As I have alluded to earlier, I am kind of a stickler when it comes to duck decoy placement and strategy. I will be writing several blogs centered around this topic, but let's just get a baseline to start.
What is the most basic thing we are looking for out of our decoys? To get ducks to come within range for good shots. On a pass shooting setup this may only mean they take a look at your decoys as they cruise on their merry way, but most often this means we want them to consider landing in our spread. So with this in mind, it amazes me the amount of hunters that fail to understand this very basic premise.
You need to be thinking "If I'm a duck and I see that group of decoys there (which I assume are real), where am I going to land?" Two key things to remember when understanding where a duck is going to land.
1. Ducks land into the wind whenever possible as it steadies them and allows for natural reduction in speed as they prepare to hit the water.
2. Duck do not like to fly over other ducks when preparing to land.
There are many decoy spread patterns that allow us to take attempt to get ducks to land in our decoys which will be gone over in the upcoming weeks. I just want you to remember the basic premise of your decoy spread, which is to get ducks attempting to land so that you get high quality shots. I don't care if you have 3 Mojo Mallards and a flock of 5 dozen G&H duck decoys in your spread, if you don't leave them a clear path to land they will fly by, but not give you a good shot.
So the basic idea here? Allow a clear landing zone for the birds to easily see and use that is in good distance and direction for where the hunters in your party plan to shoot.
[...] future posts I will touch on decoy patterns, but for today let’s just touch on a basic premise. We want [...]