Will ducks hit flooded hay fields?

I’m in the eastern central Texas area. Have killed ducks on cattle tanks before but looking to flood a 10 acre or so field to give them a more shallow area for feeding and spending time

You are mistaken. You can plant and flood for duck hunting as long as you do not manipulate it. This includes mowing, intentionally knocking down seed, etc. The above applies to waterfowl, not doves. You can plant, burn, Bush hog, etc for doves. If you do it to hunt doves, you can not later flood for waterfowl. As far as waterfowl hunting goes, you can plant a field, harvest an area to create a pond, and leave the rest standing. Grain that falls off naturally is not considered baiting. The La hunting regs give an overview of Federal regulations. You need to look at the complete Federal statute on baiting to understand. It goes into much better detail.

Would replanting an entire native grass plant to a new location be considered baiting?

Say you dig up native grasses and replant them into an area you would later flood. The entire plant not just seeds

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I’m in the eastern central Texas area

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I would think you’d get birds. Guys on my deer lease in west Texas are from the Houston area and do really good on family land around the LaGrange and Schulenberg areas. Pond hunting tho.
Driving to the lease on I-10, always see birds in the cattle ponds.
If you can flood enough grassland in that area I would think it’d be on.

Good luck.

We have a cow pasture that holds water from time to time and kill a lot of teal off of it but not much else. It runs along the Red River in southwest Arkansas.

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I'm not familiar with bird law in Texas, but in Louisiana you can't intentionally flood Ag land for the purpose of hunting. Only if it's part of a normal agricultural process, like rice.

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You can plant anything you want and flood it up and hunt over it as long as you don't manipulate it

Buddy of mine had a lease in sweetlake that used to be farmed for rice but changed to pasture for cattle. All kinds of wild vegetation grew and the ducks and geese loved it. Not sure about a hay field but ducks do like water.

The thing to remember is hunting standing, unharvested crops. Harvested crops have no restrictions(you can not dump grain obviously). Unharvested crops are what you must be careful of. You can flood them but not manipulate them. This means mowing or knocking down the grain in order for waterfowl to get to it. As I stated above you can combine an area for your blind, since the area combined has had the grain removed, it is not baited. If you combined it and allowed the grain to exit the combine back into the field, it would be baited. Any standing crops left in the field can be hunted. Any grain left standing that is inadvertently knocked down by your dog or you retrieving birds is not baiting. I would not run a boat or 4 wheeler over it to access the blind. That is a no-no. Most guys will combine a path to the blind if it is not in a levee.

AHh good to know. I've never had to worry about it as I don't hunt ag land much but its ok to dream.