THE BEST HUNTING-LEASE DUCK HUNTING

How to Jump-Shoot Quacks and Build a Duck-Hunting Hot Spot

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.

You'll enjoy taking ducks on your hunting club from a canoe, a johnboat or a small two-man boat, if the club land has creeks, streams or small rivers deep enough to float a boat. I prefer to hunt from a canoe because I've hunted from canoes all my life. However, since most canoes don't have a keel, which often makes them relatively unstable, and if you haven't hunted from a canoe before, you can tip the canoe over when you try to jump-shoot ducks. Ducks often will fly at wrong angles to a canoe, which causes you to lean out of the canoe to make an effective shot and thereby tip the canoe over. Also, when you're swinging your shotgun on a duck to get the proper lead, you've focused all your energy and attention on the duck and getting your gun barrel past the duck before you squeeze the trigger and not on your position in the canoe. Often, when you squeeze the trigger, the recoil will cause you and the canoe to become off-balanced, affording an early-morning or a late-afternoon bath in cold water.

If the waterway passing through your hunting lease will float a flat-bottomed johnboat, you can jump-shoot quacks safer and more comfortably than you can from a canoe. You also may choose to use the johnboat in beaver ponds and flooded timber, if and when the water becomes too deep to wade. Remember, if you're hunting from a boat and using a motor, according to the law, you must keep the motor in the boat when you're shooting the ducks. That's why I prefer to paddle rather than have a motor on the boat. Although most of the shooting will occur because you've surprised the ducks, and they jump off the water, I've learned even though ducks will fly down a creek to escape hunters, many times, often within two to three minutes, they'll circle and fly back up the creek, providing exciting overhead pass shooting. You'll also pinpoint ducks collecting in bends of the river, eddy pools and under the lip of banks where they can rest, feed and hide from predators.

Most landowners don't like beavers, because they destroy timber and flood timberlands. For this reason, most landowners carry on a constant war with the paddle tails. However, beavers can provide productive duck-hunting spots for you and the other members of your hunting lease, if you know the secret of the three-log jam. Check with the landowner. After securing his permission, break a hole in the beaver dam to drain the beaver pond. Next, sow Japanese millet, a form of millet that grows quickly and heads early, on the bottom of the pond. Put three logs stacked in a pyramid shape in the break of the dam, perpendicular to the dam. Over the top of the logs, place sheets of tin. This three-log jam generally will prevent the beavers from totally re-damming the pond. In the fall of the year, when the Japanese millet has matured, remove this three-log jam and more than likely, the beavers will patch the hole in the dam, thereby creating a duck-hunting hot spot. This simple planting scheme will enable you to not only pull in migratory ducks but also to concentrate local wood ducks into your hunting site.

TOMORROW: ENJOY WATERFOWL HUNTING