Concealment, patience key at seasons’ end
Texas waterfowlers who grouse about how tough late-season duck hunting usually is just lost their most ubiquitous excuse for “slow” hunts during the season’s final couple of weeks.
“If we’d just get some really cold weather, it’d push all those birds that shortstopped up in Oklahoma and Kansas and Nebraska down here and we’d have great shooting,” goes the standard lament for why the last days of the Texas season are often the least productive of the lot.
Well, we got that wished-for weather year, in spades. This January has seen some of the coldest, most sustained stretches of seriously cold weather in decades, topped by the arctic cold front that this week froze — seriously froze — Texas all the way to the coast.
If truly frigid weather “up north” was the key to late-season success for Texas waterfowlers, the state’s coastal bays and marshes and prairies should be swarming with birds, and success should be almost guaranteed. But that’s not the case. Yes, the weather almost certainly pushed a wave of “new” birds into Texas, forcing them south when temperatures locked their world in ice and sent them down the flyway in search of their two main requirements: open water and something to eat.
Still, the wintry weather is no guarantee waterfowlers between now and the Jan. 28 statewide close of duck season will see more birds over their decoys and enjoy significantly more productive hunting than in recent seasons. There’s a lot more to improving odds of late-season success than a cold front can muster.
Late-season duck hunting is always a challenge. The birds have wised up. They’ve been exposed to hunters’ ploys and the danger associated with them since early September, when waterfowl seasons opened in Canada. The reckless and slow learners are gone. Those remaining are wary.
Add to that, the birds’ patterns have changed from November. They eat different foods. They follow different social behaviors, mostly associated with the start of pair-bonding ahead of the spring migration.
Tactics that worked well enough in November often aren’t nearly as successful in January. And, to be blunt, hunters tend to get lazy as the season winds down; they get in behavior ruts or forget basics.
I can be as guilty as anyone of these missteps. But after more than 50 Texas duck seasons, I have learned some things every duck hunter should consider when heading afield between now and Jan. 28: Hide
If Texas waterfowlers have a most common tactical failing, it’s that they do not take concealment as seriously as they should. And this can be a crucial mistake late in the season, when any hint of a hunter is enough to flare approaching birds.
Add new brush or other cover to duck blinds or layout blinds that have grown a bit threadbare over the season. Pay particular attention to having enough cover to keep hunters in the shadows. That means paying particular attention to the east side of the hide.
Concealment can be a particular late-season problem for hunters who depend on natural cover. This is especially a problem on public areas, where the cover around popular, productive hunting spots tends to get trampled and wallowed to uselessness.
Layout blinds can address this problem. But they are not always an option in marshes or other spots holding water. Adding a pair of hedgetrimmer shears, machete or other tool with which to quickly and efficiently cut arms-full of natural cover — cordgrass, baccharis, wax myrtle, sumpweed, mangrove —to supplement thin cover can be the difference between having a successful hunt instead of helplessly watching ducks flare because they can see the hunters. Be savvy about decoys
Be mindful when using spinning-wing decoys.
Motorized, spinningwing decoys can be a great aid in pulling ducks to decoys, giving a decoy spread an illusion of holding live ducks that standard, static decoys seldom can. But the battery-powered “flappy duck” can prove more a hindrance than a help, at times. Late-season hunting is one of those times.
Maybe birds are getting wise to the almost universal use of motorized decoys and have learned to associate them with hunters. Maybe they just don’t like all the motion. For whatever reason, waterfowl can be as spooked by motorized decoys as attracted to them. And this avoidance seems much more common late in the season.
A recent hunt illustrated this. We hunted a flooded flat on a moderately foggy morning, employing a single motorized decoy. Early, the birds poured into the flat, most zeroing in on the open hole near the spinning-wing decoy. But once the sun rose, birds that appeared out of the fog — ducks and geese — almost immediately flared when they saw the decoys. After about the fifth time this happened, we switched off the “flappy duck.” Birds quit flaring and would work.
Motorized decoys can work late in the season. But don’t ignore what the birds tell you. If they flare or seem particularly reticent to work close and there are no other obvious causes such as hunters not hidden well enough, pull the spinning-wing decoy. It can’t hurt. It can help. Follow the birds
This sounds elementary. But it’s often not so obvious. Ducks can shift feeding areas as winter bears down. The aquatic vegetation, native seeds and agricultural grains they feasted on early in the season have mostly been depleted. Many ducks switch to concentrating on aquatic invertebrates — scuds, snails, insect larvae. Some — most — of this is driven by changing nutrition requirements. Ducks, especially hens, are looking for protein to fuel their body’s egg production and muscles ahead of spring migration and mating season. In January, it’s not unusual for ducks to concentrate in areas they’d previously avoided, often because of the presence of abundant invertebrate forage.
Find one of these spots, and you’ve got a great place for a late-season duck hunt. Play the weather
Here’s a basic rule along the coast: If it rains, hunt the prairie: if it freezes, hunt the coast.
A hard rain in January floats remaining native seeds and grains on prairie flats, giving ducks — especially pintail and teal — access to these foods. They will find them. It is common for pintails and other “puddle” ducks wintering on costal bays and marshes to abandon those areas and fly inland when rain begins falling. Stay late
Many late-season duck hunters take advantage of the pre-dawn teal blitz, then get discouraged when bird movement wanes perhaps a hour or so into the morning. By 9 a.m., most are getting antsy, and by 9:30, most call it a morning.
That’s a mistake. Often — too often for it to be a coincidence — there will be a flurry of bird movement late in the morning. The old hunters I learned from in the 1960s and ’70s called this phenomenon the “10 O’Clock Mallards.” More often than not, these late-morning birds did show up, giving us a great half-hour or more of opportunities.
And even when those late-morning birds failed to show up, we weren’t that frustrated. After all, waiting for them gave us an extra couple of hours afield engaged in a pursuit that yields much more than birds. That’s reason enough to stick around as long as possible. After Jan. 28, it’s a long time until November.