Pamlico Point, the largest impoundment and the most difficult to get to, is divided into four sections by dikes. A privately owned pay ramp is located three miles west of Pamlico Point on Oyster Creek Road with a drop box for dollars before dawn.

"You need a really big boat to get to Pamlico Point," Davis said. "You cross some big water and a strong wind makes getting there dangerous. Once you get there, there's a creek running to the intersection of all four of the dikes and your party can split up from there for hunting the different sections."

Taking a change of clothes and a means to get warm in event of a dunking is a good idea during any impoundment hunt. A step that sends a hunter into deep water along the canals or just a stumble and pitch into shallow water can make the experience miserable or downright dangerous. Other things to bring along include a stool, flashlight and pruning shears to cut reeds for makeshift blinds. Some sportsmen hunt from small boats covered with netting or other materials or from temporary netting blinds. No permanent blinds or gasoline motors are allowed in the impoundments. Hunters cannot enter impoundments before 4:30 a.m. and must be out by 1 p.m. Decoys must be out by 3 p.m.

Phragmites, a tall reed species, black needle rush, a marsh plant, and stunted pines and wax myrtle bushes growing on the hummocks and dikes make good cover for hunters. Phragmites is kept in check with herbicide treatments or it would take over the impoundments. Other than cover, the exotic reed serves no useful purpose to ducks or hunters.

"For 2006-07, we will open a new 1,500-acre acquisition to Goose Creek called the Parker Farm," Davis said. "It's a mitigation land under long-term management. It was a peat mine that's been restored, so we won't be doing any habitat manipulation. But there are ducks in the ponds. There's deep water and open water mixed with some thickly vegetated areas. It's located east of Aurora off Bay City Road, which turns off NC 33 near the Pamlico-Beaufort counties line. The road off Bay City Road to the game land is Bear Road. It will be open for hunting under the same permit system as other Goose Creek permit impoundments."

The new impoundments should offer excellent duck hunting for wood ducks and other puddle ducks. There are impenetrable places that will provide good cover for roosting and resting ducks. Hunters need small boats for access because the ponds are deep due to the type of mining that created them.

But that hunt was but a dream for the future during our hunt last season, a hunt that grew more successful by the minute. A ringneck flew over just out of our shooting range and one of the other members of our party downed it over his decoys. Plenty of ducks flew into the impoundment from the nearby sound and many decoyed to our party's decoys and to those of nearby hunters. While the shooting of other hunters (and our own shooting) sometimes turned entire flocks away from the impoundment, enough ducks decoyed to result in a good morning. Our bags included ringnecks, teal, gadwalls and widgeon -- the signature duck of Goose Creek.