Duck Hunting Taney 30 Dec - 03 Jan

[Flatbottom Boy]

Linked up with a buddy from Kentucky this past week to do a duck hunt/fishing trip on Taneycomo. We stayed in Rockaway Beach at Duck Harbor. I owe much of our success and fun we had to Duane Dotty as he was key in helping me set up a perfect trip in our eyes. My buddy (Chris) had never hunted ducks but entertained my idea for the 5 day hunt.

Day 1: Monday 30 December

My bosses son (Matt) had asked if he could tag along for his first duck hunt. We only had two Kayaks, so we ran the big boat with the two kayaks inside into a cove near Rockaway. Matt and Chris laid out in the two kayaks and I stood in the water between the two covered up with a grassed up tarp. I didn’t really intend on shooting much in hopes that they would do most of the shooting. After a half hour brief of do’s and don’ts and grassing up we were all set. First birds came in well before shooting light and hung out till a couple minutes before. It didn’t take long for them to come right back after they were shot up in the cove behind us, we ended up taking three birds out of that flock. Chris ended up with a beautiful greenhead for his first bird, Matt a gaddy, and I ended up taking a hen mallard that was mixed in with the gadwalls. After that it was singles and double popping in on us and ended the morning with seven birds, and two new guys that have the duck fever. Matt had never been on a boat before so we invited him along to do a little scouting with us for our hunt the next day. While out scouting we found a school of trout feeding in the mouth of a slough we were looking at. We pulled out the spinning rods and had three limits of trout in about 20 minutes on white slab buster crappie jigs. We returned to the dock and sent Matt home with a bucket full of trout and ducks and headed back out on the lake to chase some fish. Chris and I headed down to the landing there in Branson and ended up finding the crappies. We brought home 17 crappies that were all very nice, and released numerous trout.

On a little side note, Matt is a 19 year old kid that had never duck hunted before this. I don’t hang out with 19 year old kids much but he is one of the most respectful, hardworking young men I have had the pleasure of hunting with in a long time. I pointed him in the direction of this forum in hopes he will continue to grow as an outdoorsman and I hope he joins up soon.

Matts first duck

Matt with his three ducks

Chris and Matt with their 7 ducks

Day 2: Tuesday 31 December

Chris and I decided to head out to the main lake just upstream of Rockaway on the two islands. This turned out to be “one of those mornings”. In an attempt to save a little time we decided to hook the kayaks up to the side of the boat and tow them out. We weren’t even out of sight of the dock when the first kayak went under and swamped. Pull it out and drained it, then hooked it up behind the boat thinking it would be fine there, nope…this time it flipped. By this time I lost two boxes of Blind Side shells and a machete, and unknown to me a dozen decoys with the jerkaspreader inside. We fixed that problem and headed to the island. We killed a drake greenwing and gadwall right off the bat, then proceeded to watch dozens of ducks dump into the coves near where we hunted the day before. We called it quits early and licked our wounds, on the way back I found the bag of decoys and most of the jerkaspreader setup.

Day 3: Wednesday 1 January

Our scouting from the day before showed a bunch of ducks holding out on the main lake, so Chris and I set up on a spot Duane put me on a couple weeks back. I told Chris there was probably going to be a bunch of hunters out on their day off helping push ducks back and forth. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not much shooting going on at all. We didn’t see a duck until 930am and they were half a mile high. We stuck it out until noon with not much more happening other than a couple flocks of geese flying over that I couldn’t turn. After talking with Duane he said a buddy had killed some ducks back in the cove we had hunted the day before and that he wouldn’t be back the following day. We decided that was probably where we needed to be the next morning.

