Hunting and Fishing News Blog Articles

Whenever I hunt, I carry a pair of shooting sticks; when all else fails, they can help you make a good shot. A bipod doesn’t do you any good if you can’t set up high enough to elevate your muzzle above the surrounding vegetation. And even my go-to shooting support, a Game Changer bag stuffed with lightweight fill, needs something to rest on that gives you a clear shot. In contrast, you’ll almost always be able to use shooting sticks to get a shot from a seated position.

I became a true-believer in the technique many years ago while watching a huge mule deer snake his way through some buck brush in Colorado. My guide and I had ridden mules to the top of a ridge before sunup to glass a draw the deer were using to move between a water hole and their bedding area. We caught sight of one bruiser slipping back to his bedroom at first light.

I set up on a pair of basic shooting sticks, and was able to get steady enough to hit him at just over 400 yards with my 300 WSM, and in the process tagged my first big muley. In that scenario, there wasn’t any other means for me to get sufficiently stable to secure a hit. In other words, if I didn’t have those shooting sticks, I wouldn’t have killed that buck.

The concept behind the technique is simple: Deploy the shooting sticks so that the fore-end of your stock rests on top of them, then put the recoil pad into your shoulder. How far apart you spread the legs of the sticks controls the elevation of your rifle’s muzzle. The wider they are, the lower you’ll shoot; the narrower they’re spread, the more clearance you’ll get.

When setting up the sticks, angle them back toward you a bit so that the rifle wants to naturally fall into your shoulder. If it’s angled the other way, you can end up fighting to keep the stock in your shoulder pocket, making the position less relaxed and less steady.

A hunting hawk perched over a recent kill. (Nick Kelley/)

As soon as Hashbrown launches from his arm, Tyler Sladen starts running. I follow, sprinting through the soft New Mexican sand, dodging cholla cactus and piles of trash, and trying not to lose sight of hawk or hunter. I can mostly keep up with Sladen, a 27-year-old Army veteran accustomed to running at high altitude. But Hashbrown is a different beast. In the time it takes the juvenile northern goshawk to soar half a mile across the hills, we’ve barely covered 80 yards. In the distance, Sladen’s buddy Kevin Jackson works their combined pack of setters, still combing the brush for quail.

We’re hunting a chunk of public land on the outskirts of Albuquerque. It’s an off-roading hotspot and a dumping ground for everything from one-eyed dolls to toilet seats. The place holds quail and rabbits, though, and there’s little competition for game since it’s illegal to discharge a firearm here. But that doesn’t mean we don’t hear gunshots nearby.

When we do reach Hashbrown, he’s perched on the highest bush around, a vantage point from which to watch for game while waiting for Sladen to collect him. Beside the sage sits Trigger, a 4-year-old Vizsla and the hawk’s devoted bodyguard.

Vizslas were historically bred as Hungarian falconry dogs, and he, at least, can keep up with Hashbrown. When Hashbrown takes off in pursuit of quail, Trigger does the grunt work on the ground, re-flushing birds that try to hide in the brush and standing guard whenever the hawk makes a kill. Birds of prey, especially young ones, are vulnerable to all kinds of hazards, including other people’s dogs, windows, and cars. They’re also in danger from coyotes, sometimes attracted by the distress squeals of the dying rabbits he catches. For now, though, all is calm. Sladen raises a gloved arm, and Hashbrown hops neatly onto the offered wrist.

Read Next: These Hunters Have Perfected the Upland Bird Hunting Road Trip

A fox squirrel freezes on the trunk of a shagbark hickory tree. (skip moody/dembinsky photo/alamy/)

As with so many hunters, my baptism was by squirrel blood. A fat fox squirrel that thought it was hidden high in a post oak behind my grandmother’s house fell to a load of No. 6s from my H&R 12-gauge after several frustrating rounds of hide-and-seek.

My last-ditch strategy was to wait it out, an exercise that taxed my 10-year-old patience to the limit. But as I held the squirrel’s body in my hands, a sense of satisfaction warmed my young body. And though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, there was a lesson here: When all else fails, tenacity and patience are a deadly combination.

