“Well, I’d say that’s one vote for your new decoys, Zach,” Sean whispered, nodding to the spread out front.
With light just coming up, a solo green teal had slipped in and was now happily feeding amongst my small spread. Having never been a waterfowling addict like some, this year I’d decided to finally spring for a proper setup rather than the beat-up, hand-me-down decoys my dad had offloaded on me nearly a decade back.
Considering what I had been working with, realistic was the goal, and I started dropping things in the cart from the Avian-X website. A set of early-season mallards were first on the list along with some gadwalls and widgeon and after poking around a minute, a set of hen mallard Power Shakers joined the flock.
Rigged up with an arm’s length of coated cable and 3 oz. pyramid weights, the mallards were to the right of our hole out front with one Shaker throwing ripples between them. Tucked in along the North Platte for Wyoming’s season opener, first light revealed a solid-looking spread. Ian’s decoys to the left, mine just to the right and Sean’s mingling up into the rocky bank.
Action wasn’t hot and heavy, but every duck that finished wanted to be right in my decoys. Big, fat, medium-speed ripples overcame the weedy water and kept the spread in motion – no random yanks required, and it seemed to be a welcoming sight.
Ian jumped up to take a teal that had fallen for the trap and as the boom of the shot bounced off the hills in front of us, it was answered by the frantic honking of geese, taking flight from out of sight downriver and pushed straight at us by the rebounding echo.
On a bee line for our blind, I dropped one Canada at our feet while Ian tagged another and Sean hit a third.
With the sun climbing, we started thinking of changing gears for an afternoon of sage grouse when a lone female wood duck slid in over our heads and lit in the ripples out front. I popped up and she took to the air, falling immediately to one shot of bismuth.
My first Woodie and the perfect end to an opening morning, we packed up to head for the sage.
Zach Hein Fousek Creative