Three winters ago if my memory is accurate, we had a big rain late in the winter and the water on Stockton Lake came way up.

It hadn’t been a great year for duck-hunting, but when that lake level climbed up into the vegetation and flooded many of the long coves and tributaries, waterfowl found it to be a winter haven. My hunting partner and I found great hunting that last week, but I will particularly remember one day when the temperature stayed in the 20s and it was still and sunny.

We motored back into a long creek not normally visited by duck hunters, and when we got to a small bottom where the water narrowed down and became too shallow to continue, we were in some big flooded oaks that looked like something you might see along the lower White River in Arkansas.

There were mallards back in the tip of that creek, maybe a hundred or so, which left in a flurry of wings over water as we got there.

We decided since the afternoon was getting along, and we were cold enough, we’d hunt there, just standing out against those big oaks about crotch-deep in our chest waders, with a dozen decoys scattered around, and see what might happen. The result was something I will remember always.

Continuously, for about three hours, there were mallards in the air just above the treetops, answering my call, working above that creek bottom just as they do in the East Arkansas flooded timber.

They were late-season ducks; wary because of all the hunting pressure they had seen. And there was nothing easy about it. But every now and then, four or five or perhaps eight or ten would cup their wings and come dropping in through those branches, convinced that the decoys around us were the real things. The shotgun blasts would echo off the hills around us, and we’d retrieve whatever ducks we had dropped, and retreat to our hiding place to work a new flock.

It was duck hunting at its absolute best.

During the last week of the middle zone season last year, we hunted an open water spot on Truman Lake just off a little island, and the water was so low there were nothing but mud-flats and barren banks. Ducks were few and far between; we never pulled a feather, and left about noon.

At a restaurant near the lake, we stopped for a bite to eat, and some fellow told us about a place where he had seen what he described as “thousands of ducks.”

Quite skeptical, we put the boat back in the water and went there. No ducks anywhere.

It was getting late, but we decided to motor back into a long creek cove, and when we did, I’ll bet there were at least two thousand ducks in the back of it, loafing around shallow mud-flats where the nearest vegetation was a crop field a hundred yards away.

They left in a roar of wings, and we lamented the fact that we had little opportunity to hunt them because of the shallowness of the water, the mud and the openness. Still, it wasn’t completely hopeless. We found a place to stash the boat and hide it across the cove, and we put out about 30 decoys as quickly as we could.

When we waded out and leaned up against dead stumps and snags, we were well hidden. But would they return, and would they come to decoys off that bank a good hundred yards across the lake from where most of them had been?

I would have bet against our chances, but bobbing decoys and a good duck call can work wonders on occasion.

With only 40 minutes of shooting time left, after a day of complete futility and frustration, our persistence paid off. They came back a few at a time, and about two minutes before shooting hours ended, we dropped two drakes which came rocking in over the decoys, and filled our daily limit.

It seems to be an annual problem which has no change to it, year after year there’s no winter water in our reservoirs.

Truman and Stockton, the two lakes most often visited by Ozark duck hunters, are dropping day by day, and the wet spring seems never to last into fall.

But there were those days from past years, when the rains came late, or when great flocks decided to stop for a while despite the low water, and the duck hunting, against the odds, was great.

Somehow, as bleak as it looks right now, I can’t help but be hopeful. There’s something to be happy about. It’s duck season.