Traveling can open up some great opportunities for duck hunters who live in less-than-great areas, but it can be daunting to strike off for parts unknown. I’ve managed to put several DIY duck hunting trips under my belt over the years, and today I’m going to give some pointers for the first-timer.
The most important thing for your DIY duck hunting trip is find a friend to go with you. Having a trusted buddy go with you makes the experience more fun. It also makes it much easier. Gas, food, and lodging are all more bearable expenses when split between friends. A second hand to assist with packing in, setting, and pulling decoys makes the job much less taxing. And in the event of trouble far from home, whether on the road or in the swamp, a companion can prove invaluable.
In this case the buddy must be dependable, and they must be easy-going. Dependable, because nothing is worse than planning a trip for several months only to have them back out at the last minute or forget to bring the agreed-upon gear. Easy-going, because something WILL go wrong on your trip, and it will most likely go wrong after you’re exhausted from a long drive and a day of slogging around in a swamp. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a tent, motel room, or truck cab with a whiner or door-slammer.
Planning Where To Hunt
Having assembled a suitable hunting party, the first thing you should all do is sit at a table with a computer and lay plans. There are a lot of places to duck hunt. Too many. Your job is to start crossing them off the list.
First establish your maximum acceptable travel distance. Are you willing to fly? If you’re driving, how far are you willing to go? 5 hours? 10?
This pairs with the question of how long you can afford to take off work. A 10-hour drive to hunt an area for a week is much different than a 10-hour drive to hunt for a weekend. The more time you can spend in an area the better. The less time you have to spend, the more important the next phase of planning becomes.
Once that’s done it’s time to identify potential hunting properties within your acceptable travel area. WMA properties are the most visible when you start researching online, but it’s worth mentioning that there is a lot of public land that isn’t managed under the WMA tag. I have had good hunts on National Forests, Corps of Engineers land, and Forever Wild Properties.
Once you have a list of properties, it’s time to narrow the options down even further. I prefer to do this by harvest report numbers. I’m interested mostly in the “number of birds harvested per hunter-day” in an area. If the information isn’t published online, the next recourse is to call or email the relevant officials. I’ve had several conversations with Alabama’s Migratory Game Bird Coordinator, Seth Maddox, as well as WMA biologists, in order to get a feel for the hunting quality of several pieces of property. Everybody I’ve spoken to has been helpful. I prefer to have published, hard numbers, but speaking with the guys responsible for the property is oftentimes the best quality information you can get.
What you DON’T want to do is rely on social media or web forum information for your DIY duck hunting trip. It doesn’t matter where you are looking at hunting, when you consult these sources, you will find these two people posting, usually together:
“The hunting sucks! It isn’t what it used to be. All these out-of-staters (or kids) have ruined it. The state doesn’t know what they’re doing to manage it.”
“Hunting is great! Here’s pics of all the limits me and my buddies killed! If you can’t kill birds here, you need to hang it up”
Sound familiar? More importantly, does it sound helpful?
By comparing harvest reports and talking with qualified, knowledgeable officials, you should be able to objectively identify a relatively small number of better-than-average properties, that are within a reasonable distance from you, where you know that effort invested should pay out in heavy bird straps. But we’re not done yet!
Finding A Place To Stay
You’ll want to consider a few more details before you pack your bags. A big one is, “Where will I stay?”
When I was younger, tougher, and broker, I spent a lot of nights in the back of a ’96 GMC Suburban. I’ve spent one night on a concrete picnic table, and one sleeping in my waders on the bank of the creek I planned to hunt once shooting light showed up!
As I’ve gotten a bit older and a lot smarter, I prefer a motel if there is one nearby. After a long day of scouting and hunting, there are few more appealing ways to spend a dollar than on a room with a thermostat, hot water, and a real bed. Aside from the comfort factor, staying at a motel means the camping gear can stay at home, leaving more room for hunting gear. If there’s a motel there’s usually a diner nearby, which means you can have a hot meal at least once a day without having to have brought cooking gear, cook, and clean up for yourself.
That said, I have comfortably and cheaply spent many nights tent camping on an RV campsite. These sites cost more, but usually have water and power at the site as well as access to a bathhouse and sometimes a coin-operated laundromat. An inexpensive electric heater can make a tent mighty cozy, especially after you’ve just had a hot shower. I also can’t deny that there’s a certain romance to a tent and campfire that you just don’t get at Motel 6.
Another big question is, “Can I access this property?” If you don’t have a boat, then there are going to be some prime areas that are simply off limits to you. Even a kayak can open up options.
Some properties I have hunted don’t allow trucks on the road systems, only ATVs. If you’re forced to hunt such an area on foot, that can drastically reduce the acreage available to you to hunt.
With that said, there are plenty of areas that can be accessed with nothing but a pair of hip boots. You may have to look harder to find them and work harder once you get out there, but it’s doable.
Packing For Your DIY Duck Hunt
When all the planning is done and it’s finally time to pack, I have a few suggestions based on my personal experience.
Less is more. It can be tempting to bring every piece of waterfowl gear you own “just in case.” Fight that urge! Success on a new piece of property often hinges on your ability to stay mobile and adjust rapidly as you acquire new information, and too much gear can make that difficult. I would say to pack no more than a dozen decoys per party member. Bring motion decoys if you have them. I am a big fan of a jerk rig because it packs small, weighs nothing, and can make lots of ripples. They really help to give a small spread more pulling power. I also am a fan of Wonder Duck decoys, which provide both the spinning-wing strobe effect and ripples on the water.
Bring a good pair of binoculars. If I’m not hunting or sleeping on a trip, I’m scouting. Especially if it’s your first time on a piece of property, time spent riding around glassing areas after the morning flight has settled down can be the difference between going home empty-handed or with a cooler full of duck breasts.
Bring a spare gun if possible. You can get by without decoys, calls, or even waders, but it’s really hard to shoot birds if something goes wrong with your gun.
Finally, bring a first aid kit and any medications you may need. I personally am always sure to bring something to help with my allergies since they reliably flare up whenever I spend the night in a strange place. I also bring meds to settle a rough stomach. Washing down greasy-spoon dishes with a pot of black coffee can lead to…interesting things.
Hopefully this article gives you enough information to make you feel more comfortable hunting outside of your usual stomping grounds. There’s a learning curve, but an out-of-state duck hunt can be surprisingly inexpensive and a whole lot of fun. The first DIY duck hunting trip away from home is the hardest to plan, so go ahead and get that one under your belt this season!
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