Where to find a variety of ducks and how to hunt them
Story and Photography By Robert Sloan

Variety is the spice of life, and that is certainly true when duck hunting.
One of the most interesting ducks on earth is a woody. They are colorful, fast and unfortunately tough to pin down – but a prized bird for waterfowlers, and one that is most often bound for the wall. On the flip side a gadwall is a fairly common duck for hunters just about anywhere in Texas. Ditto that for pintails and teal.
For redheads you’ll do best along the coast from about Port O’Connor and on down to the Laguna Madre. But when it comes to mallards you will definitely have to be in the right place at the right time. These prized birds can most often be found in flooded timber on lakes, backwater sloughs and rivers. To consistently take mallards you definitely need some pretty good connections, or you are one heck of a good duck hunter.
A wood duck is about as crazy a bird as you will ever hunt. They make a squealing sound as they zoom through the timber. You can try to call them, but whether or not they will respond and wheel around in the decoys is anybody’s guess. They are totally unpredictable.
One of the first wood ducks I ever shot was while squirrel hunting in a slough just west of Angleton. Late one afternoon we had a sack of squirrels and on the way back to the truck encountered a pretty good flight of woodies, and we ended up with a few for dinner. By the way, a wood duck is one of the best eating birds in the world of waterfowl.

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