Walk-In Duck Hunting

As I wrote in my last post, Travis and I had set up in a little slime pond hoping to bust a few beaks the morning after Christmas. We’d known of the spot, as we knew mottled ducks and whistlers knew of the spot. Our hope was a few teal would swing through, as well.

It didn’t happen. We spooked the whistling ducks early and had a few woodies fly overhead but it was pretty lame - which made it all that much better that I was able to bust a gorgeous mottled drake. I guess you could say I limited out since the bag for mottleds is one, but it wasn’t the duck hunt we’d hoped for. But, if you did read my last post, a little additional scouting remedied this problem as that evening a pile of whistling ducks and a few teal met their demise. For the record, my personal bag for the day was the one mottled duck, a bluewing teal, and 4 whistlers - awesome for this style of hunting.

Over the last three weeks I’ve about run gamut of Florida ducking hunting opportunities. Hunted the bigger lakes of central Florida for ringers and teal. Per usual, there were plenty of ducks and a few have died, but as also typical of a mid-December hunt for these birds on public waters, they were rather shore-shy from being blasted at for a few weeks especially having had no recent cold fronts blow down fresh birds. I hunted Lake Okeechobee one afternoon and was perplexed by the lack of birds I saw there, though a party did well the next morning, blasting ringers and teal.

From there, I hunted STA ¾ and had an exciting shoot, again increasing my bag of ringers and teal. December 26th will go down as a memorable day for all the whistling ducks, but a few days later, I hunted up by Cedar Key for sea ducks – bluebills and bufflehead. What a neat place to give waterfowling a go! I scratched down one hen bluebill – my first - and a common merganser, but the action was limited. That’s a lot of water out there, and it didn’t seem a lot of these ducks had arrived south yet. When you don’t have many sea ducks in that expanse, the shooting is typically limited.

It’s been fun, though, my limited knowledge of duck hunting increasing with each venture. I don’t want to disparage hunting from a boat with a large spread of decoys, mostly because I really, really enjoy a boat full of buddies emptying to their plugs on passing ringers. And I really, really want to continue to be invited on these hunts. With all the rivers, lakes and shorelines in the state, the ease of opportunity is there, but the most successful hunts I’ve been on have involved no motorized boats and far less hunting pressure. And that’s what I want to focus on today: increasing duck hunting opportunities through walk-in hunts on private and public lands, not only in Florida, but really anywhere you may want to pop a duck or three away from the crowds. These places are shallow water venues that require merely a pair of waders to retrieve birds and are fine spots to innoculate that Duck Hunting Disease

So, let’s delve through this spectrum of possibilities. The whistling ducks and mottled duck died on private land. The land is largely South Florida prairie pockmarked with sloughs, wet-weather ponds, flag lily ponds, and cattle ponds. All of these features are attractive to puddle ducks including the aforementioned mottled, but also whistlers, wood ducks and teal. The duck hunting has been fickle over the last several years due to drought that allowed tall dog fennels and other weeds to thrive in these depressions, choking out the ducks. The main trick to success has been finding where the ducks want to be and adjusting accordingly, as my opening tale related.

To take it out of the state of Florida, we did something similar in Montana last year. We hunted flooded shallows on the edges of wheat fields. Ducks rafted on the nearby river would shuffle over in the mornings and evenings to feed. 2010 was sort of a down year for our trip, but a group this year pounded mallards and other puddlers that came into water barely ankle deep.

I mentioned wood ducks earlier; they are extremely conducive to walk-in hunting. Here, they’ll settle in cypress swamps and creeks surrounded by oaks. In Georgia, I’ve blasted them in beaver ponds and probably could when I visit North Carolina each year if I weren’t so fixated on deer. It’s quite an experience to have a flock of woodies whistle down through the treetops first thing in the morning. Like above, the trick is figuring out where they want to be. I believe woodies - even more so than other waterfowl - wake up in the morning knowing exactly where they’re headed and little will sway the stubborn buggers, so not each puddle will hold them.

