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John's Journal... Entry 117, Day 4

DUCKS WHEN THE WEATHER SIZZLES

Field Hunting


EDITOR'S NOTE: Like most duck hunters throughout the nation in the warm weather of this past few seasons, I didn't hear the whistling wings of waterfowl gliding out over the marsh, the constant quacking of mallards as they fed in acorn flats or the whistling of wood ducks as they came in to roost at night. Instead, the ever-present hum of mosquitos' wings -- millions of them -- overpowered all the other sounds. However, while this past year brought unseasonably-hot weather and many areas didn't see as many ducks as they'd seen in other years, the sportsmen who knew how, where and when to hunt quacks still found numbers of webfoots and took limits of ducks, even though they may have killed over their limits of mosquitos.

When ducks come into the grain fields near Greenwood, Mississippi, in the central part of the Mississippi Delta, Bo Prestidge of Wildlife, Inc., in Schlater, and his clients hunt from duck coffins. "We have 30,000 acres of land to hunt here at Wildlife, Inc.," Prestidge reported. "About 20,000 acres of it is water-controlled structures, including flooded rice fields and flooded soybean fields. We control our own habitat here. If we don't get the rain we need to flood the fields for the ducks, we pump water into the fields from the more than 100 wells located on our property, starting the first of November. Last year we were shooting ducks and swatting mosquitos out of the same blind. One man who hunted with us had so many mosquito bites on his hands that he was miserable. However, he also took a limit of ducks that morning. He told me that he'd never been bitten that bad or had as much fun shooting in his life."

Although Wildlife, Inc., has pit blinds and cane blinds on the property, they also hunt from what they call duck coffins. When ducks use an area where Wildlife, Inc., doesn't have any permanent blinds built, the guides will go into the fields in that region the afternoon before they plan to hunt the following morning. They'll set out 6-inch high fiberglass boxes that each resemble the size, shape and length of a man's coffin in 2 to 4 inches of water. "We'll put out 100 to 150 decoys all the way around the coffins but leave open water right in front of the coffins and downwind from them," Prestidge said. "The ducks probably will try to light in that open hole in front of the coffins. We'll pile mud and rice straw around the coffins to camouflage them. The hunter then lies down in the coffin. We'll spread a camo cloth over him and put rice straw on top of that. Then when the ducks come in, all he has to do is sit up and shoot. Often we'll have three hunters in coffins in the same field with a guide in a coffin either beside or behind them. The guide watches the ducks and calls to them. When the ducks start coming in, the guide tells the hunters to shoot."

TOMORROW: GREAT LAKES DUCKS






 

 

 

Check back each day this week for more about Ducks...

Day 1 - Hunting Warm-Weather Ducks
Day 2 - Saltwater-Marsh Ducks
Day 3 - Freshwater-Marsh Hunting
Day 4 - Field Hunting
Day 5 - Great Lakes Ducks

John's Journal