When it comes to duck hunting perhaps the most important thing to get right is concealment.  Of course being in the right place at the right time pretty much trumps everything, you will be hard pressed to bag your limit if you aren't hidden well.  You can set out the best spread of duck decoys known to man and be a magician with your multiple duck calls and it won't matter if you are seen by passing ducks.  This article is meant to help when it comes time to building duck blinds.

The first thing to consider is your location.  If you are setting up a blind in the middle of an agricultural field such as a picked corn field you are likely best served to go with a portable blind that is also low profile.  Layout blinds really shine in these situations.  If you are out and about in the water, you are going to be hard pressed to get any good use out of that coffin blind.  Your best bet is to find one of the many great duck boat blinds available.  Or you could always build your own duck boat blind and go from there.

Let's assume you are going to be hunting ducks in a standard locale which would be a place surrounded by water (think slough, river, lake, etc).  If we assume that you will be hunting a place that has access to land, things become a bit easier to conceal.  If you are hunting land you are usually only worried about concealing yourself and hunting partners (not to mention your duck hunting gear and your favorite duck hunting hound).  This is a lot easier than hiding a 16 foot flat bottomed jon boat.  The thing to remember with concealment are a couple of key truths:
1. smaller areas are easier to hide
2. utilizing shadows is imperative to staying hidden

With a ground blind your best bet is to find some stakes to put into the ground (you can find them along the shore or bring them with).  From here you can either go with a small mesh netting to start your blind or simply move to the most important step, which is utilizing native vegetation to hide yourself.  Sticks, branches, weeds, cattails, and the like are what we are talking here.  Remember to play close attention to what surrounding features give you shadows to help hide as well as what the surrounding area looks like in terms of vegetation.  Use both to keep yourself hidden.

Now, if you are out in your favorite duck boat things get a bit more difficult.  You will almost assuredly need to have a blind that moves with your boat and conceals as best as possible.  Overhead cover is imperative to keeping those prying waterfowl eyes away.  Remember that smaller is nearly always better in terms of concealment.  While it may be more comfortable to have a huge blind, the ducks will be much more likely to ferret out your location and reduce your odds of bagging them.  Great additions to any boat blind are the fast grass available from many manufacturers these days.  It is a great artificial copycat of late season cattails and has served many duck hunters well over the recent past.  When you are building your duck blind remember that you want one that goes up and comes down quickly.  This is imperative for when you are going from the blind to go and retrieve downed birds.

If you study carefully you will notice that a common theme emerges for duck blinds, they all are trying their best to mimic their surroundings.  It is easy to overlook when out in the field.  Make sure you take these into consideration when you are building your duck blind this fall.