Speaker 1: I've duck hunted my whole life, and I've never seen
Speaker 1: this happen like this. And ducks are literally landing beside
Speaker 1: the blind, water splashing up in the blind. We can
Speaker 1: fill the air off of their their wings as they
Speaker 1: fly by. You could touch them, You could have reached
Speaker 1: out and grabbed one. Water Fowler's occupied the ranks of
Speaker 1: the hardest core, most passionate, and ridiculous partakers of wild
Speaker 1: meat sources that I know. I love them for so
Speaker 1: many reasons. America's wetlands are the crown jewels of this continent.
Speaker 1: Families should be taking their kids to turn the swamps
Speaker 1: rather than Disneyland, because in the mud and the reeds
Speaker 1: and the flooded timber is where real magic and mystery happens.
Speaker 1: It's where one of the greatest and most celebrated bird
Speaker 1: migrations on planet Earth unfolds every fall like a recited poem.
Speaker 1: And the river rats who know it, who see it,
Speaker 1: who lived for it, are the dad gum duck hunters.
Speaker 1: And oh do they have stories. This is our duck
Speaker 1: Stories episode. I've searched the swamps and boos for the
Speaker 1: best stories about blacked out skies, sunk boats, incredible dogs,
Speaker 1: and even gators. I really doubt, even if you're not
Speaker 1: a duck hunter, that you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 1: And they started lighting in the other end of that hole,
Speaker 1: and it was like you were rolling out of carpet.
Speaker 1: A thousand ducks all of a sudden just started rolling
Speaker 1: right up to us. One of the most incredible hunts
Speaker 1: that I've been on over there. I got chill bumps
Speaker 1: on my arm right now talking about it. My name
Speaker 1: is Clay Nukelem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
Speaker 1: and likely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Speaker 1: Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented
Speaker 1: by f HF gear American Maid, purpose built hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 1: place that we explore. Yeah, the river rat, this river
Speaker 1: rat because we're called river rats. And uh, when I
Speaker 1: was dating my wife from stud guard and back in
Speaker 1: the seventies, we had longer hair and uh, her dad
Speaker 1: he said, I won't say exactly what he said, but
Speaker 1: he said, you're gonna date that long haired river rat SLB,
Speaker 1: you know, And we've been married forty six years now.
Speaker 1: But I like Raspbi or duck Ham. But this is
Speaker 1: what I mean. I don't want to really Here's what
Speaker 1: my daddy always used to say. He caught her. That's
Speaker 1: how I used to guide for a year. That was
Speaker 1: champion duck caller and callmaker Jim Stinson of Clarendon, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Jim as a craftsman and a hunter who's dedicated a
Speaker 1: big part of his life to this mysterious and ancient
Speaker 1: migration of waterfowl on the Mississippi Flyway. The consistency of
Speaker 1: their arrival is like the rising and setting to the sun.
Speaker 1: It will happen, and they will come. When wild beasts
Speaker 1: are this predictable, you can be guaranteed the predators take note,
Speaker 1: perhaps even their DNA signals to them from recesses untraceable,
Speaker 1: that they're coming. Humans since their arrival in North America
Speaker 1: have waited on the ducks, and they still wait today.
Speaker 1: The human bond wild places and beasts is innate, undeniable,
Speaker 1: and magnetic. And when this much passion accumulates in the
Speaker 1: same place, it overflows, and humans do what humans have
Speaker 1: always done. They tell stories. And these stories are really
Speaker 1: all that we have that can't be taken from us.
Speaker 1: Dear horns burn and house fires, shotguns get stolen, meat
Speaker 1: is consumed and burned as human fuel. Our bodies wear out,
Speaker 1: and old men can't go anymore. But stories last even
Speaker 1: beyond our lives. We'll hear a lot more from Mr
Speaker 1: Jim Stinson later, but I want to get into this
Speaker 1: collection of stories. Some are funny, some are scary, but
Speaker 1: all highlight the migration of the duck. This first story
Speaker 1: is told by jimbo on Quest. He's about as legendary
Speaker 1: a water fowler as they make these days. He's a
Speaker 1: world champion duck caller, a former outfitter. He's worked for
Speaker 1: call companies, and he currently works for Drake Waterfowl. Jim
Speaker 1: is telling me this story late in the evening from
Speaker 1: a duck lodge in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, and it's in
Speaker 1: the heart of duck season. This story is called shell
Speaker 1: Shocked Man. You know you ask about telling stories about
Speaker 1: either being funny or near death or whatever they may be.
Speaker 1: This one is somewhat as weird as it is to
Speaker 1: say a near death experience. That being said, here's the scenario.
Speaker 1: So back in when I was in the commercial hunting business,
Speaker 1: and we had a place we hunted that was pretty good.
Speaker 1: If other places weren't producing, we would rotate folks through
Speaker 1: this one spot. Hindsight being if I had known then
Speaker 1: what I know now, I wouldn't have been doing that. However,
Speaker 1: you're making man, these people are paying us to go
Speaker 1: duck hunting. They want to shoot ducks, so you put them,
Speaker 1: give them every opportunity you can. Anyway, we'd had a
Speaker 1: group of hunters that morning, had a great hunt, and
Speaker 1: it was just one of those special days. It was
Speaker 1: a major flight, major migration day. It was just happening.
Speaker 1: It was when I think back on it, just the
Speaker 1: opportunity to have lived it. It's cool. I would like
Speaker 1: to have that opportunity again. On top of that, we
Speaker 1: were entertaining folks and trying to make sure folks were happy. Well,
Speaker 1: it was already this season and the current dog I had.
Speaker 1: If if any of y'all who listened to this watched
Speaker 1: any of the ever early r NT videos and heard
Speaker 1: a dog that winds a lot, her name was Katie.
