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Hunting Mallards Over Decoys In Grain Fields

By Jeff Matura

Throughout the upper Midwest thousands of acres of harvested corn and soybean fields exist during the fall waterfowl migration. Just add a roosting area holding mallards such as the refuge of a state wildlife management area and you now have the beginnings of some great mallard hunting. This scenario exists across the Midwest and thousands of mallards will take advantage of this food source at some point in the fall. It is important to note that this article is referencing dry fields, not flooded which would only be a bonus but rarely happens as the majority of are tiled.

Once temperatures start dipping below the 55 degree mark we begin scouting nearby corn fields or watch and follow ducks leaving a WMA refuge or roosting area. Depending on just how cold it is ducks may feed both at day break and late afternoon. While it will be tempting to try and sneak ducks after finding them you will be much better of setting up a decoy spread the next morning or that evening. If only a duck or two is needed to fill our limits we most often pick up versus shooting at and educating a large flock to save the location for another day .

Tips For Field Decoy Spreads

While spinners have certainly lossed their effectiveness on water they still work in fields. Spinner location is important in this setup as many times the birds will try to land on them and you want everybody in the group to be able to safely shoot.

When watching mallards feed in a field although the general mass will be moving upwind their not all facing directly into the wind, a decoy spread will look more natural with 30 to 40 percent are placed in different directions.

Just as when hunting over water, blind placement is also critical when setting up on land. We generally start first by placing our blinds and then setup the decoys. It’s much easier to make sure the landing zone is right when setting up in this order.

In many cases we simply use a sheet of FastGrass to hide under as this produces a much short profile than layout blinds and offer greater portability.

If using shell or full bodys, use motion stakes or stands to get as much movement in your decoy spread as possible. Stakes will also add height to shell decoys for greater visibility.

Killer Combo Duck/Goose Decoy Spread

Hunting in the Midwest Canada geese can be very abundant during our season and the majority of waterfowl refuges are shared by both geese and ducks. Even if Canada goose season isn't open or we're within a goose refuge, we still use Canada goose decoys for their extra visibility and confidence factor. We have found this combination of duck and goose decoys to be very effective in pulling distant ducks into our spread along with finishing them. And if goose season is open a few extra dead geese are also a nice bonus!

Tips For Duck/Goose Combo Spread

With the exception of how the spinners are used all of the above tips for the duck decoy only spread above still apply for combo spread. From our experience Canada geese don’t often respond very well to spinners. To overcome this we only use spinners with remotes and also keep them a little further up-wind in the spread to encourage geese to land.

With most duck hunters attention focused on water opportunities to harvested grain fields are most often over looked. Besides the bonus of escaping the crowds of public areas the real bonus is that the same frustrating stale educated ducks found on public WMAs are much easier fooled in the fields. This style of hunting is most often action packed as feeder flocks are most often large with numbers of 20 to 300 birds, and in some cases even more.