The second split of 2013-2014 season has been recognized by hunters in Southeast Louisiana as one of the poorest in many years. I, like many other hunters, struggled with low tides and what seemed to be a total lack of ducks.
I needed a late-season strategy.
During several of my hunts, I watched large groups of green-winged teal, mixed with divers and coots, rafting up on a large lagoon on my duck lease. It seemed that any duck that flew by would ignore my decoys and drop into that raft, leaving me with empty ducks straps.
And if the raft of ducks were disturbed by boat traffic, the birds would simply circle over open water and return to their previous position, never flying over land.
A buddy and I came up with a plan.
There was a thin peninsula of land jutting out into the lagoon to within about 200 yards of where the ducks were rafted. Our plan was to set up a makeshift blind on that point and put out as many decoys as we had, including scaup and coot decoys.
We waited for a stiff wind to implement our plan.
As we arrived in the darkness on the morning of the hunt, the patter of coots and divers taking off was an encouraging sign.
The deployment of decoys was time-consuming, and we had concerns that all of our work would result in the same disappointment of previous hunts.
But, with the decoys in place, we set up on the point using some bushes that we cut the day before as concealment.
The light of dawn revealed that the raft of ducks was several hundred yards away. As the morning progressed, there was little activity — the ducks seemed to be glued down to the water.
Like two opposing armies lined up for battle, we seemed to stare each other down, waiting to see who would make the first move.
Shortly after sunrise, we saw a small band of green-winged teal headed toward the raft, looking like they may pass over our point. With the wind at their backs, they were intent on joining the concentration of ducks on the water, but their path took them over us.
As they passed, we stood up and dropped one of them.
The entire concentration of ducks lifted off the water as our shots rang out, and there were ducks flying everywhere.
Soon they were trying to return, but this time our large group of decoys fooled them into believing that our dekes were reforming the raft of ducks.
The shooting was brisk, and we were able to take a two-person limit — a nice mixture of green-winged teal, redheads, scaup and a lone hen canvasback.
The laborious task of picking up the large spread of decoys was a satisfying chore.
But we both had trouble wiping the grins off our faces knowing that we were able to finish our season strong by rewriting the rules.
