Waterfowl Hunting Blind Tips

Most great waterfowl blind setups just don’t happen. You have to build them and improve the habitat around them to make them successful year after year. Building them in the right locale is a strategic plan in the making if done right.

The most successful duck blinds often are usually located over water. Let’s consider for a moment what’s really important for ducks and geese. You guessed it, food, not water. Large amounts of water will never make up for food readily available and easily accessible for winged flights.

Consider a flight of ducks or geese often high in the sky, able to view thousands of acres at a time. What do they look for up there when out on a feeding flight? Did you guess it again, “yellow ground” not black ground or blue water but yellow, as these grounds usually indicate harvested grain fields. These yellow patterns attract and interest the flights to drop down and fly lower to the ground, scouting for higher potential feeding areas.

Build near or in these harvested yellow ground areas and you are in business. If your blind is in chisel plowed, plowed, or cultivated fields, your chances of being in a duck haven is like drawing to an inside straight. If you own your land, attempt to not put your grain fields under tillage around your blind until duck or goose season is over. If you lease, ask the farmer to delay tilling also and give him an extra Christmas gift each year to thank him.

You can get even more steel shot into the sky by placing your blind or pit in the lowest spot of this yellow haven and pay the farmer not to harvest any of the grain or corn. Flood the acreage if possible, as waterfowl simply can’t resist flooded corn fields that are unpicked after everything else in your area has been harvested. Position your blind edge higher than the water if a pit, install a good
drain or create a moat system or get a battery operated pump to bale the blind out before hunting.

When hunting clear water, use your feet to muddy the water around your decoys. Duck activity creates muddy water, and a muddy zone in an area of clear water is easy for ducks to spot.

Build your blind with natural foliage that surrounds the area and pay special attention to the top not just the front and sides of the blind. Waterfowl can see into a blind and often divert from committing to final approach due to being able to see inside the blind at shiny faces peering up at them or cupped hands moving with the calling. Some tricks I’ve used in the past is to place a step ladder in a pickup truck and look down, or if in timber get that ladder stand or climber out and get above your blind to look down and see what the ducks and geese can see.

When ducks are flying toward you, it’s best not to call. Old-timers have a saying: “Call only to tips and tails.” That is, do your calling when you can see one wingtip and the tail, or both wings and the tail. The duck won’t be looking your way then, so it’s safe to blow the call.

Placing a few crow decoys to one side of a field spread for ducks and geese can increase your hunting success. These “confidence” decoys help lessen the wariness of geese by making the spread appear more life-like.

Lastly, don’t hunt the blind every day; give them a break for two or three days at a time. Stop hunting before noon each day to let them feed in the afternoons, or as season winds down and you have them conditioned for afternoon rest breaks, mix that last hunt or two up and hunt afternoons with the morning off.