DuckSouth Tips and Tactics: The Bi-Polar Gadwall

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of The Line podcast, I’m Rocky Leflore, sitting in the Duck South Studios in Oxford, Mississippi and on the line with me today are two of my favorite people, Josh Webb, Ramsey Russell. Guys how are you all?

Josh Webb: Very, very good.

Ramsey Russell: Man, if I was any better, I’d be knee deep in a duck hole. So yeah, I’m doing good. Another day in paradise.

Rocky Leflore: You can feel the closeness of duck season. Look whenever it starts feeling like fall weather outside man, it just gets your blood flows a little better. It feels like fall just a hint in the air. I know it is in Oxford anyway and it’s got to be –

Josh Webb: Of course it’s good, it feels great.

Ramsey Russell: It’s gorgeous. People look at the temperature and go its 92°, it is still summer. No way man, I can feel it in the air just when that humidity drops like it does beautiful.

“Yeah, just no humidity or a lot less rather and it’s – I think when I got up this morning it was 60 or 61° and very low humidity, that’s just completely different.”

Josh Webb: Yeah, just no humidity or a lot less rather and it’s – I think when I got up this morning it was 60 or 61° and very low humidity, that’s just completely different. I don’t know it feels everything, just makes you feel better about today.

Rocky Leflore: Look, I got something for you. Listen to this sound right here and for today’s tips and tactics podcast episode, we’re going to be talking about this, since you know this sound, every time.

Josh Webb: You do that better than I think an actual gadwall.

Rocky Leflore: We recorded that podcast two years ago about gadwall on the Only X Podcast and BC Rogers was there. And BC had thought that we played an audio file there. He said, where they come from? Who did that? What was that?

Josh Webb: Yeah, I mean, and then every year since and I mean, well I guess a couple of times three or four times we’ve done gadwall podcast but it hits home with a lot of people.

Ramsey Russell: Bread and butter duck of Mississippi.

Josh Webb: Absolutely.

Rocky Leflore: That’s a great point Ramsey, and I want you all’s comment on the next statement that I make, I want both of you all talk about this. Look, I think that the reason that the gadwall is hated so much is, I want you to imagine yourself, say you’ve been living in the same house for 20 years, 30 years and the people that you’ve always known living next door to you move away and a nice democrat family and I’m not saying democrat in this, I better change that, man, I have to set out.

Ramsey Russell: Go with it boy, my gosh, Rocky, it’s the new frontier.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, so a nice democrat family moved in next to you, the ones that leave their yard junked up, their car is up on stilts, you don’t like them as well as the people that previously lived there. Now, in the duck hunting world when it comes to Mississippi, the mallard is the people that you loved. They lived there for 30 years, you say, they were your family. Now, the democrats have moved in, there’s your gadwall. You agree with that analysis that that’s why they’re hated because the mallard was so – it was your family forever. And now the gadwall has taken over the neighborhood.

Josh Webb: Yeah. One thing that I’ve always said and will always say is, nothing bothers me more than to see somebody at a breakfast joint or at a truck stop and they got on camouflage or whatever in the wintertime and we get to talk them about duck hunting and say, well, how did you all do this morning? We limited out, but it was just all gadwalls. It wasn’t really that big a deal. And every single person that says that, I just want to punch him in the throat and just walk off. One because if you’re not out there to enjoy it, then just don’t go, don’t go just to pull the freaking trigger. But two man, if you can’t – now look a gadwall can be the most frustrating bird on the planet, I agree with that but it’s just so many people that they just look down on them. They just think poorly of them and really for no reason other than like you’re saying Rocky, they are in the numbers that mallards once were, especially in the Mississippi delta. But yeah, I mean, who cares?

“That’s my favorite duck and just ask anybody, I’m going to shoot the next duck over the decoys but at the same time, mallards aren’t just like your next door neighbor, that you lived next to for 20 years, they’re like living next door to the best neighbor you’ll ever have and I say that worldwide mallards excites nearly everybody.”

