Getting the Teal Pond Ready

Teal season opens on September 15th and runs through September 30th.  My buddy Gary called me and the boys and I met him this past Saturday morning.  It was a beautiful day to be alive.  Gary had stopped up the pond and caught some free rainwater.  We hooked up a plow to the back of Gary's ATV and he began plowing in the flooded duck pond.  The idea is to knock down enough stubble in the field to open up a "hole" where the ducks can see water and light on the pond with the decoys.

We began plowing planks to open up the pond.  Smelly, decomposing grass began floating to the top. Ducks can find plenty to eat in the pond.  I'll tell you what else was finding plenty to eat at our pond - mosquitoes!  They are terrible right now.

Now it was time to go ahead and put the decoys out in the pond.  The decoys in the blue tubs are many years old.  Gary purchased some new teal decoys to add to our mallard drake and hen decoys.

Gary is going to work the pond up with his plow one more time prior to opening day as there was still a lot of grass floating, but we put the decoys out just to see how it looked.  I think we'll be ready for them!

There is plenty of tall bitterweed and cane grass to hide behind at the pond's edge, so we'll just bring 5 gallon buckets to sit on while we hunt.  There is a daily bag limit of 6 birds.  It would be nice to get our limit.  Cooler weather will be here soon and we'd like to build a nice inventory of teal in the freezer from which to make duck gumbo this winter.