Small-game hunters in Oklahoma are being cautioned about several cases of suspected or confirmed tularemia, including two cases involving jackrabbits at Altus Air Force Base and another case in the Blanchard area. The disease is sometimes called "rabbit fever."

  Oklahoma has periodic outbreaks, and hunters are urged to be aware and stay on the lookout. Rabbits that are behaving in unusual ways or seem to be lethargic might be stricken with tularemia.

  Tularemia can be present anytime during the year. Hunters are advised to use safe handling practices and to wear rubber or latex gloves whenever handling any wild game. All wild game meat should be thoroughly cooked before eating.

  Since September, Altus AFB pest management personnel have found about 60 carcasses of jackrabbits and cottontail rabbits. The Jackson County Health Department has been made aware of the findings.

  This bacterial infection can be passed from animals to people and pets. Transmission can occur through flea and tick bites, contact with an infected animal, inhalation (i.e., mowing over an infected carcass), and via contaminated water. It is generally treatable with antibiotics.

  Anyone going afield should always use a tick repellant, as ticks can spread tularemia to people. Also, people should not drink raw water from lakes or streams because tularemia can be present.

  Tularemia is naturally occurring in the environment, and it is common in rabbits, hares, muskrats and beavers. Oklahoma ranks third behind Arkansas and Missouri in the number of people infected each year. Because it is naturally present, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation has no immediate plans to alter rabbit hunting season, which is now open and runs through March 15, 2017.

  Hunters and landowners who encounter a concentration of dead rabbits while in the field are asked to contact the Wildlife Department at (405) 590-2583.

  To learn more about tularemia, view the Oklahoma Health Department's fact sheet at https://www.ok.gov/health2/documents/TularemiaFactSheet.2012.pdf. Anyone with health concerns or questions should contact their health care provider.

  When it comes to great duck hunting don't overlook the prairie ponds you pass by on the way to the lake and your blind. In Eastern Oklahoma just like in other parts of the country, many native grassland pastures have large old ponds somewhere within that thick stand of Native Bluestems and Indian grass that are like beacons of safe haven to the ducks looking for a quiet place to spend the day.

  My grandpa took me duck hunting for the first time when I was 9 years old. We didn't have decoys or even a dog to retrieve ducks. After we bought our duck stamps we headed to my great-uncle's place where we knew there had been a creek full of wood ducks only a couple weeks before. Back then you could kill two wood ducks each and Grandpa felt like that was more than we would want to eat anyway.

  I had recently figured out the necessary leads and lead pictures to successfully bring down a quail more often than not, but I quickly found out that knowledge did little to help with shooting ducks. Needless to say I didn't manage to bring down a single duck that day, but the duck hunting fever had taken hold.

  As the years past and my hunting experience increased I had become a very successful duck hunter. I had a 12 gauge by then and I kept the trail to the various ponds around my grandpa's farm well-worn as I checked them all at least once a day during duck season.

  I like to hunt by myself and I still do quite often, but I also like to hunt with my friends. When I was 15 I had decided to bring my best friend Lance Perdue into the world of duck hunting.

  I called him one evening with the sky overcast and spitting sleet and snow. The wind was around ten to fifteen miles an hour and we looked like small steam engines as we walked out of the back yard toward the old coal mining strip pits behind grandpa's house.

  My brother Royce is 3 years younger than me and even at 12 he was a heck of a good shot. He carried a double 20 gauge and Lance and I both had pump 12 gauges, all of us with #4 shot in the guns. This was before the mandatory steel shot law.

  As we approached the end of the pit a single mallard launched out of the corner where he had been sheltered from the wind. Royce and Lance both shot at it before I got my gun to my shoulder and with a single roar from gun the plump mallard hit the water. The wind was blowing toward us so I told them we would pick up the duck on the way back.

  There was a long open pool of water in the creek with huge hundred year old water oaks drooping over it. I knew the ducks would be there. I directed Lance and Royce to my left as we moved through the woods, slowing as I saw the top break of the opposite bank of the creek. Like ghostly spirits we eased forward.

