The 2023?24 season was a tough one for sure. The ducks weren’t on our side this season, but a few times our hunts panned out for us. The season started off with two decent youth hunts. We started at the best place in southeast Missouri, Otter Slough Conservation area but weren’t able to draw out so we headed up to the lake to one of my friends blinds. We waited on sunrise, messing around in the blind and listening to ducks buzz overhead. When the sun popped up and showed the amount of ducks on the lake, it was an unbelievable sight.
The ducks were showing up the hundreds. My brother and I loaded up the guns and set up on separate sides of the blind. The ducks wouldn’t really work but they were buzzing around from blind to blind. We shot a bunch at the beginning around 5 or 6, but kind of struggled to get ducks to commit the rest of the low light hours. When the sun finally got up and got some big ducks off the refuge, they finally wanted to work again. One lone mallard was circling the blind and was back peddling right in front and about 50 shovelers came in with it. We killed the mallard and a few of the shovelers and ended the day 1 duck short of a two man limit.
Jumping about a month ahead it was another youth hunt but in the south zone around the Arkansas border of the boot-heel. I skipped out of the last part of school to go scout a conservation area where we hunt a lot. There were thousands of ducks in one pool and the rest of the pools had little water besides some of the deep spots most people wouldn’t take their kids to, so we figured to hunt where most of the ducks were and save the secret spot for day 2. After we got done scouting I got two of my best friends and got the truck ready for the morning. The conservation area is a walk-in/ boat-in, and you have to race in as soon as the clock hits 4 am. We struggled out of bed at 2:30 am and ran to the conservation area to get our spot.
I loaded my back up with as much as I could carry and got on my bike to race people to the spot we wanted. Clock hit 4 am and we all took off. I was beating everyone and thought for sure I had the spot but little did I know there were about 4 groups of people who had boats and were already back there, so I peddled harder and still got the spot we wanted. We made a hole in the grass and put out the decoys and sat and waited for sunrise. The amount of birds landing right at our feet was unbelievable. Hopes were high but even if we didn’t kill anything it would still have been a good hunt with my friends and brother. Shooting light hit and we started killing them right off the bat, everyone was. We all shot good and killed a bunch and ended up shooting a 4 man limit by 8 o’clock.
The second day started off with a race off at 4 am again but we headed to a secret spot where nobody went to the day before so the ducks were fresh and had no clue what was about to hit them. We set up on the shallow side were my brother could stand without going over his waders. The ducks didn’t really want the spot we scouted but figured we were close enough and would still kill them there. We were just about to wrap up getting set up and my friend tripped over a tree in the water and got soaked. He didn’t shoot very much off the start because he was cold but my brother and I couldn’t miss unless it was a big group of them.
We shot a few pintails and a mallard and realized we needed to change to where the ducks were wanting to go instead of trying to pull them over to shallow water. We found a tree were my brother could stand and shoot without being too short. My friend picked up the gun for the 4th time that morning and finally we started to shoot some mallards. They were doing it perfectly with one pass then straight into the hole. We shot straight and not many ducks left, something about those deep willows get the mallards in there tight. We were closing up on a limit with only one duck left to shoot. While I recorded and called, my brother pulled the jerk rig and dad sat back and watched as the last mallard fell into the hole. We closed out the day on a nice drake green head to wrap up the hunt.
The decoys we use are Higdon’s and Dakota fully flocked, all mallards and normally keep them mostly green heads, I think it helps to have more drakes. My new Final Approach waders kept
me warm all season. I use elite duck calls out of Arkansas and shoot a Stoger. To see the pictures/videos of the hunt go to my Instagram and look through the youth seasons posts at Trenton_Lacy_Outdoors.
