Sampling Machines

Dr. Bobby Cox of Ipswich, South Dakota, is a professional waterfowl biologist and an avid duck hunter who describes ducks as “sampling machines,” because they are highly prone to sampling different habitats to find better feeding conditions. “Ducks are more mobile than most people realize,” Cox says. “They move around a lot looking for areas that have gone from very dry to very wet. The sudden introduction of water in a dry field, for instance, makes tons of tiny seeds and invertebrates available for feeding, and ducks will respond quickly and in large numbers to such an opportunity.”

In the Dakotas, for example, Cox says one of the best scenarios for hunters (but not for farmers) is when hail accompanies a heavy rain. “The hail knocks crops down, and the water fills up the low spots. You can bet that the ducks will be there in short order,” he says.

And so will Cox. He scouts for such spots immediately after a significant weather event. “Often, this won’t be a big area,” he explains. “It might be where one storm cloud went through and dumped a lot of water over just a few square miles. But the ducks can find these places very quickly. I think they do this visually. They get out and stir around after a storm passes, and they can see a long way while flying at 2,000 feet.”

Once Cox locates a freshly flooded area where ducks are feeding, he has to figure out how to hunt it. “On the prairie, the only cover will often be grain stubble or short grass,” he says. “But if I have eight inches of natural cover, I can make my coffin blind or layout boat totally blend in.”

Once he picks a hunting spot, Cox carries his coffin blind to the site, because he doesn’t want to leave a drag trail through the stubble or smartweed. He decides where to place his decoys and then positions his coffin blind so the wind is coming off his right shoulder to provide a crossing shot at incoming ducks. He covers the blind with an old army tarp and then piles on natural cover that matches the vegetation and color of the hunting site. “I always collect this cover away from my hunting site. I don’t want to disturb the natural look of where I’m hunting,” he says. Cox and his retriever then nestle into the coffin blind to await the first flight of birds.