Backyard ducks

Wood ducks are wild and free, living in their own paradise, yet closer than most duck hunters in Mississippi realize. Here are some tips to help add them to your bag.

Duck hunting is becoming a favorite sport for many sportsmen and sportswomen. Considering all the gear needed, it can become expensive very quickly — especially if you have to pay to access good places near flyways with good numbers of mallards and pintails.

There’s an exception, however, to expensive waterfowl hunting: wood ducks, aka woodies, squealers, acorn ducks and swamp ducks.

You won’t break the bank if you decide to go after woodies. They’re found just about anywhere that holds a little water. If you already have hunting land or fishing spots, chances are good that you have a place to hunt wood ducks. It doesn’t take a whole lot of equipment, either. All you really need is a shotgun, shells and some camo, plus maybe a call or two and a half-dozen decoys.

Where to find them

“Wood ducks prefer annually flooded areas that provide dense vegetative cover, such as bottomland hardwood forests and scrub-shrub wetland areas that contain willow, buttonbush, and privet,” said Houston Havens, the waterfowl project coordinator for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. “This type of habitat provides everything that wood ducks need to thrive throughout the year, including nesting structure, cover for brood rearing and plenty of acorns, seeds and insects to feed upon.”

Magnolia State hunters don’t have to look far; we are fortunate to have a healthy population of woodies.

“In Mississippi, we have a lot of resident wood ducks. We also have a large number of them that annually migrate from the north,” says Phillip Cagle, owner of White Oak Hunting Service near Tunica.

Good places to hunt are at the shallow ends of ponds, in a bend of a slow-moving stream or river, in flooded timber or cypress swamps or on the edges of beaver sloughs.

“Scouting is the key to being successful bagging woodies,” Cagle said. “Scout for them, and don’t rule out lakes that can be hunted, especially near the creeks feeding them or narrow fingers.”

Scout places before you plan to hunt, both early mornings and at sunset. Look for roosting areas and the directions ducks fly at dusk and dawn. It’s not recommended to hunt in or on the edge of roosting areas — ducks are smart, and it could ruin a good roost for the entire season.

Myths about wood ducks

A lot of hunters have fallen for the fallacy that wood ducks can’t be called or decoyed. In the right situation, they will come to a call, and when combined with decoys, hunters can get them within shotgun range.

“They will come in to a decoy,” says Mike “Catfish” Flautt, a guide for Tallahatchie Hunts in Swan Lake. “I will do a wood duck whistle to turn them.”

The high-pitched hen call — “teeeowwwit” — or the really high-pitched drake whistle — “to-wwiit” — works well getting them in gun range as they’re trying to land. The same calls work if they land out of range — call to them, and they’ll sometimes swim over in range, then flush them and shoot. The loud “wheat-wheat” sound the squealers make when they’re spooked is a good call to use when they’ve flown over you and you’ve missed a shot opportunity. Many times, they’ll turn for another pass-by.

Decoys work, but keep the spread small. The number of drake and hen decoys should be the same, as they naturally travel in pairs. A good tip that will stack the odds in your favor is to rig one decoy with a weighted jerk-line. Wood ducks rarely sit still in the water, and pulling the jerk-line creates action on the water, causing the other decoys to bob around.

While it’s possible to turn them and get them to come in to decoys, Cagle makes a good point.

“They’re not like a working duck that will circle two or three times before they commit,” he said. “They’re woodies, and they’re coming in fast and furious.”

Setups and methods

You can jump-shoot, hunt from a blind or take woodies by pass-shooting. They’re basically hunted like any other duck, only these ducks live in more wooded habitats than other ducks. And they are fast. They have no problem maneuvering — weaving, darting, diving — through timber.

“Woodies can be flying a hundred miles an hour through the woods and land in a hole of water as big as a bucket. You have to be ready for them,” Flautt said.

Hunting from a blind can be very productive. It doesn’t take anything fancy; just build one out of whatever nature has nearby. Set up near the water’s edge. Sometimes a blind isn’t even necessary if you find large enough trees to sit by and you can rely on your camo. Throw out a small spread of decoys and keep your call ready to react when they fly in or fly over. Be in the blind and set up well before daybreak. Woodies are notorious for landing on the water before legal shooting hours.

Pass hunting is where scouting pays off, where hunters lie in wait for a shot as they fly over.

Havens offers a good strategy for pass hunting,

“Wood ducks sometimes follow somewhat of a daily pattern during the winter,” he said. “They typically roost in large numbers during the late evening and will often leave the roost early the next morning, heading the same direction before dispersing further. When this pattern is observed, hunters can take advantage by setting up in the flight path of wood ducks for morning hunts.”

Set up on the flight path, no closer than a couple hundred yards from the roost — remember, never hunt too close to their roost. Woodies are predictable and will keep the same patterns until shot into a couple times.

“The only kind of wood duck hunting we knew how to do back in the day was pass shooting on the way to a roost or jump shooting,” Flautt said.

Ambushing and jump-shooting are a traditional way a lot of hunters target wood ducks. The key is to know your hunting territory and know where the woodies will be. You can hunt them all day if you choose to. Ducks will be on the water or on the bank feeding on acorns, vegetation or insects. The strategy is to slip in undetected, and once you spot ducks, get in a position to make a good shot, then flush and shoot. Creeks and streams are ideal ambush places, especially in the bends. It can be difficult to put the slip on woodies in sloughs or flooded timber because of the flat terrain usually in those areas. Wherever you decide to ambush, sneak in slowly — wood ducks have a keen sense of sight and hearing, and they blend in well with their surroundings. Listen closely as you approach, they are very vocal ducks.

Wrapping it up

Hunters don’t have to be duck-hunting experts to chase woodies. It’s not the kill that keeps sportsmen coming back for more, it’s the whole package.

Wood ducks are fascinating. The hens are so well camouflaged — on the water, they’ll spot you long before you see them. In full breeding plumage, the drake is the most beautiful of all ducks. They’re forever wild, free and independently at large, living in their own paradise. These squealers have a splendid vocabulary of their own that is distinguished only as wood duck talk.

It’s not just the allure of the wood duck that draws hunters, just as much; it’s the territory where they live; some of the most beautiful scenery in Mississippi. These places can be found just beyond your own backyard.