Ramsey Russell: But there’s more than that. It’s more than just the number of replacement, maybe the mallards shortstop or maybe there’s not as many, but Mississippi habitat, a lot of our pro habitats here, the old breaks and sloughs and things that nature are just absolutely positively prime gadwall habitat. They’re excellent habitat for gadwalls and my take on it is, you all heard me say my favorite duck is the next duck over the decoys. That’s my favorite duck and just ask anybody, I’m going to shoot the next duck over the decoys but at the same time, mallards aren’t just like your next door neighbor, that you lived next to for 20 years, they’re like living next door to the best neighbor you’ll ever have and I say that worldwide mallards excites nearly everybody. Mallards are the bread and butter duck of the universe and I’ve killed them on five continents and they’re everywhere. But see here’s the deal about mallards, as related to duck hunting I think, my whole opinion is mallards, the whole rule book of duck hunting as we know it, the calls, the decoys, the setups, the behavior every way we go about duck hunting is written for the mallard. Hell mallard, wrote the book of duck hunting. But I had a guy come to show last year and this guy is in Washington state is one of the foremost outfitters in the pacific fly away and I mean they shoot mallards like nobody’s business, so these guys shoot mallards and he comes to my booth and he says, I want to go to Argentina, I want to go do some of these trips. Now, here’s the deal, I want to decoy them like mallard, I want their orange feet paddles on the water and can you guarantee me that will happen? I said, no sir, because we don’t shoot mallard in South America. I said, that would be like asking Fred Astaire to start break dancing. I mean, you can’t do that. You’re shooting mallards and you can’t expect every other duck on God’s earth to conform to mallards rules and gadwall is not a mallard, you know what I’m saying? And what we’re trying to do is put a round peg in a square hole and that’s the hole, I think the whole disconnects.

Rocky Leflore: Well, that’s where I want to go with this. I want to help people understand just like in my analysis, just like you got on gadwall is just a little different from that mallard.

Ramsey Russell: He’s different. I believe birds of a feather flock together. There’s a lot of truism to that statement. Just think about 10, 15 years ago, you go out to buy decoys and what did you have available to you? Mallards and pin tails and green wings. And when people started coming out with these, speciation with the gadwalls and the wigeons and everything else. I mean really and truly, I think you can take any decoy in the world and paint it flat black and works equally well for just day in day out. But I will say this where I hunt down South Delta Mississippi, we shoot a lot of gadwalls, not as many as my buddy Jim Crews does up there in the break, but we shoot a lot of gadwalls and my spread and Forrest and I – Forrest will tell you right now, our spread is usually 3/4 gadwall and a typical spread, we’re going to go out day in day out it’s going to be somewhere around three dozen decoys plus or minus what’s been left behind or got lost along the way. And it’s going to be 6-8 mallards set over here in his pocket and maybe a few teals that right in the center of the hole and then the rest are going to be gadwalls. And since we started doing that, we started killing more gadwall. Now, Forrest kind of joined me on this little duck calling kick. We went to fox, we went to Gaston’s, we went down there to Radgio’s and we’ve just been around playing with a lot of different calls, homemade calls or not. I said the homemade, handcrafted calls made by the old way, here lately and it’s fun, they were coming back from Gaston’s and Forrest just saying anybody walked up to a duck call to, start calling. And Forrest always takes that first call and he starts beating on it like a gadwall because with the right call he makes a really, really good gadwall note and the gadwall responds to it. Now, here’s the deal.

Rocky Leflore: Well, we’re going – go ahead.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, conversation takes life of its own Rocky, you just got to jump in baby but getting back to that mallard writing handbook, the mallard handbook by which we’re all playing this game more or less. It’s like really and truly you go down to Tijuana and going to a grocery store, you can’t expect everybody in the grocery store to understand no matter how loud you talk to them, you can’t expect everybody understand English, you see what I saying? You got to kind of talk their language and gadwalls have their own language.

