Went to visit the wife's family to celebrate xmas in small town USA since everyone who was at risk of the Covid has either a) had it recently and recovered b) has received both vaccinations.

My BIL had been scouting to and from his commute to work and one day finds a low spot slew with sheet water off the road holding 90+ mallards. He watches it the whole week and calls the rancher on Thursday to see if we can have permission on Sunday. Gets the OK.

Saturday morning he takes me to the spot to scout it and see that the 90plus birds do really exist. Well, Saturday early afternoon BIL phone rings and its another group of hunters who "have hunted the property before" and have been scouting that spot for 1 week long as well. Rancher wants us to play nice and hunt together. Our group of 3 suddenly jumps to 6. Oh well, what can you do but respect the landowner's wishes. He is doing everyone a favor.

My BIL calls the other group back and says sounds good but we will need a great hide with this many ppl and says we will need to run panels and/or A-frames and cross wind them. Other guy on the phone agrees and sets a time for all of us to meet in the morning. However, from the initial call I knew this would be a cluster ****

We spend the afternoon collecting grass and applying a base layer on our panel A-frame that matches the grass surrounding the water.

We show up Sunday morning 5:30 at the spot and the other party seems "surprised" we have our A-frame ready to go with extra grass in the truck to touch up our blind. I will preface by saying I have nothing against the following clothing brand I'm about to mention or anyone who elects to purchase it after all this is still America until Wednesday.

Sure enough the stereotypical "Sitka Guy" that you see/hear about on YouTube IG comedy sketches ( from head to his waders he is decked out in Sitka) hops out of his super fancy lifted truck and says "Oh man, guys we don't really wanna mess with blinds this morning. I know "Robert" talked to yall yesterday but I kind of want all of us to just hide in that wooded area and just stay close to the trees. "That's what we always do when we hunt here"

I mutter to myself and say "Here we go". My group politely tries to relate to Sitka Guy that the ducks will be landing on the far opposite side from the thin wooded area and it will be very tough to hide 6 guys in the wood line. My BIL says I have been watching them land and loaf all week to the far side. Finally "Robert' pipes up and tells Sitka Guy he has been seeing the same thing and the ducks are avoiding the wooded side of the body of water.

Sitka Guy shrugs his shoulders and says something along the lines of I'm good with whatever but it sure does seem like alot of work when we are on the X and I'm going to have to leave early for church and I tore my waders last weekend. Which I took as code for I'm not planning to help in any way with the spread or blinds.


The other two guys proceed to throw out 2 dozens decoys and 3 pulsator's which I thought was over kill for the size of water we hunted. We get our blind set up and Sitka Guy and one other guy from their group now decide it might be good idea to now sit near us and utilize our back panel and run it along side with our front panel and the existing "high grass" will provide plenty of cover for our backsides. "Here we go".

Well the sun begins to rise and the mallards start to do it. However, from the get go I could tell the majority didn't like what they saw as they flew over. They stayed high on the 70th floor for most of the morning. They weren't flaring as much as they continually slid as they flew over and over the water and would finally turn off and head elsewhere. It was much like a group of pintails working a spread.

On the ground it wasn't much better. No one was in charge of calling the shot and at points was chaotic whether or not we would shot at this group or not.

Sitka guy is stunned that the birds aren't doing it like they should. At one point in the morning he instructs us to stop calling and let the birds "work." I turn and look over at him and chuckle and say I don't even have my calls on and my BIL is only chattering not high balling them to death. His groups stops calling but the ducks remained on the 70th floor. After a couple more dumbfounded comments I turn over to my BIL and say its probably because our hide is s**t and/or we are running too many decoys.

Sitka guy heads off to church leaves his shell bag and marsh chair behind for his buddies to pick up. An an hour and half later we all picked up and head out. I pulled the trigger maybe 4 times and somehow we ended up with 11 as a group which was very disappointing. Might have been my most frustrating private property hunt to date.

Hindsight is 20/20 but I didn't want to be the city boy [censored] and create a mess for my brother in law with the locals in his hometown. Next time I might just sleep in.

2 dozen and 3 twerkers is not a big spread at all. Thats actualy the same size I run, and my place is only about 5 acres flooded. Sounds like the birds were just being picky that day, and that happens some days.
But I do agree with "Sitka guy" on the fact I'd rather hug trees than set up a Aframe. Im sure the Aframe looked well out of place. I like to hunt as natural as possible.

Well, land owner said you could hunt, other hunters agreed to hunting together. You were able to hunt.

Why are you whining?

