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Late season public duck hunting
By Greg P. & Brian F.

Our late season hunting finds us on the Mississippi river bottoms.  This area is a heavily hunted public slough.  This heavy pressure creates tough hunting with groups set up as close as 100 yards from each other.  With this type of competition proper concealment, good calling and decoy usage are the keys to more birds in the boat!

We hunt from a 16-foot blind boat.  The blind is made out of aluminum sheeting on a framework of 1” square tubing.  Wire mesh is attached to the outside of the blind, which gives us a place to weave natural vegetation, brushing the whole blind.  This setup lets us hunt in the harshest of elements mother nature has to offer and allows us the ability to set up almost anywhere and be instantly concealed.

Proper calling is a key factor under intense competition.  You not only have to call to attract ducks, you must know when to crank it up or lay off the call.  Typically under competition aggressive calling is needed to pull the ducks from the other groups.  There is a fine line between aggressive calling and overcalling.  Overcalling is calling constantly whereas aggressive calling is being commanding but not overbearing.  It is very easy to overcall to ducks but with proper use of calling, you will have more successful hunts.

Probably the most important thing to getting ducks in your face is the decoy spread.  The decoy spread will be placed according to wind direction remembering ducks will typically land into the wind.  We want to shoot our ducks within 30 yards.  In order to get ducks this close you must keep your decoys within 30 yards.  Most of the time ducks will land on the outside edge of the decoys.  To keep ducks from landing on the outside edge of the decoys we always have a landing hole (kill zone).  For late season mallard shooting we will use between 60-100 mallard decoys.  With a wind between 0-10 we will try and setup with a crosswind to keep movement in our decoys.  We will also use jerk strings and motion decoys to give us movement. With a wind greater then 15 mph we will setup with the wind at our back.  This creates slick, calm water, which is natural for ducks to land in.

Click here to view a decoy spread that has been successful for us.

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