In the decades since, the wisdom gleaned from that hunt has contributed to more hunting success. It works when a gobbler stalls behind a tree trunk for what seems an eternity. It works when a whitetail inside 20 yards takes forever to turn just a bit more for the arrow’s best angle. It works when the woods have seemed barren for hours before the soft crunch of hoof steps in autumn leaves makes your heart pound.

Squirrels were also the gatekeepers of woods secrets, teaching me how to read sign, make sense of every sight and sound in the forest, and understand the necessity of taking only a clear and ethical shot.

But here’s something that should never be a ­secret: Squirrels aren’t just for kids. The beautiful thing about squirrel hunting is that you can easily build ­degrees of difficulty that will challenge even the most seasoned hunters.

Hunters have a lot of options at their disposal to help steady a shot in the field. Shooting slings, bipods, and shooting sticks all have their place in a hunter’s bag of tricks. But for me, the most versatile and useful shooting aid is a fabric bag that contains a lightweight fill.

The one I’ve used more than any other is Armageddon Gear’s Game Changer, but there are plenty of different options out there and if you have access to a heavy-duty sewing machine and know how to use it, you can make one yourself.

I carry this bag everywhere I hunt or shoot, and once you learn how to use one, you’ll probably want it with you all the time as well. What I really like about the Game Changer are its overall dimensions and the rabbit-ear configuration, which allows it to adapt to a wide range of situations. The bag is about 11 inches long and 5 inches wide, and weighs less than 2 pounds.

You can use a bag in conjunction with a bipod to create a solid support from a prone position. This technique is what most people think of when using a bag.

But because of its size and shape, you can set it on a lot of different surfaces and rest the rifle right on top of it. It can sit on a log, a rock, a fence post, or even across the rail in a tree stand. Generally speaking, you’ll place the rifle so that the bag is right in front of the trigger guard, under the rifle’s balance point.

A petroglyph depicting a hunt, near Moab, Utah. (design pics inc/alamy/)

It’s November, opening morning of firearms deer season in Wisconsin. I’m in my treestand just inside the woods, above a well-worn escape route from open land I can’t hunt that’s used by the year-round-resident whitetails.

I see six does with a 10-point buck in the open land. As they move farther away, I am curious: What would they do if I shot into the ground? My gunshot echoes in the narrow valley, making it difficult to pinpoint the source of the noise. After the sound settles, does burst through a gap in the woods and disappear into the brush below my stand. I hold my breath as the buck quarters toward me in a clearing only 25 yards away. I take the shot. I feel lucky but also regretful that my anticipated long day in the woods is over, with plenty of processing work ahead.

Admittedly, along with luck, my understanding of resident deer habits helped me punch my buck tag. A modern hunter with knowledge of whitetail behavior and sophisticated modern weaponry can successfully ambush deer. That raises questions about ­human hunting capabilities. Do modern humans have the capabilities—­physical and sensory—of ancient hunters? Or have we lost those skills because of our reliance on technology? My short answer to both questions is yes.

Recent analyses from archaeological sites in Olduvai Gorge, in East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, established the capability of humans living nearly 2 million years ago to ambush wildebeest-size prey using simple wooden spears at close range. I believe that humans ­today still possess the capabilities of the ancients. Those skills remain ­underdeveloped, however, because we can get by without them.

To compensate for their cognitive limitations, the ancients probably had to rely on their senses to survive as hunters in a crowded African savanna community of well-adapted carnivores and prey. People today have brains two to three times larger than the ancients', a difference that fuels the invention of sophisticated hunting weaponry. Humans today, therefore, can hunt with less reliance on fundamental senses and instead rely on advanced technology.

The author relied on the tutelage of a seasoned hunter to take this Wyoming pronghorn. (Joe Genzel/)

I grew up in Illinois, where there wasn’t much reason to learn to shoot a rifle. Apart from coyotes, you can’t shoot any wild game animal with a centerfire here. The only time a bolt gun was ever placed in my hands as a kid was at my grandparents' house. Grandpa loaded his own ammo and even created a hand-crafted lead coil system, which he mounted to the wall so he could test-fire his hand-loads in the basement. I vividly remember my dad taking me down there one time and showing me the old rifles, and we even shot a few .22 LRs into the coil. The distance was only about 30 feet.

