Lakes Offer An Alternative For Duck Hunters

Not all hunters enjoy access to vast coastal marshes, bays, or leased flooded fields. Not to despair though, inland lakes often provide thousands of acres of prime, public duck hunting!

In many states, people may post no trespassing signs on shorelines, but water bottoms belong to the public. Of course, always check local laws before throwing in decoys. However, in places that allow duck hunting on public lakes, sportsmen in open water can usually enjoy good shooting for divers, teal, wigeons, and pintails in the right spot. In the sloughs and backwaters, sportsmen might bag more mallards, gadwalls, and wood ducks.

Divers, such as scaup, ring-necked ducks, canvasbacks, or redheads, usually respond better to large decoy spreads in open lakes. Sportsmen may anchor a permanent floating platform blind surrounded by several hundred decoys. Builders span a plywood deck between pontoons and anchor it down. They add a boat slip for easy access. Then, they build walls of wood or wire. Before the season starts, they cut pine boughs or local brush to make it appear natural.

Permanent Blinds' Pros/Cons

Permanent blinds provide stable, comfortable shooting platforms, often equipped with ammunition shelves, rain shelter, electric lights, generator-powered heaters, benches, and even stoves for cooking lunch. They make hunting easy and enjoyable, but suffer two drawbacks ducks get used to them and other hunters use them. Also, if ducks change their flight patterns, they may not fly over certain blinds. Moreover, large blinds, sometimes extending 15 feet above the water, make easy landmarks. If hunters shoot from them often, ducks learn to avoid them.

Large open-water blinds require large decoy spreads, sometimes more than 500 blocks completely surrounding the blinds. Sportsmen leave them out all season because it takes so much time to set them up and take them down.

Large spreads pull ducks from long distances in any direction. However, buying so many decoys could bankrupt average hunters. Innovative waterfowlers supplement realistic decoys with painted plastic bottles. Strangely enough, these common household bottles resemble ducks at a distance.

A big decoy spread gets very expensive, said Sam Lamondola who hunts on Saline Lake in central Louisiana. Some people paint jugs black to resemble a scaup. Others paint patterns to look like pintails, mallards or whatever. Most people take a white bleach bottle and dip it in a mixture of black paint and watered down tar. They fill in very well with decoys and it makes for a nice spread. They're effective.

Going Mobile

Sometimes, even a terrific decoy spread won't bring ducks within range. Then, hunters might want to sacrifice a little comfort for more mobility. With small, camouflaged boats, hunters can move to where ducks feed or rest, and quickly set up an ambush.

Boat blinds allow hunters to target dabblers, such as mallards and pintails, that might not readily respond to large floating blockhouses in mid-lake. Hunters in small boats can get in the back of coves and tributaries or set up along timberlines in thick growth where mallards hide and feed. Birds often follow those same timberlines the way people follow highways.

Many hunters stretch surplus Army camouflage netting over rigid frames on aluminum flatboats, which make excellent boat blinds. The frame comes up on both sides and forms a pyramid like a tent. When ducks come within range, drop one side quickly and shoot at surprised ducks.

We can get up and move, find ducks, and set up in a few minutes, said Mike Caruthers, of Caruthers Marine in Vicksburg, Miss., who hunts Mississippi River oxbows. Because we can move easily, ducks don't get used to seeing the blinds. We can keep up with the birds as they move.

Fewer Decoys Sometimes Better

If hunters discover birds working through small potholes off main channels, they might opt for fewer decoys, especially if ducks grow wary of large spreads. A dozen well-placed decoys in a small pothole among trees could look more realistic than 400 blocks surrounding a pile of browning pine boughs. Boat hunters can easily set up such a spread before first light for a morning hunt and leave at noon.

Hunting lakes holds another advantage for sportsmen. In lakes known for great fishing, anglers running boats could kick up duck concentrations as they travel to their favorite honeyholes. Therefore, lake hunters should consider staying in blinds longer.

Typically, hunters see a flight of ducks at first light as shooting hours begin. As anglers move about the lake from spot to spot, or return to the dock for lunch, they kick up more ducks. Hunters running to their blinds in mid-afternoon scare up ducks again.