  You couldn't see the water for the ducks!

  We took another step forward and the world exploded with ducks. My gun hit my shoulder and as fast I could shoot I knocked down two ducks with three shots. They were still coming up and I slammed another shell in the barrel of my gun and hit a cripple one of the other boys had hit. He went down, but another just like him sailed by.

  Royce was yelling, "Shoot!! Shoot!!" I saw it was his duck getting away.

  I watched it and I could tell it had gone down in the pasture across the fence. That was around 150 yards away. We had 8 ducks in the water and all of them were greenheads. There was not a hen in the bunch!

  Royce being the youngest, we sent him back to get a fishing rod and top water lure to retrieve our ducks. I loaded my gun and headed for the pasture.

  That old mallard was standing in the middle of the pasture like a lone sentinel and he didn't wait for me to get close to take off running. I sprinted across that pasture until I closed within 25 yards and I shot him as he was about to go under another fence.

  When I got back to the creek Royce was back and Lance was hip deep in the water with his arm under the bank. I knew right then he REALLY loved duck hunting!

  We retrieved all our ducks and were standing on the bank catching our breath when the whirr of wings caught our attention and a big flock of ducks landing right in front of us. They were there for maybe 5 seconds when they saw us and we knocked down 4 more ducks before they got away. One of them was a hen.

  From that time on Lance and I were hunting ducks together all over Haskell County. One of our traditions since, even though we would go to college and I would move to Texas, is we hunt at least one time a year together. That time is normally around Christmas.

  Lance called me on the 25th and asked if we were still going on the 26th. I told him yes. He said to be at his house at 6:15 AM. We were going to hunt over decoys.

  I had only hunted over decoys a few times. Even now he and I mostly pond jump our ducks, but the prospect of shooting over decoys sounded fun. I set my alarm to 5 AM.

  The problem with setting my alarm to 5 AM is that same alarm wakes my wife. Gripey and unpleasant that time of the morning, I would rather let sleeping beasts lie. She asked me why I had to get up so early and I told her if Lance had told me to be there at 3 AM I would have set my alarm to 2 AM. She mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, cover over her head.

  Lance was up and ready and we waited a bit for his brother Ryan, our sometime hunting partner, but he didn't show. We headed over to an old prairie pond I had first taken Lance to some 20 something years ago.

  This pond has a peninsula of dirt arcing toward the middle of the pond and it is covered in cattail reeds and some kind of heavy grass. We were there before good light and we could hear the ducks whistling and landing all around us.

  As shooting light appeared, we shot a big flock coming in and shot the ones that jumped startled from the pond. For 30 minutes the sky was full of darting and diving ducks. My gun messed up on me and I was shooting it as a single shot, cussing myself for not pulling it apart and cleaning it after dove season.

  When we finally counted 11 ducks on the water we stopped shooting.

  In those 30 minutes we had 10 greenheads and one hen on the water. Lance pulled out the collapsible fishing rod and big top water lure and began casting, bringing in the ducks to where we could reach them. We had ducks buzzing us the entire time. Once we were sure we only had 11 ducks we loaded our guns to kill one more to complete the limit.

  I walked down the pond along the base of it going back to the peninsula when a hen mallard squawked and took off from the grass, wing dragging. I let her get far enough away not to ruin her for eating and killed her.

  We had our limit.

  Lance knew he had shot one that morning that fell behind the pond dam, but we had both seen one fly from there later and we decided it had to have been the duck he had shot. We were wrong, but we did recover the duck.

  As we walked back to the truck, hands full of ducks Lance asked me if I would have thought this old pond would be the hottest decoy hunt we had ever done. I told him no. We actually drove around and identified two more old ponds that always produced ducks and they all had over 50 mallards on them at the time.

  Those ponds would have let us limit out too.

  So if you don't live next to a big lake, don't let that discourage your duck hunting. A little pond scouting and a good call can put you in business right in the middle of a nearby pasture.