Rocky Leflore: Well, I think the first thing you got to understand about the gadwall, I think the biggest thing that people don’t in the science of a gadwall is their photo migrate. A lot of your gadwall are going to migrate within two or three weeks of Halloween. A lot of them, I can say all of them. And I’ll say this for the Mississippi delta and Louisiana, Northeast Louisiana delta in the cypress breaks of Arkansas that are used to having gadwall over the past two or three years with the dry fall that we’ve had, a lot of these places that gadwall, usually would stop off and stay and hang out in have been dry and the gadwall, as much as these Louisiana people want to argue with me about this, they’ve just been skipping right over us going to south Louisiana because those harvest numbers down around Venice all the way around the coast of Louisiana have been up as it pertains to gadwall.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, and there’s a lot of truth to that. Basically to a large extent, all of the vegetative and animal communities of the world operate on photo period, that’s just a biological fact. And lot of duck will hang up, a lot of ducks and geese will hang up further north just because of resources. They’ve got food available, they’ve got habitat available, they can make a good living there but they really do. We tend to think erroneously that the migration is just everything picks up moves out at one time and that’s not true, it comes in waves. I see gadwall showing up with the blue wing migration. Blue wings and shovelers and pin tails and gadwall begin to move but I think you’re exactly right Rocky. I think the peak gadwall migration down in south, the bulk of that migration begins around Halloween and on end of the season. And that why there’s a lot of gadwall down here and you’re exactly right, I believe. I think you’re exactly right, that Louisiana marsh and coastal habitats are very good for gadwall because it’s got a lot of – there are submerged, their principal food sources are submerged aquatics in the state of Mississippi. I would argue that the reason the birds hang out so much and have such a fidelity for the breaks and for natural organic holes because their principal food sources is coon tail. That stuff, if you walk around the waiter to just hang you up, drags down and slow you down but it’s coon tail man, those gadwall love coon tail moss, that’s one of the principal food.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, Josh. I mean, look, in the United States you’ve seen parts of what you duck hunt. Josh has some of the best gadwall holes in the state, if not in the Mississippi delta. But Josh, you’ve seen parts of these breaks and areas that these gadwall usually hang out when they get here dried up the past two or three years. That’s two or three generations of ducks that never stopped here.

Josh Webb: Now, that’s the truth. Matter of fact, one of our shoot top, on an any given day, it’s really the best, as far as going and knowing that we’re going to kill gadwall, it’s an easy place to kind of scout and look at too and knowing they’re in there but we are talking about it being dry last year, we did not go in there and hunt until it was on into January, we just whatever, I didn’t hunt as much last year as I used to do it anyway, but we went in there and I knew in September and even early October that that section of that break was dry. Well anyway, long story short we went in there and from a distance I saw birds going down in there in the day or two before and said, well we’ll go to our old faithful little spot in there and got in there and just the weeds and the brush and everything, there wasn’t even a hole there anymore, it’s just grown up, it was just so thick. And we were sitting there going crap, it got drier than we thought it did. And that on top of several other things, last year was the first year I noticed a real difference in not killing the number of gadwalls throughout the year that we usually kill but that was kind of a reality check on just how dry it got, how much sunlight was hitting the actual ground last year in some of those little buck brush sloughs and stuff.

Rocky Leflore: Well yeah, I think that the past 2 or 3 years I know that on Mossy Lake those last couple of years that I was there that’s gadwall heaven and it got so low and it states so dry all the way into mid-December, those gadwalls man, they just came through and totally passed it up. You talk to Jim Bowen where we film multiple hunts with Primoz with migration nation. They’ve had break that dried up that has never ever as long as Mr. Bowen, 60 years old has never seen dry ground on, the past two or three years have been that away. And so I think that has a lot to do with the numbers being down in Mississippi and then the numbers being up in south Louisiana. But the thing that I want to help people with today and I want to get both of you guys to respond to this and tell me what I’m missing out on but is how to kill more gadwall? How can we help people listening to this podcast, what are some simple things that they can do to kill more gadwall? And I think the number one thing that I found as a guide that hunted these every day was movement. Nothing in this world. Well, I take that back, that’s going to be one A. There’s a one A and one B in this and one A is going to be movement in your decoys, it’s never more important as it pertains to gadwall. Maybe not so much the 06:30 gadwall but the 08:30 gadwall.

