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From pestering livestock and domestic animals to preying on juvenile deer and small mammals, coyotes are becoming a major nuisance to both native wildlife and domestic animals. 

Hunters using clever decoy spreads can increase their odds of taking home more feathered fowl by incorporating Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion to make their hunting spot more attractive. 

A scissor rig’s two-piece design is a marvel in form and function, and it must be custom-built to your vessel’s specs. However, one cannot begin construction with just any old planks. Sure, most any wood floats, but even treated lumber will become waterlogged and sink relatively quickly and rot in the briny sound water. Juniper wood is the secret, sought-after for its buoyancy and resistance to decay. 

The Alabama rig, aka A-rig, debuted in 2012 after a pro bass fishermen used it to win a big tournament on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville. Now, it’s used on almost every lake where it’s legal, mostly by fishermen targeting largemouth bass. However, striped bass love to bust a bait ball, too, according to guide Mitchell Blake, who has been breaking ground with it ever since.

While it may be the first month of the year, it is the last opportunity to sit in a blind and take down a limit of ducks. Hunters should take advantage of the last three weeks of the season, when ducks have flooded the Carolinas and are anxious to fill up on rich food resources. But by January, the waterfowl migration is practically over — or is it?

While winter bears down on North Carolina, the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds play host to a combination of fins and feathers that’s sure to light a fire under any sportsman. Taking advantage of the coincidence are two guides looking to sample the best duck hunting and striper fishing available during frostbitten January.

Years ago, in the back of a lake near home, my father took me on my first duck hunt. The water was cold, the world was dark, and paddling the wooden johnboat deep into the swamp was tiring. It was nearly enough to turn a young future hunter away from the sport.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has a limited number of permits remaining for a special youth-only waterfowl hunt on Jan. 31 on Currituck Sound.

Beginning with Native Americans during pre-settlement through the modern day, trapping has been one of the nation’s unique past-times. To some, trapping has lost its luster, but, there is still a sold trapping community beating the bushes all over the Carolinas. In fact, North Carolina issues nearly 4,000 permits each year. 

With the largest part of duck season and the final days of deer season arriving this month in the Carolinas, so will winter weather. The long hours in a tree stand or in a flooded marsh have a totally different meaning to our own two feet, practically numb from prolonged exposure to extreme cold. 

Diving ducks do not decoy as readily or gracefully as puddle ducks, but they will respond to calling.

For many hunters trying to lure ducks into range on ponds, in swamps or around other small bodies of water, “less is more” when it comes to decoys.