Thread: Opening day delimma

Whats your thoughts chaps
you got a swag of ducks on your pond, do you
1- Sneak in opening morning and shoot what you can and be gratefull but possibly never see another duck all day
or
2- just go in making a bit of noise but not firing a shot, ducks will leave settle in your Mai Mai and hope they will come back. ?
Maybe.....

sneak in early, then when they come back its probably light enough to see them.

So don't shoot first you reckon?

yes dont shoot, till they come back,the birds get off my pond when i am still about 100 meters away and its too dark to see them.

Sneak in, if they fly off all good. Take that opportunity to throw a few deeks out and sit back and wait. They may take a while to return, but they will. If they're living on your pond that's their safe place.


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DO NOT SHOW UP SHOOTING. Put them off quietly in the dark. Get your decoys out then wait. They will come.......

send jake in half an hour before kick off.

We head in quietly and if they get off well fine. Set decoys out, get sorted out with ya gear in Mai Mai. Then wait for them to come back.
We aim to be in the Mai Mai @6.15 and no later than 6.30 ( that's with shooting starting at 7). The aim with that is we are in and settled before other people are in theirs.
But what can happen is you have the bloody things come back in while dark and the pond is full again before it's light enough.

Well that easy, not much arguemnet there on what to do, cheers.
last touches on the Mai Mai earlier this arvo and leave now till opening.

There's a good probability if you have a lot of ducks on the pond over night you have a night feeding pond. How- ever you move them off you may only see a few back if they are disturbed off their day roost pond. Your shooting will most likely be in that last half hour of light- if they haven't got the pip with you putting them out opening morning. I'd consider putting them off quietly after they have had a bit of a feed (9pm??) throw out your decoys and hope they forget.....

I don't have the answers but have had that same scenario . A pond would hold hundreds of mallards , but put them off in the morning and they would return in mass for about 3 or 4 waves and bugger off and only 10 percent return over rest of day . Was in an area which had a lot of Sid creeks and rivers that never got shot . They just weathered the storm out untouched . We would return in poor weather,any time in the season and pick them up then . We tryed putting them off the night before and also first thing but made no differance over a 5 yr period . The parries , it didn't bother them they cam all day , but they aren't so smart !

I would scare them off the night before a couple hours after dark.
I have done the same thing on one of my ponds heaps of times.
Only around 50% come back in the morning but it is still enough to shoot a bag.

Otherwise leave it for an evening shoot where you will only get maybe an hours shooting before dark depending where from and why the ducks are coming into the pond.

We get good shooting once the district farmers get out of bed and shift stock or move around their farms. Any resident ducks will turn back up.
It is a bad shoot if we are not packed up by 9am.

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I've been wondering what to do also. Can get into mai Mai without scaring them off. But from what most you guys are saying I should scare them off and wait for them to come back. Only thing is there's two other ponds very near by and they normally just go and land there when I do scare them off. Might have to get the missus to go scare them off those for me haha.

sounds about right to me gibve yourself and them at least half an hour to drift back before the shooting starts

Never jump shoot a pond you intend to decoy on. If you put them off in the dark they will be less alarmed than if you do it in daylight or with shooting.