Green Timber Duck Hunting

Where The Trees Have Wet Feet

Green timber duck hunting reminds me how Joan Rivers used to disparage one of her husband’s ex-girlfriends as being so gauche as to eat peas with a knife. “I was so upset,” the comedienne relates, “I dropped a whole handful of mashed potatoes.”

I was beginning to feel the same way. John Anthon, while swinging on a duck, stepped in a pothole, tried to recover by using his shotgun as a crutch, and buried its muzzle six inches deep in the muck.

I was so busy laughing at his klutziness I didn’t realize my own precarious footing until, upon firing my own long-twelve, I found myself blown stock-over-boxlock across a hummock, and wound up sitting in eight inches of water.

Somehow it all seemed fitting. Little mishaps like that are quite common among those of us who spend time timber duck hunting - pursing our prey in flooded timber. While they seem mildly funny in hindsight, they’re positively hilarious when they happen. Green timber duck hunters, like blondes, simply have more fun.

Green timber duck hunting is perhaps the ultimate waterfowling art. Any dyed-in-the-down duck hunter would swap one good day in the timber for a week’s worth of other gunning. Even when pursuing waterfowl in other places with other techniques, we have flooded timber on our minds. We recall the last time the greenheads fluttered through the branches, wing tips so tight they became feather-covered rings, spilling air and dropping through the woods. And we plan for the next time we get to stand knee deep in tannin stained waters, leaning expectantly against a gnarly oak.

Maybe your thing has been a brushed in blind overlooking the open waters of a small impoundment. Or you’ve hunkered in a corn husk hide while mallards take that long, slow glide into the stubble. Perhaps you’re in a layout boat while the bluebills fall in by the dozens. Or maybe even body booting the Chesapeake and dreaming of the days we could still shoot Cans with impunity and the redheads looked like smoke on the horizon.

No matter. It’s all been training and a dress rehearsal for timber duck hunting the flooded forestlands of America.

There is a classic image of green timber duck hunting. A section of oak woods is diked and artificially flooded about ankle deep. Acorns fall from the trees into the water, and puddle ducks---particularly mallards—land on the water to feed. You, meanwhile, are half hidden, half leaning against one of those oaks. As the birds do their aerial dance through the branches you mount the double gun, swing through, and pull the trigger.

Classic green timber shooting! It’s one of the great legends of waterfowling. But it’s more than a legend. You can still find it in places like Illinois’ Oakwood Bottoms, or at Bayou Meto---the 35,000 acre public hunting area near Stuttgart, Arkansas---or on the many private “holes” created by outfitters on the Grand Prairie.

At Merlin Bullock’s place, aptly tagged The Mallard Nest, we found such classic timber duck hunting. About 50 acres of oak woods had been diked and flooded. A double handful of decoys were floating in a relatively open spot. Calf deep in the water, we leaned against convenient trees while our guide worked his call in that typical Arkansas style that puddle ducks find so appealing.

This kind of gunning is up close and personal. You are snapshooting birds at only 15 or 20 yards. Sometimes even closer. Imagine grouse as an incoming bird, and you’ll have the idea.

While most timber duck hunting afficonados use 12 gauge shotguns, they aren’t at all necessary. A 20-gauge works just fine. Indeed, if I could find non-toxic shot for it I’d be tempted to use my 28 gauge.

At the private clubs they use decoys, rigging them just before the season opens and leaving them in the hole until season’s end. Try that on public land, or anywhere a road comes near the hole, and you’ll be out replacing decoys.

Dekes, however, are neither needed nor used by most veteran flooded timber shooters. I learned that lesson at Oakwood Bottoms, a federally managed green tree reservoir in the Shawnee National Forest. Stretching over about 700 acres, it’s divided into a series of diked compartments.

When the name of the game is running the dikes to find an appropriate hunting spot you strip down to essentials. Decoys are not one of them, so they get left behind. Instead, you rely on pre-scouting to find where the birds are feeding, good calling, and, on occasion, kicking the water to replicate the sound of a mallard hitting the turf.

For most, timber duck hunting means the wildness of the perennially flooded bottoms of rivers along which ducks migrate. Unfortunately, you can’t depend on these areas. One year the river bottoms are flooded, artic temperatures skid the birds down during the season, and everything is right with the world. The next year, or the one after that, and everything is high and dry---of water, of birds, and of hope.

But when it’s right, it is very right. The unkempt forest floor lies below water that may be six inches deep or that many feet. It takes caution to scout where the ducks are feeding. And woodcraft of the highest order to find that spot again in the predawn darkness of a ducking day. No dogs and no decoys in this timber. Carefully working your way to the hole, you take up position and await the coming dawn, which may or may not bring ducks with it.

If the day brings no ducks, you are only mildly disappointed. You’ve had a good day afield, regardless. And flooded timber gunners, perhaps more than any others, know there are good reasons we call it hunting instead of killing. Besides, if it was easy, everybody would do it.