“Here They Come!”
By Nick Sisley
fall 2007 | OEI Properties Magazine
Green iridescent heads shine as a squadron of mallards drops from 50 yards, orange feet extended, wings back-pedaling to decelerate quickly. Down, down…The sun has just peaked above the eastern horizon. Down… You mind will hold this sight picture for years to come. They’re almost in the blocks. You nudge your son, “Now!”
You come up slowly, so he gets the first shot. You see the greenhead fold and swing hard on a drake climbing fast to the right. Only two shots have reverberated across your new duck marsh. But those two were enough. While the rest of the flock struggles for altitude, restless wings from the two birds you and your son have shot ripple the water in front. You’ve got to a lot of effort, time and expense just for this moment. There’s no doubt in your mind now; it was all worth it!
Attracting ducks to your property can be anything but easy. It’s not quick, and it’s surely going to be expensive. Your success is going to be governed by the weather and other elements beyond your control. Still, creating your own haven for ducks could be one of the best things you’ll ever do – for the ducks, for yourself, for the environment.
I first hunted with Ed Moxley back in 1972. We shot over his marshes just inland from Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio. Ed’s father had started managing this marsh when Ed was a youngster, so Ed’s experience here runs for nearly 50 years. If anyone knew how to bring ducks into new places, it was Ed Moxley.
“To attract ducks you need property that is in what I call a duck area,” said Ed. You can provide an ideal duck marsh, but if no appreciable numbers of ducks have ever inhabited the general area, you are wasting your time, effort and money. However, if your property, or property you can lease, is close to a flyway, staging area or feeding grounds, you can coax ducks to include your marsh, field or stream in their travel patterns. Productive duck marshes don’t come up for sale often, but when they do it takes top dollar to buy them. Ed told me that a good duck marsh
around Sandusky can easily go for $4500 an acre. And keep in mind that some corn-producing areas in the Midwest are now selling for $5500 an acre – partly due to the demand for ethanol.
In addition to the “lots-of-ducks-in-the-area” requirement for your success, you also need water. This could come from a bordering creek, river, lake or simply runoff. But it needs to be there consistently. Dry riverbeds have nothing to offer ducks. Nor do marshes drained to keep adjacent homowners happy; nor do ponds that ice over before Canada’s late waterfowl have left the provinces. Carefully check out your own property or property you might consider leasing for duck shooting. Besides water, you’ll need shallows to attract puddle ducks. A deep lake or river serves for resting only. Still or slow-moving water that comes to between your knees and hips is ideal. So are flats with lush vegetation but open enough in places for rafts of ducks.
Once you’ve found a well-watered place near where ducks like to be, your next job is controlling the water level. In most instances dikes are the best option. While costly to build, dikes can last for many years with little maintenance. Most conservation groups and agencies look favorably upon the creation of marsh areas. They know what you want to do is good for wildlife. But dike construction may require federal, state and local permitting. Don’t expect immediate agency approval – or to be hunting your new marsh a few months after you conceive the idea.
The reason you must control your marsh’s water level is that you have to be able to drain it for planting, and then flood the area a few weeks prior to duck season. If you are going to plant corn in your hunting area, draw-down will probably have to start in April, so you can plant in mid to late May. Select a corn variety that will mature at the proper time for your area.
Soybeans are a great duck food to plant. Because beans have a shorter growing season, they can be planted in June. Buckwheat and millet can be planted in July. Other crops allow you to drain even later. Japanese millet, foxtail millet and browntop millet will all bring ducks to your property. So will rice, of course. For corn you’re going to want 12 to18 inches of water. For beans, millet and buckwheat you can get by with less than a foot. Field grains like barley and wheat can be used if you can’t flood an area. Then you’ll focus on managing as a resting place. It can still provide great shooting next to unharvested grain fields. If you have wet flats that will accommodate crops but no way to drain them, consider aerial seeding. Some plants – corn and soybeans, for example – must be drilled.
Moxley suggests buying a bigger pump than you think you will need. If cared for properly a pump will last many years. “Electric is definitely best,” Ed told me. “You just flip a switch. A gas or diesel engine is always running out of fuel or having mechanical hiccups.”
