bill herian wrote:Rick wrote:You guys would hate me. More days than not, I call loud and long and we kill a mess of ducks we wouldn't have if all I did was "call to get their attention and let the decoys do the work".
...The quiet guys are usually doing the shooting.
40 years ago I would have said that, and 25 years ago I might have. Though I'd already had the value of aggressive calling pointed out by a first time hunter who'd noticed our "luck" changed for the worse when I quit telling our birds what to do and started asking them, that's been a lesson I've had to relearn time and again over the years.
Maybe 15 back, I was quoted in DU and our state rag saying the trick to fooling late season birds was "call less and hide better". That same season I took over a blind near a safe spot every passing duck keyed in on, no matter what I did or didn't do to change their minds - until I tried letting them break down for the live birds, without making a peep, then jumped on them and stayed on them all the way to the guns, where we strung well over 1,000 of them. Seemed like half the hunters through the blind that year had read the DU and/or Sportsman pieces and wanted to know, "What happened to 'call less'?"
My answer was simple, "Didn't work."
And, at least in my experience, "just getting their attention" doesn't work a whoooole lot of the time. So you can bet your sweet granny's ponytail I'm gonna try something else. And keep trying until I find what does work.
