Photo by Mike Marsh.

On the next occasion you don your waders and head out hours before daybreak, braving frigid morning air to await the blur of wood ducks as they take their early-morning flight, tip your hat to the large, toothy rodents responsible for creating the miserable flooded mess that the wood ducks call home. Beavers and wood ducks go hand in hand. Woodies are fond of waters with plenty of wooded cover -- hence the name -- and a new-built beaver pond offers habitat that attracts and keeps wood ducks in the vicinity.

The wood duck can sometimes be the most reliable among all of the Southern duck hunter's winged quarry. The brightly colored ducks are prevalent throughout the Southeast, and are the most abundant of the wild duck species to breed and live out their life cycles as full-time residents in our Southeastern states.

Hunters also benefit from the great number of wood ducks that migrate south along the Mississippi and Atlantic flyways during the colder winter months. During mild winters, other migratory species may even remain farther north, making the wood duck the only dependable target for Southern duck hunters. Returning home with a couple of woodies in the game bag can save an otherwise unproductive day of staring towards the sky waiting for a flock of mallards to show.

Known as "dabblers," because they tilt into the water to feed instead of diving beneath the surface, woodies rarely leave their woody habitat. They fly very little, and generally stick close to vegetation at water's edge. Wetland areas with large numbers of oak trees make ideal habitat for the crested birds. Wood ducks feed heavily on acorns in the fall in preparation for the winter months, switching to a high-protein diet such as insects in the spring; they also feed on aquatic plants and duckweed.

Hunting woodies requires tactics different from those used to pursue other duck species more apt to fly over open water. Using decoys isn't practical for hunting wood ducks. They fly too fast, and usually through dense cover too thick to really see the decoys in. Wood ducks don't take to the air very often, so the best chance to catch them in flight is at first light.

Find a clearing in a wooded swamp, perhaps near a fallen tree or two and a break in the canopy, and wait for that first early-morning flight, which brings your best chance of the day. You can also position yourself close to the bank of a wooded creek, keeping your eye on the opening above the water for woodies using it as a flyway.

Sometimes hunting by boat or canoe is the best option; it can be productive any time of day. By easing along creek and river edges -- especially waterways with lots of twists and turns -- woodies can be jumped, their usual warning call hopefully providing you time to take aim. Camouflaging the front of your boat with some brush and branches can be a good idea.

Targeting woodies from a boat or canoe works best with a partner, with one of you paddling the vessel and the other sitting up front ready to shoot. But be ready: A wood duck can fly up to speeds of 40 to 55 miles per hour.

The woodies' preference for sticking close to dense woods makes the birds' numbers more difficult to determine with the aerial surveys used for counting other duck species on open water. Biologists have greater success with monitoring the birds by means of banding methods. Many woodies taken by hunters show that the birds were banded in the same state, and that most Southern states are sustaining their local populations. Even with the added number of woodies that visit us on the southerly migration in the winter making them seem especially plentiful, hunting seasons need to be carefully monitored so as to not deplete populations.

THE WOOD DUCK STORY
Wood ducks weren't always so plentiful. Hundreds of years ago, they flourished in our country's dense woodlands, along secluded ponds, marshes and slow-moving creeks. As man moved in, eradicating large swaths of forest through logging and clearing for farmland and draining swamplands, the wood duck's habitat diminished. Especially hard hit were the hollow hardwood trees used for nesting. Excessive hunting pressure from long seasons and large bag limits both severely reduced numbers, with commercial market hunting playing a big role.