Legal shooting hours

[CP]

Those of you that are cutting loose right at a half hour before sunrise (or a little before), can you really identify your targets; particularly on a cloudy morning?  If you can you have a lot better eye sight than I do.  All I can make out is a silhouette when the bird’s background is the Eastern sky or the water reflecting it.  Usually it’s a silhouette that comes and goes as it flies in front of varying backgrounds, or various size shapes swimming amongst the dekes. 

Can you really tell if you’re shooting at a duck or a coot, mallard, pintail or shoveler, scaup or redhead, drake or hen?

There’s a lot of early shooting going on but I don’t believe everyone knows what their targets are.  Does it matter to you?

[Hunterman]

If I can see the cross hairs in my scope,,its time    If I can hear it I'm hunting it  

Hunterman(Tony)

[krbyers84]

If you can't identify a bird by it's silhouette, especially identifying a mallard from say a coot or pintail, then you should work on learning how to because they have very different silhouettes plus it is a valuable skill. However I totally agree with you on identifying hen from drake that is pretty impossible and for that reason I refrain from shooting till color is distinguishable, that is what determines my shooting hours in the morning. I would rather let the birds land in my spread and let them do the calling for me and wait until I can fully identify them.

[General Disarray]

yes, I can really identify what I am shooting or calling at in the predawn darkness. 

[Special T]

 
I killem in the twilight.. Don't matter much if its a hen or drake for wigeon, teal etc...Plus most drake mallards have a very light breast making it easy to distinguish it form the hens.. If you cannot tell the different kinds of birds from silhouette and wing beats you must not be paying very close attention

[Dustin07]

the biggest difference to me is the lighter it gets the further away I can ID them. right at shooting time I am still usually having a hard time ID'ing and don't typically feel comfortable being the first shot of the day.

[ducksdoom12]

id'ing birds by silhouettes is not a problem, but I do still think the shooting hours should be shifted back by half an hour, cuz u can usually still see colors 20 min. after shooting hours end.

[h2ofowlr]

I can usually tell by the silhouettes, size and sounds what type of duck it is, at certain angles I can loose the contrast as to which is a hen and drake.  If I know there a pair of mallards I usually aim at the following bird and it is usually the drake on most instances.  Early morning, they usually decoy very well, so I try to get a good view as they are coming in.  If your taking 50 yard shots right off the get go your probably just shooting a duck unless you got a close fly bye on the initial pass.
Most instances, I will wait until I can properly identify the birds.  That can be from opener until 20 minutes after.
The ones I really have to wonder about are those shooting 15-20 minutes early.  They are just shooting at dark spots or using lit structures in the far off to silhouette birds..    

If you ask how one is able to identify these birds, hunt public land.  You have to get out there at o'dark thirty so you get to play the identification game for hours on end until legal shooting time.

[boots]

You can tell a lot by the size of the sillouette. If two mallards are coming in and one quacks, i shoot the other one 

[Blacktail135]

 Widgeon and gadwall hens are pretty tough for me in the first 10 (legal) minutes as well as Wood duck and Hooded Merganser hens. OK! I'll call BS on myself! The main 4 species are pretty easy for me. Seperating the hens and drakes in the first few minutes can be tough (sky dependent) sometimes. So far this year I haven't shot in the 15-20 minutes of first legal light. Yesterday was a magical day!