Got into Ducks Last Year, Tell a Story or Give Advice!

[WanderingWapiti]

I only call and shoot decoying birds, have no issues with anyone else's style or techniques it is just the way I like to hunt!

Location is the first priority, after that hiding well is

If your goal is to shoot birds with minimal investment, sneaking is the way. I own thousands of decoys but I still enjoy a good sneak. Whether it's quietly sneaking up through the grass to a slough edge to pop a couple wood ducks, or belly crawling a fence line to rip into 15,000 feeding snow geese.

I like it. Good reminder you don’t have to have all the toys. Just go hunt.

 

[WanderingWapiti]

Man good advice here and different styles. I like it. Stoked for October

 

[Sandhills]

Cocaine is likely cheaper and less addictive.

Used to hunt em hard. Kind slowed down for a couple years but last year I hunted half a dozen or so times and got a guy from work and his sons into it.

We were hunting a public marsh on a fog day, I usually have pretty good luck on fog days, and the boys got dove bombed by teal while there dad was walking back from their vehicle. They scared it em pretty good but no birds dropped. The younger of the two looked at his brother and said " They're Quick! They're fckin quick!" He then looked at me and kinda got an embarrassed look. I said they are fckin quick aren't they! My wife got a good laugh when I told here because the younger of the two was in her classroom the year before.

 

[BigDuckHunter]

Lots of good thoughts on this thread already. I do have one piece of advice to add though.

Think long and hard before you get a dog. You can kill plenty of birds without a dog and shouldn’t have any trouble retrieving them if you take smart shots.

I’ve seen plenty of hunts ruined by dogs and plenty of guys who used to kill lots of birds struggle to kill them after buying a dog.

All that said, my dog is my best friend and a great tool. I enjoy hunts twice as much with him as I do without, but I’ve also spent well over a thousand hours training him and often plan my day around our training sessions.

If you are going to invest in a dog, take the time to make sure it’s coming from the right litter and understand the time commitment it’s going to take to get the dog to the point where it actually makes your hunts more enjoyable.

 

[RockAndSage]

Lots of good thoughts on this thread already. I do have one piece of advice to add though.

Think long and hard before you get a dog. You can kill plenty of birds without a dog and shouldn’t have any trouble retrieving them if you take smart shots.

I’ve seen plenty of hunts ruined by dogs and plenty of guys who used to kill lots of birds struggle to kill them after buying a dog.

All that said, my dog is my best friend and a great tool. I enjoy hunts twice as much with him as I do without, but I’ve also spent well over a thousand hours training him and often plan my day around our training sessions.

If you are going to invest in a dog, take the time to make sure it’s coming from the right litter and understand the time commitment it’s going to take to get the dog to the point where it actually makes your hunts more enjoyable.

So much truth in all this. Even with putting in a reasonable amount of work, the difference between your overall hunting experience with a given dog in the first or second season is usually a different universe from their 5th or 6th ones. My dad made me feel a lot better when I was working with my first dog and had a rough first season, when he said, "All the great hunts in the later part of their lives really makes you just forget the difficulties of the first couple of seasons, it gets better."