re: Sweet potato planting for ducks

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Flooding a corn field is not a normal agricultural practice but it is legal. I don’t see the difference? It obviously it’s not a very practical method or more people would be doing it I would think.

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You can add water to corn but you can't add corn to water. I doubt seriously that its any different with sweet potatoes. If a person owned a sweet potato field and it flooded naturally it would be perfectly legal to hunt it...I am ethically torn on the intentional flooding of grain fields to attract waterfowl to hunt but it is not illegal and is in fact widely practiced by state game managers and on at national wildlife refugees. My only question is the efficacy of sweet potatoes over a grain like corn or a bean....

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Flooding a corn field is not a normal agricultural practice but it is legal. I don’t see the difference?

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The normal agriculture clause deals with the planting of the crop, not what happens after its planted and comes up (I.e. flooding)

You can plant anything you want and flood it and it’s perfectly legal

You couldn’t however spread corn/rice/millet on the ground saying you are planting it and then flood it right away. Nothing normal about that

I have a hard time believing it’s like crack to ducks, but maybe I don’t know. It seems more likely it’s a variety issue, as in sometimes wildlife want something different to eat.

I also don’t think people realize you can’t just bait ducks up to a spot you are hunting hard. If the ducks find it and you let them work the field they will enjoy it. But if you are hunting them hard from the get go you won’t be able to do anything to just make them keep coming.

People always say “a doctor I know did it and we slaughtered them”, well that’s because the doctor probably had private ground that was hunted once a week so the ducks had a refuge from getting shot 6 days a week.

Wonder how baw was planting them. Only way I have planted them was with a transplanter.

it is legal..... and it's not so much that the potatoes but they potatoes attract them...


flooding a standing millet field or any other grain is not a standard practice.. but legal.

oh and the burlap sack of sweets works too or so I am told.

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I have a hard time believing it’s like crack to ducks, but maybe I don’t know. It seems more likely it’s a variety issue, as in sometimes wildlife want something different to eat.

I also don’t think people realize you can’t just bait ducks up to a spot you are hunting hard. If the ducks find it and you let them work the field they will enjoy it. But if you are hunting them hard from the get go you won’t be able to do anything to just make them keep coming.

People always say “a doctor I know did it and we slaughtered them”, well that’s because the doctor probably had private ground that was hunted once a week so the ducks had a refuge from getting shot 6 days a week.

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I have told this story before and was accused of shooting a baited field but I trust the opinion of the Texas and federal LEO responsible for making that call in the field, 2 of the former and 1 of the latter all agreed it was a legitimate agriculture practice.

Anyway I have access to 4 sections of grain fields outside Lubbock Texas and one year, for some reason, the farmer mowed the standing corn and plowed it under in about half of one of those sections.....there was corn EVERYWHERE. I was concerned about hunting any of them due to the proximity of that corn....it looked like someone had crop dusted corn into that field. I called the local game warden and he initially said it would be baited and couldn't be hunted legally for 10 days after the bait was removed. He offered to physically look at the field and when he did he changed his mind....said it was not baited. I was still unsure so I asked the same thing of a federal warden and he said it was fine. We hunted it and the surrounding area and was checked by a different state warden a couple of times during the season and they never mentioned it. The strange thing was that the field in question was not used by ducks, geese or cranes to any significant amount. The area was thick with birds and the other 4 sections were gang busters....but the one was never as attractive, that year, as the others. Birds would use it but not to the same extent that the other fields, all planted in wheat, were. In prior years when all of it was corn or wheat they all produced and when they were rotated between corn, wheat and beans they would all produce about the same....but that year, for some reason, birds were just not overly attracted to acres of corn lying on the ground. It had been on the ground about a month when dove season opened....I think it was rotten or sour or something, but whatever it was it just wasn't of much interest to birds in the area....it was no more or less barren than any corn field....it makes me wonder just how effective baiting would be over a season....I know it would work for a hunt or two shortly after baiting but that corn was still evident the next season when the field wasn't planted at all and it didn't even pull dove....