Alot of rain and wind in Manitoba this last week. Conditions were less than ideal.
With some good scouting we found a field that the snows and blues were using. Unfortunately, the rain was heavy and forced us to walk in with only 2 dozen decoys. Normally we would have 300 to 500 decoys in our spread.
We shot 35 snows/blues in about an hour until the rain forced us out. It was pouring rain and we had to get out of the field. These birds had their feed down and were totally committed. Snows/Blues at 25 yards. 2 Dozen decoys!We were hiding behind bales of hay which was the huge advantage that day and the details, including putting a few family size decoy groups out, made all the difference.
We had a feed lot that the mallards were using that we saved for a few days. This lot was maybe 5 acres. There were NO other ducks in the area to be found as they were concentrating on this feed lot. We put a total of 6 decoys out amongst the water that was available in the feed lot and 4 of us shot 64 ducks in 2 days. It was cloudy and rainy. Picking out the drakes was difficult. A few shots at a time and we got it done. One shot or two and we had a limit of drake mallards. The detials were careful scounting, paying attention to what the ducks were doing/where they wanted to go and and selective shooting. So much for taking hundreds of decoys!!!
cheers