I have always waited for the ducks to land in front of me, then I Identify the ducks I want and spook em up and cut em !

But most other people I see calling ducks shoot the ducks before they even settle. whats there logic? all there doing Is training the ducks to shy away from calls and deks?

If I do shoot jumpshoot ducks I wait until they are the size of the end of my barrell.


I believe its unethical to skybust.

In my humble opinion, allowing ducks to settle in your decoys before spooking them for easy shots is unsporting behavior. The duck is at an extreme disadvantage in that situation. Personally, I would not be comfortable practicing that as a method of hunting.

The way most hunt ducks is to attract flocks with decoys and calls and when in range, shooting. This provides for split second decisions to be made and shots that vary between easy to impossibly hard. The other method is jump shooting, which basically involves hunting ducks like upland birds, flushing them as closely as possible. This provides a challange B/c it's extremely hard to sneak up on ducks.

But there isn't a challenge in spooking ducks off your decoys after they land. The ducks have at that point become "Sitting ducks," with little challenge to the hunter. I'm not a big fan of duck meat anyway, but I just don't think it's worth having more birds in the bag if you have to pretty much trap the birds on the water. Personally, I don't need that much time to decide what's a drake/hen.. that is what hunting is all about.

"sky busting" is the practice of shooting flying ducks that are nearly or out of gun range. Of course that is unethical and there isn't anyone that would say it was effective at bringing down any bird. It's just a problem that the inexperienced and frustrated can't help but do from time to time.

Cwu:
Thanks for the responce.
But the chalange Isn"t just the shooting
in early seson I do cut birds on the in fly some of the time but where I hunt the birds learn verry fast to how people hunt just the average
joe duck hunter cant get ducks to sit or even atempt to sit in their deks. But as for me I love duck meat. my point of this thred is when you can't hit why shoot and wound. It seams to me that alot ofthe pepole are just to excited because of the amuont of mergansers that I see left behind in bushes. most of the hunters Iv come in contact whith cant even I dentafy
what kind of water fowl thay have.

Assalyan...
Seen a lot of irresponsible shooting at waterfowl over the years.
I think the prior response was directing you toward the fact that their is a huge difference between real "skybusting" and responsible shooting over dekes.
I define skybusting as shooting at ducks that are at marginal range or beyond. The ducks could be simply flying by (pass shooting) or flying by the spread for a look,jumping off the water, or in the worst scenario, working some other hunters' spread.
I've seen hunters shoot at ducks repeatedly at 60-70+ yards (geese MUCH farther) with no apparent effect but a couple of cripples. Why they do this, I'm not sure. Boredom sometimes? False hope- ie. they once knocked one down from that distance? Can't control impulses? The common factor seems to be that they lack the hunting skills and knowledge to pull birds closer.

For me with steel shot I would say my responsible range is inside 40 yards (preferably much closer). I kill ducks regularly by pass-shooting and jump-shooting, but mostly I hunt over decoys. I select my shots carefully, and I kill most of the birds I shoot at stone dead. Most of them when they are "locked-up" or at least flying over the spread.

I don't know where you hunt, but in our area even as hard as my partners and I work at it, we would not get much shooting if we waited for the ducks to actually land before flushing and shooting them. We get "educated" ducks to come close enough to kill, but the vast majority will spook before actually setting down. We do not take risky shots. We cripple very few birds and almost never lose one.

I'm not even sure it would be an advantage to shoot ducks jumping off the water. Most shots in that case must be "going away" targets (tougher feathers, less exposed vitals).
What could be a surer kill than "incomers" with their wings spread with head/chest area exposed? Granted, direction makes little difference on a duck you hit with the center of the pellet spread at short range.

To summarize I agree that skybusting=verybad!
But there is certainly nothing wrong with shooting at birds coming in to your spread; generations of waterfowlers can't be all wrong!

gsiegel;
Iagree With what you sed, I hunt western
mostly Mason Co. I had A fairly nice Spot that nobody new about then one morning thier where about 6 other gys thier and it whent to hell in hand basket rill fast With my gun 40 yards is the same as the birds head and tail fethers just bigger than the baral. Do you hunt alot At the public places?