Redheads and ringneck ducks -- also known as "black ducks" -- are often overlooked as primary targets by Louisiana waterfowlers. Photo by Pete Cooper Jr.

The number of diving ducks wintering in Louisiana -- primarily ringnecks and redheads -- has been increasing in recent years, offering savvy Bayou State waterfowlers an opportunity to expand their enjoyment in the blind.

Many divers end up in the bag as merely incidental quarry, however, encountered and taken pretty much by chance. To get the most out of these sporty (and quite tasty) targets, one must use tactics varying somewhat from those effective against mallards, squealers, grays and widgeons.

I shot my first duck -- a drake ringneck -- almost 50 years ago on Shreveport's Cross Lake, and immediately got bitten by the diver bug. However, several seasons would pass before I realized the first of those variances. It took place on Wallace Lake -- more of a rather deep cypress slough than a "lake," but the ringnecks, among others, loved it.

I had shot a few of them by that time, usually from borrowed blinds ranging from almost total dereliction to simply not having been brushed for the season. Those that had been built in a brake of cypresses, even if they were in a rather decrepit state, were always more effective than similar ones that stood in open water.

One frigid late November morning, I decided to do some freelancing, and set my spread in an open pocket alongside a sparsely vegetated island, hunkered down in some buttonbrush on the bank and spent several hours shivering, while the ducks passed well overhead on their way to some hidden slough.

I recall catching pneumonia from that morning!

But I survived, and after I recovered, I did a little prospecting, and discovered where those ducks were headed that morning. It was an almost circular opening roughly a half-acre in size and rimmed with thick stands of cypresses. There I could only set my spread in the center of the pocket, shove my duck boat into a narrow opening in the upwind trees and, for the first time in my duck-hunting career, lay out in it.

And the ringnecks came in like there was no tomorrow, offering rather quick but totally committed shots over the decoys. Glorious!

LAYING LOW
The "layout tactic" has been without a doubt the most important factor in my diver-hunting career; it works well on pintails, too. That aside, it's been effective with a bare minimum of side-cover for my boat and none overhead -- but the point is that the lower you are to the water, the less obtrusive it seems you are to the ducks, and the better they'll respond to your decoys.