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John's Journal... Entry 74, Day 5

Duck Hunting in Flooded Timber

click to enlargeEDITOR'S NOTE: I'm not a purist. I like to hunt anything, anytime, anywhere with anybody. The more different kinds of hunting I can do in a day, the happier I am. This season I've found my ultimate playground -- the Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge located just outside Pickensville, Alabama, on the Tenn-Tom Waterway. This fine lodge offers duck hunting in the morning and deer hunting in the afternoon. Or, you can duck or deer hunt all day. But I prefer to shoot quacks at daylight and bag whitetails in the afternoon. This week we'll introduce you to the people and the hunting on the Alabama/Mississippi border along the Tenn-Tom Waterway that creates river navigation from the port of Mobile, Alabama, into the Great Lakes region.

The Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge offers flooded-timber hunting as well as flooded-field hunting. Generally you can find ducks in both types of areas. But, on some days, the fields prove more productive for ducks hunting than the flooded timber does. On other days, the ducks may be in the woods and not in the fields. During my visit to the Tenn-Tom Lodge, I had the opportunity to hunt ducks one morning in the flooded grain fields and a second morning in the flooded timber. In the afternoons I hunted deer over greenfields.

click to enlargeLennis Crimm of Millport, Alabama, works as a duck-hunting guide at the Tenn-Tom Lodge. Lennis Crimm hunts with a chocolate lab named Cody. "I like to hunt flooded timber because your ducks usually will come in close," Lennis Crimm said. "And you usually shoot much better and much faster."

Hunting in green timber with a dog will be difficult because the dog doesn't have anywhere to stand. He either has to stand in possibly chest-deep water or swim until ducks fall. To solve this problem, Crimm takes a portable tree stand like the one deer hunters use and straps it low to a tree. Then his dog can sit on the stand until Crimm calls him into action. "When I first started using a tree stand for my dog, I didn't know anyone else had come up with this solution for this problem," Lennis Crimm explained. "But in the last few years, I've seen more and more duck hunters carrying tree stands for their dogs when they hunt in green timber." Crimm also uses a vest produced by Avery Outdoors in Memphis, Tennessee, for his dog. "I'm convinced the vest helps Cody stay warmer. Too, because the vest has buoyancy, it also allows Cody to swim easier, get higher in the water and see the ducks easier."

click to enlargeLike Dutton, Crimm doesn't believe in calling too much or too loud to ducks. He's often found that hunters may spook ducks with too much loud calling.

We watched a flock of gadwalls circle our blind four times as Crimm called. The birds finally came in with their wings down and locked and their feet out right in front of the blind. "Take them!" Crimm shouted. We both mounted our shotguns and started pouring steel into the air. Two gadwalls took steel, and the other birds in the flight darted, ducked, pitched and rolled like World War II fighter pilots, dodging steel and putting on a show in the air as they flew away unharmed. As Cody hit the water to begin his retrieves, Crimm explained that he had fun calling to gadwalls because they usually would work to calls and decoys really well. "Although gadwalls aren't known for being green-timber ducks, our proximity to the Tennessee-Tombigbee River system often gives us big-water ducks in the green timber," Crimm said. "Ducks have to go where they can find feed and if they find the feed in the fields or the timber, they'll go there."

Crimm chooses Winchester Dry Locks No. 4, 3-inch Magnums for hunting ducks. He explains that, "I've left these shells in my jacket for weeks at a time. These shells can get wet every day and still perform perfectly. You can depend on these shells."

click to enlargeLike Dutton, Crimm has a 3 1/2-inch shotgun, but he shoots 3-inch shells. "The 3 1/2-inch shells cost more than the 3-inch shells, plus those 3 1/2-inch shells will really beat you up," Crimm reported. "I shoot No. 4's because they pattern the best of any shot I can shoot through my gun." This past season, Alabama duck hunters and east Mississippi duck hunters had a highly-productive year for waterfowling. "When Arkansas freezes up and the Mississippi Delta dries up like happened in 2000, the Tenn-Tom Waterway gets loaded-up with ducks," Lennis Crimm commented.

Because the Mississippi Delta has dried-out the last several years, many of the ducks on the Mississippi flyway have found more food and habitat on the Tenn-Tom Waterway, causing the duck population along this Waterway to steadily increase. If you watch the weather map, you'll also see that most of the cold fronts that come through the South start in the North and the Midwest, next swoop down from the Midwest to the South and then move east. Therefore, the cold fronts that come across the South will push ducks from Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi over onto the Alabama/Mississippi border and the Tenn-Tom Waterway that runs there. And these same cold fronts cause bucks to move. You can have the best of both worlds when you hunt at the Tenn-Tom Lodge -- duck hunting in the morning and deer hunting in the afternoon.

For more information on the Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge, write the Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge, 16234 Buggs Ferry Road, Macon, MS 39341; or call lodge owner Hugh Snoddy at (662) 726-9909 or lodge manager Kenneth Crimm at (205) 662-3382.

 

 

 

Check back each day this week for more about The Best Of Both Worlds ...

Day 1 -The Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge
Day 2 -How Dutton Calls, Why He Uses the Decoy Spread He Does and a Late-Season Crop for WaterFowl
Day 3 -Better Duck Hunting: the Robo Duck and a Quality Retriever
Day 4 -Deer Hunting on the Mississippi/Alabama Border
Day 5 -Duck Hunting in Flooded Timber

John's Journal