LIKE CHILDREN PLAYING JACKS
By Mike Faulk



Onezies, twozies, threezies, and four. That’s the way the woodies came throughout the course of the afternoon. On this hunt, we had as much fun as children playing jacks.

It occurred to me that success in the game of jacks requires the child to concentrate on but a few of many jacks strewn about the table or floor. And it was just that way duck hunting.

My usually hunting companion, Art Swann, and I have an annoying knack for shooting at the same bird more often than not. This is so even though we go to the added length of designating shooting lanes.

Those shooting lanes have a way of overlapping if many birds are decoying at the same time. But if they come in small groups – onezies, twozies, threezies and fours – the shooting lanes seem more clearly defined. We tend to shoot more ducks even though the total number of birds we’re seeing may be fewer.

So it was on this January afternoon on a frozen pond near the White River Refuge in St. Charles, Arkansas. They came over and over again. Never more than six at a time did the wood ducks fly.


With six gunners hunting the honey hole, rarely did a crested king of the early migration escape. As the well-known novel begins, “It was the best of times.”



First published in Waterfowler.com - Spring 2003