Hickory nuts are starting to fall in Little Rock, which hints at summer's end.

I noticed the fallen hickory nuts for the first time Tuesday. Those on the ground in mid-August are drought-stressed specimens cast off by their hosts to free resources for healthier nuts that have better odds of fulfilling their potential.

Trees shed a portion of their nut crop for several reasons. One is related to tree health, especially during a drought.

Conversely, heavy rains in the spring and early summer can also cause trees to shed nuts and fruit early. This is often the result of precipitation washing trees clean and preventing adequate pollination. That might have happened during our wet spring.

I was very pleased Wednesday morning when I stepped outside and gazed at tree branches swaying in the wind. My eyes locked on one branch that bounced out of time with the others. The difference was subtle but conspicuous enough to register with a hunter's eye.

The movement coursed to the end of a branch and continued to another. My eyes tracked the movement until I saw a gray squirrel emerge from the foliage and leap to yet another branch. The squirrel vanished among the leaves, but I tracked its path up another branch until it stopped at a thick spot near its junction with the tree trunk.

I was pleased at my sharpness of sight and quickness to process and assimilate the stimuli into a rote memory action plan.

When hunting squirrels in the past, it has taken me awhile in early outings to tune to the surroundings. I have missed opportunities because I had gotten rusty over the summer. There have been times when I processed asymmetrical movement in the canopy too slowly or reacted too slowly and let my quarry escape.

I considered this exercise a drill.

An excellent duck hunting preview is in the latest episode of Duck Lore on YouTube. Titled, "The Duck Capital," it features Clay Newcomb and Anne Marie Doramus. Newcomb, a native Arkansan, is a prominent bear hunter. Doramus, who serves on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, is an avid duck hunter. Newcomb, who lives in the Ozarks, is not. The host, Sean Weaver, combined their dissonant perspectives into a complete montage of Arkansas duck hunting.

Weaver's videography is superb. He captured every nuance of a Grand Prairie winter. If you have hunted ducks only once, the scrape of decoys across an aluminum boat deck and morning's icy stab on your cheeks will grab your collar.

The first hunt is a gadwall shoot at a cypress reservoir near Stuttgart. This vignette ends with the trio sitting in chairs plucking their ducks. This roundtable includes a salient discussion about why so many hunters dislike the flavor of duck meat. Newcomb speculates that "obese chicken" has reprogrammed the American palate about how meat is supposed to taste.

Newcomb, who said he can count his duck hunting experiences on one hand, projected another common bias. Until the gadwall hunt, Newcomb said he'd only shot mallards. He obviously enjoyed shooting gadwalls, but he could not retire his mallard-centric bias.

Newcomb was content during the second hunt, a mallard shoot at a flooded field. I was impressed that each hunter tracked what they shot and quit shooting when they filled their personal limit of four mallards.

Finally, the group visited Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area to fulfill Weaver's dream of killing a mallard at duck hunting's most storied destination. Despite difficult hunting conditions, he finally got one at the end, during a walk-in hunt necessitated by the sudden death of Weaver's surface drive outboard motor. This would have thrilled the late Joe Morgan, a former Arkansas Game and Fish commissioner who loathed surface drive motors.

On their final hunt, Weaver and Newcomb did not put out a decoy. I often hunt that way, and killing just one drake mallard in this manner was very familiar to me. Weaver was satisfied.

People come from everywhere for the Bayou Meto experience, and they spend a lot of money to do it. It's easy for us in Arkansas to take it for granted. One duck has often been plenty for me, as well.

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