Going north gives duck hunters best chance for success

Published 10:48 pm Thursday, January 24, 2019

ALFALFA, OKLA. — What is often referred to as duck hunting weather sometimes is not. Sitting in a cold, inch-and-a-half rain and wind was a reminder.

The 400 acres of man-made marshes at the Crooked Creek Duck Club had held more than a thousand mallards the afternoon before. The next morning the birds were a no-show, apparently opting to sit out the storm in the protection of the refuge on Fort Cobb Reservoir as the weather deteriorated.

The marsh units, which had been planted in corn, sorghum or millet during the summer, were not completely void of birds. A few mallards, teal and divers gave the unit we were hunting a look, but there was something about the pit blind they did not like. Our guide that morning, Alex Brittingham of Athens, guessed the flat sky might have made it easier for the ducks to spot us even with the straw covering.

In two hours we eked out a handful of birds, but nothing compared to the private Crooked Creek’s standards where limits of greenheads are the gold standard.

Showing it was all about location, that afternoon three members of our group joined another group of hunters for a hunt in a nearby peanut field. Laying on slant birds in worsening weather, they were able to finish out limit on mallards.

The next morning Mike Leggett and I joined club owner Jack Brittingham in the same marsh for another hunt. The conditions were the same minus the rain, but adding a stiff wind. Fortunately a predicted fog held off. The results, however, were about the same.

However, during a late breakfast one of the ranch hands mentioned that ducks were starting to pour into one unit on the marsh for a late breakfast.

We dropped our forks and walked away from the bacon, slipped back into waders and within minutes were back in the blind. Sure enough the mallards were floating into the unit and just across a levy into an adjacent one.

Brittingham started to call and a single showed interest in our spread then headed toward the birds just across the levy in the next marsh. He switched to a comeback call and the bird turned, fixed its wings and began to glide down into range. A volley of shots went off, the greenhead hit the water and Brittingham’s old Lab, Pup, was on his way to his first of many retrieves that morning.

It was a tough shoot. A howling wind meant that as we came up out of the blind, the ducks could turn and be out of range faster than we could be in position to shoot. On one fly-by, Leggett made a 50-plus yard shot, one he claimed his longest in a lifetime of duck hunting.

We were using 28-gauge shotguns loaded with No. 6 Hevi-Shot. While it may seem an unusual choice, Brittingham went to 28-gauge shotguns years ago simply because they don’t seem to disrupt the marsh as much as a 12. Anyone who has shot a 28 knows it’s great for wing shooting and with the extra punch of the Hevi-Shot or similar non-toxic shot, it can be a good waterfowl gun.

To give us more of an edge, we switched strategies to let the ducks get all the way to the blind before calling the shot. It did not hurt that in most cases they were coming in one or two at a time, making it easier to find the greenheads and pick out a target on a gray day.

In recent years more and more Texas hunters have moved their duck hunting out of state into Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and beyond. The reasoning is simple, the birds just are not coming into Northeast Texas like they once did.

Mallards will only migrate as far as they have to to find feed and water. With warmer weather, they may dip into Texas, but quickly migrate back north at the first sign of a warm-up.

Brittingham said he has not seen any signs of migration changes over the years. Crooked Creek continues to attract mostly mallards and while numbers may fluctuate daily with the weather, the club continues to produce consistent hunting.