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.

The Waterfowl of Montana

Mallards are big ducks that get swallowed in the steel blue of the Montana dawn, especially as they circle against the backdrop of a distant mountain or foothill. A pair of drakes had looped Cliff Pond a half-dozen times before dropping from the air that’s as fresh and thin as a July bride. They cupped up and bombed towards the decoy spread as we waited motionlessly, fingers on the trigger and breaths rolling out of the blind.

I did not fly to Montana to duck hunt. I flew to Montana to see Montana. And because Harris invited me to this beautiful 1000-acre private ranch near the Lewis and Clark country of Three Forks and Willow Creek. The hunting was strangely an afterthought in my mind. After four mornings of waterfowl hunting, my next trip will definitely concentrate on duck hunting, no question.

The waterfowl is mindboggling. My Lord, the ducks! In the rivers and irrigation ditches near the ranch, thousands of greenheads puddled with wigeon, gadwall, coots, Canada geese and wild swan. It’s quite possible I’ll never fully Q-Tip the hooting of honking geese from my eardrums. All day long you could sit on the back patio of the ranch house and watch waterfowl of some variety. With a long season and liberal bag limits, this region of Montana is a sportsman’s dream.

I am but a casual waterfowler. I’d never hunted ducks outside of FL or GA. I’ve killed more mottleds than mallards and found these wild greenheads strikingly beautiful when compared to the tamed ones so problematic to the aforementioned mottled ducks of the Sunshine State. It’s somewhat embarrassing to report that despite the amount of waterfowl we spied, we killed only a dozen or so greenheads. It’s the Beast of Hunting.

One, this place is impossibly open. Even the far expanses of Okeechobee marsh feel tight. We huddled in cut-out septic tanks buried in dug, shallow ponds. Those of us without waders were pushed with gear in a canoe to the hide-outs. Some service, I say...and said multiple times to the boys ferrying us. But anyway, you could see ducks and geese a long ways off. Having them choose this one particular drop of water amongst the reaches of the river and similar honey-holes on un-hunted land is a challenge that’s being addressed according to the ranch’s agenda.

Next, the weather was unseasonably warm for late October. The mornings were no colder than 40 degrees. Ranch Manager Ron said the migratory birds simply had not winged down yet. The ones that were there were residential ducks.

Which brings us to our third difficulty. A party the week before had put a solid hammer on what local birds lit on the property. They evidently had a fine shoot. The ducks that circled us did so with the careful, detail-oriented eyes of a jeweler.

I wanted a mallard for the wall; however, when pairs and trios come within gun range, the Five-Gun salvo made it awfully difficult to claim birds – probably hard for the Taxidermy Man to repair, too.

I especially craved a honker for the wall. I’d never hunted geese. It is its own challenge. One morning a flock flew over that we skyblasted at, but armed with 2’s we might as well be slinging rock salt at them. They would land in a pivot field of cut wheat and feed in groups of a hundred or more. We simply did not have the gear for this routine. I am pumped for the next crack at that.

Still, we made the most of it and hunted hard. Duck blinds are places for friends, anyhow. One of the two drakes mentioned at the beginning flew past Clark at butterfly-net distance. He failed to dump the quacker, something that was not easily dismissed. I missed my opportunity on one greenhead, getting the barrel of my BPS caught in the blind material on my right. Watching these big ducks cup and drop towards the decoys is a matchless experience.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to return one day. It’s truly beautiful country that is beyond writing, especially for an amateur wordsmith. The game is astonishing. Mule deer fed along the foothills. The long-tailed, Ring-Necked Pheasant cackled in the early morning and pitched between patches of deep grass. Coyotes howled in the coulees. Up the road on a private ranch, a green alfalfa field was literally swarming with pronghorn and mule deer. In the cottonwoods near the river, a herd of whitetails fed under the trees, a couple of the bucks bigger than anything I’ll catch up with in Florida anytime soon. Hell, even the black and white magpies impressed me. It’s a great place for the heart.

I’m a big game hunter, first and foremost. I long to travel many, many places in pursuit of this passion. The waterfowl of the Big Sky State now have me just as hooked.