I tell this story to give you some perspective of the very short distances I grew up shooting. It took a lot of hard work for me to learn to stretch out to longer yardages, and I still won’t shoot an animal much past 300 yards with a rifle.

When hunters head west for the first time, pronghorn antelope are often their introductory big-game animal (although cow elk offer a great entry-level Western hunt, too). The good thing about antelope is, if you’re hunting the right place, there are a lot of them. It’s not like a whitetail hunt where you’re waiting all day in a treestand for that one buck to come in. If you’re busted on a spot-and-stalk pronghorn hunt, you can often find another antelope. You will almost always see speed goats as long as you’re willing to cover some ground. (If you don’t, then get the hell out of that unit, or never book with that outfitter again.) The only real drawback is that antelope have a smaller vital area than whitetails, so they can be tougher to hit even at shorter distances.

To ease your mind, and get you ready for your first antelope hunt, we’ve pulled together some tips to get you started, along with notes on the gear you’ll need.

1. Hunt with an Experienced Buddy

There are valid reasons to use both 3- and 5-shot protocols, so I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other without know what the shooter is hoping to accomplish. (Bill Buckley/)

“My rifle is a half-inch gun.”

I hear and read statements like this frequently. Hunters and shooters like to boast about how well their new guns shoot. Or they want to show off the results of their latest reloading efforts, or just reaffirm that an old favorite still has what it takes for another hunting season. Sometimes they have a picture or two of small groups for evidence; sometimes not.

For me, however, these pronouncements raise more questions than they answer.

One of the first things I wonder is, How many shots are in the group? That answer is usually either three or five.

There are valid reasons to use both protocols, so I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other without know what the shooter is hoping to accomplish.

A massive old buck heading for security cover. (John Hafner/)

One of the themes that’s developed around our upcoming presidential election is that there seems to be very few “undecided” voters. Most folks have chosen their camp and intend to stay there. I find that kind of sad. Changing your mind is one of the pinnacles of freedom. I change mine often and, when it comes to deer hunting, I’ve changed it almost completely. Changing your mind is one of life’s greatest gifts, and it can be one of your greatest assets in the woods.

We are now nearly a month into the 2020 deer season and I’ve yet to actually hunt. Does that mean I’m taking a year off or that I’m being lazy? Nope. It simply means I’ve learned an awful lot from previous mistakes, and that I’ve admitted to myself that I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew.

It’s really that I’ve changed my overall hunting approach based on experiences, results, and, perhaps most of all, necessity.

In the past, I’d spend untold hours during the summer months getting everything lined up for the coming deer season. Long-range surveillance, trail cameras, food plots—you name it, I did it. Nowadays? Until last week, I hadn’t been in the woods since turkey season. I spent not a single hour watching bean fields or monitoring summer trail cams. Those tactics were fun, but everyday life has gotten in the way and I just don’t have time for them anymore. But here’s the thing: I’m more successful now than I ever was in the past.

Before we dive in too far, it’s best to set the stage for how I developed this approach (and how you can too if my schedule sounds familiar). To be honest, it was quite by accident.

Setting up a standard variable-power scope with a duplex cross-hair reticle with a point-blank zero is a smart choice for hunters. (Bill Buckley /)

Modern precision rifle scopes are powerful tools that can be quite effective for hunters who take the time to master them. Exposed elevation turrets combined with reticles that have reference marks for holdovers and windage can take the guesswork out of connecting on longer shots.

But these scopes aren’t without their drawbacks. The faint lines in the reticles can be difficult to see in low-light conditions and tough to decipher in the heat of the moment. Hunting with them requires time and practice to master. Because there’s no shortcut when it comes to using them—you’re either all in, or better off going another route.

This is why setting up a standard variable-power scope that has a duplex cross-hair reticle with a point-blank zero (PBZ) is a smart choice.

