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Picking Pockets
The history of duck hunting is filled with tales of the famed big waters of coastal bays, Northwoods lakes and the mighty Midwest rivers. However, it's on small waters across the country where the real story of duck hunting gets told each fall as waterfowlers go about picking pockets for puddlers.Maybe it's the very nature of these small waters that keeps them out of the history books. Their locations are kept secret, held close to the vest like the finest of grouse coverts. Hunters go to extraordinary lengths to keep them to themselves.

Don't Wing It
It seemed so obvious to me. Yet, to my fellow stander sixty yards to my right, the gleaming white truck parked along the dirt road right behind him was just part of the scenery. He was a local; I was a guest and a relative newcomer to the thrill of pheasant hunting. However, I had a pretty good idea that in order to kill a late-season rooster, I had to get away from the truck and find a spot that would give me an advantage over the pheasants that have played this game before.

Mighty Divers
Few places in the country are as synonymous with diver hunting as is the mighty Mississippi River. As such, Iowa's stretch of the Mississippi has for decades attracted the layout men with their small pumpkinseed boats, high-walled tenders and scores upon scores of cork bluebills, canvasback and redheads. Once You're ThereMike Minchk moved to Iowa City from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, when he was eighteen. Soon, the big man and his son, Dan, began spending time along the Mississippi near Fort Madison.

Wayne National Forest
I killed my first gobbler in southern Ohio's Wayne National Forest some eighteen years ago. And while plenty of longbeards have come and gone since then, there's just something about your first. Same, too, with whitetails; and there've been plenty of firsts--and more than a handful of record-book wall-hangers--that have come out of the 230,000-plus acres within the borders of the Buckeye State's only national forest. Once You're ThereOn paper, the Wayne covers more than 833,000 acres; approximately 65 percent of those lands are in private ownership within national forest boundaries. The U.S.

Grouse on the "UP"
There's something about Michigan's Upper Peninsula--the "UP," as it's known--and ruffed grouse. Poplars, pines, meadows and brooks--it's the very essence of traditional upland gunning and for hunting what many consider the king of upland game birds. Inject the accessibility offered by the 1.5 million acres of the Ottawa National Forest and the UP quickly becomes a partridge hunter's paradise.If you're antisocial, then the UP is your place. If you're antisocial and a devotee of the ruffed grouse, you might want to pack up and head toward Lake Superior.

Clear-Cut Benefits
Throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s, timber harvest on all U.S. Forest Service lands averaged about 11 billion board-feet per year. In 2002, however, foresters cut just over 1.7 billion board-feet, the lowest level since 1940. Game and nongame wildlife have suffered, and so has hunting.The Forest Service's five-year strategic plan, released last October, addresses a number of issues, including an objective to sustain and enhance outdoor recreation opportunities.

Oklahoma Bucks And Ducks
Six feet off my left shoulder, Bob Robb acts as my forward observer. "You're high," he says again, never taking the binoculars from his eyes. "Windage is perfect. Hold low--you're shooting downhill." Performing half of the basic gymnastic movements, I ran another round into my .270 while lying on my belly; thankfully, the 7-pointer was as poor at judging direction as I was at range estimation."Hold low." It's Robb again, reminding me. Squeezing the trigger, I feel the A-bolt buck; through the scope, I watch as the whitetail bounds away--or so I think.

Greatness
Northern Oklahoma reminded me of the Kansas I grew up in. Brushy hedgerows bordered small grain fields, and the creek bottoms were wide and thick. Fingers of grass and buckbrush extended up out of the low ground, often ending in little islands of dark plum. It was some of the best bobwhite country I'd seen in decades. I was there for the Grand National Quail Hunt, but as I saw the country, I was mostly there for memories.The second day, on the Meibergen farm, I had a pretty good morning. Minutes from the vehicles the dogs locked up in a grassy swale.

Late, Great Chukars
The fog was so dense, I could barely see 100 feet ahead, but I knew that just beyond my limited vision, the ground tilted abruptly upward, terminating in the towering red cliffs where the chukars lived. Frowning, I set a waypoint on my GPS and slipped it into my vest. Then Powder--the dog I thought least likely to run off and disappear in the white, milky, nothingness--and I set off blindly through the frosted cheat grass for the ridgeline I knew was out there someplace.We were utterly lost within minutes.

Divers Down
Greenheads are great, and drake pintails are as handsome as they come. Still, there's just something about the divers--brutish, bull-chested and strong of wing, canvasbacks and redheads, bluebills, buffleheads and goldeneyes challenge and frustrate even the most jaded of waterfowlers.For many, divers are the swept-wing symbols of tradition. Few places are more traditional for gunning the country's vast array of divers than the relatively shallow waters of western Lake Erie, and in particular, the sister bays--Maumee and Sandusky.

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