Stressless Wood Duck House plans, built installed with predator guard (buy) info

[Stressless]

I used to waterfowl hunt a bunch with my chocolate lab Nikee, after she passed I just fadded out of hunting ducks and geese. I've always loved jumping woodies on the ponds around the property. I didn't know some of the issues of either having a predotor guard if on land or a stand alone snag upright thru the water. In looking back there was a wood duck house in almost every photograph taken at the time. I was just fun to put them up - never had much success as they didn't maintained every year as needed. May not have pointed South and other First Timer mistakes we made.

So here are some old pond photos with the duck houses ... the actual wood duck house info follows.

Grandpa getting one for my son.

My kids a lifetime ago.

The magic of bringing the woodies in and having a bunch of them around just enhances these kinds of scenes.

A couple years ago I bought two "plastic - high end- plastic ones and two wooden ones to see what the local woodies prefer. No question, the wooden ones. SO I revere engineered the house and figured out the dimensions - made a bunch and installed them The results are great - the only issue is the time when the ponds are covered up is when I'm bowhunting and they are mostly in my sanctuaries.

I put mine together with a rough cut cypress board 10'x1"x12" - That makes one Wood Duck house, with cypress inner steps for the chicks and a couple inches of planned cypress shavings foor the nest.

Here are the dimensions:

I've made them from finished and rough cut cypress the only difference is in the thickness and width. The 'plan' above is for finished cyress lumber, rough cut is 1"thick x 12"wide everything else is the same. DO NOT use pressure treated wood or plywood the chemicals used will harm the embryos. So I cut a bunch and hauled them to the farm, they fit alot better in pieces then assembled.

Assembled

I have them mounted to submerged snags and to 4x4's for any land based nest you need to add a predator guard. I looked hard for a bit and this guy makes a fantastic product that can't be beat $ wise. I'm not getting anything back - his product works, lasts and is inexpensive.
$14 plus 6% Sales Tax: $14.84 each - He'll give a Military discount if you ask.

https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/MWDI/predator_guards.aspx

Mike Schroen
Sales Manager
Cell: 410-404-4662
Office: 410-633-0685 ext 22 office
Email: Mschroen@wemakeduct.com

Flat predator guard shipped:

I'm not a fan of shiny out in the woods so I bought a tan and black spray paint - once installed it's easy to blend it in.

Here are couple of mine that got put on my ponds this year. Close up of the predator guard installed on a 4x4

 

[Stressless]

The best part - lots of birds and espesally wood ducks. Feels kinds good when you roll up for yearly maintenance and find the signs of a successful hatch.


So this is good pic of the "hinge" which is only the two top screws put in about level. The bottom ones I unscrew to allow it to swing up so I clean the box out and add new shavings.

I hope this help some folks, it's a good winter project as they should go up in March. Best of luck.

 

[Stressless]

It's that time, put'em up/clean'em out. Woodies are pairing up, Got some boy-girl shenanigans going on in Beaver Bottom.

 

[bowhunter1023]

Just talked to my dad yesterday about building a couple of these for our farm. Good stuff!

 

[Stressless]

Done with the 12 wood duck boxes, 3 successful hatches last Spring, 4 with unhatched eggs... maybe some successful ones as well. The rest were used by other birds. Two of the successful ones were in the plastic ones first time they were used.

 

[Stressless]

Folks like Outcomes. In Beaver Bottom I had two houses up in a .8 Acre beaver pond, both had successful hatches last spring, the chicks (and brood pairs) come back as adults to where they had a successful hatch. The ponds are all teaming with woodie's this year - if the wx and predator issues hold off it should be a great fall to jump them for dinner and have many come back next year.

 

[jagermeister]

Great write up and thanks for sharing your plans! Those look great.

One thing I’ll add... When placing a new nest box, try to put it into some woody cover or brush. Most people’s natural thought is to put them out in the open because they look nice and purty. But wood ducks prefer cover. Most times when you find a natural nest in a hollow tree they are nowhere near being “out in the open.” After looking in a lot of boxes over the years, I’ve found that most boxes in the wide open are used more so by Hooded Mergansers or other “non-targets” than by Wood ducks. Just a little tip.

 

[Stressless]

jagermeister speaks the truth, if you do you need a real predator guard. Link for them and the guy that builds them is in the first post.

 

[Stressless]

Great time to get the maintenance on duck houses done.....

Walkin' on water

7 of 11 successful hatches one nest fell with the tree it was on....

had 2 nests with full clutches...