The idea is simple. You zero your rifle so that it hits a bit high at 100 yards. Depending on the distance and the size of the target, this allows you to place the crosshairs in the middle of target and not have to worry about fiddling with turrets of calculating holdovers.

Typically, you’ll want to set your zero around 2 to 3 inches high at 100 yards. With most cartridges, this will put you dead-on somewhere between 200 and 245 yards, and a few inches low around 280 yards.

Idaho wolf hunter Ryan Williams howls from a ridge near Lolo Pass. (Matt Arkins/)

Ryan Williams wants to be clear. He’s not a wolf-­hunting expert. Though he spends the majority of the year around wolves and hunts them nearly all winter out of his family’s lodge in the remote Idaho wilderness, he says he’s more a perpetual student than a knowledgeable teacher.

“You could hunt these things for a lifetime and never learn all there is to know,” says Williams, who works as a U.S. ­Forest Service smoke jumper during the summer, bowhunts elk in the tangled pine jungles of Idaho’s high country through the fall, and then calls wolves all winter.

“Even when you think you have them figured out, they’ll pull some shenanigans that make you second-guess what you know. My friends have gotten so used to me coming back with a one-that-got-away story that they call me ‘Chances with Wolves.’”

But Williams has an advantage that most of us don’t: a 2-million-acre classroom where he’s learned the behaviors and responses of wolves and developed a library of experiences about which hunting tactics work, which need refinement, and which are definitely not effective.

“I can tell you with more certainty about what doesn’t work than what does,” says Williams, who lives and hunts west of Missoula, Montana, on the Idaho side of Lolo Pass. “Most prey-in-distress calls don’t work. Also, one of the best ways to not kill wolves is to rely on a single gun for all setups.”

An avid day hiker when he’s not hunting, the author prefers specialized concealed carry packs like this model from Gun Gear. He further camouflages the packs by adding a Grizzly insulated water bottle holder. (Mike Dickerson/)

Hiking, running, and cycling may be great for your health, but these pursuits can also put you at risk for encountering predators (both the four-legged and two-legged variety). Hikers and runners have been murdered on trails and, if you pay attention to social media, you’ve probably by now seen this standoff between a mountain lion and a trail runner.

If you wish to carry a concealed firearm during these activities, you may find that traditional carry options aren’t entirely satisfactory. Runners and cyclists often wear light, skin-tight clothing that allows few methods for concealing anything larger than a toothpick. Outside waistband (OWB) holsters can be difficult to conceal. Inside waistband (IWB) holsters can chafe or cause a gun to dig into your skin during strenuous activity. With the right holster and clothing, IWB carry may be the answer for some people some of the time, but it doesn’t work well in every circumstance. When hiking in warm weather, as I often do, I sweat like a third-strike felon before a judge, and I’m not keen on repeatedly drenching my guns in sweat. I’m not a fan of pocket holsters because they may limit you to carrying very small guns. Shoulder holsters only work with a concealing outer garment.

The ideal concealed carry option for these activities must provide effective concealment, be comfortable during hours of strenuous activity, and have good firearm retention. It should also offer immediate access to the gun, because if you ever need one in an emergency, you’ll likely need it immediately.

When I’m not hunting, I am an avid day hiker, and I have long struggled to find the best concealed carry solution. What works well for me—and may work equally well for you—are specialized packs or pouches worn on the waist. Some people (mostly gun people) think these items scream “I have a gun” or are less than masculine, but that’s no longer true (also, who cares?). Once out of fashion, waist packs are making a comeback, especially with outdoor recreationists , and many models are designed for concealed carry, providing a great hide-in-plain-sight option. Here are some I’ve tested that may work for you.

