Mallards of course, but a nice pack of pintails working on the whistle in a north wind are hard to beat. Widgeon are great too when they are really working the call and ecoys.

Those pintails might not taste good when they come off the prairie potholes in Canada, but after a couple months eating rice, they are right up there with the finest greenhead you ever ate.

Pete

a good read guys , I'm envious of you guys that can taste the differences of a duck , when cook together , same with beer ,it all taste the same , that being said I like duck , and I like all ducks that decoy in ,

golden eye are one of my favorites. but ringnecks are fun when a flock works the decoys. by the way rusty I hear you only shoot em when they're sitting down lol!

Can't believe no one has said widgeon!! When you hear that whistle and see them make that final circle...that's my favorite by far!

We mostly have wood ducks here, but I don't think I've ever shot one over a decoy. I just hunt where they eat and hide good.

Divers decoy great, but sometimes they make me seriously question their intelligence. I think I could set out two long lines of old tennis shoes floating on top of the water and they would come from miles to land there.

Mallards are great too, but cotton tops are my favorite

Mallards.Then Geese if they count.

Black Ducks!, Learned on them and specialize on them, Everything else fell off the IQ truck, lol

Too many with Rice Breast on BD's around here, and yeah I know it won't hurt eating them. :-(

Coots. Very good eating. Rice hen

Raised hunting mallards and blacks. Nothing like having a mixed flock of wary, red-legged mallards and blacks circle you a half dozen times before they commit. But canvasbacks are the most coveted because consistently seeing them is rare where we hunt....Hope to kill my deer early so I can get more duck hunting in when the weather gets good and snotty!!

If your targeting just black ducks is there any tricks to setting up a decoy spread or on calling ?

I'm glad to see a thread on the eating of waterfowl. You hear the comparisons of game, like turtle to chicken, beaver to roast beef, which are both accurate. But waterfowl are waterfowl you can't make it taste like chicken or roast beef. It is the main reason I spend "TIB" time in blind. The second reason is watching them come to decoys, nothing like it.

goose or puddle ducks slow cooked in onion soup mix in a crock pot tastes like roast beef if your serving to people who don't like "gamey" food. add horse radish and mashed potatoes and gravy and everyone's happy. we shoot mostly divers later on in the season and sometimes it takes some fancy cooking to make them edible lol

[quote=Knappett]goose or puddle ducks slow cooked in onion soup mix in a crock pot tastes like roast beef if your serving to people who don't like "gamey" food. add horse radish and mashed potatoes and gravy and everyone's happy. we shoot mostly divers later on in the season and sometimes it takes some fancy cooking to make them edible lol [/quote


I hear common merganser chilli is pretty good

TeePee2

I suck at shooting so I get to watch them come to decoys, and leave . Lol

Actually, there is a "routine" Black Duck setup. BD's are generally anti-social and group in pairs. 5 >7 dekes in an open area ( in pairs or 3) is more productive than a large spread such as other species. Space them apart!

Actually, there is a "routine" Black Duck setup. BD's are generally anti-social and group in pairs. 5 >7 dekes in an open area ( in pairs or 3) is more productive than a large spread such as other species. Space them apart! Less is more :-)

Thanks for the advice! I didn’t know they were an anti social bird
We have been talking about trying that lately - the ducks seem to be shying off the bigger spreads a bit-
So glad to hear that it works

You can say that again SJA.

Too bad we don’t have waterfowl on the Delmarva Peninsula.

Yup! ducks are getting real scarce on the Delmarva ISLAND

Greencaps against a clear November sky! Over decoys of course. If they tasted like pheasants or quail, they'd be extinct.