PERFECT WEATHER

PERFECT WEATHER by Brad Fenson

Here’s a secret weapon that doesn’t involve buying any gadgets. Most of us know this but feel powerless to do anything about. I mean, if our scheduled Saturday hunt coincides with 80 degrees and no breeze, what are we going to do? Well, how about rearranging our lives to be more flexible? Trade your boss a Saturday off for a Thursday or Friday.

Even better is flex scheduling. Arrange work so you can escape nearly any day and then pick a good one based on weather forecasts. Low pressure, snow, wind. You know the right conditions.

One job I worked for three years offered flex scheduling. We could take off a half day or even a few hours as long as we made them up another day. One blustery November Wednesday, with a blizzard just moving in, my hunting buddy Harvey sidled into my workspace and hissed, “Mallards on the deck.” I quietly checked out and the two of us drove to a “pass” where wind-blown mallards flew low from a roosting lake to bordering cornfields. At 3 p.m. with 25-mph winds and snow beginning to fall, they nearly took our caps off as they passed. We limited in less than an hour.

Don’t assume bad weather is always best. This harks back to scouting and paying attention.

Don’t Neglect to Work on Perfect Shots
Here’s the tactic I really need to work on: SHOOTING WELL! Given the few good shooting days we are lucky enough to get, it’s a waste to screw them up with poor shooting. Invest time and shells in honing your skills on clays thrown at a variety of angles, but especially high, crossing, and incoming. Use your waterfowl gun, not your sporting clays gun. Light target loads are good enough, especially if muzzle velocity nearly matches your field loads.

Over the years, Harvey noticed that calm, sunny days in mid-November were actually more productive for decoying mallards than windy, cloudy ones. As soon as we saw or heard of big migrating flocks moving in, we hit his proven blind location on a public hunting area midmorning, midweek, in bluebird conditions. Conventional wisdom kept most competition home waiting for “duck” weather. Harvey and I napped in the boat until about 9:30 a.m. “Should start anytime now,” Harvey said. Within 10 minutes flickering flocks appeared near the stratosphere. Harvey hit a loud, long high-ball and the flickers started spiraling down—right into our laps. The harsh light gave us extra shadows in which to hide.

“What’s the deal?” I asked when the smoke settled.

“They’re out feeding at dawn,” Harvey explained. “And some are just coming in after an all-night migration flight.”

Perfect weather. Perfect “scouting.” Perfect timing.

Perfect Date

Duck and goose hunting is regulated into fairly tight seasons. Nevertheless, within the framework of open dates, not all seasons are created equal.

Most of us see an advantage in opening weekend when we hope to find young, locally bred ducks as yet unaccustomed to hunting pressure. Often still in pin feathers, they don’t look like much, but they sure taste like much. And they decoy as if mama abandoned them too early. But after a day or two of noisy harassment, they wise up. Rather than burn vacation days on a low-percentage hunt, why not wait until the first waves of northern migrants come in? Even though they’ve been called, decoyed, and shot at from the Arctic to Arkansas, they’ll be most accommodating on their first day or two in your neck of the woods. And they’ll be sorting out which wet areas are the safest on which to sit, so flights are frequent and decoying productive.

In most areas, these migration flights are fairly consistent unless unusually warm weather keeps water open farther north. Changes in forage crops are more gradual. Most of the northern “short stopping” was established years ago when vast new reservoirs and irrigated corn fields were put in. But if these get iced over or snowed over, new birds should be moving your way. Keep your finger on the migration news.

A good way to figure out when most northern flights typically reach your area is to consult your state fish-and-game agency. They usually have statistics on average arrival dates for ducks and geese. These can vary by a week, sometimes several weeks due to extreme weather, but they offer a reasonable starting point for planning your hunting dates long term.