If the hide is gonna be tough I like to put a couple hundred pounds of corn near the spot I want to hunt about a week before. Works better than any pulsator or fancy decoy you can buy.

Maybe should have hunted from the trees...



Maybe it's not always about killing every bird you see. Like you said, maybe you should have just slept it if you couldn't just enjoy being out and watching birds. Especially if the brand of clothing someone wears bothers you.

I guess you missed the overall theme...

One guy wanted to do it his way while the others including the two others in his group who invited him wanted to what was best for the group.

Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.. Like I said if this were to happen again "I'll just say thanks but no thanks" and not get up at 4:15.

Sometimes that is better than hunting with folks you do not know.

Free is free...and you get what you pay for. I would have bowed out as soon as other hunters were mentioned. Hate groups bigger than 2 really.

Sounded more like you were bashing the "sitka guy" in your story and might should've listened to him. That's the theme I got.
Other than that, I think ducks have made us all scratch our heads sometimes and wonder why they are doing what they are doing.

Just be glad and thankful you were hunting and able to hunt.

I get that it's frustrating not having something "work out" as we may think best, but you got to hunt week of on private property, were successful to some extent, met new people who could have potentially turned into future hunting partners, and got to enjoy the outdoors. Your Sunday could have certainly been worse.

Sounds like typical Magellan Man against Sika Guy morning.

The day I take orders from a sitka model is the day I quit duck hunting.

Bummer you drew the short straw and ended up hunting with a slack jawed Sitka pimp.

Over time I have become very selective about the people I hunt with. Without eyes on the slough, I can’t pass judgement either way but the one constant I have learned by rubbing elbows with countless other hunters over the years is most folks don’t know what they don’t know. Consequently what makes sense may not make sense to them. As for strategy from your description, I likely would have wanted to put out 8 dozen decoys to approximate what had been sitting there, leaving the X open, and let the incoming 90 birds think they were the last ones getting to the party but their preferred parking spot was still vacant, while giving them a lot more to focus on, other than my marginal hide. With the knowledge If 90 birds were sitting in one spot, 24 is not a big spread.

If the Sitka Guy had hunted that spot before and was successful just standing in the trees, I would have been happy doing that. Weary late season birds could have been bashful of the A-Frame that suddenly appeared in a spot they were frequenting. One of my favorite blinds is a tuft of cattails in the middle of the marsh, a stand of trees is nice substitute.

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Next time try this type of camo shirt --------- they work wonders.

Maybe I would handle it differently if I were a young man, but I would have done one of two things in that situation and have done both in similar situations more than a few times.

#1. The other group of hunters have hunted this landowner's land before. I'm not going to bird dog their party. I would let the land owner know we are going to respect they have had permission before us, they have hunted it before us, and let them have the hunt to themselves, but ask if it would still be ok for us to come hunt another day. Not completely good guy stuff though as I would see it as a good opportunity to also offer any help around the place in exchange for that permission as a way to one up the prior group in the future.

#2. Hunt with the other group, but with a less serious go with the flow, here for the party attitude. Keep my call in my bag, Offer my decoys in advance and leave them in the truck if they refuse. Go with whatever blind construction they want. Other than dropping some seeds on the plan I would go with their plan even if I am the most experienced hunter there and I know a better way. I would let one of them be the "pit boss" for the hunt as I like to call it for the one who calls the shots. I would even say "good shot" every time the Sitka guy yells "I got it" every time I shoot a bird. I would just enjoy the hunt. Or the show. Whichever it may be. Or it might even go well and I learn something. You never know.

I bought a Sitka coat last month....my 10 year old drake had had enough.

How far away did you park the trucks? Is it possible the birds were flaring bx of the trucks?

I think its hard to blame the other group or the Sitka fanboy. Guides take the same people out all the time and kill birds.

Its hunting, sometimes the birds just don't do it like you think they will. It could have been just your group and you would have had similar results.

Exactly!

That’s a good point on the trucks. Not sure how far back they parked them. I was toting the blind and other gear across the water. They weren’t visible from where we sat but we were also in a steep bottom.

Now that I have had time to reflect. I shouldn’t have been so critical about the guy. Primarily frustrated that I have only been out 4 times this year and 2 of those times were strike outs without even seeing a duck.

As pointed out there are numerous things that could have caused the birds to be weary. Not to mention they’ve probably been shot at quite a bit.

BIL texted me this morning and said the bulk of the group was back again loafing this morning. I laughed and told him to invite the rancher this week and yall hide in the trees this time and let me know if it works!

A-frames this late in the season around a slough that has no high grass/brush is a bad deal in my experience. Lay-outs are the way to go around something like that in my opinion.

Bingo