1. Elite Survival Systems Marathon GunPak

Make sure your rifle is prepared to handle whatever hunting season throws at you, including inclement weather. (Bill Buckley /)

Years ago, I was hiking in the breaks in eastern Montana looking for a late-season mule deer when I lost my footing and drove the barrel of my .260 Remington into the soggy ground. I spent what felt like the better part of an hour using small twigs and stalks of dried grass to clear the mud, snow, and ice from the barrel. The funny thing is, that this wasn’t the first time I’d pulled that stunt. But, I’m happy to report, it was the last time I found myself in this predicament because then and there I vowed to never venture forth on a rifle hunt without taping the muzzle of my barrel first—and so far, I’ve kept my word.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had other issues crop up. A couple seasons back, I was hiking down a logging road in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, looking for a blacktail. After a lifetime of shooting my hearing isn’t what it once was, but even I couldn’t help but notice an odd clicking sound with every other step I took.

An inspection of my rifle revealed that the scope was rocking back and forth in time with my cadence: The screws in the scope bases had come loose. I always carry a small tool kit with me—a set of Fix It Sticks, with some additional bits and fixtures added—so I was able to rectify the situation and confirm my zero before resuming the hunt.

So, in the hopes that you might be spared similar headaches in the field, I’m sharing with you the lessons I’ve learned through firsthand experience. Think of the advice offered here as the classic “Do as I say, not as I’ve done,” variety.

1. Check Your Fasteners

Senator Jon Tester (left) has introduced a bill to block William Perry Pendley from resuming his post at the Bureau of Land Management. (Bureau of Land Management/)

Montana U.S. Senator Jon Tester (Dem.) yesterday introduced legislation that ratchets up the stakes against William Perry Pendley, the embattled defacto head of the federal agency that oversees management of more than 245 million acres of land, mainly in the West.

Tester’s bill, which is co-sponsored by five fellow Democrats, would prevent the U.S. Department of Justice from appealing a federal district court ruling, handed down last month, that removed Pendley from his leadership role.

Pendley has been controversial since his appointment by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to serve as deputy director of the BLM in July 2019. Public-land advocates at the time protested his record as a property-rights lawyer who has called for the dispersal of federal lands to the states and for his prior representation of energy companies that currently do business with the BLM. Bernhardt promoted Pendley to the role of acting BLM director in August 2019, but Pendley was never confirmed by the U.S. Senate for that post.

The Interior Department has complained that the Senate has failed to invite Pendley to a confirmation hearing. However, many Western Democrats, led by Tester, have called for Pendley to appear at an expedited hearing.

The case escalated in September. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ruled last month, following a suit filed by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, that Pendley had served unlawfully for 424 days, and concluded that any decisions that he had approved in his “illegitimate capacity” are also subject to appeal. In response, the Interior Department denounced Morris’s ruling, calling it an “erroneous” decision that “fundamentally misinterprets the law.”

A trained dachshund helped find this Georgia swamp buck. (@Jaegertracks/)

You know you hit that buck. You found blood and hair. You just can’t find the deer. You recall somebody—­somewhere—said with absolute confidence what wounded deer do. Was it Uncle Bill at deer camp or the farmer who gave you permission? Regardless, they said they knew exactly how deer behave after being hit by a bullet or an arrow. Their advice is echoing in your head, but daylight’s slipping away, panic is setting in, and you have no earthly idea where that wounded buck has run off to, or even how badly it’s injured.

It’s impossible to predict with absolute confidence what an injured animal does after being shot. Nobody knows that better than members of United Blood Trackers, a coalition of dog owners who use their specially trained dogs to track and recover wounded game, often for a price. Legal in 40 U.S. states, leashed-dog tracking has deep roots in the hunting culture of central Europe, where breeds were developed specifically to find game like red deer, fallow deer, and wild boar. Leashed-dog tracking didn’t become widespread in North America until the late 20th century, but since then, the practice has taught thousands of anxious hunters the unpredictable ways of wounded animals, lessons that often culminate with the recovery of an animal that would have otherwise been lost.

“I’ve been tracking with my dog for just two seasons,” says Damon Bungard of Tennessee, who uses his dachshund, Jager, to find deer and wild hogs. “He’s already taught me more about what wounded or marginally hit animals really do than I learned in 30 years of hunting.”

We humans may not have dogs' prodigious sense of smell or their ability to process a complicated array of sensory cues, but we can learn from their accumulated experiences. Here are a number of lessons hunters can glean from leashed tracking dogs to ensure a wounded animal is recovered.

