Normally I would encourage you to visit Emiquon, Chatauqua and Spring Lake on your trip to or from Dickson mounds. But duck hunting season opens this weekend, so walking around any of those areas after Friday is not a good idea until waterfowl hunting season closes. Go ahead and visit those areas, but stay in your car.
Because of earlier flooding, the visitor use area at Emiquon is closed to vehicle traffic right now. Though you can park by the boat ramp and walk it. (But again I would not walk it during waterfowl season.)
Right now at Emiquon, you will see hundreds of thousands of coots on the lake. They make cute little puttering noises and they sound like a huge deck of cards when the scurry across the water to put distance between you and them.
If you look closely in the mass of coots, you will see a few pockets of other waterfowl. Last weekend I saw grebes, pintails, and shovel nose mixed into the massive coot colony.
Emiquon just finished their water control structure and they have started to lower the water level. They will be repairing the flood damaged areas of the visitor use area and the levees once they get the water level down to where they can recover some of the material (rock and soil) that had moved from the high water levels.