This all translates on public land, as well. You know, mottled and whistlers are largely unique to Florida, and many WMA’s share the same features of the private ranch I’ve hunted. And duck hunting is allowed on most WMA's during open seasons for deer, hogs, or small game hunts. Many more WMA's have an abundance of cypress swamp land that woodies call home. The Green Swamp, Chassahowitzka, and Lake Panasofkee are a trio of public lands where I’ve noticed a plenty of wood ducks recently. And since most folks are concentrating on deer and hogs, the potential is there for great shoots.

For the ultimate walk-in hunts on public land in the state, the STA’s are the cat’s meow. These lands are designed to clean runoff water before it reaches the Everglades and is loaded with a variety of ducks. If you live anywhere outside of South Florida, it is a haul to get down there, but it is worth a trip or two a year if you draw the tags.

The STA’s require a touch more planning than a few of the other options. Last year, we waded through the hydrilla to a line of cattails. We got a limit easily but ached like Hell after slogging through that mess, dragging weeds behind us like wet wedding dresses. This year we toted kayaks down which made it a lot easier to get hunters and gear in and out.

But that’s as complicated as these hunts should go. Typically we’ve hunted with few decoys, if any, in the case of wood ducks. If you’ve done your scouting and know – or reasonably hope – the birds will be there, tons of dekes are burdensome. A couple decoys and a Mojo Duck never hurt mallards or teal, but sea duck-like spreads of them are unreasonable. For blinds, just cut surrounding vegetation (check regulations on WMA’s!) and put those Boy Scout badges to work. In Florida, cutting long palm fronds and planting the stalks in the mush is a popular method of concealment. Of course, care must be taken on where you splash the birds; most of these joints are wader-friendly, but the deep spots may require a retriever - either by canine or by a fishing pole with a snatch of some variety.

Duck hunting, oftentimes, is what you want to make of it. As I said, I certainly enjoy hunting from a boat on the lake with buddies and hoping for a limit of teal and ringers. It does happen, especially early in the season and after cold fronts when new birds wing South. There is something to be said for going beyond this formula, though. Not everyone is gonna get excited about that one bird limit of mottled ducks. Or even three wood ducks.

But it’s reasonable to expect, with a little scouting and luck, to enjoy a day of waterfowling without worry about other hunters or hauling a boat around.

Hunting Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks

The pre-dawn morning after Christmas, Travis and I snuck out to a wet-weather slime pond with a handful of decoys, a teal Mojo, and palm fronds to prepare an assault on the local waterfowl. In Florida this time of year, one could reasonably expect mottled ducks, teal, and black-bellied whistling ducks arriving to feed in the pinky-deep water on duck weed and other aquatic grasses.

The whistlers had beaten us there. After we’d left the truck, we could hear them peeping and chirping and, yes, whistling, in the reeds. Our arrival spooked three separate flocks up and out of the marsh, each group consisting of a couple dozen birds. We hurriedly fashioned the palm fronds into a makeshift blind in a swath of reeds and awaited daylight, convinced the birds would return.

They did not.

As the morning lengthened, T and I listened to the chorus of birds that had settled in another wet area to the north. We backed out of our set-up and crept up to the other pond. There, a flock of 30-40 whistlers were in a holding pattern over the wetland. As they dropped down, another flock of 20 popped up, those bold white bands on their wings flashing brightly in blue of the morning. This continued for 20 minutes as we watched mesmerized as flock after flock of black-bellies would rise and fall into the marsh. Hundreds of birds. I’d never witnessed anything quite like it in Florida - the afternoon would be a great hunt.

Black-bellied whistling ducks, also known as black-bellied tree ducks, are odd birds. Taxonomists categorize them closer kin to geese than true ducks. They don’t dabble. They don’t dive. They wade in shallow water with their spindly legs and use their long necks to bend over to graze on grasses and aquatic vegetation. Beautiful in flight, these dark chestnut-brown birds have bright-white wing patches with a pinkish-orange bill and feet that hang behind them. Hens and drakes share similar patterns with a slight deeper contrast in color for the drakes. While flying, they can not be confused with the buff-colored fulvous whistling duck also found in the same regions – or any other duck, for that matter.

