Certain things apply in both situations: • Keep the sun to your back. It's harder for ducks to see you if they're looking toward the sun. Even a poorly camouflaged hunter is harder to spot when sun and shade provide high contrast.

• Keep the wind behind you, too. Since ducks usually land into the wind, the birds will probably set their wings and come closer to you as they land. If they're moving toward you, it takes them longer to recover and change directions to flee, even if they spot you.

• Sit still and keep your head down. Unless you're an upland bird or game hunter, movement typically is your biggest enemy. No matter whether you're ambushing deer, turkeys, doves, or ducks and geese, sitting as still as possible when your prey is in the area helps prevent detection. And the shining skin of your face peering upward out of a blind or bush can be like a warning light to circling waterfowl. Wear a facemask or use the brim of your hat to keep your face hidden.

But beyond some of those basic rules, your tactics and equipment may have to change radically between wet years and dry years on major Oklahoma reservoirs. You may have a favorite spot that has for three years in a row brought you great success throughout the season; then a dry year comes along and strands your favorite spot a quarter-mile from the nearest water.

As I said earlier, I believe that most duck hunters prefer high-water situations. When the lake rises and spreads out into the surrounding lowlands, it creates many more places in which to hunt ducks. It can accommodate more parties of hunters on any given day without overcrowding.

When lakes are low, crowding can occur. Hunters may wind up working closer and closer together when the choice of places for setting up is restricted, which creates those maddening situations in which neighboring parties shoot at and try to call the same groups of birds simultaneously -- not much fun for anyone, usually.

But on the bright side, low-water conditions may quickly discourage some hunters from even trying, so when lakes are low, the competition usually thins out more quickly after the first week or so of the season.

Depending on whether you're hunting the flooded brushy areas or the open-water areas, a noticeable difference in the species of ducks you'll draw in to your decoys is often evident. In the first you're most likely to see mostly the puddle ducks preferred by most Oklahoma hunters; in the second you may attract more divers.

Diver species are fewer in the Central Flyway, which encompasses all of Oklahoma but the Panhandle area, but we still get an assortment of mergansers, ringnecks and scaup. You'll see buffleheads and goldeneyes now and then also, especially if you're hunting smaller bodies of water. When I was a youngster, redheads and canvasbacks were sought-after species, but I rarely see either these days.

Several of the more serious duck hunters I know in Oklahoma are mallard snobs: They rarely pull the trigger on anything other than mallard drakes. Fortunately, mallards continue to be one of the more abundant species in the flyway, so hunters can afford to be picky, especially in a wet year.

Wildlife managers sometimes sow millet along shorelines of major Oklahoma reservoirs, typically in summer, when lake levels are a bit below normal. The seed is scattered by airplanes flying low over the exposed shorelines.

The millet that sprouts and grows -- assuming that water levels allow it -- not only provides food for ducks migrating through in the fall, but also can "train" the ducks to spend more time in the lower lake areas, thus making open-water hunting better.

So duck hunters accustomed to hunting the brushy marshes at the upper ends of lakes might do well to cruise the shorelines of the lower lake basins early in the season to look for stands of shoreline millet. Finding those areas in which the millet grew successfully can help you choose a likely area to hunt if your favorite marshy areas have no water in them.