Duck hunting: There is a lot of experience, but also training and patience: some advice on how to recognize diving ducks from their surface cousins.
For a hunter, immediately recognizing the duck in front of him is of fundamental importance: not all flat beaks are huntable, a professional and enthusiast does not shoot indiscriminately at everything that moves. And if you consider that recognizing any bird in flight is not child's play, you immediately understand how important experience, training and a good eye are!
On the other hand, to err is human: when you hunt on the water it is not so difficult to be subjected to real optical illusions; precisely for this reason, attention and calm are important for a hunter dealing with anatidae. The time during which it is most common to make mistakes is when the duck heads towards the tip hunter.
The most wrong attitude to take in these cases is the instinctive one: normally in this circumstance you shoot too early, when the duck is still out of range and above all by mistaking ammunition and barrel. If you do not recognize its volume it is impossible in a short time to choose the best shooting option: this is why the calm associated with the experience become the best tools to take with you during the hunting days.
Anyone who knows ducks and has the ability to recognize them "on the fly" knows that within the family there are a thousand and one differences: for example, different hunting techniques must be dedicated to tufted duck and pochards compared to those reserved for non-diving species: having said that, it is obvious that a hunter who shoots without knowing exactly what, is likely to return home empty-handed.
Duck Hunting: To get around the problem, let's discover together some tricks to hunt with an eye.
Diving ducks (Morette and Pochards etc). When you see them in the distance, most of the time they fly in groups forming a V or an M: technically they are said to fly in formation. Mallards, wigeons, pintails and many other surface ducks also take this kind of flight, yet the tufted duck and pochards maintain this style both during high flight and during that at half height and on the surface of the water. This is a good clue to recognize them. In flight, divers have the characteristic of beating their wings very quickly, which they position in a "normal" way and therefore not backward from the body. An unmistakable trait is related to the formation they take on when they touch the water: unlike their surface cousins, they love to remain close and strongly grouped.
Surface ducks (Mallards, Wigeons, Codons etc). They occur in flight taking a V or inverted W formation, but break this flight mode as the height decreases. Normally, the flapping of the wings is not too rapid and this is a trait that distinguishes surface ducks from divers and many other water birds. The wings take a backward position and when they land on the water they usually move away from each other.
Of course, this is useful information which, however, requires extensive experience: on the other hand, theory alone never pays. Perhaps the most useful advice to give is therefore always the same: when you shoot it is essential to be sure of the species towards which your barrel is aimed; it would affect one's ethics as hunters and in some cases one's wallet, on the other hand, with the fines aimed at those who hunt protected species, no joke.