Day 4: Thursday 2 January

This morning we had a cold front push some weather on us from the night before. A light dusting of snow and wind made me think this was going to be a great day. It turned out to be just that. Right at shooting light we had a big flock of Gadwall come soaring into the decoys and after the smoke cleared we had dead ducks lying everywhere and one cripple we had to chase. Chris ended up tripping over a log and getting pretty wet so we spent some time rearranging his clothing to make it work for a while longer. Five birds were killed out of the first flock and many more kept pouring into our setup. The only reason we left with 10 instead of 12 was our poor shooting toward the end. I think we got a little cocky, but there were no complaints from either one of us. The hunting in this cove had us convinced that the next day we should probably just set up right in this spot. We only had a couple hours to hunt since we had to be on the road by 10am. We decided to stash the decoys, back boards, and cockpit covers in the grass till the next morning.

Chris with the 10 we took on thursday.

We hunted out of two 10' Ascend kayaks. This is me in one of them all grassed up. I took the seats out and made some back boards out of 1/4 inch plywood so we could lay down inside. It worked awesome, we had duck landing almost on top of them on the last day when our deeks were a few feet off the front of my boat.

Day 5: Friday 3 January

Wish we hadn’t had the bright idea to stash the gear, cove was completely frozen. We ended up paddling up the main lake to another point where we could walk in to get out gear back. That took a long time. By the time we got it all out it was shooting time and we just decided to hunt were we ended up parking the yaks on the main lake. Threw out 5 decoys and sat there half disgruntled and laughing about our stupidity. Within minutes we had a flock of 15 come in….six shots later 15 flew back out. More laughing. Several more minutes pass and three come in….six more shots and only one dead bird. More laughing. Half hour or so goes by and a massive flock of gadwall dumpes into our spread, again six shots and one bird drops…a bunch more laughing and finally we decided our barrels were bent and it was time to call it a week.

Several takeaways:

-less seems to be more. The birds that seem to have been on the lake longer responded better to less decoys. We started the week out with 4 dozen decoys, and the final day we had 5. Each day we took more and more out of the spread and it seems they liked that better.

-Listen to Duane…

-if it seems like it’s gonna save you time, it’s probably going to take you longer anyway. Just do what you know works.

-If you are going to dunk a gun in the water when it’s 9 degrees and expect it to still shoot, make sure it’s a Remington 870. It’s the only one I know that can hand take a beating from a rock to break away the ice from the safety.

-Listen to Duane

- After shooting several different types of shells this week I’m am certain that the more expensive they are doesn’t necessarily mean they kill ducks better. Especially with my shooting…well skills. But I will say that those Blind Side rounds are extremely deadly. I have never seen that much destruction on a duck from those kinds of distances, and very few if any cripples. But everything that was decoying well dropped just fine with the cheap Xpert shot.

-Jerk-a-spreader from Mojo works ok when you figure out how to set it all up. If you buy one throw away the stake and use a boat anchor. This thing added tons of motion to our setup.

[duckydoty]

Great report Eric. Glad you guys got into them. Went out today and it was a slow one. Hoping for some fresh birds after this cold front comes through. I think you got this Taney thing figured out. You guys did a great job blending in!

[Flatbottom Boy]

Thank you Duane, it was a good week. No limits but that sure doesnt' matter when you are in good company. I just sold my soul to the devil for two more days of hunting before the season is out, so I'll be calling to see if we can link up. Thanks again for all the help.

[BilletHead]

Excellent! Good pictured too and thanks for the report. I am glad you guys have some soft water to hunt in.

BilletHead

[Feathers and Fins]

Very nice

[JohnP]

Sounds like y'all had a life times worth of adventures and learning experience in relatively short amount of time. Less is more most definately, especially when it comes to the late season hunts down here. Great pics.

[duckydoty]

Thank you Duane, it was a good week. No limits but that sure doesnt' matter when you are in good company. I just sold my soul to the devil for two more days of hunting before the season is out, so I'll be calling to see if we can link up. Thanks again for all the help.

You are welcome. Definitely give ma a call. This next week is gonna be interesting down here

[Quillback]

Great job on the camouflage.