How to Hunt Early Season Teal

I settled back into my blind and loaded my shotgun, glancing at my watch and counting the seconds. Soon enough, I could make out clouds of shadowed ducks flying low and fast over the water and streaking past my blind like tiny, feathered bullets shot from a gun. As soon as legal light came, I spotted a small group of birds heading in my direction. I quickly clicked off my safety, raised the gun to my shoulder, and took a lead on the first bird; as the ducks flared, I breathed a silent thank you. The day and duck season were only just beginning, and the teal were already here.

Also known as water doves, peepers, and rockets, teal are the smallest and fastest members of the puddle duck family. They come in three different varieties—blue wing, green wing, and cinnamon—and most hunters consider them to be a limit-filling bonus that flies among more popular mallards and pintails. However, teal are far from just a windfall duck as they are among the best-tasting and most challenging ducks in North America.

Teal, especially blue-winged teal, are usually the first ducks to migrate to warmer climates for the winter, giving you an early opportunity to get some ducks in the freezer. In most places, flocks of teal begin to arrive from early to mid-September, a time when most waterfowlers’ minds are preoccupied with fishing and bow season, meaning that you can have the blind and the water to yourself. Which is a bonus: there won’t be anyone around to watch you miss.

Teal are tiny, fast-flying birds that streak over the water at speeds often around 50 miles an hour. This makes them a great bird for knocking the rust off after a long off-season—once you start hitting teal consistently, a chubby, slow-flying mallard is a piece of cake. This also makes teal just seem to taste better, as every bird you eat has to be earned. However, before you can start spraying rounds at low-flying teal like an aircraft carrier fending off a bomber attack, you’ve got to know where to find them and how to hunt them.

Early-season teal are sort of funny birds in that they are never where they are supposed to be. You can set up in what seems to be perfect duck water alongside flooded fields or marshy estuaries, only to have the birds fly in and start landing in the center of a nearby golf course pond. This is due to the teal’s diet, which, unlike other more popular species of ducks, is often mixed. Teal will eat just about anything from agricultural grains and vegetables to waterweeds to small crustaceans and insects. They will eat these varied items at different times of the day and year, meaning that before you head out onto the water, you’re going to want to scout out your hunting location to find some birds.

A couple days before your hunt, head out to your chosen ground with a good pair of binoculars and even a spotting scope and watch the ducks. Pay attention to where teal are landing and feeding in the morning, afternoon, and evening, and try to pinpoint what they’re feeding on during the different parts of the day. If you don’t see a lot of teal flying around or are forced to scout in the super early season, it can be a good idea to look for coots. These underappreciated waterfowl will frequently inhabit the same areas as teal and the two species will often be spotted swimming around the same areas together.

If you can’t get out early to scout the water you’re hunting or simply don’t have the time, then your best bet for bagging a limit of teal is by hunting shallow mud. Teal love mud and will usually gather along and in the center of shallow mud flats in roughly six inches to two feet of water. Pay particular attention to any small gaps of open, muddy water near or around tall grass, cattails, and marsh weed, as these locations provide a lot of cover for both you and the birds. Even if you don’t spot a lot of ducks in areas like this, mark them, as it can be easy to draw teal into these zones with the right decoy spread.

Decoying is often more effective than calling for teal, the small ducks love company and will often stay in the air until they see their compatriots land. You don’t have to have a ton of decoys at your disposal to get a flock of teal to focus on them and occasionally having too many decoys will even send them away, especially when they’re pressured. So keep your numbers low, with six to eight decoys being more than sufficient to bring in birds.

Teal will land among floating and feeding decoys very willingly and are notoriously susceptible to spinners as well. My favorite set-ups usually consist of four or five floating and feeding decoys, with a couple placed smack dab in the center of the area I’m hunting and another single or pair of decoys spread 10 to 12 feet out to the left and right. Then, I’ll hook another pair of decoys to a jerk string to keep them moving, which I’ll place within a couple yards of my blind. Finally, I’ll add two spinners to either end of my spread to draw attention from passing birds.

Once you have your decoys set up, concentrate on your blind. Unlike with other puddle ducks which come in from on high and require elaborate and detailed camouflage to fool, teal are quick in and quick out. They fly in low over the water at pace and land quickly, relying on their speed and ability to change direction to get them out of trouble. As such, you don’t need an extravagant blind to get them to approach, you simply need to break up your outline. With some good camo clothing and a little ingenuity, you can set up a blind for teal by propping up a couple logs and sticks, covering them in grass, and hiding behind them. This is also an advantage in case you’re set up a bit too far away from where the teal are concentrating as you can simply stand up and move over instead of having to shift or rebuild a giant blind.

There’s a romance to early-season teal hunting. The weather is usually warm when they show up and you don’t need a lot of decoys or other extra equipment. It’s old school duck hunting at its best, where you just go down to the water with a few decoys in a backpack and hide in some reeds. One of the simplest pleasures in the hunting world, chasing early season teal takes you back to the early days of waterfowling where hunters just settled in, waiting for the sun to rise, and listened for the sound of flapping wings.