Unlocking The Secrets Of Successful Duck Hunting

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Tip #1 – Build A Solid Foundation

Take a look at the individuals, groups, or teams that are at the top of their profession. Whether it’s business, teaching, coaching, athletics, acting, or duck hunting, the people that are the best at what they do over a long period of time are those who have built a strong foundation by mastering the basics of their chosen profession.

Now notice what I didn’t say. I didn’t say they master a “basic”. No, they fully developed all of the basics to success for their chosen field and that is why they enjoy so much success.

The same is true for duck hunting. In order for you to enjoy the success that you seek, you need to build a solid foundation by mastering the basics of duck hunting.

Again, you need to master the basics not just a basic.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

There is an individual that I know that believes that calling is the most important thing there is in duck hunting. He has spent a considerable amount of time mastering the basics of calling and he is an outstanding duck and goose caller. But his success is only marginal because he has mastered only one of the basics to duck hunting success. His neglect of the other basics has led him to enjoy only marginal success, at best.

Now, contrast this individual to another duck hunter I know who is a far less accomplished caller, but he is consistently successful because he understands that all of the basics are important and he has built for himself a solid foundation for success.

Tip #2 - Find A Mentor

The fastest way to get to the level of duck hunting success that you are seeking is to learn from someone who has the success you desire. In other words, find a mentor.

Throughout my years duck hunting I have been extremely fortunate to learn from some great teachers, being my mentors. My father Keith and my uncle Kendale taught me more about the art of duck hunting by the time I was 18 then most people learn in a lifetime. I had the opportunity to learn first hand from two truly great sportsmen.

Unfortunately, not everyone has an opportunity to learn first hand from the caliber of teachers that I grew up with. If that’s true in your case, don’t worry. We’re about to show you how can find a mentor that will share with you many of their secrets, and you may never even meet them in person.

Here’s how to find a mentor that will share with you many of their secrets to success and allow you the ability to fully enjoy duck hunting.

Identify Outstanding Local Duck Hunters And Learn Everything You Can About What Sets Them Apart

In addition to my dad and uncle, I increased my knowledge of duck hunting enormously from two older duck hunters who were my local heroes. I have never in my life hunted with either of these two waterfowl legends (in fact one of them has past away), and it was not until I was in my mid 20’s that I actually met them in person and sat down and talked with them. It was at that time that I shared with them what a huge influence they had on my duck hunting career.

So how did I learn so much from these two individuals? I watched, observed, and listened to everything they did whenever I had the opportunity. For example, if they were loading up their boat I would walk down to the boat ramp and make mental notes about the decoys they were using, the calls they had hanging around their necks, the guns they shot, everything.

If I was in the field the same day that they were, I would watch through binoculars to see how they were setting up their blind, how did they set out their decoys, when did they shoot their ducks and geese, and on quieter days, I would listen to how they called. My goal was simple; I wanted to be the best duck hunter that I could be so I wanted to learn from the best.

Find A “Pro” That You Admire And Learn About What Has Made Him/Her A Success

Back in my late teens and early 20’s I read an article written by a waterfowl hunting guide based in central California. The article made a great deal of sense so I adopted this “Pro” as another one of my mentors.

It just so happened that this individual had a series of cassette tapes that went into even greater detail than the original article did. I ordered these tapes and they immediately had an impact on my success. In this short series of tapes, this individual shared years and years of his personal experience and what it took to make him a successful guide in central California. I actually wore out the first tape that I purchased from him. Even without ever meeting this individual in person, he became another great teacher that I learned from and helped me improve my duck hunting success.

Learn From The Success And Failure Of Others

To this day, I constantly observe the success and failure of others when I’m in the field. I take both mental and written notes to help me learn from what others are doing. Watching and learning from others is like having a whole team of duck hunters mentoring and reporting directly to you.

So as you can see, even if you aren’t fortunate enough to have someone “Show You The Ropes” there’s no need to worry. Just use one or all of the above keys and you’ll create your own personal mentoring team!

Tip #3 - Try New Ideas And Adapt Them To Your Situation

Tip #3 requires you to study and observe all sorts of successful duck hunting strategies that are being used by other successful duck hunters outside your normal duck hunting area.

Your goal is to adapt other successful duck hunter’s good ideas and, with a twist here and a turn there, put them to work at the task of helping you become a more successful duck hunter.

I’ll give you a real-life example of what I’m talking about.

A few years ago, Jeff Matura and I had the opportunity to meet and visit with Kirk McCullough. Kirk, if you didn’t know, is one of the finest green-timber duck hunters anywhere in the country. Kirk had a number of his duck hunting videos playing in the background as we spoke and as one of the scenes was playing, Jeff Matura asked Kirk, “How come you’re using drake bluebill decoys in the flooded timber?” Kirk turned to Jeff and with a wide smile said, “So you noticed?”