Whistlers don’t migrate, in the true sense of waterfowl, but they flock up in oftentimes huge groups to travel back and forth across their range. As the moniker “tree duck” implies, they nest in holes of trees, and their webbed feet have needle-sharp talons to help them perch on branches. There’s also a reason they are known as whistling ducks. They are very vocal; their peeping whistling while in flight betrays their approach (listen here).

These birds are found in great numbers across Central and South America where, in some locales, they are referred to as “Cornfield Ducks” as they plague grain fields and are treated as such. In the US, their range is limited to Florida and the southern limits of the Gulf Coast states, though wayward birds have been found in northern states. Their population is actually increasing in these areas and bag limits of six represent their availability. In Florida, they’ve become rather commonplace on golf courses and around cattle pastures with a little bit of freshwater and year-round availability of fresh-growth grasses.

From a hunter’s standpoint, whistling ducks are user-friendly. Since they do not migrate and endure the salvoes of gunfire from Canada south, they aren’t particularly hunter-savvy. Also, they don’t get a lot of hunting pressure locally because they prefer environs that differ from the standard-issue ringneck or teal. While I'm sure several are splashed each year in such places, whistlers aren’t likely to decoy for a ringneck spread on the bigger, hydrilla-covered public lakes and rivers popular to state duck hunters.

To purposely hunt them, waterfowlers should focus on areas where whistlers can wade for their food. The STA’s in South Florida hold their share of birds. I’ve witnessed flocks of thousands flying around Lake Okeechobee where they’ll settle down in the shallow marshes. Wet-weather ponds, flooded cow pastures, dug ponds, and flag lily ponds surrounded by trees will attract their share of birds.

As these birds expand, more will be learned about hunting them in the future. I’ve seen them decoy, but suspect we were just where they wanted to be more than them being attracted to teal dekes. If you can get their calling pattern down, I’ve watched folks mouth-call birds around to investigate, but no commercial calls are available that I’m aware of. Whistlers aren’t all that tough to bring down, either. Number 2’s or 4’s is more than enough from a 12 gauge, 3-inch chambering. And their meat is very good, indicative of their diet grasses and grains and avoiding long-distance travel that’ll make migratory birds a touch gamey by the time they hit the Sunshine State.

Travis, Don, and I gave them the full nine yards that evening. As we scrambled to set up a Mojo and a handful of Big Duck decoys, the whistlers were still there doing their thing, circling and rising out of the marsh like a busy airport. After the first shot, hundreds of birds flapped their way out of the flag pond like something you’d see on a wildlife documentary about Africa. Between the constant whistling, the passing flocks of so many birds, and the frantic re-loading, it’s tough to honestly detail the flurry of action. We splashed our limit – and a couple bluewing teal – in short order.

I badly wanted one for the wall, but none I could claim that afternoon were worthy. They lacked the deep roseate pink bills of a trophy. That drake came, though, the next morning. We returned with a few other hunters and added to the weekend bag, though the action was not as steady as many of the birds retreated for happier grounds after the first few blasts. I’d put one on the ground, and as I walked to retrieve it, a lone drake cupped into range and the BPS folded him without so much as a ruffled feather when it hit dry land. Sadly, my Nikon took a swim that morning which prevented me from getting a picture. But he’s in the freezer now awaiting a taxidermy trip.

It is beyond me why so many birds were congregated in that small marsh. No one who had hunted this ranch had seen anything like it – it was truly a special opportunity that quickly snuffed out any thoughts of deer hunting. I will say, it’s an exciting thought knowing the populations of these birds are healthy and expanding. As I said above, if this trend continues, we’ll know a lot more about hunting whistling ducks in the future.

They are unique waterfowl. It is a unique hunt.