Make a good shot

Sportsmen’s and women's issues will help frame what the Nov. 3 election is all about. (Lee Thomas Kjos / The Raw Spirit/)

“I guess you’d call me a recovering Republican.”

That’s how Nick Siebrasse, a retired UPS driver from Havre, Montana, describes his political philosophy. Siebrasse commits to just enough construction work—light residential remodels, mainly—in retirement to leave him time to hunt and fish, mostly with his extended family.

“I grew up a rural Montana Republican,” Siebrasse tells me while we install grip bars in a tiled shower for our mutual friend, who just had his foot amputated due to diabetes-related complications. “But then I started looking around. I just don’t see how you can be a hunter or fisherman in America and vote Republican, not if you care about accessing public land, keeping our water clean, and keeping wildlife as a public, instead of a private, resource.”

On the other side of Montana, Gary Baxter says his political affiliation is also migrating. A lifelong hunter, Baxter hesitated talking to me because he’s not sure his staunchly Democratic family would understand his decision to support Donald Trump’s reelection bid. For Baxter, next month’s election turns on a single issue: guns.

“I just don’t trust Democrats in general and Biden in particular when it comes to protecting my right to own and use guns,” says Baxter. “I think they’d just as soon that we [gun owners] went away. I think other issues will take care of themselves, but I’m less sure when it comes to guns.”

It’s worth investing in the right tools to clean your rifle, both to get the best results and to protect your barrel and receiver from inadvertent damage. (Bill Buckley/)

I get to shoot a lot of guns for my job. That’s the fun part. I also end up needing to clean a lot of guns. That’s when the fun stops. Fortunately, I’ve fine-tuned my cleaning process over the years so that I spend the least amount of time swabbing barrels in order to get back to pulling triggers.

If you scroll to the bottom of this article, you’ll find a list of the cleaning gear I use. It’s worth investing in the right products, both to get the best results from your efforts and to protect your barrel and receiver from inadvertent damage.

Step 1

Soak a small stack of patches with cleaning solvent. There are a ton of good solvents on the market. I use Hoppes Elite, Shooters Choice, and Butch’s Bore Shine, and I’m happy with all three products. While the patches are soaking, secure your rifle for cleaning. Whenever I clean my rifles, I always clamp them in my gun vise so that the barrel is angled slightly downward to prevent the goo from going back into the action. This is especially important if you’re using a strong copper remover (see Step 4). If you don’t have a gun vise that allows you to do this, rest the gun, barrel down, against the wall and place a rag under the muzzle to soak up the solvent and protect the metal.

Step 2

Pennsylvania started reintroducing elk in the early 1900s. (Hal Korber/Hunt Wild PA/)

When most hunters think of elk hunting, they envision snow-capped mountain peaks with dark fir forests, alpine meadows gracing the high country, and golden aspens shimmering in the foothills. But there’s another option that’s steadily becoming available. Picture sprawling meadows of rugged, reclaimed coal mine land in Kentucky. A forest glade in Wisconsin’s northwoods. A hillside in Arkansas' Ozarks. And an Appalachian ridge cutting through the Pennsylvania countryside.

Elk once ranged across our nation. But habitat changes and overhunting led to a severe decline in populations. In the last few decades elk are making a comeback in the East, thanks to the efforts of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF), state fish and game agencies, and a variety of other conservation partners.

The Eastern Elk Restoration

RMEF has been at the forefront of eastern elk restoration and they’ve worked with state and local wildlife agencies to put elk back on the landscape. There’s still much work to be done, but several states already have high enough elk numbers to warrant a hunting season.

“It’s been part of RMEF’s mission since 1990 when the first project east of the Mississippi was completed in Wisconsin,” says Blake Henning, chief conservation officer for RMEF. “Since then, the organization has spent millions of dollars both directly and indirectly to support the efforts of seven states (Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin) and also Ontario, Canada.”

Freezer burnt meat requires plenty of trimming with a sharp, thin fillet knife. (JACK HENNESSY/)

I’ll come out and say it: Understanding freezer burn and how to best avoid it, as well as knowing how to deal with it, is the single-most important factor when it comes to enjoying what you put on the plate. There, the gauntlet has been thrown.

