Summary - Public wildlife management areas still offer duck hunters some great duck hunting. But unlike a guided duck hunt, it’s up to the hunter to do the work of finding the ducks and pulling them into shotgun range.
1. Don’t Get Stuck In A Rut – Don’t expect to hunt the same area day in and day out and come home with a limit of ducks each hunt. Weather conditions, feeding patterns, and hunter pressure all play a very important role in which areas of wildlife management area the ducks will use and during what part of the day.
2. Open Day Success – While the majority of acres in a given public land will be drained in the summer time to allow for moist soil plant growth, there is typically some part of the area where the water will remain such as a river or natural pond. These are key areas to hunt during the early season, even though the rest of the management area may be newly flooded. Keep in mind this is where the birds have lived all summer long.
3. Just In Time Scouting – If you don’t have time to scout the area you hunt on the weekends you may be better off starting off by staying in the parking lot and seeing what the birds are really doing. Many times you will be able to identify a spot to setup in and have a successful hunt.
4. Make The Most Of Your Available Time – Cold fronts and northerly winds most often bring in new ducks that are not wise to the boundaries of the refuge and hunting areas on public wildlife management areas. These new ducks will also not be educated to the use of decoys or duck calls and much easier to hunt than educated ducks that have been in the area for weeks.
5. Identify Patterns – Whether you shoot a limit of ducks or not keep a journal that notes the date, weather conditions, time of day hunted, where you observed ducks flying over, ducks landing, and landing, etc. By doing so you will eventually be able to pattern the ducks, essentially predicting tomorrow’s hot spot.
6. Hunt The Weekdays – This can be a little harder for most of us with day jobs but you don’t have to hunt the whole day. Just take a half-day of vacation, or if possible a few hours of vacation in the morning or afternoon so that you can get in a couple of hours of hunting.
7. Save Yourself Some Legwork – Use aerial photographs of the public lands you hunt to identify potential duck hunting spots. These maps can be viewed and printed for free on the internet at Google maps or Microsoft virtual earth.
8. Avoid The Crowds – Hunting public land usually means some degree of competition from other hunters, which can lessen your chances from bagging a limit of ducks. When too much competition exists many times other hunters will start sky busting or over calling at the ducks. Your much better of avoiding this type of competition.
Whether it would be first thing in the morning, mid-day, or a few hours before sunset, identify which time period has the fewest amount of hunters out in the area you wish to hunt. Very duck hunters realize just how good the duck can be on public hunting lands during mid-day.