Waterfowl ID: The American Wigeon

What Is a Wigeon Duck?

Non-hunters ask this question a lot. Flocks of American Wigeon congregate each January on the rolling lawns of the city park where I take my lunch break. And routinely, I’ll overhear stroller-pushing moms and power-suited businessmen gasp, gape, and fumble for their phones as a flight of sixty cottontops buzzes the rhododendrons to splash down in the fountain. “What ARE those?” they’ll ask. They’re wigeon, my friends. And they’re wonderful.

How Do You Identify a Wigeon Duck?

Your ears may tip you off before your eyes. Wigeon are vocal birds, and the trademark “who-HEE-whoo” whistle is often the first indicator Mr. Widge has dropped in for a visit. When it comes to appearance, drakes are easy to pick out from a crowd. The white puff on the crown (hence the nickname “cottontop”) and iridescent green eyemask contrast with the hen’s subdued plumage, but both drakes and hens sport a warmer, almost blush-colored hue from the neck down come breeding season. In terms of size, wigeon are the classic “extra-medium”: bigger than a teal, smaller than a mallard – just right for the grill.

Wigeon Identification Hack: Watch the wing patches. It’s often not until January that drakes don their full winter garb. And even then, juvenile drakes can be nearly indistinguishable from hens until their second season of maturity. But you know what’s always in place? Those bold white wing patches above the specula on every age class of wigeon males. If you want to shoot a limit of cottontop drakes, zero in on the flashes of white and smash the trigger.

How Do You Hunt Wigeon Ducks?

It’s hard to think of someone more qualified to answer this question than Joel Meeteer of Wenatchee, Washington. Joel is a board member of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Waterfowl Advisory Group who spends over 80 days annually on the water. He’s also hunted wigeon from Canada to Mexico, but especially on the broad waters of the Columbia. “I estimate our crew has put 3,000 wigeon on the ground over the last decade, conservatively,” humble Joel will admit, if you press him. This guy knows how to kill a cottontop. And here are some of his tips.

How Do You Scout For Wigeon Ducks?

“Find the coots,” says Joel. Wigeon aren’t just known as “the robber duck” because of that suspicious green eye mask; wigeon are aggressive social feeders who don’t think twice about snatching food that other waterfowl (like coots) have rooted out. Same goes for geese and swans, in crop fields and sheetwater. So if you spot a group of bigger birds when you’re scouting, pull out your binos and scan the ground closely. You’re likely to spy some crafty cottontops pulling at the leftovers.

Wigeon Scouting Hack: Deploy a trail camera. Since wigeon are frequent land-feeders and shore-feeders, you can set a trail camera in a likely patch of browse just like you would for whitetail deer. Green grass is ideal (the wigeon hunting on turf and grass seed farms in the Pacific Flyway is legendary,) as are the pockets of shallow sheetwater in a flooded crop field. Find a spot with muddy wigeon tracks and curling green droppings (just like a Canada goose, but smaller and softer) and stake your cell cam in the mud, then wait for the notifications. As with all waterfowl hunting, though, you’ll want to strike quick when the wigeon are in town. Flocks can destroy a feed quicky, and weather patterns could send your birds 350 miles south overnight. As Ben Franklin said (right?): “The nimble hunter whacks the wigeon," or something along those lines.

How Do You Decoy Wigeon Ducks?

It never hurts to purchase species-specific decoys (most major manufacturers offer a sexy wigeon line), but when it comes to wigeon, you don’t have to. “Wigeon are ‘the party duck,’” Joel explains. “Mallards, canvasbacks, pintails – those species want to land with some of their own. But wigeon, boy, they just want to party. And they’ll party with anybody.” The centerpiece of Joel’s wigeon spread is a wad of coot decoys (“they can see those black blocks a long way of”) with a mix of wigeon and divers trailing downwind. Full-body or silhouette Canada goose decoys can also be highly effective for drawing in wigeon, especially in dry fields.

Wigeon Decoy Hack: Motion, motion, motion! “Wigeon just eat up a spinner,” my waterfowl mentor told me years ago, and science backs him up. According to a study published in the Journal of Wildlife Management in 2006, American Wigeon proved more susceptible to spinning wing decoys than any other North American waterfowl (about three times more so than the least susceptible: cinnamon teal). So stop debating with your buddies and release the Mojos when targeting wigeon.

How Do You Call Wigeon Ducks?

Wigeon will turn to a mallard call, but nothing finishes a big flock of cottontops like a whistle. Most call manufacturers offer a classic “7-in-1” style wigeon call, and it doesn’t take much practice to master a convincing imitation of the drake’s “whoo-HE-whoo”. My four-year-old son, in fact, will gladly tell you about the time he was blowing the simple duck whistle I’d handed him to keep him occupied and somehow enticed a lone wigeon drake to land right in the kill hole…while I was 60 yards away with my waders around my ankles answering the call of nature. Get your kid a wigeon whistle and keep your waders snapped.

Wigeon Calling Hack: Did you know female wigeon call, too? Especially during breeding season, hens will sound a high, drawn out “aaaacck” that sounds like someone clearing their throat into a kazoo. But believe it or not, this unusual vocalization is murder on the wigeon, especially late in the season. “I like to use the female wigeon call in January, when the drakes are looking to pair up,” Joel says. “It’s extremely effective.” You won’t find this kind of call on the shelves of a sporting goods store, but you can make the sound by adjusting the air presentation (“you almost growl into it,” Joel says) and cadence (stretch it out) on a standard mallard call.

How do you hunt Eurasian Wigeon?

No discussion of American Wigeon is complete without reference to their much-coveted cousin: the Eurasian Wigeon. The easiest way to bag a euro for the wall? Buy a plane ticket. There are 2.5 million of these redheaded beauties dabbling across Europe and Asia as you read this (where, I imagine, German and Czech and Italian duck hunters freak out when the extremely rare white-headed American Wigeon strays in for a visit. Could we all just contact our local consulate to arrange an international bucket list duck swap??).

But if you don’t want to dust off your passport, the best way to get one of these prized trophies in the United States is to simply spend time hunting wigeon. A lot. Sure, some guys will use binoculars or trail cameras to key in on areas where euros have been spotted. And more power to them! But the needle-in-a-haystack scarcity of these birds can make such targeting a fool’s errand. Anecdotal evidence indicates that hunters who shoot Eurasian wigeon with regularity are the same guys who are piling up A LOT of American Wigeon week in, week out, season after season. Keep after these birds long enough and, eventually, the law of probabilities will tilt in your favor to check the “Eurasian” box on your lifetime list.

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