Over the last 4 years I've found an egg or two in the midst on most successful broods -

If you figure a low end of 8 per clutch - that's 56 wood ducks form the 11 boxes... plus the mating pairs. Something to enjoy.

 

[MoonLab]

Nice

 

[giles]

Don't you think they would find other places to home?

 

[Stressless]

Don't you think they would find other places to home?

If the question is would the drake and hen nest somewhere else. Absolutely, but giving them a predator free nest site increases the successful hatches.

When they have a successful hatch the chick's are imprinted to nest close to where they hatched, building up your local woodie population greatly in just a few years. My woods has a definite lack of large old growth trees (where they normally nest) due to the clear-cut done 28 years ago.

 

[giles]

Gotcha. I've got a bunch of old sycamore trees. I see the difference now.

 

[Stressless]

Really happy with this success. 12 wood duck houses season 2, first breeding season I had 12 boxes was last year 2020. My buddy Hawkins and I got in the old john boat with a skim of ice on the water and went and retrieved the box that fell into the pond, saw, screwgun, bits etc so ... a little tightened up doing it but we reattached the rough ceder box I made, that had been 1/2 submerged since Oct '21. Ceder held up like a champ, reattached to a bald cypress without tipping.

and just witnessed the hen going in to establish a nest. That's her stick in the box looking out.

On ski jump the clovers and trefoil are popping nicely and Canadian geese, mallards and woodies are resident on the plot throughout most of the day.

This incredible herd of woodies rolling into feed on SkiJump plot is a wonderful blessing to me after the work to try and manage the habitat and having a distinct feeling I was doing much of it wrong.

Gonna check with the neighbor Cliff and see if we can get about 20-30 boxes on his 10 or so ponds. That would be something....

 

[triple_duece]

That’s good shit!!!

 

[Stressless]

No Foolin' - 32 wood ducks parade into the food plot from the pond, I had no idea it would be so attractive and beneficial to have it 'connected' to the pond but the results are in the video. Not sure if the April below freezing wx has anything to do with pushing them to flock like this. How many did you count?

 

[Stressless]

That time of year again, with 'lumber prices' lurking around dark corners I was hesitant to even ask the local sawmill - but I was really surprised to learn a 10'x12"x1" rough cut cypress slab was only $27.80. So picked up 6 slabs today for 6 more duck houses.

Will be cutting the parts next week and assembling after Xmas in OH. Installing the new ones and cleaning out the old nests, year three of cataloging the successful and unsuccessful hatches.


Oh and the guard manufactureris still in busines.

---

-------- Original message --------
From: Brian Wisniewski <brianw@wemakeduct.com>
Date: 12/13/21 7:53 AM (GMT-06:00)
To: stressless
Subject: RE: wood duck nesting box guards

Good Morning Robert,

We sell them in increments of 5 so I can send you the following:

5 guards to fit a 4x4 post - $185.00

10 guards to fit a 4x4 post - $332.00

These prices include Shipping.

All guards include hardware for mounting.

If you want to proceed with the order, please call me at your earliest convenience with payment information.

Thank you,

Brian Wisniewski
Estimator
Office: (410) 633-0685 ext 18
Cell: (443) 401-1693
Fax: (410) 633-0683
www.phoenixmetalsindustries.com

 

[Stressless]

With the water hardened up at camp I got after the duck boxes I could reach. Of the 11 boxes I checked / cleaned and installed fresh cedar shavings 11 - all of them - had nests on them.

I found 21 unhatched eggs in 8 ,boxes, 4 with other bird nests over (twigs) duck nests, one with a duck nest, another twig nest and a small nest on that..

I have them far enough apart that they shouldn't be 'dumping' eggs a behavior that some wood duck hens do - but unsure why some nests had many unhatched eggs.

10 nests showed successful hatches even if a couple eggs didn't hatch. Also 3 boxes looked like they had multiple duck nests last spring.

Plan to setup a couple cams on the successful nests from the last two years and see if I can get some good videos...

 

[Stressless]

With the freeze I went and got a couple more boxes up and hopefully a good camera location on one to watch the what the Duck is going on down in Beaver Bottom. Prior to the 6-7" of cedar shaving going in.

 

[Stressless]

Got 5 new houses up / one replaced a plastic one I broke when it was 3° out and tried to much force to get it open. Total of 16 solid nest sites for the '22 season. I put cams on three of them and hopefully will have some interesting nesting vids as spring rolls to summer.

I had taken 3 nest boxes down when the repair of Crescent pond was underway - I got those put back up as well for a total of 7 new/restored. Those 3 that were on the pond last spring weren't used as the pond was gone.