Killing Time in the Duck Blind

Anthony Hauck

Anthony Hauck is the public relations specialist at Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever's national headquarters. He grew up on a farm in western Minnesota and now lives in White Bear Lake. He loves to hunt pheasants, Hungarian partridge, grouse, woodcock, waterfowl and deer.

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Killing Time in the Duck Blind

Posted by: Anthony Hauck Updated: October 30, 2009 - 2:35 PM

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Spend any amount of time in a duck blind, and there are a few certainties. Birds will always appear while someone is throwing out the decoys or while the spread is being rearranged. Ducks will always land where you were going to set up. No matter how many sets of eyes, one duck will manage to elude them all and make a perfect landing into the spread unscathed.

And you will also go slightly insane. Wait long enough for the flocks to appear, and the human mind can devolve. To combat this as best you can, the conversations sometimes fly more than the ducks. On a recent North Dakota hunt with a couple of southern gents, James Overstreet and Steve Bowman from ESPNOutdoors.com, we killed more time than ducks, and tried to come up with as many of the nicknames for our favorite species as possible – turns out these boys from Arkansas had a few this Yankee had never heard of (see if you can tell which ones below). If you have any to add to the list, post 'em below, and happy hunting!

Drakes – Bulls
Hens – Suzies
American Wigeon – Baldpates
Buffleheads – Buffies, Buffaloes
Canada Geese – Canadians, Canadas, Honkers
Canvasbacks – Cans, Silverbacks
Common Goldeneyes – Whistlers
Gadwalls - Gads
Northern Pintail – Pinners, Sprig
Northern Shoveler – Spoonbills, Bootlips, Smilin' Mallards
Mallards – Greenheads, Greenies
Ring-necked Duck – Ringers, Blackjacks
Scaup – Bluebills, Blues, Blue Williams
Snow Geese – Sky Rats
White-fronted Geese – Specklebellies, Specs
Woodducks – Woodies, Woodrows