8 Strategies For Early Season Ducks

Early season is the time to take advantage of the mild weather conditions and sharpen your duck hunting skills for later in the season. In order to fully enjoy the benefits of these special early season hunts, we're going to give you 8 strategies that are sure to help you put more ducks in your bag.

***Please note: this is a great time to introduce a child or someone who has never hunted ducks before to the sport. If you have a chance, please bring someone new to the great sport of duck hunting with you during these special seasons.

Scout While You Hunt

Many times choosing the right location to hunt during these special early season duck hunts is a crap shoot. Therefore, make sure that while you're hunting you're also scouting. If you notice that there are places where the ducks want to be or are landing simple pick up your decoys and move over to the other location. The chances are very low that you'll actually be able to "pull" birds over to your spot during this time period. Please keep this in mind…mobility is an essential key to early season duck hunting success.

Identify Key Areas To Hunt

If you're hunting teal, pintail or other small gray ducks identify:

If you're hunting mallards, wood ducks or gadwalls identify:

Get Down With Brown

Regardless of the species of duck you're hunting, the majority of your decoys should be brown or hen decoys. As a rule of thumb, we'll use a ratio of 4-6 hens for every drake we set out. The exception to this rule is when we're hunting wood ducks. There we'll use a 50/50 mix with the drakes being set in the areas with the highest degree of visibility. Also, we highly recommend painting some of your hen decoys a darker brown for higher visibility as well as painting the tail and butt area of the hen decoys white to once again create a higher degree of visibility.

Match Your Decoys To The Specie Of Duck(s) You're Hunting

It's a well known fact that almost all puddle ducks will decoy into a mallard spread. But if you're looking to maximize your early season success use the species of decoys that mirror the ducks you're hunting.

Approximately 20-25 years ago, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources conducted a study to see if ducks actually landed with their own kind when large concentrations of ducks were present. The Missouri DNR set out large spreads of decoys that consisted of mallards, teal, pintail, wood ducks, etc. and then release captured adult ducks as well as young ducks just outside of the decoy spread. One of the individuals that helped conduct the survey shared with us that almost 80% of the ducks that landed in the decoy spread landed with decoys of their own kind. The ratio was lower for the adults but much higher (almost 90%) for the young.

Based on this study, if you want to decoy more "bonus" ducks into your spread, have a mixed species decoy spread.

Set Your Decoys In Small Loose Groups

We recommend that when you set your decoys out; place them in small groups (2-7 decoys; 2-3 feet apart) and spread these small groups throughout the area you'll be hunting (10-20 foot apart from each group). Early season ducks do not tend to sit tightly together nor do they tend to congregate in large concentrated groups. Therefore, make sure you try resembling the real thing.

Please refer to our Early Season Multi Species Decoy Spread link for more details on how to set a successful early season decoy spread.

Call Subtly For Early Season Success

Early season ducks don't tend to be extremely vocal. Instead of aggressive calling, use more quacks, chuckles, peeps, and drake mallard calls to lure in these birds. For more information on early season calling strategies refer to: Early Season Duck Calling Strategies.

The only exception to this rule would be teal that buzz your decoys. To get them back, try using some extremely loud and aggressive calling. But, once you've gotten them to turn, go back to your whistle or soft quacks.

Match Your Surroundings

Mid to late season camo patterns don't work well when hunting early season ducks. Light brown or dead grass tan don't go well with the dark green or light green cover that is often present during this time of the year. In fact, a mid to late season camo pattern or blind almost looks as out of place as white does in the middle of black. If you have a blind that has mid to late season camo on it, attach some early season foliage to break it up. If you don't have a blind but will be hunting in camo, use turkey hunting camo or early deer season camo. Both will match the surroundings much better than traditional waterfowl camo patterns do at this time of the year.

Use Wider Chokes And Smaller Shot

Many of the ducks that you'll be shooting during these early season hunts will be fast moving targets. In order to give yourself the greatest chance for success, increase your choke size (we recommend improved, modified/improved or skeet chokes) and choose a shotgun shell with a shot size of 4 or greater. One of our favorite early season loads is a 1 oz or 1 1/8 oz 4 or 6 shot load.

With a wider pattern and more shot leaving your shotgun barrel, you'll give yourself a much greater opportunity to cleanly kill the birds you're shooting at.

Enjoy Yourself And Maximize Your Success By Using These 8 Early Season Duck Hunting Strategies