Kirk went on to explain to us that he used the decoys to give his decoy spread in the flooded green timber more visibility to the mallards flying overhead. Although bluebills do not frequent the flooded green-timber of Arkansas, it was a very effect strategy that helped Kirk kill more ducks.

Jeff and I weren’t hunting flooded timber, but we were hunting areas that had a lot of weed cover which limited our decoys visibility. I can assure you that no one in either of the areas that we were hunting had ever thought of using bluebill decoys to help give their decoy spread added visibility.

We took Kirk’s idea and ran with it. We even added our own touch. Instead of bluebill decoys, we used drake canvasback decoys, and we were exclusively hunting puddle ducks and Canada geese. Although Jeff and I were both laughed at when we place one dozen hand painted drake canvasback decoys with our usual duck and goose decoy spread, no one seemed to be laughing when we were the only ones that were consistently killing birds during an extremely challenging duck hunting season.

So if there is a moral to this story it is:

“It pays to keep your eyes peeled and your ears wide open whenever you are watching a hunting video, reading a waterfowl hunting book or magazine, or when you’re traveling out-of-state to hunt. The next good idea you see, read, or hear could put a lot more waterfowl in your bag.”

Tip #4 - Concentrate Your Efforts On Those Things You Can Control

Let’s face it. There are certain things we have control of when we’re duck hunting and there are certain things that are totally out of our control.

What are some things that you have no control over when you’re duck hunting? The weather, the direction and speed of the wind, the number of ducks and geese in the area you’re hunting or the hunting pressure. You’d be surprised at how many things you have absolutely no control over when you’re hunting. But, what do you hear most duck hunters complaining about? Exactly. The weather, the number of ducks or geese in the area or the hunting pressure.

What’s important is not that there are uncontrollable events that happen when you’re duck hunting, but it’s how we respond to them. Often the most realistic response is to be flexible and adapt. Live with it. Roll with it. It makes no sense to get upset over those things you can’t control. Instead, you need to adapt. Otherwise, you’ll be constantly stressed out.

There are things, however, over which we do have total control. It includes such things as the amount of time you spend practicing your calling, how much time you spend scouting, the pattern you set your decoys in, how well your blind is hidden, how you react to what other waterfowl hunters in your area doing. What do all these things focus on? You! The only thing you have absolute and complete control of is you. Everything else is just partial control or no control.

As you can see, the real issue is: What events or things can I control? Focusing on those things that you can control makes all the difference in the world.

The best way to leverage your duck hunting time is to spend it in areas that you have control over and that give you the greatest payback for your efforts. Don’t give any more than a minimal amount of your time to any effort that doesn’t at least hold the promise of helping you improve your duck hunting success or an event that you can’t control.

If you follow this advice, you’ll accomplish more, feel better and have a whole lot more fun and success!!!

Tip #5 - Prepare For Success

You’re excited! You’ve been watching the weather and it looks like a cold front will be pushing its way into your neck of the woods. The front is going to hit during the middle of the week so you make the necessary arrangement to get the day off. You get everything ready to go and you make a mental note to yourself about the exact location you’re going to hunt and since you’ll be hunting public ground you estimate the time you’ll need to arrive to get the “Chosen Spot”.

As you leave your driveway you can hardly hold back the excitement you feel the day will bring. Your excitement turns into gut wrenching disappointment when you reach the hunting parking lot and see 12 other vehicles already there and what’s worse, as you scan the black horizon; you see a spotlight in the exact location you were planning to hunt.

Now panic sets in. You’re frustrated with yourself for not being there sooner and you really haven’t thought about where else you would hunt. As the day breaks, you find yourself in a location that proves to be marginal at best and you leave the field at the end of the day frustrated and disappointed.

Here’s a cliché that I’m sure many of you have heard: “Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.”

Based on over 30 years of watching my fellow waterfowl hunters in the field, I am absolutely convinced that so few of them properly prepare for success, that if you only use Key #5 To Unlocking The Secrets To Successful Duck Hunting, Prepare For Success, you’ll be part of a very elite and successful group of duck hunters.

Preparing for success involves three keys:

Develop A Plan

The first step in developing your plan is to imagine that you will be the only person in the entire area that you’ll be hunting and you have the pick of any spot you want. Then, based upon critical information that will help you choose the perfect location (weather conditions, wind direction and speed, temperature, flight patterns, etc.) determine where you’d hunt. Next, determine, based upon the above information, how you’d set your decoys, where you’d place your blind, and any other key factors that will lead to a successful day. By going through this simple process you’ll be setting yourself up for a very successful day.

Develop A Backup Plan

Now that you have a vision of your perfect spot, it’s time to play the “what if” game and come up with alternative plans before you ever reach your destination.

Here is a partial list of “What If” questions to ask yourself before you take the field and then determine what you would do if the “What If” actually happened.

Playing the “What If” game before you take the field will end a lot of your worrying and anxiety. While others are wondering around aimlessly and feeling helpless because things aren’t exactly as planned, you’ll be taking the actions necessary to maximize your success because you’ve already developed a winning backup plan.

