Here in Argentina the best duck is the creston or rose billed .

Teal.

The best tasting duck, is the one you give away to someone on the way to the butcher to buy a 2 inch thick t-bone or ribeye

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Originally posted by Steve Latham:
Teal.

+1

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Patricio Gaudiano

The best tasting duck, is the one you give away

So true. Love shooting duck and my dog loves eating them.

Kamo Gari:

I do hope that you noticed that a poster named "Norton" identified mergansers on this thread as such good eating. (Yeah,I think he's kidding) If you agree with him then I can only conclude that you have spent too much time in blinds where the ice piled up and your poor dog had to be with you. {By the way, why didn't some ASPCA group get after you for that horrifying photo you posted once) Oh, well, I should remember that you're a Red Sox fan. {No jokes about recent games with the Yankees, please} Hope all is well with you. ( I used to be Gerry375 but had to reregister due to the vagaries of the internet)

Wood Ducks, then Teal.

1) Chesapeake Canvasbacks & Blackducks (tie)

2) Any Wood Duck

3) Arkansas Greenheads

4) Montauk Scoters that have been feeding on bug scallops (pounded, Italian breadcrumbs, pan fried)

The smaller ducks such as teal, widgeon and gadwall. Also canvasback are supposed to be excellent but I don't have any experience with them

465H&H

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Originally posted by Abob:
Teal & mallard -- but any duck, cooked on the grill, wrapped in bacon with a slice of jalapeño is hard to pass down

Exactly. Last Jan while hunting on Ocracoke Island in the OBX, we grilled out one day with a combination of Pintail, Brant, Redhead, Bufflehead and Lesser Scaup. Could not tell the difference in taste between any of them.

Cans, then sprig; the mallards around hear tend to scarf up dog salmon carcasses. I never met a teal I didn't like, nor a redhead (either kind). Goose is great on the hibachi, drenched in bbq sauce, especially after a hard day walking up doves in the sagebrush.
windywales

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know this is like asking if you prefer brunettes to blondes, but which ducks in your opinion taste good, which taste bad, and which taste just ugly? Opinions please.

Which of these taste better????????

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if you prefer brunettes to blondes

My favorite is blonde with nothing on it but natural flavoring, freshly basted in bubble bath water, but thoroughly dried prior to eating.

UM.....UMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

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Originally posted by Jeff Wemmer:
1) Chesapeake Canvasbacks & Blackducks (tie)

2) Any Wood Duck

3) Arkansas Greenheads

4) Montauk Scoters that have been feeding on bug scallops (pounded, Italian breadcrumbs, pan fried)

i didn't know scooters knew how to pound, bread and pan fry scallops.- but seriously though, the best ducks are the ones you manage to give away without a guilty conscience( which is all of them)

I prefer mallards,or wooducks,myself.
My old neighbor used to love mergansers,he would hang them outside on the side of the garage for a week or so,undressed, before eating them.true story.

I've only been duck hunting for 42 seasons, and nearly all of it in California's central valley, which is mostly rice country, even though I shoot in natural riparian marsh habitat. Having shot several thousand ducks and eaten plenty of those, I've come to the following conclusions:
Wood ducks are the best eating duck that flies, consistently. Fun to shoot as well.
Green Winged Teal rate right up there with Woodies. Every bit as much fun to shoot, even more when they're in big flocks.
Mallards are very good, but pintails are a bit better on a consistent basis. No duck is more fun to shoot than mallards working over decoys, though sprig in rice come in a close 2nd for me.
Canvasbacks are real good, though we seldom kill any where we hunt.
Everything else is 2nd rate to the above, thought most species we shoot (cinnamon teal, wigeon, gadwall, ringed neck ducks) are also good if they have white breast skin, indicative of eating a lot of rice. If they're red or purplish colored, they just aren't going to eat very well, no matter what you do to them.
Among geese, specklebellies are in a class all by themselves, and just about as good to eat as a mallard or pintail/sprig. Shooting specks over decoys is great fun in the late season. They work just like mallards.

Shovelers, aka spoonies, are seldom worth eating, but work well for retriever training! Don't even ask about mergansers....
Just about 90 days till duck season opens!

CAelknuts:

I read your comments about wood ducks with some pain. In my youth (in NY) the wood duck had become scarce and the season limit was 1. My father would build bird houses out of red cedar shingles for them and put them on long stakes into which he hammered old razor blades on edge (to keep the water snakes from climbing up in the spring after the eggs) I would wade out and stick the stakes into the marsh. I never hunted "woodies". I often saw them flying in Canada (struggling to keep up with the mallards and blacks when I would be shooting in pass shooting. As a sentimental (retired) shooter, I don't want you to shoot wood ducks!

