When the hunting is good, some hunters have complained about all the competition when the boat ramp parking lot is full of duck boat trailers. However, my observation has been that having a number of hunters and plenty of anglers is better than having just a few hunters on the lake.

On such a small water body, ringnecks and other diving ducks merely head for the flats, forming huge flocks where they find safety. The flocks build and build, while lone hunters can only watch. But if there are enough hunters to cover the eight ponds formed by the dikes, they keep the birds stirred up, much the same as doves are on an opening day hunt over a good field.

Once the ducks start rafting up, all you can do is sit there and watch them. Rallying ducks, or chasing them up with boats for hunting purposes, is illegal. But hunters returning to the ramp after hunting often stir them up incidentally to navigation and fishermen stir them up as well.

While most hunters hunt during the morning, standard diving duck strategies work well at Sutton Lake all day. Find a flock of ringnecks and then set your decoys right in the same spot. Often the ducks return as you are setting out the decoys or erecting a boat blind.

For this reason, I only toss out a dozen decoys, set up my blind, then wait 30 minutes or so for them to return. It's only then that I set up the rest of my spread, which consists of all the decoys I feel like carrying that day. On daylong hunts, I set out 200 decoys. On hunts of a few hours, I set out a few dozen.

There are certain places the ringnecks traditionally fly near shoreline cover and these places fill with hunters quickly. Some hunters have camped in their boats overnight to get a preferred spot, but this only happens occasionally. Some have discussed requesting special waterfowl rules for the lake, such as a three-day-per-week hunt and shooting hours. But after hunting the lake for three decades, I find these suggestions ridiculous. When the ducks are there, the hunting is crowded, but crowds help the hunting. When the ducks aren't there, neither are the hunters, so there's no crowding. I hope all hunters will realize this and seek to keep the lake open for hunting six days per week as it is currently.