My first non-guided, non-tank jumping, bigger than a bath tub duck hunt. Made a lot of mistakes. Some good shots, bad shots and lost opportunities but it feels good getting a few ducks and learning a few lessons. Got access to a friend's deer property for the weekend that happened to have a 10+ acre lake and a few smaller tanks. Scouted it Sat AM and then hunted it w/decoy spread Sunday AM. Key lessons:

1. Setting up decoys in the dark is tough. I had them way too close to our blind and not upwind enough. Made for longer shots that we needed to be taking and we def missed some birds. Also wasn't sure how many decoys to use...

2. The wind changes. Duh. Got so fired up seeing a bunch of ducks Sat that I decided on a place to setup our blind assuming the wind would be the same in the AM. It wasn't and a lot of bird were landing 100+ yards away or just not buying our spread. I was def out of my comfort zone on a bigger body of water.

3. My calling sux! Wax on, wax off.

We didn't quite get a two-man limit but overall it was awesome and got to add a few more firsts to the list my first season of duck hunting! Great weekend!

My first Pintail!


Bufflehead hen?


First Gadwells & a ringneck pair

If you had fun, there you go.

It's always a learning lesson!

Good job!

Bufflehead hen. Yes

Thx - wasn't 100 sure on that bird.

Is there anything you can do/try when bird are landing on the water out of range? Wait? On the smaller tanks everything is in rang but this was the first time I've had that issue. I'm sure it won't be the last...

I usually let them land and hope they swim closer or they jump up and come in or sometimes I will get on the call right when they are about to land (it makes them think twice about their spot lol).

They do that a lot on the little lake we hunt, they especially like to land in the middle. For right or wrong I will call at them while they are working the wrong spot, even to the point of scaring them off if I have to. We have shot in the air before as well to spook them off just because once you have a dozen live birds 200 yards away you will have a heck of a time getting anything on your spread.

Yeah I kinda froze and didn't know what to do but thankfully another duck that did buy our decoys came in and got things stirred up.

We were setup towards the middle of the lake and had ducks landing to the narrow side and the wide side of us. If we get to hunt it again I need to figure out where to setup.