The sun won’t be up for a while yet, and the dog is already whining with excitement. It’s officially here—another waterfowl season. You’re as excited as the dog is. A lot of work has gone into making this the best season yet, too. The Polaris Ranger has been out here so many times, it can likely find its way to the blind by itself. From the habitat projects, to setting the blind, and then traveling back and forth, the Ranger made this job easier, and now it is time to enjoy the fruits of the labors. Time to set the decoys, pour a cup of coffee and get ready for shooting light to arrive. You already know you’re going to get on more birds this waterfowl season, and your Polaris Ranger was a big help.
There are two ways to go about hunting waterfowl. You can scout out locations and go to the birds, or you can work on habitat projects and bring the birds to you. If you want to work on your habitat projects, a Polaris Ranger can be a big help. This can be anything from setting a blind in a dry field, working on setting up a flooded field, or even flooding timber.
You can also use a Ranger to plant crops for hunting. One of the many uses we found for our unit was using a seed spreader to plant various plants to help shore up the levees we used for flooding the fields. Levees are extremely important for flooding fields, and they take a lot of abuse from the water and weather, so getting them set and then covering them with a good, deep-rooted grass variety helps prevent erosion. If you’re planning out a levee system, we suggest making them wide enough to drive your Ranger upon. This helps with spreading the seeds, as well as giving you a transportation path to and from the field and blind. It also helps that driving on them packs down the dirt more to help secure the levee.
If you build it…
One of the other many uses for a Ranger is for field hunting geese and ducks. One of our favorite models for this is the Ranger XP 1000 CREW, as it can haul all of the decoys, and all of our buddies in the morning before shooting light. We like to load up and set decoys right from the Ranger, saving time and energy. This is also a big help if we have to do a rapid decoy spread change in the middle of a hunt due to a weather shift.
Another solid reason to use your Ranger for field hunting is mud. A Polaris Ranger weighs less than half as much as a full-sized truck. In most cases, it’ll weigh 2/3s less than your truck. Add in aggressive tires and it becomes pretty easy to see how Polaris Ranger makes a better choice to get you and your gear across a muddy field for a waterfowl hunt than your truck. Besides that, it is just plain going to be more fun to drive a Ranger in the mud than your truck is going to be. Whether you’re running goose decoys across a cut corn field in the northern Midwest, or slogging through a flooded rice field in Louisiana, a Ranger is the best option for getting you, your hunting buddies, the dogs and all the gear to the blinds and back again.
With the right accessories, you can plant additional crops with your Ranger. This includes plows, discs, rakes and more. For waterfowl, you can plant rice, corn, wheat or other crops that can attract birds. Just be sure you follow all regulations about how crops are used. On the plus side, you can use your machine and implements for work on your deer hunting food plots, too.
Your Ranger can help set your waterfowl blind, too. If you’re hunting a flooded field, or timber, setting up a new blind can be done two ways. You can either build it on site, and the 12-volt outlets in the Ranger can be pretty handy for running power tools, or you can build it at home and haul it out to the field. If you’re like us, we run a Polaris PRO HD winch on our Ranger and it has more than enough power to pull a blind up onto a raised platform to keep the blind out of the water when the field floods. It comes in pretty handy too if we get stuck running around the muddy field. Not that that has ever happened…
Field hunting
Ponds are a lot of fun to hunt for ducks and geese, but they can be rough to access, especially if you don’t have the right tools. One trick we have learned over the years is to have a small boat setup for pond hunting. It is only 14 feet long, and uses an electric trolling motor for power. Getting it back onto these ponds used to be tricky until we got the Polaris Ranger. The trailer rides very well behind the UTV, and launching it into a pond that doesn’t have a regular boat launch is a piece of cake with the Ranger that can back down to the shoreline and not worry about getting stuck like with the truck. The Polaris Pursuit camo pattern also helps hide the machine when we stash it on the shore too.
Pond hopping
Using a UTV for scouting waterfowl spots works pretty well, especially if the machine is equipped with on demand all wheel drive like the Polaris Ranger. The off-road capability of the machine lets you get right up to the field or water, and if you’re hunting pothole ponds, it is the best way to scout multiple ponds in quick order.
This is really true for run-and-gun hunting when you have a small batch of decoys and maybe a layout blind or two. You can pop in on a pond or field, see how things look, drop down in and set things up and then stash the machine in the brush or trees close by. With the right accessories on your machine, this is a great way to get in a quick hunt when you have to work, but still want to get a chance at a few birds. Have everything loaded on the machine and secured, then you can back it off the trailer, grab the shotgun out of the truck and be back onto a sweet-looking spot for a couple hours of hunting time before you have to pack back in and get to the office.
Waterfowl hunting is a super fun and thrilling way to hunt during the autumn seasons. It is a social form of hunting that is great to share with friends and family. Using a Polaris Ranger can help get you more birds this waterfowl season, regardless of the type of waterfowl hunting you do. You will likely wind up like us—finding new uses for the machine that helps make the entire hunting experience better for everyone involved.
Scouting
There are two ways to go about hunting waterfowl. You can scout out locations and go to the birds, or you can work on habitat projects and bring the birds to you. If you want to work on your habitat projects, a Polaris Ranger can be a big help. This can be anything from setting a blind in a dry field, working on setting up a flooded field, or even flooding timber.
One of the other many uses for a Ranger is for field hunting geese and ducks. One of our favorite models for this is the Ranger XP 1000 CREW, as it can haul all of the decoys, and all of our buddies in the morning before shooting light. We like to load up and set decoys right from the Ranger, saving time and energy. This is also a big help if we have to do a rapid decoy spread change in the middle of a hunt due to a weather shift.
Another solid reason to use your Ranger for field hunting is mud. A Polaris Ranger weighs less than half as much as a full-sized truck. In most cases, it’ll weigh 2/3s less than your truck. Add in aggressive tires and it becomes pretty easy to see how Polaris Ranger makes a better choice to get you and your gear across a muddy field for a waterfowl hunt than your truck. Besides that, it is just plain going to be more fun to drive a Ranger in the mud than your truck is going to be. Whether you’re running goose decoys across a cut corn field in the northern Midwest, or slogging through a flooded rice field in Louisiana, a Ranger is the best option for getting you, your hunting buddies, the dogs and all the gear to the blinds and back again.
Using a UTV for scouting waterfowl spots works pretty well, especially if the machine is equipped with on demand all wheel drive like the Polaris Ranger. The off-road capability of the machine lets you get right up to the field or water, and if you’re hunting pothole ponds, it is the best way to scout multiple ponds in quick order.
This is really true for run-and-gun hunting when you have a small batch of decoys and maybe a layout blind or two. You can pop in on a pond or field, see how things look, drop down in and set things up and then stash the machine in the brush or trees close by. With the right accessories on your machine, this is a great way to get in a quick hunt when you have to work, but still want to get a chance at a few birds. Have everything loaded on the machine and secured, then you can back it off the trailer, grab the shotgun out of the truck and be back onto a sweet-looking spot for a couple hours of hunting time before you have to pack back in and get to the office.
Waterfowl hunting is a super fun and thrilling way to hunt during the autumn seasons. It is a social form of hunting that is great to share with friends and family. Using a Polaris Ranger can help get you more birds this waterfowl season, regardless of the type of waterfowl hunting you do. You will likely wind up like us—finding new uses for the machine that helps make the entire hunting experience better for everyone involved.