“And a lot of people have commented and all kind of stuff through the years and Rocky and I get to talk about gadwalls because we always mentioned 06:30 AM gadwall and 08:30 AM gadwall is like it’s two completely different birds. And then a lot of ways they definitely act completely different but the movement and all I can say is try and try anything until it works.”,

Josh Webb: That’s what I was about to say. And a lot of people have commented and all kind of stuff through the years and Rocky and I get to talk about gadwalls because we always mentioned 06:30 AM gadwall and 08:30 AM gadwall is like it’s two completely different birds. And then a lot of ways they definitely act completely different but the movement and all I can say is try and try anything until it works. I guess the gadwalls just a – I don’t know man, they’ll leave you racking your brain sometimes and then some days it’s just –

“And I’m serious as heart attack when I’m saying that is, number one just for the record, I shoot a lot better at 40, I hit a lot better at 5. And they’re not a mallard and I’m not playing by the complete mallard rule book and if I can get them to work within a good angle, I call it, if I can get them in that good angle zone at 35 and 40 yards, I’m going to kill them every time.”

Ramsey Russell: My rule number one for killing gadwall is don’t miss. And I’m serious as heart attack when I’m saying that is, number one just for the record, I shoot a lot better at 40, I hit a lot better at 40 yards than I do in 5. And they’re not a mallard and I’m not playing by the complete mallard rule book and if I can get them to work within a good angle, I call it, if I can get them in that good angle zone at 35 and 40 yards, I’m going to kill them every time. That’s just to me that’s rule number one for killing gadwall. And I agree with the movement part but because I’m not always expecting gadwall to come instead and present themselves feet off the ground or feet off the water eyeball level, like a lot of these other species, I find myself and willow break it has a lot of gadwall, we shoot a lot of gadwall. I find myself setting up differently. Now, I’m a mojo fan. I believe if the ducks aren’t working them like I want them to then it’s really placement or something of that nature more than the movement itself. I just don’t describe the fact that you killed more ducks with without a mojo than you do. If you have, you hunt it’s your business. I don’t care but me personally, I like the movement but what I find myself doing, we’ve got a couple of little potholes up there at camp in some areas in willow break and what we see is the deeper water that’s got the coon tails submerged aquatic and it’s surrounded ringed just a little ringed potholes with tall willow trees.

Josh Webb: Gadwall catwalk.

Ramsey Russell: One of my favorite set up when I hunt there, it’s crazy. We’re sitting say on one side of the hole up in the willows hidden and the decoys are in front of us like we know, set up with the wind like we know they’re going to be but what I like to do is I like to put a couple of mojos about 10 or 15 yards to my immediate right on line with me right up against the same willow trees I’m hiding in and what those birds will do a lot of times they’re just, those 08:30, 09:30 gadwalls are not going to, usually sometimes they will but usually generally speaking they like to hang up, they’re not going to just kill it, come right into the kill hole like we want the duck to do. But boy, if I can put those mojos right here and put them in that corner like I like to put them what those birds will do is instead of coming through the gap and setting up over the decoys they’ll hang, they’ll drift and they float and they’ll come right over us at about 25 yards high and boy, let me tell you what if I’m out with my team, the guys that I hunt with, you don’t have to say nothing, they know all you got to do give them a little whistle and they know these round, they know when those birds are floating right above us, they’re not coming in, but they’re coming, they’re floating over to look at that motion, they can’t see it because it’s obscured by trees but they can get bits and gaps of the motion sometimes and they’re hanging over and it’s just make them rain. So, they’re not coming in to kill a hole eyeball level with you, they’re hanging right above you, belly showing they’re 25 yards above you just floating and that’s when we start scoring gadwalls, that’s just the day in day out way to score gadwall for me. That’s how it works for me.