Yes, a gut-shot buck that was surging with adrenaline can make for a poor final product when it comes to table fare. But that’s only one critter in your freezer. Failing to realize the overall impact of improper freezer management can adversely affect your entire collection of wild game.

And of course knowing how to cook wild game correctly is paramount, but if your main ingredient is scarred by your freezer, you’re already starting from behind. So let’s break down what exactly freezer burn is, how to prevent it, and, finally, how to deal with freezer burn should it occur.

What Is Freezer Burn?

Without getting too technical, let’s provide the short-version answer: Freezer burn is when moisture from meat evaporates and oxygen reaches your meat, causing dehydration. The longer portions of your frozen meat remain exposed to air, the more dehydrated meat gets and, you guessed it … the more freezer burnt it becomes.

Sandhill cranes in formation over New Mexico. (Donald M Jones/)

“Put that damned thing away!” Evan Stabolitis hisses in the dark. He’s sitting on a lawn chair somewhere to my left in the portable blind he and his half dozen guides constructed on the edge of a picked Oklahoma cotton field. Then, for emphasis, “You wanna get us all busted?”

He sounds exactly like the commander of a blacked-out submarine, imploring an oblivious sailor not to drop the wrench that will reveal their location to enemy destroyers and lead to lethal depth-charging. “You wanna get us all killed?” is what I heard, though I think Stabolitis actually said, “You all wanna kill limits, right?”

I snap shut my bright yellow notebook and tuck it in my camouflaged blind bag. Sandhill cranes are approaching in the breaking November dawn. We can hear their hoarse bugling as they rise from the distant Red River, and while shooting light is still 15 minutes away, Stabolitis isn’t taking chances. He tells the four of us shooters that there will be no talking once birds hook into the decoys.

“I don’t want to hear anybody whispering or see anybody twitching,” he says, channeling the voice of that submarine commander. “You move, we all lose.”

His caution is borderline laughable, but I figure that Stabolitis, who guides crane hunters on the High Plains of southwest Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, has seen—and been busted by—a lot more sandhills than I have. So I sit on my hands, keep my head down and my thoughts to myself, and wait for the cranes to spiral into our spread.

A wood duck and ringneck duck on a northern Minnesota rice lake. (Alex Robinson/)

All diehard duck hunters have their favorite species, and they’ll usually rank them something like this: greenheads, canvasbacks, and pintails. But living and hunting in the northern half of the Mississippi Flyway, my favorite waterfowl species is the odd and gorgeous little wood duck. They are fast and challenging targets, when they decide to decoy they do so with reckless abandon, and they’re one of the best-tasting ducks out there. To my eye, a plumed out drake is prettiest duck in North America (it’s closes relative is the Mandarin duck in Asia).

In the Eastern and Mississippi Flyways, wood ducks are abundant and accessible. According to Ducks Unlimited, wood ducks were second in total harvest in the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways in 25 out of 30 years, second only behind mallards. Wood ducks hang out in tree-lined marshes, creeks, and ponds. You don’t need a massive spread and an expensive duck boat to effectively hunt woodies. You can usually decoy them in with about a dozen decoys and a wood duck call to get their attention. You can also drop a kayak or canoe in a wooded stream and jump shoot them out of a boat. But once temps drop close to freezing and the calendar turns to mid-October, wood ducks will start flocking up and heading south.

You can have good shoots on migrating woodies in northern states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, where I live, but also in the South, where the birds are headed to winter. The tactics and strategies that will be most effective, all depend on where, and when, you’re hunting. —A.R.

Hunting Wood Ducks in the North

At the beginning of the season, wood ducks are easy targets. They’ll usually dive bomb your decoys in singles and pairs and help you inch closer to an opening day limit. Migrators are not so easy. They usually push through the upper Midwest quickly. They don’t hang around until the water freezes up like mallards do. But if you scout diligently and time the migration right, you can have outstanding shoots on migrating wood ducks up north.