South Georgia is not known for awesome duck hunting, but that doesn't make me love it any less. The first season came on Nov. 19th. I usually sit out the first season since it only runs for around a week. I begin preparing for the main season which began on Dec. 10th. I start by getting my Duck boat prepared. I wanted to do a little work to it by adding a better light bar to the front of it, and by adding some small lights to the inside of the boat. Luckily I have some good friends that know what they are doing when it comes to things like that. So now began the real work. I have a favorite spot that is my go to which is a slough off of our small blackwater river, luckily I have permission to hunt the land that surrounds the slough which makes it easier by not having to hunt from the boat. So it came down to us doing some scouting. There are a few things that I look for while scouting, by no means, am I telling you that my way is the best, but these simple steps are just what I do.
Step 1- The river that I hunt is fairly small so the water level is important, especially in the places where I hunt. Lower water just seems to work out better for me because it will confine the birds to where the water is. so I take note of the water level and look at the upcoming weather to watch for rain. It has been said that for every inch of rain, the river will rise around a foot.
Step 2- Is simply a food source. My go-to is to look for acorns. These wood ducks love feeding on the little black acorns. So I always check my go-to spot to look at the acorn drop.
You can also just cruise the river and look for small sloughs or branches that may be dropping acorns. The wood ducks will also land in the river and walk up onto the bank if there is a tree dropping near the water.
That is about all that I look for when scouting you may also ride up on some ducks while scouting so obviously that would be something to take note of. we also usually have to cut some trees and limbs out of the way us a path. Our river rises and falls so often that we usually have several places we have to cut our way through.
We arrive at my go-to spot and the water level is around a foot higher than I would prefer but the acorns are falling like crazy so I think to myself man opening day is going to be on fire. We pick some spots to set up in and decide where our decoys would be best.
Opening day finally arrives. We get my ranger hooked up to my 1542 War eagle and head toward the ramp. I like to try and leave the ramp around 45 mins before shooting light because if you are like me something doesn't go as planned and that morning was no different. The spot we were heading is around 1/2 mile from the boat ramp. As we were heading to the spot the motor was running a bit rough and I realized that I had left the choke pulled, when I reached over to take the choke off the motor I found that I had the throttle a little bit too high because it seemed like it went wide open and snatched the handle from my hands. It made about a full 180 in the river and almost put us on the bank but luckily I was able to get it stopped. Luckily everybody was fine and we didn't lose anything, but boy did the ragging start. Do one thing wrong and your buddies won't let it go.
We arrived at our spot and begin setting up, I usually run 6 decoys and a mojo. On this trip, my mojo wouldn't work so we didn't have it. I was excited because the conditions were almost perfect except for the 60-degree temp. Shooting light arrived and we started hearing the iconic wood duck whistle that they make while they are flying. We started seeing groups of ducks fly over but none of them were paying us any mind. We ended the morning by seeing around 20-30 birds but were only able to take two birds. I was disappointed because I thought that it was going to be on fire.
Things don't always go the way we want them to, but if you have fun it makes it worth it.
Time spent outdoors and making memories with family and friends is what it is all about.