Top Four Waterfowl Hunting Tips

Written by Pro-Staff team member Kurt Kruger

The Iowa waterfowl season is in the books, and between classes and work my fellow classmates and I had a banner year.  Thanks to student loans and limited space, a large spread of goose decoys was out of the picture. So daily scouting, good farmer communication, and  scrutinizing every detail in the spread became important to our overall success. From September to January we saw our local geese turn from brainless B-52s into a well educated hoard with the help of incoming migrators and unrelenting pressure.  Here are our group’s top four tips to stay ahead of the curve this hunting season.

The Illusion of a Bigger Decoy Spread

1. Create the illusion of a bigger spread: Most of our hunts took place over less than three dozen decoys so placement became a significant aspect to our success.  To do this we would place two wings of decoys downwind of the blinds and a short, thicker line around and upwind of the blinds to create the shape of a short tailed “Y.” We would often string the two downwind lines of decoys 40 to 50 yards away from the blinds, as this made the birds work low over the first small groups of decoys and key onto the larger group where the calling was coming from, and by the time they got there they had landing gear down and wings were back-peddling. Game over.

Duck Blind Cover and Concealment

2. Concealment, concealment, concealment: Concealment starts right after taking a blind out of the box. Find your nearest mud hole and slather it up, this will take off the factory glare.  Though most modern camouflage patterns will replicate any type of crop, nothing can perfectly duplicate natural field cover.  Taking the extra five minutes to stubble a blind can make the difference between a limit and flaring birds out of range.  Though snow covers may seem expensive, they are worth their weight in gold and can make a hunter virtually disappear in late season conditions when ducks and geese are the most educated.

Iowa Waterfowl Hunters

3. Read the bird’s body language: Both calling and flagging geese are important aspects when putting birds on the ground, but doing either at the wrong time can alert an incoming flock.  We generally only pop up the flag when geese are at a distance too far to hear our calling, but if the birds approach and start veering off to the side we will give them a couple quick flaps to restore their full attention on the center of the spread.  No one in our group is a champion goose caller, so catering the style of our calling to match our abilities is important. As soon as we get the birds’ attention we generally quiet down and turn to natural clucks and moans to keep the birds on track.  If a large flock bypasses us without much interest we will lay on the call until we see necks start turning. As soon as they start looking we throw up the flags, and more often than not we can get them to turn. Remember, it only takes one goose that wants to land to turn an entire flock.

4. Do what other people aren’t: Our area sees a lot of pressure and at times we can use this to work to our advantage.  When we see another group set up next to us we will take mental notes of what their spread looks like and listen to their calling, then we do the opposite.  Most people around here set up their trailers of decoys in a big blob or a defined “U,” we try to mimic the pattern of the feeding birds when we set up on the “X” or we use a more spread out “Y” pattern when running traffic.

There you have it! Our top four tips for your next waterfowl hunt. Comment and let us know how these worked for you, or share your own waterfowl hunting tips!