Better "luck" next time...

[Rick]

Know I'm spoiled with opportunity compared to most in our region, but I'm disappointed with what I've managed to do with it. And my mind's been awhir with plans for improvement.

Perhaps the most important among them is keeping more complete logs to help keep me in mindful of what I've seen and should have learned from. Including, for instance, the tendencies I see in how the birds are working our rig under the day's conditions. Where I've logged, "Waterfowl Responsiveness: The chop in our decoys didn't help me finish much as I wished for our new waterfowler, but enough came well enough to get him in the game." noting that too many of the mallards the rig and I broke down were then drawn by the attraction of calmer lee waters without offering sure shots for any but the lee end gun might better serve.

I need to remember that sort of thing and address it as best I can when opening, or otherwise re-configuring, next season's pond and setting next season's decoy spread. Could be simply leaving more floating black dirt in places will quell some of the chop that made it harder to finish our mallards in front, with the bonus of making my pond more attractive to black-bellies. And, hopefully, noting such things in this thread will help keep me more mindful of them.

[Darren]

While it served me well on that particular hunt in that it gave me more time for pre-hunt construction work in the blind, my allowing David B, a long time salt marsh veteran, to set my decoys (when I basically never let anyone else do that) was in attempt to teach this dog a new trick, or shed light on my own flawed logic.

Note he set them much closer than I usually would have, and we indeed saw result of that which made for easier shooting ops, with decoys out of ripples and enjoying the slick water up close to the roseau patch.....birds sucked right into it.

I similarly have plans to re-engineer some marsh features in a couple ponds this offseason when tides are higher, by dragging some clumps here and there to 1.) create more of a broken marsh look, and 2.) have mud clumps to set some full body decoys on to add dimension to our spread.

Drone imagery David collected years back on our mutual favorite public ground shows teal, mottleds, mallards, and grays loafing about, some in water, some standing/sitting/resting on grassy or muddy mud clumps. I'd like to use those clumps also to break wave action on big wind days, and overall make the hole look more appealing on big blows. Would think more places for standing would make your hole more appealing to the BBWD's.

The migration will be what it'll be; it's up to us to make the most of who shows up.

[Ducaholic]

If you are not adjusting, you are not hunting. I'd expect nothing less from you guys

[Darren]

Here we go!

Screenshot 2026-02-19 104304.jpg

[Rick]

I've seen those and don't figure full-bodies will be too long in coming.