The northwestern Mississippi waterfowling Mecca known as Beaver Dam, a cypress-studded oxbow lake cut loose by the Mississippi River more than a couple years ago, originally achieved fame in the writings of legendary outdoors scribe Nash Buckingham. In the early part of the 20th Century, on Friday afternoons during duck season, “De Shootinest Gent’man” and his cohorts would take the train from Memphis to the town of Tunica, Mississippi, and spend the weekends hunting what seemed to be an endless stream of ducks.

When my old waterfowl hunting buddy, Tommy Akin, called to ask if I’d like to accompany him to Beaver Dam in early January, I practically had my bags packed before I hung up the phone. After all, Beaver Dam is one of those special places on most sportsmen’s short list of compulsory destinations. Tunica and Beaver Dam are to ducks what the state of South Dakota is to pheasants, or the province of Saskatchewan is to monster whitetails.