Since that time, I've suddenly become much more patient when faced with pea soup fog. Instead of cursing and heading for home, I settle in and wait for the skies to clear. While doing so, my partners and I help pass the time by telling stories of past hunts, plan future hunts and tell jokes. It's a jovial time, because experience has shown that when the fog eventually lifts, the birds will come hard and fast, making for some memorable hunting action.
It seems that ground fog doesn't really impact waterfowl as much as pea soup fog and in most cases, the birds will leave their roosts and fly out to feed on their normal flight patterns. The only real difference is that ground level fog sometimes impacts their visibility as they fly out to feed and the birds can end up feeding in different locations.
When hunting under such conditions, I try to use as many decoys as I possibly can and spread them out much farther than normal to try and increase my odds of being seen by birds on the wing. In addition to bigger and wider decoy spreads, I try to call as loudly and aggressively as I can with hopes of attracting any birds that cannot see my spread. Over the past few years, this tactic has served me well when hunting waterfowl during ground fog conditions.
Wind
There's nothing worse than having the wind direction change in the middle of a hunt. When such an event happened, it used to involve a great effort on my behalf to move decoys, relocate the landing zone and reposition blinds. After being caught in the open on one too many occasions and missing out on some prime shooting opportunities, I figured there had to be a better and quicker method to change things up when the wind suddenly changed directions.
After lots of experimenting with decoy spreads and blind placement, I discovered that an "X" pattern is my best decoy pattern option to use on hunts when there's the possibility of a wind change. In reality, my pattern is a "Fat X". The main body of this X contains my blinds and the bulk of my decoys. The intersecting lines of the X are formed by running strings of decoys to represent birds landing and walking up to the main spread and birds walking away from the main spread to spread out and feed. In most situations, I make each intersecting line of decoys 30 yards long, so that no matter which way I'm facing, I always know when birds are within shooting range.
Snow on the backs of dekes...an ongoing problem for inclement weather waterfowlers.
By setting up my decoys in this "Fat X" pattern, I actually create four potential landing zones and the potential for numerous quick variations of each landing zone depending on the wind direction. If the wind changes in a multiple of 90 degrees, all that's needed on my behalf is a simple repositioning of head positions on my walkers and quick shift of my blinds. If the wind shifts on a direction that's not a multiple of 90 degrees, all I need to do is reposition a line of walkers, change the head positions of the decoys in the other lines and spin the blinds.
When setting up the main body of my "Fat X", I deploy my decoys in a multitude of directions as opposed to having the bulk facing into the prevailing wind direction. By doing so, I never have to reposition any of those decoys when the wind changes and my switch over to the next landing zone is smooth and quick.
Before each hunt, I go to great efforts to watch the weather forecast to determine which direction the wind will blow from. If the forecast is for changing wind directions, I now go with my "Fat X" setup.
Snow
I generally find hunting in the snow a very rewarding experience. Unfortunately, I've also found that hunting in the snow can prove to be frustrating. Therefore, in order to turn the odds in my favor, I take a few extra precautions when hunting in snow covered fields that I wouldn't normally take when hunting in non-snow covered fields.
On days when the fields are covered in snow, I change the way I setup my decoys to reduce the effects of vehicle tire tracks around my spread. My general decoy set up routine prior to snow on the ground is to drive up to my hunting spot from the down wind side, shine the head lights of my truck onto the area where the decoys are to be set up and then proceed to set up from the downwind end and work forward into the wind. Once everything is set up, I back my rig out of the area and drive away.
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