In some instances you can create a wetlands area around an existing lake, even if a lot of the water is quite deep. Natural grasses will come up on their own if you can wet down the shoreline area – again using a pump. Such areas can also be planted with your choice of waterfowl food. Often this situation lends itself well to attracting Canada geese, especially if grasses that geese prefer can be planted around the shallow periphery of the lake, using your pump to keep the apron at the proper depth. Here again you could face regulation – in that some type of permit might be required for you to use your pump in a lake you don’t own. Keep your hand off the switch until you know you have complied with all the requirements!
Y ou can also use your farm ground – or farm ground you lease – to create an ideal duck or goose shooting area. Look for a field of corn, soybeans or small grain with a low or periodically flooded tongue. If the field borders a creek, a dike can be used to flood the lower portion of this field just before hunting season. One caveat: Without a system to easily control water level, your dike could be quickly washed out by a downpour.
Help with dikes and other habitat alterations is available from Ducks Unlimited, the Soil Conservation Service, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and other agencies. This assistance can come in the form of advice or even funding. Don’t sell either of these possibilities short, but remember that any agency or non-profit group can take a long time responding to requests for help or permits.
How many acres do you need to attract ducks? Obviously, the more the better. But any water that pulls mallards is enough to increase the value of your property! If you have a big marsh or duck-friendly lake, you have the makings of a refuge – a place you never, ever enter, nor allow anyone else to enter. It’s tough to ignore 2,000 ducks only a few hundred yards away in your refuge pond – on a day when you can’t entice one flying duck close to your blind. But where you can establish one, a refuge is the most important part of any waterfowl project.
If you pressure waterfowl, they leave. Except where options are very limited, they don’t come back. They are gone. But with a refuge pond you can keep some ducks for weeks before they move on south. Even when you take a couple of birds from a flock, if the others can fly to a refuge pond they will stay close by. Without a refuge pond you’ll probably never see those birds again. Further, a refuge pond and its residents attract other ducks flying in from the north, packing your property with waterfowl.
I started hunting ducks with Tommy Akin the first year I partnered with Ed Moxley – 1972. While Ed has always managed his own marsh, Tommy does it with hunting associates. They lease cropland, and then do what it takes to attract ducks. While Ed lives in the prime duck area of northwestern Ohio, Akin lives near the famous Obion River bottoms of northwest Tennessee, another prime duck area.
Tommy Akin talks a lot about water levels. “Whether you are using runoff water or a pump, you have to be able to control water level, and to put the necessary amount of water into your hunting patch,” He said. “An inch or two isn’t enough, especially if you are hunting flooded corn.” Tommy likes to see the water brought up to “ear level” in corn fields. That can mean up to three feet. Duck hunting over beans, buckwheat, rice or smaller grains in his area, Tommy likes 12 to18 inches of water. Predictably, he feels a big pump is a must. ‘The more horsepower behind the switch, the less you have to depend on rainfall.” He says that some duck clubs in his area flood 1,000 acres and need several wells besides powerful pumps. Soil type figures into your water supply needs. Some fields flood during a heavy rain. Still, if you are not pumping you probably will have to close floodgates three to six weeks before the gunning starts.
Akin likes to hunt over flooded corn if the plot is at least 10 acres, and he prefers not to harvest one ear. In his area, clubs leave up to 200 acres of standing corn for the ducks. After corn, his next choice is natural grasses that come up on their own – smartweed, swamp grass and the like. If the season is unseasonably warm, he has found that milo and beans are even better than corn.
He says when you’re in standing corn you are not actually hunting ducks. “The ducks are coming to the corn, not to your call or spread. You’re just ambushing them.” Akin is an excellent duck caller and decoy man – a purist with a passion for waterfowling. But you don’t have to claim such expertise or have decades of duck stamps to your name to enjoy the chatter of mallards or what Aldo Leopold once described as goose music. No matter what you do to attract ducks, you won’t be sorry, especially when the first flock of big ducks work the marsh you have created especially for them.
Nick Sisley can be contacted at here.
