“If you want to hunt ducks you’ve got to find some sweet spots off of the main lake and waterways in the area, and that means getting out and finding new water sources,” Jusin Giles said. “I’m looking for an area that will give them concealment, food and be located near roosting sites.
“The Foothills area is home to an unlimited number of smaller creeks and streams with backwater sloughs that are tough to get to, but they can be found and located with legwork and modern technology, also.”
Online mapping sites let hunters find areas with water before putting in the legwork to check them out and see if there are currently ducks and water in the area.
“If we don’t have many big ducks in the area, I like to work the streams, creeks and oxbows and jump-shoot woodies,” Giles continued. “If you know places to go, you can kill a limit of wood ducks regularly, and that might include places right next to a public road or way back in the sticks.”
Once you find an area that has ducks, it’s simply a matter of setting up and hunting.
“You want to remember to find out which area the ducks like in a hole because sometimes they prefer one spot and if you’re not there, it’s pretty hard to get them to move to where you want them,” Giles said. “If you get in the area that they prefer, it’s not necessary to have a big spread of decoys, and we’ll only use a half dozen or so most of the time.”
Once he locates a honey hole, Giles and his partners will not overhunt it.
“If we kill a bunch of ducks on a hole and we’re the only ones hunting it, we’ll give it a break and only hunt it every two or three weeks,” he said. “We’d rather go twice and get a limit, than kill just a few on several hunts.”
Once again the key is to have enough spots located so you will always have options and ducks to hunt.
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