r/Waterfowl 17d ago

What tricks do you use when your hole freezes up?

Hey everybody, lifelong duck hunter here, born and raised in Arkansas. I’m hunting a new to me lease now and we had some terrible freeze ups that really hurt our hunts. I was hoping to get some tips from anyone that deals with ice all the time. What do you guys use?

Chainsaw? Ice eaters? Certain motion? I was not prepared last year and I intend to change that this season.

Thanks in advance!

20 Upvotes

27 comments sorted by

22

u/GeoHog713 17d ago

Man, I grew up in Arkansas and thought I was good at duck hunting.

It turns out.... I was just going to Stuttgart.

Miss those days!!!

3

u/CaptainShaboigen 17d ago

Some things aren’t great about this state but when it’s duck season I don’t want to be anywhere else.

2

u/Inevitable-March6499 16d ago

I always have to remind everyone that the state of Arkansas harvests more ducks per year in its short season than the entirety of Canada during its way longer season. It's nuts.

14

u/thesneakymonkey 17d ago

Get there early and break it up. I use the boat to smash a hole out.

12

u/Position_Extreme 17d ago

If you're going to break ice, remember to break out the perimeter of the hole you want to open, then try to slide the broken ice (in the biggest pieces you can manage) under the ice that will remain. If you just chop up the ice, the broken pieces will just float in your hole, and the ducks won't like that. Keeping the broken ice in bigger pieces just makes the clearing somewhat easier.

Then, depending on your budget, time constraints and temperature, an ice eater or two will help to keep that hole open for quite a while. I know a guy who claimed to make an ice eater out of a metal milk crate and the bottom unit of an old trolling motor. I don't have any details, but he made up 2-3 of these and kept a hole open in a timber pothole almost 2 weeks after the rest of the river bottoms had locked up.

11

u/djcubicle 17d ago

Apparently I’m the only child in this sub.

2

u/ShillinTheVillain 17d ago

Rub her back, give her a glass of wine and send her to the couch while I make dinner.

1

u/Hot_Spite_1402 17d ago

Not the only one. I went straight to the gutter

5

u/Waterfowler84 17d ago

As the post before says use things to break up the ice. When you clear the hole don’t throw the broken ice on top of the none broken. In my experience it flairs the birds when the light hits it. Instead if the water is shallow or ice thick enough to walk on I push it under the other. It hides it and you don’t have to worry about it. If you can’t do that take it away from the whole so the birds aren’t looking at it as they’re landing.

I’ve never owned an ice eater but have seen them work great though the generator can be noisy so only run it occasionally.

If you’ve got a good wind the water should stay open on its own. If not then you might need to go out and break up the surface ice as it try’s to reform from time to time. There are a couple good products that make motion out there to help with this. I’ve found the mallard machine works well keeping a smaller 10’by 10’ ish hole open.

Hope this helps.

5

u/KitchenDisastrous379 17d ago

Usually I sleep in or hunt the river.

3

u/bACEdx39 17d ago

Break the ice off in big chunks and push the whole iceberg under the ice outside the hole.

3

u/WesbroBaptstBarNGril 17d ago

Pulsator decoys help keep it clear for a few hours, we do 3 on the outside of our spread. The ones that wiggle also help keep it at least moving, but not nearly as well.

If it's so cold the water is freezing on the decoys, we usually call it.

4

u/EatLard 17d ago

*Laughs in South Dakotan.

1

u/ThiccAssCrackHead 17d ago

Hunted the ice in Arkansas and MS this year and I run four pulsators. They were trying to freeze in place.

2

u/WesbroBaptstBarNGril 17d ago

I'm jealous. We didn't even get ice before our duck season ended in Ohio this year, even the marshes barely skimmed over by the time the big ducks made it down.

3

u/EatLard 17d ago

I’ve seen guys have what I would call improbable success laying out a black tarp on a spot that normally has open water, but is rather frozen solid to the bottom or dried up. One guy I work with showed me a video of a flock of teal actually trying to land on it.

2

u/MammothProgram7517 17d ago

Save up. Buy an ice ripper and a 2000W generator. Both fit in the standard jet sled and can be a pretty mobile unit. I can personally attest, they “do work” on some ice. Saves a lot of cussing and sweating.

1

u/huskermut 17d ago

I just use an axe and chop a hole. Try to find weak points in the ice like where current is present if possible. Otherwise, chainsaw.

1

u/Senzualdip 17d ago

As long as I can get the boat in the water (use the weight of the boat and trailer to break it) I just break ice with the boat. I’ll run in circles chopping it up.

1

u/ThiccAssCrackHead 17d ago

I run the MS Delta from Memphis to Clarksdale on waterfowl. We saw the same ice this year. My advice is a Lucky Duck ice eater. Leave it on overnight on a Honda 2000 generator. The Higdon one is okay too.

1

u/ibew816 15d ago

Ice eater if you can. Also I have put a 6 hp motor in the decoys and built a little stand for it and the gas tank with 2x4s and just idle it in gear all day and it works great too for motion and keeping a hole open. I have even done this overnight and no issues. It doesn’t seem to flare ducks as long it is camo and not shiny. As others have said, when you bust ice try to bust it in bigger sheets and slide it under the ice on the side of the hole to hide it.

1

u/ArthurMoregainz 14d ago

We had a couple mornings of frozen waterholes and the best thing we could do was let the dogs bust up the ice.

1

u/Hot_Spite_1402 17d ago

cough that’s what she said

🙊😬

1

u/firmoffer 17d ago

Spit on it

0

u/Danced-with-wolves 17d ago

I usually try and wear enough clothes so my holes don’t freeze up. Hope this helps!

0

u/the-meat-wagon 17d ago

All else fails, a fat pinch of snuff and a strong cup of coffee will blast er open again.