buckclub

My only days duck hunting so far this year have been high pressure, sunny days which I absolutly despise of for hunting ducks over water. Tried a lot of decoys, and a little, a lot of calling, to a little. No response or interest what so ever, it seems they all want to land in the center of the lake or swim around shore. I hunt from shore blinds. And I dont think the peak migration has started yet where I hunt in Central NY, so the amount of birds aren't quite here yet but still..

What do you guys do when the weather doesn't cooperate? as I prefer to decoy in the nastier weather

Chris_H

I have noticed that on cloudy days, there are more ducks flying longer. However, the first day of teal season this year was a sunny day, and it was like World War 3 on the lake. About 30 minutes before sunrise, i look over to the left to admire the sun peaking over the trees. In my awe, i suddenly hear the cut of little wings slicing through the air. Next thingi know, about 100 teal completely surrounding our little tree and some light into our dekes. Between that time and sunrise,we probably saw about 100-150 more. We did see some mallards and woodies, but who cares (for now) when you cant shoot em .


That morning couldn't have been any more perfect. There was a cold front to the north that pushed down more birds, and it was cool in the morning too; about 60 degrees before the sun came up.

The second time i went that season, it was one of those heavy overcasted days. The birds were flying later,and the water had dropped dramatically on the lake. It was hard finding a good spot but we finally found one. It was about flying time when i noticed that two of my mallard dekes keels were sticking out of the water because the water wasn't deep enough. I rushed out to the decoys, and of course thats when the first wad of teal beelined towards our spread. I sat down in the water, but they flared. I fixed our little problem and ran back to my tree when another wad saw me and flared. Amazingly though, one of those little suckers lit right between me and my buddy, and we were only about 5 yards apart. We both just froze. I mouthed "don't move" to my buddy, but my foot was stuck in the mud in an awkward position and i was losing my balance, so i had to move my leg. That bird flushed, and it seemed at that point the flying stopped. The first was that i flared circled around the point in front of us and lit to feed about 200 yards away. They were constantly getting up and landing in that general area.

I've read that teal flying time is a very short period, and if you're not in the right spot, you'd better move quick. Well on the sunny day, the teal were steady flying all morning till about 10am, and the geese started to fly about 8am.

On the cloudy day, theteals flight was short, lasting about 15 minutes. The mallards and geese were flying longer than normal.

After all that being said, the south's best friend is the north's worst enemy: a cold front in the north. Some other bad things that causes or success to drop is a relatively full moon the night before the hunt... that means staying out in the blind till atleast 2pm, when the birds just start flying again. Freezing temperatures move some of the birds down south further, but it makes the birds fly more.

You can't change the weather, so the only thing that you can do is think like a duck.