[duckaholic_16p]

Me and 3 buddies are headed north this fall to kill some ducks. i was wondering if anyone could give me any helpful tips, or i deas. we are use to hunting ducks here in central il and have never hunted small pot holes. How many dekes, all mallards or change it up some, any goose floaters, how about a flippy duck? any help would be great. we are going to be north of devils lake. Also is there any geese up there? should we bring feild decoys and feild blinds? how many goose decoys would we need?
We will be there Oct 4-9th
thanks guys
Mike Pershing
Macomb, IL

 

[ND_Duckslayer]

Depending on when you come up I wouldn't bother with too many drake mallard decoys. Early in the season they all look like hens anyway, so that's all I use until later when the northern ducks migrate down. I mix teal, gadwall, pintail, and mallard all together (note: cut the sprigs off your pintail decoys cus they don't have any yet) As for field hunting, that can be almost better than hunting in the pits and ponds around here...IF you got someone in the area scouting for you, than you'll have a good time. Otherwise there are so many fields it would be better just to stick with the water...where abouts are you going north of Devil's Lake? I shoot south of it a ways...but there are ducks everywhere. Good luck!!!

 

[duckaholic_16p]

we are going to be 30 miles north of devils lake near hampden. What kinda fields do the ducks hit? I dont know what you guys plant up there, here its pretty simple just corn and beans. How many dekes should i guy need for field or water? We are going to be there oct 4-9
Thanks for the help duckslayer

 

[h2ofwlr]

The Devils Lake Region is mostly small grain like wheat and barley, Sunflowers, Canola are around too. Corn is pretty scarce, a lot more 100 miles south though. You better be able to tell the difference between barley and wheat, as the the ducks and geese preferr barley as it is easier to digest. Bring waders for each guy-forget the boat. 1 sack of puddlers per 2 guys is enough and thensome for pothole shooting. For geese, yes they hunt them in the fields over decoys with layout blinds. Shooting the goose roost is held in high distain up there. they know if you shoot the roost-the geese will boggey, so they only shoot the fields and thus the geese will stick around. There will be local giant CA geese and maybe a few lessors around, could be a couple of snows around. Really too early for Snows though. So I would bring the field hunting trailer VS a boat or if you can throw a small boat on top of the topper rack, it might come in useful.

FYI--it is really wet up there. A full scale drought 1 year ago-now way too wet. So bring extra tow ropes-and forget 2 wheel drive trucks. Heck if it is raining evening 4 wheel drives have a dilly of a time on the township roads-much less in the fields...

Buy a ND county by county atlas--lots of section roads, etc.. up there.

And lastly, traditionally for migrant geese, North of US #2 is for Snows and south towards Hwy 94 is more for CAs. But there are now a decent amount of locally raised Giant geese to go after in much of the state. And that time of year you will be shooting mostly locally raised ducks VS migrators from CA.