Photos by Bill Buckley.

When heading afield for a waterfowl hunt, there are many variables such as where, when and how to hunt that I can control. However, there is one major variable that I simply have no control over. That variable is weather. Since there is no changing the weather, I've learned to adapt my hunting styles and tactics to the conditions that Mother Nature throws my way. Weather conditions that I typically encounter throughout a season of waterfowling require different tactics for different situations.

Frost
There comes a time each hunting season, where the daytime temperatures are above the freezing mark, yet the night time temperatures plummet and dip below the freezing mark just prior to sunrise. When this happens, a blanket of frost generally starts to form on any and everything, including decoys.

As soon as the sun starts to rise and warm up the countryside, the frost will start to burn off causing decoys to get wet and glare. This unnatural glare is quickly spotted by keen eyed waterfowl causing them to flare.

After having the effects of frost spoiling lots of my hunts, I figured there had to be a way to overcome and successfully hunt on frosty mornings. At first, I tried downsizing my spreads and waiting until just before legal shooting time to set out my decoys. On some mornings, it seemed the decoys wouldn't frost up as much as if they were put out an hour earlier. However, this wasn't fool proof, because my decoys sporadically frosted up and I occasionally got caught short setting up decoys. Therefore, I kept searching for a better method.

In conjunction with setting out fewer decoys just at sunrise, I started keeping my decoys outside the night prior to a hunt. My reasoning was that instead of going from a warm garage or trailer directly into a cold field, the decoys would cool with the outside environment and not be as prone to frost. While this helped reduce the effects of frost, it seemed that frost would still form on my cool decoys.

Over the course of a morning, frost will eventually melt, turn to water on the decoys and then eventually dry. However, when birds are approaching and being turned away by shiny wet decoys, the burn off process doesn't happen fast enough. Thus, I started taking a handful of towels into the field and wiped down the backs and heads of decoys with the towels to help speed up the drying process.

A good bunch of harsh weather Canadas.

Finally, a couple years ago, I discovered fully flocked decoys. What impresses me the most about these decoys is that they don't frost up as much as regular decoys and even when they do frost up, they do not glare or shine when the frost starts to melt. Instead, the flocking absorbs the moisture and the decoys simply get a little darker.

Now when frost is in the forecast, I'll use a spread of fully flocked decoys. Since they don't frost up like painted decoys, I get set up early and don't hold back on the size of my decoy spread.

Fog
Over the years, I've encountered all kinds of foggy situations while hunting. However, I typically classify fog in two ways. Pea soup fog is heavy fog so thick you can barely see your own hand when you stick it out front of your face. This type of fog also seems to linger for long periods of time and can hang around well past mid morning. Ground fog is the wispy fog that forms at night when the temperatures drop rapidly. In most instances, ground fog isn't overly thick and usually burns off shortly after sunrise.

From my experiences, pea soup fog will suppress bird activity and keep them on their roosts until the fog burns off. In years past, I found these situations very frustrating because there was no bird activity. My patience level would quickly wear thin and within an hour after sunrise, I would have had enough. The entire spread would be packed up and my buddies and I would go home disappointed.

Several years ago on one such outing, the fog was so thick we didn't dare try to pack up and head for home. Instead, we settled into our blinds and waited for the fog to lift until we could see well enough to go home. At about 11 a.m., the fog started lifting enough that we figured we should start picking up of decoys. Within minutes, the fog completely disappeared and bright blue skies were around us. Thankfully, we hadn't picked up too many decoys as the distinct sounds of calling geese could be heard. Looking back toward the direction we anticipated the birds to come from, we saw flock after flock of geese coming at us. The few decoys we had packed up got set out haphazardly. We then jumped back into our blinds and were treated to some of the fastest goose hunting action of the season.