Organize

Having a great plan and backup plan can be of little value if you’re not organized and ready put your plan into action. Here’s an example of how I organize myself for success.

The first step that I take is to make sure all of my equipment is organized. From the clothing that I wear to my spare decoy string and anchors, everything has an exact place. For instance, my decoys are separated by size (standard, magnum, super magnum), species (both ducks and geese), boat decoys, backpack decoys, floaters, shells, silhouettes, motion decoys, etc. My boat is organized so I know exactly where all of my essentials are. The same is true for my shotguns, shells, clothing, calls, and any other item that I will need during the season.

Next, I pack or layout everything that I’ll be using the next day. I actually developed a checklist many years ago to help make sure I didn’t forget anything. I can honestly say that I can’t remember the last time I forgot to bring something along that was important to my success that day.

Now I know what many of you may be thinking, “This guy is totally nuts! There is no way I’m going to go to spend all of that time planning and organizing everything to that degree. I don’t need to do this to be successful.” And that’s how I used to feel until I found that:

The payoff for careful planning is the difference between success and failure;
It’s the way you can outguess and outsmart failure!

Tip #6 - Pay Attention !!!

How many of us, as we were growing up, weren’t told by our mom, dad, teacher, or coach: “PAY ATTENTION”. Well, we’re here to tell you the same thing when you’re out hunting, hey, “PAY ATTENTION.”

Now you may be asking yourself, “Pay attention? Pay attention to what?” Well, for starters, pay attention to the details. You know the little things most other hunters don’t pay any attention to. Such as:

“How”, you may ask, “can paying attention to these little details help me become more successful?” Here’s how.

We were hunting a very heavily hunted waterfowl management area on a Friday. It was a warm sunny day with a 10-15 mile per hour wind out of the northwest and the ducks were moving well. Although we were having a successful day, we noticed that the birds really didn’t want the spot we were hunting but rather, they wanted an area about 250 yards to the northeast. Not a soul was hunting in that area so after we shot our limit and picked up our spread we headed over to the exact spot the birds were landing in.

We knew there were a lot of birds that had landed but we were shocked when we got to the area and over 500 ducks erupted from the water. Even though we had shot our limit of ducks that morning, we knew that the area we had just found was “The Spot”.

So, the next day my son, a close friend and I went back out to the WMA and to the exact spot I had found the day before. The hunting pressure was very heavy and there were very few birds moving. That is with the exception of the exact location we were hunting. Although no one else in the entire area killed a bird that morning, Jordan, Kent, and I had killed 12 greenheads, 2 spike pintails, and I gadwall before 10:00 a.m.

Now here’s why I tell this story. On Friday, there were at least 12 to15 other groups of hunters that saw the same thing that I saw but not one of them went over and checked the location out before leaving.

Instead, when they headed out the next day they either went to spot that they hunted the previous day or they went to the location I had hunted the day before.

By paying attention to the “little things” we avoided getting skunked along with the other hunters in the area, and I enjoyed a great day hunting with my son and close friend.

Tip #7 - Turn Your Duck Hunting Mistakes Into Success

What you do with the mistakes you’ve made and will make when you’re duck hunting, will have a tremendous impact on how successful you’ll become and how quickly it will take you to get there. Because in duck hunting, it’s not a matter of if you will make a mistake or have a problem, but rather, how are you going to deal with it.

How can you use your mistakes to help you become more successful? By evaluating what you did that was wrong, learning from it, and then adjusting. The two keys to this process are: “Evaluating and Adjusting.” Simply evaluating will not help you become more successful unless you learn from it and do something about it.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about that will help you understand this concept.

Throughout my years duck hunting, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. From choosing the wrong location, to over calling, to hunting with a blind that was totally out of place for the surroundings I chose to hunt, I’ve made about ever mistake that a duck hunter can make. With all of the mistakes I made and all of the days I went home empty handed, it would have been easy for me to just quit.

Because of my great passion for duck hunting, I decided that quitting was not an option. But I was tired of going home empty handed. Fortunately for me, I kept a journal of my hunting experiences and I wrote down notes about what went right and what went wrong. In the beginning most of it was about what went wrong.

At the beginning of each season I would review my journal and low and behold I started to notice that what went wrong during most days was the same. Well it didn’t take me to long to figure out that I was making the same mistakes over and over again.

It was at that point where I realized that if I evaluated the mistakes I was making and figured out how to make adjustments, I would be more successful. And that’s exactly what happened.

From the time I was 16, I started to evaluate my failures and quickly made adjustments. By the time I was 19, I was traveling out-of-state to hunt ducks and geese and enjoying success that only much more experience waterfowl hunters were enjoying.

I’m convinced there is only one reason why. I understood that I could use my mistakes as a great teacher and by evaluating my mistakes and then adjusting to them, I could get to the level of success I wanted to be at much faster.

If it worked for me, I guarantee it will work for you.