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On the closing day of Reelfoot's duck season, I had the opportunity to hunt with guide Jeremy Seals and get a little insight on the keys to Reelfoot hunting.
The main blind he hunts has been around for 40 years and is located in one of the prime waterfowling areas of the lake. All together they have 8 blinds in their family and will hunt different blinds depending on the weather.
He uses over 400 decoys in his woods hole, at the main blind, and will space them out a little farther than he would on open water. When hunting open water he will use even more decoys, but bunch them up a little more. The use of black decoys and/or black buoys is one of the tricks that has brought them success over the years. With the many blinds on Reelfoot, visibility is a must and black will show up the best from long distances. When the ducks are in the air, they might be looking at a dozen different spreads, or more. Getting seen first can provide a major advantage.
Open water calling and timber calling also call for different techniques. "Open water demands a much louder call.", says Jeremy. "You've got to be forceful because they have too many places to land out there." In the timber he will tone it down a lot. The timber will echo the sound tremendously and ducks can hear every little mistake. It demands a lot more precise calling to get em in. He likes plenty of callers to help bring in the high ducks, but prefers to do the calling by himself on the lower (working) bunches. In his words, "You've just got to know how to hit em at the right time when they're going down wind." He also points out, "Reelfoot is much different than most areas. It is really just a large resting area, not a feeding area like the rice fields of Arkansas. Much of the best shooting will come on high bunches of migrating ducks coming out of the north or west." Many duck hunters think that getting paid to hunt is a dream come true. But, it's a challenge to help provide good hunting day in and day out. The work involved in maintaining blinds, decoys and boats is often underestimated. Now a days you've also got to take care of cooking meals, which Jeremy is good at, and maintaining various electronic devices (robo ducks, mallard machines, etc.). You put all that together and it can wear on a man after 50+ days in a row. It's a lot more work than most people realize. Even at his young age of 26, Jeremy is a veteran guide who was knows duck hunting. He's been guiding since the age of thirteen and has owned his own boat since he was 12. It was a pleasure to get to hunt with Jeremy and it was a true Reelfoot duck hunting experience. For
more information on Jeremy Seals...visit
his webpage or call him at 731-538-2604. |
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Many families have been hunting Reelfoot for generations and the Seals
family is one of them. Jeremy's father, grandfather, great grandfather
and his uncles have all guided on the lake. Needless to say, they have
learned a lot over the years and here are a few of Jeremy's views and
methods for duck hunting on Reelfoot.
Jeremy uses a Johnny Marsh single plastic reed call and knows how to use
it. He likes that style of call because it provides a good mellow raspy
sound, you can blow it loud or soft and it's easy to blow (doesn't take
a lot of air), which can mean a lot when calling 9 hours a day, 51 days
a year.