Rocky Leflore: I think spinning wing decoy, thanks for jumping to that one Ramsey, because that is one of the points that I had listed but when it comes to a spinning wing decoy I like to obscure mine a little bit like you’re talking about. I will put it closer to me than I normally would. If I’m in a cypress break and I’m in a group of trees, I’ll put that sucker to somewhere and I like to put it right up under an overhanging live where they’re just catching flashes of it.

Ramsey Russell: Exactly, yep. And my late season strategy, when we’ve got those kind of late season when we’re dealing primarily with local birds instead of with local stale birds instead of with new birds, new birds behave differently but when I’m dealing with – I mean it’s funny how a bird can get stale on mojo or anything up in southern Missouri, but then he flies 2 hour to south or whatever and he’s a brand new dumb bird again, that’s what I mean. They act stupid when they go up for the first time. But those late seasons when the birds start, like here’s the deal here, Ramsey’s game plan in the morning, right off the back 15 minutes for shooting time, I put the mojos exactly where I want to kill the birds right out in the kill hole, but soon as that sun comes up and hits him after about 45 minutes or so, usually I’m going to move that bird, let the birds still, the minute they start acting funny, what I’ll end up doing is setting that mojo somewhere that they could – because they are attracted from a long distance to that spinning wing decoys but I’m going to set it up somewhere that they can be attracted to the area but when they get set up for the home stretch into the kill hole, they cannot see that decoy. They can see it when they see it up on their work and they see it when they’re east, north, south, they cannot see it when they set up on its final descent, that mojo is not staring at them. And that’s how I use the mojo definitive. And there were times like we hunt a lot of coffee weed and buck brush and things that nature, I will set those mojo from the start I will set those mojo at the margin of shooting range, completely out off the track way for coming into decoys but it’s out there, it’s obscured probably from my sight it’s out there. The birds can see it from high but as they start to work low, it’s a non-equation anymore. So, I’ve used the flash to attract birds but it does not interfere at all or influenced bird at all on how he finishes, that’s the pure setup of the decoys and the call and the concealment and all those good things like that but I can tell you this, if old bird does set up around that mojo, he’s killable because it’s not 50 yards away, it’s 35, 37, 40 yards somewhere in that range away, where if he does set up on it, I can kill him.

Rocky Leflore: Well, I’ll say this about the gadwall. Next point would be and that was extremely well put Ramsey really, really good. But the thing that I notice about a gadwall, this would have been my one be earlier would have been scouting. Scouting is never more important when it comes to gadwall, when that’s the main bird that you’re going to be shooting, especially in these flood, cypress breaks of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana scouting is never more important because usually wherever you see them that afternoon, that’s the first place. They’re almost like a snow goose. That’s the first place they’re coming back to that following morning that they like.

Josh Webb: Yeah, they can be real particular on a place. I agree with that. There’s places that we hunt and from a distance you think, okay cool, we can just go get off in there and kill them and we learned that the hard way years ago is no, for whatever reason they like that 10 by 10 circle in all that buck brush more than they like the 30 yard long hole just it is what it is. But yeah, you’re exactly right in that Rocky.

Ramsey Russell: I agree with that. I think, I’d say that with hunting any duck though, you got to remember about those break. Those ducks are using those breaks and a lot of our different habitats you see the ducks and they’re using it for different reasons, like, I’ve come to long conclusion having hunting at willow break and fooled around with a habitat, been involved with a habitat and just watching birds there for 17 years, I believe like the universal thing is farm for ducks, millet and feed the ducks and if you want to own the duck feed, you got to dump corn. Because I believe a lot of our habitats, that I hunt birds are utilizing to get back on point willow break, the birds are utilizing willow break to eat some, primarily our attraction is intermediary hole. It’s where the birds are coming, what I call day ruse And that’s really how I like to hunt the bird and if you’re telling me, if you’re hunting in that habitat, if you’re telling me, and like I can tell you it willow break when there’s mallards in the area, we’re going to kill more mallard around 10 o’clock than we are in daylight. And the reason is those bird, wherever they’re roosting, wherever they’re flying off the drink, wherever they’re going to feed, when they’re ready to lay up at intermission time, they’re coming to that kind of habitat to lay up midday to preying to climb up on logs and oil themselves to put them off with a hen and talk sweet talk, they’re coming in to do another one of their life cycle requirements that need midday primarily, that’s my thoughts on it. And if you understand why that bird is coming in where he is and I think it’s a whole different set up in an approach that that’s just my take on it. I see the birds do eat coon tail a lot the gadwall do, but then they want to come in and just relax and maintain themselves in the quiet shadows out of the wind and just kind of do duck things that don’t involve eating and it’s a whole different ball game.

