When a hen is rallying her brood for the dawn flight, she makes a single, two-note call. It is repeated at intervals. Another hen call hunters should learn is the feeding or contented call. It is a multi-note call, and is made in similar fashion to a mallard hen feed call. The tongue is "ticked" rapidly while the notes descend, ending on drawn-out, low note. Blowing these subtle calls and staying away from excited calls will fill your bag.

Jump-shooting wood ducks can be done afoot or adrift. The best creeks and ponds for jump-shooting on foot have high banks, which hide the hunter's approach. If you have a dog, train the dog to sit a distance away. Then walk to the edge and peer over with a camouflaged face net hiding everything but your eyes. Crunching leaves, snapping twigs and sloshing water will alarm wood ducks before you get the chance to see them, so sneak along quietly. Binoculars are handy for spotting ducks' foot ripples in the water and for checking deadfalls for resting wood ducks.

Canoes, pirogues and kayaks are the best watercraft for jump-shooting. But larger streams also host to jump-shooters in small johnboats. The best waterways for jump-shooting with boats have lots of tight twists and bends, along with smaller feeder creeks and swamps off the main channel.

A duo of hunters can park one vehicle at a downstream takeout and launch upstream. But a lone hunter can hunt effectively if he can call a spouse by cell phone for a pickup. In some streams it may be possible to simply paddle one way, then at the end of the hunt paddle back to the starting point.

Wood ducks often circle when jumped, and then land in the same stream. They may only go a short distance either up or downstream of the hunter and many times will return within a few minutes to the exact spot where they were resting or feeding before the hunter disturbed them. Therefore, when jump-shooting from a small boat, a hunter should take only sure shots. There's a good chance a wood duck that hasn't been shot at will offer another chance farther along in the same direction of the hunter's paddle or after the hunter reverses and heads back to his vehicle.

While other waterfowl will have long left the scene following a jump accompanied with or without a shotgun salute, the double-or-nothing odds of drift-hunting wood ducks is the final hands-down reason why Tar Heel hunters can't get enough of the Carolina duck, their favorite backyard webfoot.