Definitely take a dog for retrieving jump-shot wood ducks, because downed birds can quickly disappear in weeds and grassy shorelines. Any duck that falls in thick cattails, canary grass or weeds can be lost forever without a dog's nose to sniff it out. In our two days of jump shooting woodies, my old German wirehair pointer found six out of our eight birds that fell in heavy cover where we probably would have never found them. On another trip, my two German shorthair pointers retrieved all of the ducks we shot, plus two bonus Canada geese we jumped off the edge of a small lake.

Drakes reaching three years old are often prime for mounting.

Dark-Thirty Not Necessary
Although I got up at 4 a.m. and drove 30 miles to meet Koob, then went another 20 miles to the lake where we set out decoys, none of the early hours were necessary.

"Tomorrow, let's meet at 8 a.m. and hunt till noon if we have to," Koob suggested. The idea worked just fine -- we collected a two-wood-duck-per-gun limit by noon. On the second day, we had our last drake woodie on the fourth pond, a big bird retrieved by Jake out of a mish-mash of tree limbs and tall weeds.

"Though jump shooting these area ponds is done mainly for wood ducks, that doesn't mean we won't shoot other species," Koob said. "Typically, we will put up some mallards, teal, gadwalls and wigeon from the opening day early in October to ice-over in the second week in November. In fact, last year, we limited out on greenheads a couple of times toward the end of October. During the main part of the duck migration, we can have thousands of mallards feeding in the thousands of acres of grain stubble throughout the region. Lots of them sit on these ponds while they're here."

In most upper Midwestern states, any time in October is the best time if there have been no major, long-term cold fronts to push the ducks south. Generally, woodies in the upper Midwest are early migrators, sometimes moving out of northern nesting areas in late August or anytime in September.

Even with cold weather, however, many wood ducks will linger in the northern states.

I've jumped woodies from ice-rimmed beaver ponds in central Minnesota, and out of mostly frozen creeks in Wisconsin as late as the first week in November. By November, if the weather stays above freezing, wood ducks will still be found in huntable numbers in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.

Hunting 'Good' Ducks
On the second day of our hunt, back at a local restaurant where we went for a late breakfast, a trio of camouflage-clad hunters sat next to us. When I asked how they did that morning, their report was one gadwall and one blue-winged teal, despite motoring a half-mile across a big slough and putting out four-dozen floater decoys.

"There's just no 'good' ducks around here this time of the season," one of the disappointed hunters concluded.

The three guys left before we could show them our trophy wood ducks.

Jerry Thoms is a frequent contributor from Brookings, S.D.