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Originally posted by jb:
I prefer mallards,or wooducks,myself.
My old neighbor used to love mergansers,he would hang them outside on the side of the garage for a week or so,undressed, before eating them.true story.

Man, I wish I had a neighbor who loved eating mergs and seaducks. That'd be a real nice arrangement indeed!

Gerrypeters, I understand where you're coming from. However, where I shoot, California's Butte Sink, the wood duck is not only very common, it is one of our most abundant ducks in the central valley, at least until the migration from Canada arrives later in winter. Just on my little 265 acre club, we annually hatch out about 200-250 woodies each summer. The Butte Sink is 12,000 acres of ideal wood duck habitat, and that are annually produces thousands of new woodies. They migth be low on numbers in your part of the country, but out here they're one species that is doing very well indeed. As an example, while your limit was 1 per season, ours is 7 per day and early in the season it is pretty acheivable to take 7 per day if you want to.

I've hunted little sloughs where you didn't even need a gun to kill wood ducks. You just hold out your paddle and you'll hit several. I can even remember a hunt or two when you had to turn your paddle so you didn't kill over the limit. Sad to hear that NY doesn't have many, but this is not the case everywhere. LA deer hunting is the same. We have an abundance in most places, and instead of a draw for a single tag, we can kill six a year. In fact on most managed properties you have to kill a certain number of does every year to keep the population in check. One club I hunted on a lot when I was a boy, it wouldn't be uncommon to see twenty or so deer in a day, more if you were on a big food plot.

CAelknuts,
I can't tell much difference between gadwalls and mallards at all. Same between the species of teal and the widgeon (which we don't get many of). Why do you rank them so low? I agree with the rest of your assessment.

For me, Mallard is my favorite.

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CAelknuts,
I can't tell much difference between gadwalls and mallards at all. Same between the species of teal and the widgeon (which we don't get many of). Why do you rank them so low? I agree with the rest of your assessment.

Daniel, I think that mallards do taste better than gadwall on a consistent basis, and think that is is partly due to them eating a diet that is more conducive to good taste. Out where I live, mallards seem to eat more rice, while gadwalls tend to perhaps spend more time foraging in marsh areas instead of rice fields. I'm not saying that gadwalls aren't good, I just don't think they are as good, and you will get more gadwalls that aren't very good to eat at all. I seldom get a mallard that isn't good to eat, I just prefer sprig, greenwings and woodies.

Don't get me wrong, I like cinnamons and wigeon, its just there are better species to eat. Wigeon, at least out here, tend to eat more green grass late in the season and get skinnier and don't eat nearly as well as when you get one that has white skin and a lot of white 'rice' fat. Those wigeon are good eating, but not when you get a skinny red one.

Regardless of the species, when you get a bird with white breast skin, chances are he's going to be good to eat. When it's a skinny bird with reddish or blueish skin, they're not fit for human consumption, IMO.

goes to show differences. 90% of the time I see Gadwall flying with the mallards. Generally when we shoot one it was a long shot or bad light, cause they look like a hen. You may see a stray pair here and there, but by and large, they hang with the mallards. Pintail often do the same thing.
When I lived in north La, we mostly killed mallards and wood ducks, and let come in locked to land. In the south La marsh, it is often pass shooting only, so identifying them can be difficult.

my friend is the dedicated duck hunter.
He says the best way to cook ducks is in a 500 degree oven for a ridiculously short amount of time.I forget how much time,I will have to ask,but he claims most any duck is better cooked this way.

JB, your friend does know how to cook ducks. If you can stand the smoke (be sure to turn your smoke alarms off!) you can roast a mallard or sprig for 25 minutes at 500 degrees and they are very good. Smaller ducks take less time. Put a strip of bacon along each brest, and stuff the cavity with something that'll give a good taste, I like to use some onion and celery, and put them on a poultry rack to keep them out of the grease.

They're good that way!

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Originally posted by jb:
my friend is the dedicated duck hunter.
He says the best way to cook ducks is in a 500 degree oven for a ridiculously short amount of time.---

YEP

CAelknuts:

I'm really happy that wood ducks are doing so well in CA. Being retired from hunting for some years I have no idea how well they are doing in NY today although I do know they were coming back even decades ago. Whether that trend continued, I just don't know. I can say that some dozen years ago in Canada when I was shooting ducks that wood ducks were doing very well. I guess I meant in my first post only that I had a sentimental feeling for a bird I remembered from youth -and, I confess, I never could bring myself to shoot at thereafter. Just one of those things, I guess.

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Originally posted by nugman:
I prefer brunettes.

If its cold pressed duck how do you know the difference?