Jon gives a few pointers on locating secluded holes for pressured ducks.
We just had our duck opener here in New York yesterday and 100 and I came back into this big flooded timber, boggy, really just thick, nasty stuff.
But within here, it doesn't look like it probably through the cameras, but there are these little pockets and this time of the year, it's really just holding wood ducks. I mean, we haven't seen a big duck back in here yet, but the specific piece of public ground that we're on gets hunted really hard and those bigger pockets get hit pretty hard during the regular season as the season goes on and those ducks get pressured.
You know, we get my graders in, they get pressured. They're going to flock to little areas like this. And this is a perfect example of one of those little holes that are probably only ten yards by 20 yards wide, but there are really no trees up above it. They can land down in here and then swim back in to get food.
There's a bunch of food through here, a bunch of Arrowhead duckweed and just a whole bunch of native plants that are going to drop seeds. So as those bigger ducks, you know, your mallards, black ducks for us, pin tails, I mean, we don't really hold them very often, but mostly mallards and black ducks in this general area.
Get pressured on those bigger areas that are easily accessible. They're going to push back into these harder access spots. We've heard a bunch of shooting today. Not a single person has been back in this timber. So one of the biggest reasons we wanted to come back here today, we scouted it before was that we knew we were going to be able to shoot some wood ducks and we did.
It was an awesome hunt this morning, but also just to get eyes on it and kind of mark some of these openings for later in the season when those bigger ducks are getting pressured and then move into this flooded timber.
If you're hunting heavily pressured ground or heavily pressured public ground, don't be afraid to get off the beaten path. Go back in here. It may look like a complete jungle from the canal or however you're accessing it. But once you get back in here, you can find these little holes and it's pretty working mallards down into them.