Reading the Ducks

EDITOR'S NOTE: Brad Harris, vice president of public relations at Outland Sports, the owners of Lohman and M.A.D. calls, is a hunting expert and a longtime duck hunter. More than 26-million households across the nation watch Outland Sports television show, "Outdoor Traditions with Brad Harris."

Question: Brad, everybody has a different "finishing-the-ducks-off kind of call. Most people use a feeding call to finish off a flight of ducks coming in to land. What do you use?
Answer: I think hunting ducks is somewhat different every day. Some days the feed chatter works very well. Most days, I like a combination of little soft feed chatter, used sparingly, and a lot of the clucks of the mallard hen. I use a lot of clucks with soft quacks. I like the single soft quacks, to give them confidence, with a little bit of feed call and a lot of little soft clucks and sounds like that. Because sometimes you need to coax the ducks, soft sounds will work. Other times, you've got to stay on those ducks with a lot of aggressive quacking the whole time to pull them in and make them land. So every day is different. You need to be versatile. Read the ducks and see what they like. Then you'll know whether you need to call aggressively all over the water or if you need to back off and coax in the ducks.

Question: Tell me how you read the ducks.
Answer: To read ducks, you simply watch them and the way they respond to your sounds. The beautiful part about waterfowl hunting compared to a lot of other calling situations is that generally you can see the bird the entire time you're calling. Many times you can read what he likes and doesn't like by watching how he responds, seeing whether he turns to you, watching when he cups his wings, seeing when he hesitates or pauses above certain sounds you may be making, determining which call makes that duck turn on a dime and looking hard for his eyes. Every day is different. There are days you read the ducks and they tell you how they want to be called. Some days you need to be aggressive, other days you need to be passive, and other days you need a combination of calling.

Tomorrow: Hunting Ducks in High-Pressure Areas