I plan on hunting specks next year and will have 2 and half dozen specks plus a half dozen snows. Would it help to put some mallards to the side and may try to kill a few mallards
Wouldn't hurt a thing but I would consider putting out more snows if you got them. Its been awhile since I duck hunted in a dry field and never did it seriously anyway. When we would we just put the Canada dekes out ducks would usually try to land upwind of them. Give the birds a straight edge to follow up to the top of the spread we did learn our fairly loose family group horseshoe shape we set for Canada's didn't always give us great shots at ducks but if we bunched most of the decoys the upwind side of that group would be where our feet down 10yd shots would be. All my field duck hunting is/was on the x in cornfields in Illinois and always in late season right before the majority would migrate out usually late Nov thru mid dec which means we would be dealing with very aggressive birds. You also didn't mention a spinner which would definitely help but I wouldn't want one if I was also after geese which we always were. :beer:
If that's "Arkansas"duckboy, you may find that dry field hunting for ducks is a hard sell in a region where they've so many options for feeding in water. To your south in Louisiana, we shoot some ducks over dry field goose spreads, but only by calling aggressively and shooting before they see how dry the spot the calling's from is. (Puddled fields are an entirely different and more productive matter.)
I doubt duck decoys will add more than work to your mornings, and you may even find those snow decoys costing you more specks than they add snows. It my understanding that there still isn't much pressure on Arkansas specks, but here where they're hunted very hard, they come to see handfuls of snows as "Hunters Here" signs. If that seems the case, I'd be cutting back, rather than adding snows - unless I could add a pretty good mess of them. Here, we've a tough time drawing light geese in normal weather with anything less than hundreds of light decoys, except for the very lost and lonely singles and pairs that will probably come as well to snow calling from an all speck spread as one with a few snows.
I just got back from northeast Arkansas. We were hunting Snows over wind socks in fields. The Pintails, Mallards and Specks were committing to our spread without even calling them. With some calling I think they would commit to your set up. I'd invest in a couple dozen Snow or Speck wind socks, the Specks in the area of Arkansas we hunted didn't seem to have a problem decoying in them. Rick is right though, down here they can be very picky about were they want to land.
The field sometimes is muddy with spots of water and there's usually a big pool of it about 50 x 80 yards and there hasn't been anybody hunting specks there so I'm hoping to kill them. The duck decoys won't be much of a hassle I have a dozen foam feather flex flambeau shells decoys you can just slip them on your gun barrel and call it good.do you thnk it would be better to do 1 dozen snows and 2 dozen specks.
As far as how much of one species to put out your going to have to guess. No one on here has seen the birds and how they work in your area so it makes it hard. I would say take them all and add or subtract as needed.
As far as how much of one species to put out your going to have to guess. No one on here has seen the birds and how they work in your area so it makes it hard. I would say take them all and add or subtract as needed.
On my first snow goose hunt this year, we had more ducks decoying than snows! Many many flocks up pintails mallards and widgeon would circle really low right over our heads, I'm talking at times I could've smacked them out of the air with my gun. The best duck hunting spread for the feild is 10 dozen snow goose decoys with 2 or 3 vortexes and electronic calls. IMO :lol3:
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