Daylight began breaking through the eastern tree line as Chuck Smith stuck his call to his lips and released a cacophony of duckspeak into the cold morning air. Not long after that, the shrill cry of a wood duck echoed into the early light and was soon followed by the morning's first flight of woodies. The trio of hunters crouched low, waiting for the birds to work their way into the standing timber.

Tennessee hunter Chuck Smith shows off the first duck of a WMA limit. Photo by Phillip Gentry.

When the group of four ducks was within range, the hunters raised their 12 gauges and were rewarded with two of the brightly colored birds. Not a bad start to a morning duck hunt, all things considered.

Young, who's from Little Creek, on the outskirts of Nashville, was lucky to be hunting today. A last-minute change of plans had left him and two of his hunting partners with time to hunt, but no time to plan. Fortunately for his group of hunters, some good public duck hunting was available just a couple hours' drive from their homes, so they packed up and spent the previous afternoon scouting out a likely spot on one of Tennessee's numerous public duck-hunting areas. Now, here they were with two birds already in the bag and only a few minutes of legal shooting light elapsed.

Tales like this one are not unusual. The state of Tennessee provides, to varying degrees in various places, good duck-hunting opportunities across all four regions of the state. To help hunters home in on some good duck-hunting opportunities across the Volunteer State, we obtained some advice from wildlife managers in each region. Here's what they had to say.

Region I
Paul Brown is the waterfowl supervisor over Region I. Though he oversees a number of WMAs in western Tennessee now, he spent more than 20 years managing the Reelfoot WMA, which he considers one of the best -- perhaps the best -- hunting locations in the state of Tennessee.

Brown suggests the best way to hunt Reelfoot or any of the state WMAs that have permanent blinds is to spend a day familiarizing yourself with the blind locations, then return first thing the next morning. Many WMAs conduct a hand-held drawing for permanent blind sites sometime in August. Being drawn gives the permittee the right to build or maintain permanent blinds on public land and gives them first right to hunt the blind throughout the season. The permittee must occupy the blind at daylight on the day he intends to hunt or the first person or party occupying the blind after legal shooting light has the right to hunt that blind the remainder of the day.

"Blinds that are not occupied at daylight are available on a first-come, first-served basis," he explained. "During the week, only about half of the blinds get hunted anyway and you can slip quietly into an unoccupied blind and hunt it. Hunting in the standing timber at Reelfoot isn't like (hunting) other locations: Ducks will fly just about all day long and you'll have plenty of hunt time even if you miss the first hour getting into a blind. Most of these blinds will already have decoys out and shooting lanes cut. Just be respectful and leave the blind in better shape than you found it."