A quiet, low-profile craft like a canoe is your best choice on streams and calmer rivers. Photo courtesy of Gary Lewis.

The canoe sliced through the water. The only sound was from the droplets running from the blades of our paddles back into the river. Hunting buddy Ron Burns was in the stern. I was in the bow, shotgun at the ready.

We rounded the first upstream bend, hugging the left bank, our eyes focused on the next corner. But we didn't see the ducks that paddled nervously against the grassy bank to our right. They flushed wild, well ahead of us, far beyond the reach of my shotgun. We pushed on against the current, and promised ourselves we wouldn't miss the next ones.

Then, as we rounded a sharp bend, we spied two ducks on the water just ahead, close to the muddy point.

I set my paddle behind me and lifted my Remington 1100 to my shoulder. Burns kept paddling, closing the distance. The ducks streamed out ahead. I determined to take the one on the left first.

When they flushed, I led the bird and squeezed, registering the hit.

Swinging to take the other bird, I missed, and then watched it flare and climb above the trees.

We retrieved the first bird, admiring it for a moment before putting paddles to the water again. With this first success under our belts, we pushed ahead, communicating in whispers, careful to keep our paddles from striking the side of the boat.

Rounding a sandbar, hugging the right bank, I spotted ducks again. Five mallards paddled away from the tall grass, cutting Vs in the mirror surface of the river. With strong strokes, we closed the distance, and I put my paddle behind.

Burns kept paddling with quiet, even strokes, and I picked my target -- a drake, second in from the left.

Keeping the safety on, I waited for the flush.

They erupted from the surface in a spray of foam. I led the drake, feeling the recoil in my shoulder, watching four ducks continue on where there had been five.

JUMP-SHOOTING LOCATIONS
Most hunters turn to moving water when nearby lakes and ponds are frozen over. But from October to January, in fair weather or foul, any waterfowler can find good sport on one of several rivers in Oregon and Washington.

WASHINGTON
Yakima River
It gathers water from the Cascade Crest above Snoqualmie Pass, and collects in Keechelus Reservoir. Then the Yakima River flows south and east to its junction with the Columbia River, 215 river miles away. Between Union Gap and Mabton, the river serves as one of the boundaries of the Yakama Indian Reservation.

The Roza Dam north of Selah divides the upper from the lower river. Ducks use the whole river below Keechelus Reservoir. But the best hunting is in the slower water, closer to the confluence with the Columbia.

Mike Franklin of Pacific Wings Waterfowl Adventures got his start as an outfitter on the lower Yakima, back in the mid-1980s.

He built a 2,054-acre ranch on the Yakima River.

"We put 82 hunters on it at one time, and everybody shot their limits of birds two days in a row," said Franklin. "We used to shoot from 5,000 to 8,000 ducks a year. Most of them were mallards."

Today, Franklin guides his hunters on dozens of flooded farm ponds close to the river.

Those properties, and others like them, are magnets for waterfowl using the Yakima and the Columbia as stopovers on their fall migration. And that's what makes the lower Yakima a drift-boat duck-hunting destination.

According to Franklin, "There are several spots where you can put in a boat off of Snively Road, which is off of the Twin Bridges Road. There's been a launch there since at least 1986, and it has been improved in recent years."