How Dutton Calls, Why He Uses the Decoy Spread He Does and a Late-Season Crop for WaterFowl

EDITOR'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.

Longtime, avid duck hunter Tony Dutton of Northport, Alabama, works as a duck-hunting guide at the Tenn-Tom Hunting Lodge. He says, "I like to put out Feather Flex decoys when I hunt. I can carry a dozen or two of these lightweight decoys and either put them out in the rice or green timber without having a heavy load to carry. The least little bit of wind will move these decoys around, and you can turn the decoys' heads in different positions so that all your decoys don't look just alike."

Although Dutton hunts with a Benelli 3 1/2-inch Magnum 12 gauge, he admits he prefers the 3-inch Winchester No. 4 shot for taking ducks. "I just hate to take the beating that the 3 1/2-inch shot delivers," Dutton explained.

The area that Dutton and I hunted had controlled water where the owners had built levees around a field planted with rice and millet. They had set up a blind in the middle of the field and flooded the field so that the ducks could come into the field and feed. "They specifically set this field up for hunting ducks," Dutton emphasized.

Dutton had set his decoys out on either side of our blind and left a hole in the middle in which the ducks could land. However, he also placed some of his decoys in the stubble above the water on the edge of the hole. "I believe that ducks like to land in open water," Dutton said. "But I also know that once the ducks land, they feed out into the stubble. So, to make my decoys more natural looking, I always set a few ducks out in the weeds to give the appearance of ducks feeding."

Besides planting rice and milo in the field for the ducks, Hugh Snoddy, the owner of the Tenn-Tom Lodge, also had planted Egyptian wheat in patches out in the field. "The Egyptian wheat grows really tall on a very strong stem," Dutton reported. "When the ice and snow hits, these heads bend over to the water and provide a late-season food source for the ducks after they've eaten the rice and millet."

As another flight of ducks came in, we all shot. But only Kenny Crimm, the lodge manager, connected with a big gadwall. "We get a good variety of ducks since our lodge is only a mile away from the Tenn-Tom Waterway," Crimm commented. "Our lodge has big flights of mallards and plenty of teal, gadwalls, ringnecks, wood ducks and every other kind of duck under the sun. We rarely will sit in the blind for more than 10 minutes without seeing ducks or having ducks to work." Unlike most duck callers, Dutton doesn't try to blow the reeds out of his duck calls. He calls very little and depends heavily on his decoy setup to bring in the webfoots. According to Dutton, "Because the ducks in this region receive plenty of hunting pressure, I call as little as possible to get in the birds. I just try to get the ducks' attention and let the decoys bring them in. You have to remember that hunters have called to, decoyed, shot at and spooked the ducks on the Alabama/Mississippi line all the way down the flyway. So, I believe in using only as much calling as I absolutely must."

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

Tomorrow: Better Duck Hunting: the Robo Duck and a Quality Retriever