FIELD TACTICS
Field hunting is the bread-and-butter for farm-country waterfowlers. Not all farms have ponds, but every farm has fields -- they wouldn't be farms if they didn't! It's in these fields that migrating ducks and geese find the energy sources they need to fuel them for their journey to their wintering grounds.

If you're hunting a farm that's on the daily flight path of flocks of ducks and geese, but isn't their ultimate destination, set up your decoy spread on the property's highest ground. This will give you maximum visibility to passing birds.

In this situation, you're also going to need plenty of decoys. After all, your goal is to distract flocks overhead from their normal daily routine and convince them that the farm down there is a prime feeding destination. In most cases, if you're using fewer than 50 decoys, you're wasting your time.

If you're hunting a farm being frequented by ducks and geese, your path to success is a little smoother. Depending on the farm, a field might cover 50 acres, or it might cover 500. Regardless of its size, it's important to find out where the visiting ducks and geese are feeding before you set up to hunt for the day.

This is a simple task. The day before a hunt, watch for birds landing or taking off and mark their location from a distance. Or before daybreak on the day of your hunt, you can walk around in the dark and search for waterfowl sign -- droppings and feathers, to be exact.

Ducks and geese leave a lot of excrement when they're feeding. They also preen continuously, leaving many feathers on the ground.

When you set up, make sure the wind is at your back. Leave a space in your decoy spread directly in front of you where the birds can land. Even better, set up your decoys in the shape of the letter J, U, or X. With any of these setups, you should position yourself at the closed end of the spread, with the open area directly in front of you.

Decoys do more than just attract ducks and geese. They way you position them helps dictate where the birds will land. The posts of the letters J, U and X funnel the birds toward the closed end of the letters, which means they'll be landing in your lap.

If you just set your decoys out in a big, unorganized mass, the birds could land anywhere. That means they might be hard to your left or right, or even behind you -- all of which makes for tough shooting.

SHOTGUNS AND LOADS
Hunting over decoys in farm country typically means you'll be shooting at incoming birds at close range. A 12-gauge shotgun fitted with an Improved Cylinder or Modified choke will allow you to shoot effectively out to 40 yards. Load up with No. 6 steel, tungsten or Bismuth for ducks only; No. 2 shot for geese only; or No. 4 shot if you expect to encounter both species.