If I could give a color to diver-duck shooting, and I can because I'm writing this hunting diver ducks tips and guide, I'd color it blue.
Blue is the color of the bill of the most popular diver ducks since the canvasback and redhead started to go the route of the bison, the whooping crane and 32 cents a gallon gas. These are the ducks I want on the pin of my rifle scope to hit.
Understanding Diver Duck Nature
I'm talking about bluebills (lesser scaup) and broadbills (greater scaup). These two species are the mainstay of diver shooters today, and probably for years to come. Nesting farther north and west than either cans or redheads, they are less likely to be disturbed by some guy with the IQ of a fence rail and the keys to a bulldozer.
Besides heavy overshooting for the market, the canvasback and redhead became victims of several forces that conspired to - put them down for the count.
First, they taste almost too good. Secondly, they were almost too trusting. A good stool of blocks and a few toots on your call to get their attention, and you were in business. Thirdly, they are a wing shooter’s ultimate test.
How Diver Ducks React
Trying to hit a downwind can is extremely challenging and difficult; doing so is a noteworthy feat. Unfortunately, nesting grounds too close to the population centers of the United States was the ultimate enemy of the canvasback and redhead.
The Scaup don't have that problem-at least they won't until some infidel in a business suit decides that a K-mart can be built on top of permafrost. Still you can manage to hit it with duck hunting decoy tips.
Blue is also the color that we associate with the fingers of your typical diver hunter on your typical diver hunting day. The best days to hunt these birds is when the Weather conditions place the human participants very near to death. You can literally die of exposure in a deep-water bluebill blind.
If you tip over out there, make sure you've named your executor. Divers are tough, too. Up where they live, Snow and ice are facts of life practically all year long, so they really won't move down until freeze-up comes and the food supply turns white.
Because of this, many states have extended seasons to let shooters get in on the late-migrating Scaup.
These bonus birds are often liberally limited in the game laws, too. While the mallard hunter often enjoys his shooting on naive, young birds in sometimes bluebird weather, the diver hunter has his inning when his fingers turn to Stove wood, his nose is but a memory, and his toes are a cruel joke.
The Midwest, especially the Great Lakes, gets its share of diver shooting, but the coasts, especially the East, are the strongholds of the diving-duck clan: bluebills, broadbills, Scoters, goldeneyes (whistlers), ringnecks (ring-bills), buffleheads (butterballs), ruddy ducks and the mergansers (fish ducks).
Diver duck hunting guides
To put it bluntly, in my opinion, the divers are not what you could call 'overly-intellectually gifted. Compared to some gun educated mallards or those wary spooks, black ducks, most of the divers, even in heavily-gunned areas, are a shade or two above a box of rocks in the smarts department.
Still, you have to know what you're doing to take limits of these birds and stay alive in the process. Divers are also the birds of lore and legend. In his mind's eye, the hunter of today sees himself braving the elements, squinting into the distance to catch that first flash of underbelly as the birds streak out of the leaden, Snow-Spitting Sky and make their first Sonic blast over his blocks.
So, hunting these ducks can still be tricky if you do not have enough knowledge and tips on hunting down diver ducks. Let us find out how we can hunt down these ducks easily.
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