Josh Webb: And Ramsey talking about that, that kind of approach is the reason I started years ago 8, 9 years ago now. I mean the opportunity is there. If there are logs or stumps or anything sticking up out of the water, I stick full body decoys on them. It just gives off – when you ride by a breaker, you see ducks hanging out and when they’re just being themselves, they’re up on logs there up on stumps, they’re sitting there and they’re just hanging out and they’re not talking a lot and they’re just there and that time of day that’s when we also our places similar to that Ramsey, it’s usually better mid to late morning and that’s the ducks we’re killing, they’re just looking, they’re loafing around looking for other ducks that are – they’re doing what they want to be doing just chilling that’s it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they can’t always eat. The two principle ways of duck loses energy is through its feet, this bill and being able to, being there to climb up on that log and sit down on his feet he gets to conserve that energy and they got to do different things besides just eat and poop. We gave my kids some Easter ducks one time, the big old white Aflac ducks whenever little chicks and we had those things for every, it was so interesting because they were kind of pets, the dogs didn’t bother them of course the dog kennel, but they were kind of pets is like I wake up in the morning come a make coffee pot, they would sleep right by the back door. And in a minute I flipped on the light man they started talking. We go out there and take a little bit, finally we had to get rid of and put them on the farm because the only two things the duck does really young ducks, you can say this, the duck does two things, eat and shit, that’s all a ducks does. If you live near geese, you can say the same thing but really there are subtle lifecycle requirement of duck has to conserve energy, has to fly, he have to find resources, he has a pair bond, he had to maintain himself, he has to oil his feathers all the time or he’ll get wet and they can’t just do that when they’re eating, they have to go off to the quiet places we’re talking about and I think it’s integral to how we set up, but guys, seriously two things Rocky lead off the show one, but on the show doing that call and I really believe that speaking their language makes the difference. When you go off to some parts of the world, electronic calls are legal and over in Azerbaijan, they have state of the art, world class, electronic calls, I mean very, very nice recordings. And not only does it have the different species gadwall, pintail, mallard, wigeon all these different calls, but they even have little cycles. Like you’ve been out there for 30, 40 minutes and you see that there’s a preponderance of certain species, well, I can put the pin tail and the gadwall flying, sound playing simultaneously. I can put together a call scenario and I can tune one out and add another one and do different things and man, let me tell you, we put it on gadwall and those gadwalls were just killing it, they were killing that sound is what I’m saying. They were digging it. It wasn’t a mallard talking to them, it was a gadwall. Now, as we learn to call like Rocky does or like Forrest does, if we learn to utilize that call and talk their language, we can probably coax them in a little bit better. And the first time I bought gadwall decoys way back when, I about a half dozen and I just set them out there by themselves and what I realized was a lot of gadwalls that were doing it, were doing it over those six gadwall decoys. Not over the general decoys, but given a choice, I’ve got the mallards, I got a bunch of mallards out here and duck, but I got those six little gadwalls sitting out there by God, those six little gadwall and I had heard somebody tell them say one time that, if you set those gadwalls off from your spread, just a little bit, just on the lee side, downwind side, just a little bit of your principal spread that the gadwalls would respond to him and I’ve seen that be the case, well now because the gadwall is a bread and butter duck, I’ve swapped over where I put a lot of gadwalls decoys out and I think it really works. Because birds of a feather flock together.

Rocky Leflore: Are you reading my list? How can you see my list? This is crazy.

Ramsey Russell: No, I just kill gadwalls.

