If you want to take advantage of this early-morning wood duck flight, be sure you're in place and ready to shoot when the magic minute arrives. (There's also an evening flight, but this usually occurs after sundown, except on cloudy or rainy days.) Station yourself along a creek or bayou channel so you have as long a line of sight as possible, or find a hole in the canopy in the flooded timber and stand where you have the best field of view you can manage.

Stand right in the open, or at least where you have a clear swing, because this isn't like the circling, hide-and-seek game you play with green-timber mallards. These little speedsters will be on you and gone before you can push away from your tree, so get out in the open and have your gun at half-port so you can fire quickly. You still won't be quick enough in many cases.

If you're going to hunt woodies like this, it'd be best to have a buddy with you, so that you can face opposite directions and cover twice as much sky; if you're alone, you're going to get blindsided a lot. Stand either back to back with your partner, or 25 to 30 yards apart, facing each other and covering each other's blind side. Listen as well as watch, because often you'll hear the wooo-eeek call of the female woodie before the ducks come into view.

An open choke and small shot are the best combination for this type of hunting, and a light 20-gauge over-under will probably serve you better than the heavy, long-barreled 12-gauge pump or auto that most Arkansas hunters use for ducks and geese. My choice for wood ducks is my 20-gauge Charles Daly O/U, choked improved and improved modified, with 3-inch loads of No. 4 or No. 5 steel shot or No. 5 and No. 6 bismuth or heavier-than-lead shot.

You don't have to be in the delta to find satisfying wood duck pass-shooting. The larger permanent streams of the Ozarks and Ouachitas provide a wealth of opportunities, as do the streams of the Gulf Coastal Plain, The important thing, as mentioned earlier, is to be there early, because the action doesn't last long.

FLOATING AND JUMP-SHOOTING
This is another type of waterfowl hunting that few Arkansans bother with, but it's fun and effective, and it can be done in conjunction with pass-shooting for wood ducks on the same streams and bayous.

The stream in question must be navigable with your choice of boat, of course, and in most cases the stream must flow through public land to keep you from running afoul of trespass laws. But there are many such streams in the Ozark and Ouachita national forests, and other suitable waterways and sloughs in the Big Lake, Cache River, Pond Creek, and White River national wildlife refuges.

A canoe or small johnboat is best for this type of hunting. You can have an electric motor or gasoline engine on the boat, but you can't use the motor to approach ducks; if the boat is still in motion from the power of a motor, it's illegal to shoot, so this is a drift or paddle game. All that's required is to float or paddle downstream, remaining quiet while staying alert and ready, jump-shooting ducks as you go. The shooting can be close-up or at the extreme of effective range, so float-hunting usually requires a little more gun and larger shot sizes than does pass-shooting wood ducks.

It's not a bad idea to carry the makings of a boat blind and a sack or two of decoys on a float hunt. Often you'll find a wide spot or sheltered backwater of a creek or bayou that's an excellent blind-and-decoy spot.