^^^This has worked SO MANY TIMES for me. There's a lot to benefit from too, as in, they might have a dog (which I hope is at least halfway decent) and you almost always get a bigger decoy spread out of the deal. Plus, if their calling is on par with a 5 year old with a broken kazoo- you can politely offer to do the calling for the group.

I've had mixed experiences with doing this, some groups are really annoying idiots and I've also met up with a few pretty talented duck hunters over the years. It's just part of the game now. Sometimes you have good hunts, sometimes you don't. The places that I go, you have a very difficult time finding any areas that aren't crowded so I've given up on the "honey hole" dreams and I have just started to adapt to the way things are now and focus on accomplishing what I set out to do. I never go out to a public lake with any sort of preconceived notion that I will have a good hunt, much less any solitude. It makes those times when everything comes together that much sweeter.

These days, the only thing that grinds my gears about hunting public land is the abundant littering. I will straight up lose my shart on people who leave their hulls and garbage laying around their blinds and parking lots. It takes me twice as long to pack up because I'm always grabbing dozens of red hulls and silver boxes off the ground that people have just left there. If the COE closed off areas to hunting, the same people would be screaming "It's our land, the public has a right to hunt it" while they have no qualms with treating it like a giant trash heap. Sorry, went into a rant there.