The author’s son, Bill, cashed in on the memorable greenhead frenzy set in a freshly-cut South Dakota cornfield.

Sometimes good things in our world of waterfowling come to those who wait. Such was the case with our South Dakota adventure last year.

We annually apply for South Dakota non-resident waterfowl licenses in the state’s highly subscribed lottery. When we are drawn, we’re in hog heaven. But because we have to pick the 10 consecutive hunting days allotted by the special license in advance, timing our hunt to coincide with the season’s peak migration is always a crapshoot.

The decision was a lot easier last year when my son, Bill, and I were invited to join a group of friends from Michigan on their annual early November SoDak pheasant hunt. With high fuel prices, it made sense to piggyback our waterfowl hunt with the pheasant trip.

And a wonderful pheasant hunt it was — productive and social South Dakota classic in every sense. But as we left the boys at hunt’s end out near Mobridge, Billy and I had little trouble shifting gears. With webbed feet on the brain, I phoned the third member of our waterfowl group, John DeVries, as we motored eastward toward Aberdeen. Our plan of attack had yet to be fully formed.

Although he’s a North Dakota native, DeVries knows South Dakota from a waterfowler’s perspective from life as a snow goose guide.

“Drop down off highway 12 a few miles, get out your map and look for the Scatterwood Lakes NWR, just south and west of Aberdeen. Check that whole area out, then let’s talk again.”

Arriving at Scatterwood a half-hour before sunset on a beautiful Indian summer Sunday, we were thrilled to find its waters paved with snow geese, and the skies nearby were etched with small, trading flocks of the same. However, except for a solitary tornado pummeling one of the area’s few cut cornfields just after sunset, ducks appeared to be scarce.

We had planned for a full day of scouting though, with Job One being to prowl the northeastern part of the state looking for a decent field hunt setup. But we were flexible. Ducks, geese or any combination thereof would be fine with us.

The next day, as we tooled through the lake country east of Aberdeen, thoughts of those oh-so-tempting snows out west weighed heavily on my mind. Few fowl were moving at midday. But we found several roost waters chocked full of puddlers, mostly mallards.

The birds put on a show as they swarmed a quarter section-sized bean field — one mostly harvested, but pock-marked by acre-sized chunks of obviously wet, still standing crop. It was enough to make our blood boil. No competing hunters were looking at the birds.

“Snows be damned,” we decided. “Ducks it’ll be!”

While staying in phone contact with DeVries, who was sizing up a similar situation in another part of the county, Billy and I hustled to locate the landowner.

Finding two old gents working on a combine in a nearby farmyard, we stopped to make an inquiry. Upon realizing we weren’t after pheasants, the suddenly friendly pair gave us the landowner’s phone number and directions to his home. After leaving a message on his voice mail, we took the chance of finding someone at home. Luck was with us as we caught the missus just as she was leaving to take her husband’s supper to the cornfield he was combining. She invited us to follow her.

“You wanna hunt ducks?”