Summary: When many duck hunters, and goose hunters for that matter, choose a location to hunt they often fail to properly assess the type of location they're hunting. Understanding the type of location you'll be hunting is critical when determining the type of strategies that will be necessary to succeed.
Here's a short analogy to help you understand the three different locations to hunt.
Let's say that you're planning a family vacation. You live in Chicago, Illinois and want to take your family to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Now it just so happens that there are a couple of hundred other families from Chicago that are planning on taking a family vacation to Disney World during the exact same week you and your family are going. As fate would have it, you all open your United States map and choose the same route to drive to Disney World and each of you places an X on the city of Orlando. That's your destination point and that's where you and a number of other families from Chicago want to be, it's "The X."
Even though each of you has chosen to drive the same route, it's highly likely that some of the families may detour off the main thorough fare and may stop to see some friends or family along the way, or they may simply drive off the beaten path to see the sites and enjoy the countryside and stay for a little while. Now these are places that "Some Of The People Want To Be."
But most of the families headed to Disney World on vacation will drive directly to Orlando. They travel their predetermined route with the intent of getting from point A to point B with no intentional detours. To the casual observer these folks traveling down the interstate are just "Traffic."
When you break the locations down where you can kill ducks and geese to their simplest forms there are really only three places you can consistently kill ducks and/or geese. First, where they want to be or "The X." The second location is where "Some Of The Ducks Want To Be." And finally, you'll be able to kill ducks and geese as you're able to get under them as they travel from where they are to where they want to be. In that case you'll be hunting "Traffic."
Through proper identification of the location you'll be hunting, you'll be able to determine the strategies that will be necessary to maximize your hunting success in that location.
For example, let's use our families that we would consider "Traffic". In order for a business to get these folks to stop along the way, that business is probably going to want to try to convenience them to stop by using flashy road signs, large billboards and other attention grabbing advertising. That strategy is completely different than the strategy Walt Disney uses to get the same people to come to Orlando to visit their theme park or "The X".
And so it is with the ducks and geese you'll be hunting in each location. A strategy that may work well for hunting "The X" may be totally ineffective for hunting "Traffic" ducks and geese.
The next time you're scouting, make sure that you've properly identified the type of location you'll be hunting and then choose a strategy that will help you kill as many ducks and geese as possible.