Thread: Decoy setups on large ponds

Asking for the people's 10c who shoot on big ponds, particularly irrigation. What do you do about ducks sitting in the middle of the pond or away from the spread in un shootable ranges. Do/did you increase your spread, more motion decoys, better calling, float buckets where you don't want them to land. We already run a big/decent spread mixture of floaters, full bodies, motion decoys, geese, swans etc etc). We float buckets in the corners to try flare the ducks from where we cant shoot, but still isn't perfect. Am I better to increase the spread even more to compensate for the large amount of ducks that live on the pond, get more motion decoys, or more full bodies and replicate a safe group roosting along the bank, or just accept the fact we will never get them all? Side note we use well covered laydown blinds so it isn't a issue of them seeing us and going to the middle.
Cheers in advance.

I've shot irrigation ponds a handful of times and been frustrated by the ducks behavior like you. We were very successful once and the ducks did exactly what we wanted. The difference was the weather. Our successful hunt was in strong wing and rain. I personally would not hunt an irrigation pond again in fine weather. Now in saying all that I haven’t hunted irrigation ponds on opening or early season.

we ,,,,,,, and laydown blinds ,,,,,,,,,,therein lies your answer???????.
set up with someone else over in another part of pond with no more than six decoys set in really close.
if that still isnt enough invite more folks untill you have it covered safely.... and contemplate a box or two of the superdupergarycooper HSS stuff to stretch barrels perhaps.

Laydown blinds for a quick relocation. And get a decent length of 20-25mm floating rope and make a big circle where you want the ducks to land, suspend it on a few milk bottles if need be. And add the occasional anchor on a string to hold it roughly in place. Put all your decoys in the enclosure and all the ducks will land inside the roped off area. Dont ask me why, Im not up with the way a duck thinks, but it seems to work. Might be something to do with the water inside the enclosure is usually nice and still and outside it gets affected by the wind and ripples up.........who knows.

One of our ponds is pretty long and skinny, but you can only shoot in one spot. We've got a buoy tied to a long bit of rope on a old electric fence reel that you let loose, bobs to the surface and scares the ducks towards the shooting posse.

Great ideas, thanks

mallards GENERALLY wont land amoung parries...... so if game to do so,set all your parries off to one side where you dont want mallards,be best to have a gun covering them though..cause..you know what parries are like,nothing then a hundy turn up at once LOL.
I would be reluctant to use any real scare off tactic as around here irrigation ponds are everywhere,its not uncommon to see 4-500 birds on a pond and more on another close by...saw one absolutely black with canada geese last week....