Rocky Leflore: I mean, it’s just like you’re working down my list and I’m telling you, people just listen to us, we didn’t talk about these points, pre-production, pre podcast. Nobody knew what I had my list written out but anyway, response to a call, never more is it important to mimic a gadwall. Don’t worry about hitting that if you need to turn one. Yeah, you probably can do it with that. But it’s never more important. Just like Ramsey said, whether it be with decoys or the call to mimic the gadwall, learn how to make a gadwall sound. Great point Ramsey.

“You know I’m saying, I’ve got this call in my hand, I got to use it, but I think sometimes the best call is no call.”

Ramsey Russell: All I can do is call. I cannot beep into my call like Forrest can I’ve tried, I cannot make his note sounds like a gadwall or sounds like a gadwall to my deaf ears. But my gadwall call is just a touch into a mallard call. Boy, that sounds like a gadwall but it’s different, it’s not a mallard call and it works enough to make them comfortable. And truth the matter is, if nothing else, if you’ve got the movement going on, if you got your setup right, if you’re in the right place, just being quiet. The truth the matter is, just being quiet, sometimes like in business in life, sometimes no answer is the right answer. Sometimes duck hunting, no sound is the best sound. If the ducks are working, especially gadwalls, let them work, let them float around and sort it out and because if they’re working – I never forget one time as an example, it was, I don’t know, it must have been five or six years ago, the South Delta was dead man and what ducks we had were, they were shell shocked man, they were war weary. There was no new birds in the state of Mississippi that I’m aware of and where we were I don’t think, I think that, that last week of season, I was not putting out a mojo, I was not putting out a spread. A good friend of mine Ranch Elin came down from Ohio and we’re hunting a little spot in the afternoons and we knew we weren’t going to limit, but he showed up in the afternoon, we want to go out and shoot a few ducks and I left the camp with one green head and two gadwalls, a pair of gadwalls decoys, that’s it. And I put this mallard way in the heck – we didn’t have a pattern, we didn’t have a hole, we’re just hunting area that we shot ducks in before and I put this one gadwall kind of out here and shadows by himself and I put this pair of gadwalls over and under and we had a flock of – just kind of breakdown 6 gadwalls and they come out of nowhere, broke down and kept on going. I didn’t make a sound, I told Ranch don’t call and those birds disappeared and when they got passed over and I couldn’t see them because they were beyond the trees behind us, I just called, that was it, didn’t make another sound, I just called didn’t make another sound. And 5 or 10 minutes later, out of absolutely nowhere, I mean they hit the top of the button bush, we were sitting up in when they came in and all six of them, son of a gun that made up their mind and they were coming right into that pair of gadwalls we killed all six of them. And that was the afternoon. That was our hunt that afternoon. But it’s just letting the ducks work because they were going somewhere else. Look, they were still working that body of water we were in, we just let them know we were there after they couldn’t see us and it was natural it wasn’t no come back call one, was no kind of competition call is a, we had made a single sound then we just shut up and like, well they’re going to do what they’re going to do and it was nothing more than just a pair of gadwalls out there, they came in low and knocking, limbs when they came over our head to land on them two gadwalls and we killed all six of them done. I think a lot of times we do tend to over call and man, look, I heard of Bill Cooksey somebody talk about call and being quite 30 seconds at the time, and I’m a terrible caller, it takes a lot of strength for me not to make a noise. You know I’m saying, I’ve got this call in my hand, I got to use it, but I think sometimes the best call is no call. And I would say Forrest had been there as soon as they got past as he started gadwall calling and that probably would’ve worked great too.

“Rocky, do you have anything left to follow that will or is your list just gone thrown out the door?”

Josh Webb: Rocky, do you have anything left to follow that will or is your list just gone thrown out the door?

Rocky Leflore: No, that’s well that’s it.

