peeves. Many professional outfitters around the country have told me that most shootable birds are flared off by movement. By the time the migration has started and the waterfowl show up, the birds have been shot at by other hunters for thousands of miles along the flyway. Birds are cautious, careful, and savvy when it comes to staying alive. This means cover and movement are critical to your success. If you are like me and have hunted more times than you can count from a boat blind, you have been with THAT guy who is as fidgety as a kindergartener. He moves, twists, turns, plunders around in his gear, adjusts everything, sighs, snacks, and moves. And moves. And moves. This one is easy, but the hardest to stop. Stop moving your body and just move your eyes. Be still. Soak down in Deep Wood OFF® if you have mosquitos, turn on your Thermacell® (and if you don’t have one, get one), and be still. You will get more birds coming in to your decoy spread and ultimately have a more successful hunt.
Take the shot. To be clear, we are not talking about “sky-busting” where your buddy - never you - takes the shot at the absolute maximum distance of your gun’s reach when the bird is still just a spec in the sky. There is a tendency to feel rushed and make fast swings with your gun, pulling the barrel out to the proverbial car-length lead and shoot. You may not admit it, but you know as well as I do that “pull and pray” doesn’t work. Instead, try moving the gun about half as fast as you think you should, slow it way down, take a breath, follow the flight line, lead the bird based on the speed, and pull the trigger. You have more time than your mind tells you.
Get the right shells. Seems simple enough, but there are more choices for waterfowl shotgun shells than ever before. The new shells pattern tightly, create bigger wound channels, and are long range duck and goose-killing loads like no tomorrow. Tungsten, bismuth, copper-plated exotic metals, and even dense steel in some of the ugliest pellet shapes you have ever seen make them deadly. Add 3” and 3.5” shells that open up faster while traveling at higher velocities and you have the down range energy needed to reach out and take those larger ducks and geese. We can argue size (#4 vs BBs or 3” vs 3.5”); but at the end of the day, you have to choose the size for what you are hunting. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to shells. Long-range geese require different shells than timber mallards. And remember this -- shells are not like wives: you can have more than one, so stock up and see which works best for you.
Blend in and disappear. I am not talking about the new fashionable camo pattern that may have just hit the market. You need any camo pattern that causes you to blend into your surroundings. According to Ducks Unlimited®, waterfowl have highly developed retinas that allow them to see up to three times farther than humans. They can actually see much farther than they can hear, and that helps them form clear images and spot the hunter silhouette from a fairly long way away. And waterfowl also don’t see the same colors the same way we do: they see greens, reds, blues, and yellows more vividly and are sensitive to UV light. What that means, in practical terms, is that glare, shine, and reflection are not your friend. Your shiny pale face, blued shotgun barrel, glossy wooden stock, or exposed gear laying around on the floor of your boat creates unnatural reflection which causes the birds to flare or avoid the area entirely. Camo is designed to disrupt the waterfowl’s sense of color and motion. According to experts, soft shapes, lines, and hexagons tend to do better than vegetation patterns, but the jury is still out on that one. Everyone agrees, however, that the best camo is the one that lets you bag your limit. No matter which pattern you choose, you need camo that blends into your surroundings. The bottom line is to practice, study, get in the blind, use the camo, be still, and disappear. And remember, even a bad day waterfowl hunting is better than a day spent working, so enjoy it.
Now, Let’s Take It Outside.®