Mike Carloss loves to hunt with coot decoys. By this time of the season ducks have been hunted the whole length of the Mississippi Flyway and then another month here, they have gotten pretty wise to the ways of hunters.
The survivors look at hunters’ little plastic ducks on the water with jaundiced eyes, but coots, well, they’re safe. No one hunts with coot decoys — except Carloss.
“I see birds attracted to that,” he explained. “Poule d’eaus (aka coots) will bunch up very tight. They attract gray ducks and teal, as well as mallards.
“While I worked on the Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area I was doing bag checks on hunters at the Wax delta campground. An old Cajun from Loreauville had a limit of mallards when no one else had any.”
The piqued his curiosity.
“I couldn’t help but ask him how he did it,” Carloss said.
“He said, ‘Come here; I’ll show you.’ He walked to his boat, where he had a handful of mallard decoys and a bunch of black plastic Coke bottles.”
Carloss used the lesson wisely, but added that he only has a few of the black-pained soft drink bottles in his spread.
“They are kind of a pain — bulky, noisy, they smash easily and are hard to wrap with weight lines,” he said. “But they move really well in the least wind.”
