Hope may spring eternal in the hearts of duck and goose hunters, but enthusiasm often lags during the last few weeks of the season. Waterfowlers are human, after all, and not completely impervious to harsh weather and tough hunting conditions. Spooky birds that are reluctant to decoy
aren’t exactly easy quarry. And mental and physical exhaustion from so many long days in the marsh can make it difficult to muster the gumption to hunt hard until the season’s final bell.
Those who stay in the game, however, can be rewarded with some of the best hunting of the year. The key is to adjust your tactics to the unique conditions and demands of the late season.
These seven tips from expert waterfowlers will help you hone your hunting strategies to ensure that your season ends on a high note.
1. LET YOUR DECOYS DO THE CALLING
Ed Larson, waterfowl products manager for Cabela’s, hunts primarily along the duck- and goose-rich Platte River corridor in southwestern Nebraska and northeastern Colorado. Toward the end of the season, the influx of new birds has all but ceased and the ducks that winter in this area have settled into obvious feeding and roosting patterns. These ducks have been called to and shot at since September and have become adept at avoiding hunters. To get them to finish, Larson tones down his calling style.
“I’ll call aggressively at first to get their attention, but when I know they’re listening, I’ll go totally silent and let my decoys do my calling for me,” Larson explains. “I don’t blow feeding chuckles or confidence calls. I’ll just keep quiet and let the ducks work. If they start to fly away, I might get back on them with the call. But as long as they’re showing interest in my spread, I’ll remain quiet.”
Larson also advises late-season hunters to experiment with different calling and decoy tactics when the birds become cautious. “You shouldn’t just sit back and watch ducks reject your setup without trying something new,” he says. “If the ducks are not following the script, keep changing things up until you find the combination that entices them to finish.”
2. ADD REALISM AND DOWNSIZE YOUR SPREAD
Late in the season, most ducks are already paired, and drakes like to settle down with hens on secluded waters where there’s little competition from other males. To mimic this natural behavior, Cory Foskett of Clayton, California, sets out only four decoys—two drakes and two hens deployed in separate pairs several yards apart—on small marsh ponds surrounded by tules.
“By the end of the season, ducks have had months of hunting pressure in the Pacific Flyway. They’ve seen and heard it all,” Foskett says. “To get the birds to decoy, we have to make our setup look as realistic as possible. Less becomes more this late in the game. That goes for decoys, motion, and calling. We use fully flocked, extremely realistic decoys. We rig a jerk string to provide movement and surface disturbance. And we call sparingly.”
Consistent with this minimalist approach, Foskett and his partners also avoid hunting from blinds. Instead, they hunt with marsh seats in the thickest natural vegetation on the upwind or crosswind side of the pond.
“That’s all we do,” Foskett says. “We just go small and subtle for late-season birds, picking away at them one and two at a time.”