But it's the wind that moves the ducks and the choice between good hunting and safe navigation creates a duck hunter's dilemma. The answer is to use a big boat and if that one isn't big enough, get a bigger one.

Still, the advantage of hunting these two small bays is that they are more protected than the vastness of Pamlico River to the north and Pamlico Sound to the east, which is the body of water to which they are tributaries. Hunters who launch boats at Hobucken to travel the Intracoastal Waterway to the north to gain access to Pamlico Point know just how rough the crossing at the southern edge of the Pamlico River can become when jostled by the wind.

But Jones Bay and the Bay River are protected by land during north, south or west winds. Hunters can use the shoreline as a windbreak on every wind that is not east and can set their decoys and hunt from their boats in the lee side of a bank.

There are some homes along these water bodies. Whether it is legal to hunt near them or not should take a secondary consideration to whether it is ethical. Some property owners don't like being awakened by shooting before dawn, so hunters should have the courtesy to stay a long distance from any waterfront homes, even if they spot ducks rafting there.

Divers' and sea ducks' brains are not as adapted to identifying danger as those of most puddle ducks. They can therefore be hunted harder and longer before they become decoy shy. Still, the dimmer bulb in their head glows a bit brighter with each passing day of the hunting season and they can become skittish of decoys.

The worst conditions to hunt them are bright, sunny days with no wind. But as the wind picks up and water gets rippled, they fly from place to place.

Freezing weather makes them feed more than warmer weather because it takes more calories to maintain the high metabolism of sea ducks. A wise hunter takes along a NOAA weather radio or a VHF radio to listen to the marine forecast and plans his hunting times and locations accordingly. Weather can change rapidly and getting caught in the wrong place during a blow is dangerous. Instead, a hunter wants be in the right place during a blow. Points of marsh are classic places to hunt during the days when the ducks are moving. Setting up in the lee of a point is a classic way to get in good gunning on divers stirred up by the wind like hornets from a bush-hogged nest.

Scouting the locations of duck concentrations is more important to consistently shooting good bags of sea ducks and diving ducks than finding a good location and sticking with it day after day. Most hunters will have the most success by planning to hunt an area for two or three days and using a boat blind or layout rig, instead of competing with other hunters to arrive at a certain place.

The best tactic is motoring through the bays, using binoculars to spot resting ducks and to identify the species of resting or flying ducks. Scouting for resting ducks is productive at any time of day. But to find flyways, it's best to watch before dawn or after shooting hours near sunset. A hunter watching where ducks roost and the flyways they use to get to nighttime resting areas can set up along them the next morning and have good shooting if the wind direction remains the same.