Photo by Ken Archer

Late-season waterfowling in southern Iowa can be rewarding for those hunters who take the time to learn how, when and where.

As is always the case, much depends upon the weather. Even if the weather doesn't cooperate, though, there'll be some respectable hunting available, asserts Iowa Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist Guy Zenner.

Zenner pointed out that duck hunting in the southern half of Iowa centers around the two rivers that bracket the state. Along the western edge is the Missouri River; to the east is the Mississippi.

Weather patterns and production issues have caused problems in the past. These issues aren't likely to go away, but things are looking better. Water levels are generally improving, and production seems to be on the rebound. Both will help Iowa waterfowlers. More water will attract more ducks, and more ducks will stabilize flight patterns.

The water issue is obvious: Ducks don't land on bare, dry ground if they have any other choice. The production issue is more complicated. It isn't just that low production lowers the number of ducks available. Lower numbers also make the ducks that are around harder to kill.

Young ducks have less life experience and are the easiest to trick with decoys and calls. That makes them easy to kill -- or, at least, easier. As the average age of the birds in the flights increases, waterfowling gets harder. The ducks learn our tricks quite quickly.

Keeping all this in mind, savvy hunters move their blinds, use different decoys and learn to think outside the box. Waterfowling has changed, and hunters must change also.

Starting from that background, let's take a look at a couple of the better places to hunt waterfowl in the southern half of the state.

RIVERTON WMA
One of the hottest areas is Riverton Wildlife Management Area, which is in Fremont County approximately two miles north of Riverton. At around 2,700 acres, it's not the biggest management area by any means, but don't let that fool you -- the habitat is great. It's just north of the confluence of the West Nishnabotna and East Nishnabotna rivers and within 10 miles of the Missouri River.

Roughly half its acreage is marsh. The other half is mostly upland timber. The north end of the management area includes cropland, and the crops offer migrating ducks plenty of forage. Riverton is flooded in the spring after the northern migration, allowed to dry during the summer and then flooded again around the middle of August.

According to serious hunter and conservationist Stu Mass, the area is rapidly becoming the place to hunt waterfowl in Iowa because of its wide variety of hunting habitat and a reasonable population of migrating ducks. "It's a great spot. It has just about everything," he said.

And while Riverton offers great habitat, so does the surrounding land. A number of public hunting areas can be found in the vicinity, as can several productive wetlands and Mass' personal favorite project, Flightpath Bottoms.

Flightpath Bottoms is a wetlands project that sits about nine miles south of Riverton WMA. It offers habitat for ducks as well as quail, pheasant and any number of other critters. Although not a part of the Riverton area, it offers professionally managed wetlands that help attract ducks to the general area. All in all, it's an important asset to southern Iowa waterfowling.