There’s a great satisfaction from calling in an animal with a call you have fashioned yourself. I admit I’m no duck-call maker. That takes years of trial and error, knowledge of toneboard structure and many other variables. It’s way too much for me to delve into, especially when there are...
By nature, hunting wild birds brings frustration. Weather, fellow hunters and other situations sometimes conspire to stomp our best plans into the marsh muck, leaving us cussing our favorite activity. Don’t get mad. Get after it. Identify these frustrating scenarios and try some quick fixes to come out on top...
January brings a wave of excitement across the country. No, not the football playoffs. It’s the final push of duck season , and hunters know they only have a few weeks to make memories for another year. Trouble is, January ducks can be … um, challenging. Many birds have been...
My license plate, barely visible under days of accumulated road salt, might have read Wisconsin, but I sure wasn’t up North. Constant quacks and feeding chuckles echoed across the water as flock after flock of mallards halted in mid-air and then parachuted down toward us through the tupelo and cypress...
It’s been called the last best place for a free-lancing duck hunter. Spend a week in North Dakota during the peak migration and you’ll see why. It’s not just the astounding numbers of birds that descend upon cut cornfields or that roost on the thousands of pothole ponds and big...
For many folks, frozen boat landings and iced-over wildlife-management areas spell the end of duck season. For others, it simply marks the next step — a shift to a unique period with rugged challenges but potentially great rewards. Whether you hunt in the North or South, freeze-up shooting can bring...
So, you have a problem. There’s some empty space on the wall of your trophy room — not much, but enough for, say, four or five bird mounts. Trouble is, you really need to make these count. Where do you go? And what do you (hopefully) bring back? You want...
Hunting flooded woods is the ultimate mallard hunting experience. Here are nine tips to help you succeed, from a 60-year veteran of the green-timber wars. Click here for more Realtree waterfowl hunting content. And check us out on Facebook .
Everybody knows diving ducks use only big water, right? That means you need a big deep-V boat stacked high with sacks of blue-billed and red-headed decoys. Put a hefty outboard on the back of the vessel. The hunt might even involve a layout skiff or two bobbing among long strings...
An autumn ride in a boat or canoe is nice. Shooting ducks along the way is better. To do it requires a little planning and a lot of strategy. Sure, there’s some luck involved, too. Are there even ducks there? You can control that by choosing the right stretch of...
In previous blogs, I’ve praised many ducks, including mallards, woodies, canvasbacks and other high-profile birds. Shoot, I’ve even written about shovelers, mergansers and ruddy ducks. But anyone who knows me realized long ago that bluebills are my favorite ducks. Heck, they can be greater scaup (called broadbills by some) or...
Some duck hunters just seem to have a knack for killing birds. Like the 10 percent of fishermen that catch 90 percent of the fish, these guys seem to come home with a strap full of ducks every time they go out. What’s their secret? They might belong to a...
If you hunt east of the Mississippi River, wood ducks have probably played a big role in your waterfowling career. They might be the everyman’s duck, common on sloughs, creeks, backwaters, flowages, lakes, marshes, rivers and ponds throughout the North, East, Midwest and South. Heck, many of the wood ducks...
If you’re hoping opening morning of duck season will be successful, you should be doing more than hoping, according to Ryan Breish, one of the producers of Fowled Reality and The X on Realtree.com. “There are things we generally should do that we don’t do that we end up realizing...
Every outdoorsman falls into the trap of using excuses to explain subpar days afield. Waterfowl hunters are no different. A psychologist might classify this behavior as a defense mechanism; our way of rationalizing a poor performance. Sometimes, those excuses are legitimate, as many factors can make waterfowling difficult or even...
It’s no secret that everything changes. The late David Bowie talked about it in 1971. Bob Dylan spoke of the “times a changin’” in 1964, which, incidentally, was the year I was born and — I’m guessing — long before most of you reading this entered the world, let alone...
Force-fetching is the foundation of a reliable retriever. Some will argue this, and that’s their right. I’ll stick to my guns on this and carry the belief to my grave. You cannot have a finished retriever without force-fetching. There, I said it. Let the hate mail begin. Teaching the force-fetch...
A good bird dog isn’t born. It’s made. Although breeding and natural instinct play decisive roles in a dog’s ability to perform, you cannot simply pluck a retriever from a pile of puppies and rely on instinct to create a reliable, well-trained gun dog. It takes training, discipline and hard...
Duck hunting doesn’t usually produce the kind of resentment inherent in deer or turkey hunting. After all, waterfowlers don’t often have multiple encounters with one bird or buck that consistently thwarts them. But let’s admit that some general duck behavior traits might leave you shaking your head or even cussing...
Duck hunting might be on hold until fall, but there’s plenty you should be doing to get things shaped up for when the season rolls around again, according to Realtree pro-staffer Chad Belding, host of The Fowl Life on The Outdoor Channel. “As a duck hunter, our main goal should...
