THE BEST HUNTING-LEASE DUCK HUNTING

Gearing Up for Finding the Flocks

Editor's Note: My family always belonged to a hunting club. The lease included 8,000 acres of excellent deer and turkey habitat and a rich river-bottom swamp with enough squirrels to keep our squirrel dog's tongue hanging out all day. During my senior year of high school, as my dad and I hunted squirrels in a swamp, a huge flight of mallards and wood ducks flew over. We went to the nearby town of Livingston, Alabama, to buy our duck-hunting stamps, and I realized that the University of West Alabama there only was 15 minutes from our hunting lease. I made up my mind that I'd attend the University of West Alabama to study something. While in college, I duck hunted at least two or three mornings a week before class and learned some productive tactics for taking hunting-club quacks. If not for my family's hunting-club lease and that flight of ducks that came in as we hunted squirrels, I might not have attended college. But, I knew if I could stay in school for four years and graduate, I'd have four years of the greatest duck, deer and turkey hunting of any young man in the country.

Wood ducks and mallards, which fly major river systems, often seek refuge in flooded-timber regions, especially when bad weather moves the mallards south to feed, rest and roost. If you study the water available on your hunting lease, you'll soon learn where the ducks will show up every fall and winter. If you're fortunate enough to have a beaver pond or river-bottom hardwoods that flood on your lease, more than likely you're deer hunting in those areas. Before daylight and just before dark, when you're in your tree stand hunting deer, look for ducks. Notice where the ducks leave from in the morning and where the ducks land in the afternoon. Then, take a morning or an afternoon off from deer hunting, and plan a quack attack.

I prefer to wear LaCrosse Neoprene waders when hunting ducks. A quality pair of waders enables you to get into the water and move slowly and quietly into a position where you can take mallards and wood ducks. Under my hunting coat, I wear a SOSpender's Inflatable PDF. By your simply pulling a cord, this vest will inflate, keep your head above surface and allow you to get back to the bank if you step into a stump hole, drop off into a beaver run or trip and fall down while wading. No one ever intends to get wet or fill up their waders with water when they're duck hunting. But, if you duck hunt much, sooner or later, you'll get wet. The SOSpenders give you the ability to transform a dangerous situation into a safe way to return to solid footing.

Because I enjoy going onto the lease to hunt the ducks before daylight and because I tend to get lost in flooded timber, I always carry my Magellan SporTrak Pro hand-held GPS. I always mark the spot I want to get to as a waypoint the day before I'm going to hunt. With this GPS, I can navigate easily and quickly to my stand site in the dark. Depending on the water level, I'll often use a Browning Magnum Float Boat (belly boat). With an inner tube surrounding a comfortable chair, I can sit comfortably in the water with my waders on and take ducks in beaver ponds and potholes often deeper than the tops of my waders. The belly boat also allows me to recover ducks in deep water I normally can't recover. Always carry a small sculling paddle to move the belly boat forward or sideways when your feet won't touch the bottom. Carry your shotgun on a sling to move through the water hands-free without fear of your gun's getting wet.

TOMORROW: HOW TO JUMP-SHOOT QUACKS AND BUILD A DUCK-HUNTING HOT SPOT