Josh Webb: I’m glad man. I love –

Rocky Leflore: The only thing that I’ve got left and I’ll say this, the thing that for those of you listening to this episode, you’ll find that 06:30 gadwall different and the 08:30 gadwalls different. There’s going to be a lot like your wife one day you walk in, they’re going to be happy, next time you see them they’re weird and don’t know what the heck is going on. Your old high school girl with snakes in her head, high school girlfriend, that’s the best explanation for a gadwall. But I will say this to close out this podcast, the open water gadwalls when you’re trying to kill these gadwalls in the field, there are a lot like the pin tail. Bill Cooksey said it best and Patt on that podcast where we’re talking about pin tails, you better shoot them on the first or second pass because that’s probably the closest they’re going to get to you and you better turn that mojo off in the field because they will – I just don’t like them for some reason.

Ramsey Russell: I agree with that. I entirely agree with that. I agree entirely that. Well, the thing about it is when you’re hunting in wide open fields, especially dealing with gadwalls you’re dealing with a bird that works differently and they can see it and figure it out, they can see it figured out. The habitats that Josh and I hunt, Jim hunt, a lot of us in Mississippi hunt for gadwalls is totally different than a wide open sections big or half section big body of water and we’ve got a spot there at willow break that is probably 40 acres and it’s mostly open water and they’re very, very difficult to finish those birds again because we do have some cover around, we hunt up in the pockets of cover, we utilize those mojos in such a way, in a little quiet out of the way areas, but we’re trying to hunt that main body water, which we have to in the south wind, they’re very difficult to hunt because they’re not coming in there to feed, they’re coming there to lay up and they know and really and truly a lot of birds, not just gadwalls but a lot of birds, they find refuge and protection by being out in the middle of nowhere on open water and when you’re sitting there hunting a big body of open water, you got all these decoys around you, I know you’ve got all the stuff going on, but they can land anywhere and get the equal protection and if they’re a little weary or whatever they want, they can do, you know, they can go 100 yards away, 150 yards away, 200 yards away and set up and just be among themselves and get the benefit of that open water protection, so they’ve got choices. You know what I’m saying? When you’re hunting in those little potholes or these timber areas of these little holes and stuff, they really don’t have maybe as many options as they have in that vast open water, but dear, you’re dead on. And man, I’m going to tell you, just like those guys said, first half and now, hey, go back to my first rule number one, even hunting these habitats we’re talking about opened my rule number one, is killing gadwall when you can. And I really say that on other ducks too and I’m guilty of it. When I started duck hunting really got into a big, the limit of mallards was two, I was hunting up on some public timber in Arkansas with a fraternity brother and Mr. Boyd who was the chief of police there in West Helena, he was the straw boss. It was his hunt, we followed his lead and I was kind of knew hunting ducks like that hunting ducks with decoy and all that kind of stuff in general and their whole game and their whole process was a decoying those birds landing those birds, landing them. Landing those birds and of course going whole Ramsey there, never seen anything like it what, first flock of birds came in and I aired out, he scolded me, he said Ramsey, anybody can shoot a bird, anybody can shoot a mallard, he said the game is landing them, owning them, we want to own them, that’s our game. There was always a child or a woman or somebody around and they let them shoot a bird on the water and then the birds got up, we shot and what it was just like just tremendous amount of sports skill and shoot a flushing mallard that’s fine. The art to them was coaching those flocks in and landing them on the water and enjoying that moment that you owned those birds and you were just shooting them because you’re hunting and a whole ideal but now you can’t really apply that like I say, mallards wrote the book we’re playing by mallard rules, those are mallard rules, you really can’t own that on every other duck because every other duck, just ain’t going to buy it a mallard rule, they’re not mallard. And so, I think, when we start branching out on other species and other habitats and around the world, rule number one is to shoot the duck and if you duck hunting and you got to bend the rules a little bit, you got to learn the rules a little bit better.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, well it has been a – I think we’ve covered everything to do with the gadwall, I hope that the guys that are listening to this, I hope these rules and these tips will stick in the back of your mind as gadwalls start working in this winter, you’ll think about some of these things that we talked about today. Ramsey, thank you for being here, Josh, the gadwall expert, hey thank you for being here. I want to thank all of you that listened to this edition of The End of The Line podcast powered by ducksouth.com.

[End of Audio]

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