Speaker 1: Katie was really mad at the ducks, and she was
Speaker 1: a really good duck dog. She was a painting the
Speaker 1: butt to hunt with. But she was a really good
Speaker 1: duck dog. She was gone with a training buddy mine
Speaker 1: and then were row on lagars. At this protector time,
Speaker 1: I did not have her. She was off running a
Speaker 1: hunt test. So at that time I was probably pushing
Speaker 1: three hundred. We was hunting a big old beaver dead
Speaker 1: and in a big old swamp, and it was hard
Speaker 1: to get around, and we was picking up ducks and
Speaker 1: shooting ducks. And while I might have been near three hundred,
Speaker 1: I was probably one of the most agile fact guys
Speaker 1: in Monroe County, Arkansas at the time. So I was
Speaker 1: walking out through this swamp picking up ducks, and you
Speaker 1: know we I was coming back and had two handfuls
Speaker 1: of ducks, and ducks were hitting the decoys. You didn't
Speaker 1: have to call at him, didn't have to blow at him.
Speaker 1: And I was coming back up to the blind too
Speaker 1: handfuls of ducks, so if you can imagine, and I
Speaker 1: see ducks lighting to my left and I said, y'all,
Speaker 1: don't shoot, don't shoot. So there's a guy about he's
Speaker 1: not quite where you are. He may be a little past,
Speaker 1: but not far, and he's shooting this day action, and
Speaker 1: I'm walking towards the window, if you can put this
Speaker 1: in perspective, and I said, don't shoot, don't shoot, don't shoot.
Speaker 1: I got two hands full of ducks, right, I got
Speaker 1: two limits in each hand, and he's boom, don't quitch heat,
Speaker 1: quit shoot, And I remember feeling the heat on my face,
Speaker 1: and I remember I took my both hands that covered
Speaker 1: my face and he shoots again. I'm like, quit, shoot
Speaker 1: and quit and I'm screaming quit shooting. And I remember
Speaker 1: feeling how hot my face felt. My hat was no
Speaker 1: longer on my head. I remember standing there and I
Speaker 1: was a big guy, you know. I come from a
Speaker 1: construction background, poor concrete for living, worked on farms, put
Speaker 1: up a lot of hay, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was just one of them kind of guys. And I
Speaker 1: remember being nervous and finally I said, are you done?
Speaker 1: Are you done? I yelled, yeah, yeah, you're okay. But
Speaker 1: I remember my hand's been on my face, and I
Speaker 1: remember being nervous to pull my hand because I I
Speaker 1: thought I was gonna see two hands full of blood
Speaker 1: and I didn't. I said, I'm okay. I looked at
Speaker 1: my hat and the bill of my hat was frey
Speaker 1: just a little bit when I picked it up, So
Speaker 1: I guess what I got was a little of percussion
Speaker 1: and in the gas off the off him shooting in
Speaker 1: front of me. And you know a lot of folks
Speaker 1: would think that you just go punch him in the
Speaker 1: nose or No. I had to go grab a hole
Speaker 1: to the blind my knees. When my knees went to jelly,
Speaker 1: I couldn't move. I just had to sit there a
Speaker 1: minute just to kind of let everything work itself out. Um.
Speaker 1: And I finally got where I could move a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I talked to you. I said, look here, party,
Speaker 1: I said, you may not. I thought I was in danger,
Speaker 1: I said, but I felt the heat on my face.
Speaker 1: I said, here's my hat. After I pulled up out
Speaker 1: of the water, you could see the threads there. That's
Speaker 1: a little too close for comfort. Bub Um, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get in the boat and we're going back to the
Speaker 1: truck and and then the rest of these folks will
Speaker 1: finish their hunt out. And luckily they did, and it
Speaker 1: was a fantastic hunting day. We shot lots of birds.
Speaker 1: It would just umbelieve. It's a day that goes down
Speaker 1: in history It's one that you'll never forget for two reasons,
Speaker 1: one for how good the hunting was, and two for
Speaker 1: Jimbo getting his hat shot off. And to this day,
Speaker 1: there's times I'm hunting with folks and if I don't
Speaker 1: know they they're going to shoot, and if they just
Speaker 1: raise up and shoot and I don't call the shot,
Speaker 1: you know, or duck kind of falls in, or one
Speaker 1: duck gets close and somebody shoots, I I'm kind of jumpy,
Speaker 1: almost overboard. To this day, Jimbo says he'll find himself
Speaker 1: uncontrollably dropping his gun and hitting the deck in a
Speaker 1: duck blind when he hears an unexpected shot. The moment
Speaker 1: scared him. There are, however, other types of stories that
Speaker 1: shape us at a foundational level, the ones when things
Speaker 1: go really right. The second story is told by my
Speaker 1: friends Scott Harness of Jacksonville, Arkansas. Scott is a pastor.
Speaker 1: He's a former US military helicopter pilot and a lifelong
Speaker 1: duck hunter. Here's his story, called the Tupelo Break. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up in Arkansas, I think part of
Speaker 1: the culture of our state has all been influenced by
Speaker 1: duck hunting. I mean, there's not very many people who
Speaker 1: have grown up here that don't at least understand it.
Speaker 1: But still, even at that, I think I fielded the
Speaker 1: question of why do you duck hunt? You know, so
Speaker 1: many times and and any time that there's somebody on
Speaker 1: the outside looking in, what they'll do is they'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, you go through all this cold water, and
Speaker 1: they name the time you get up and how much
Speaker 1: money you spend, and and they usually conclude that question
Speaker 1: by saying, and you do all that for a duck,
Speaker 1: and they just wait for your response. And and for
Speaker 1: years I had a hard time answering that question, because
Speaker 1: when you put it in that context, it does sound
Speaker 1: a little insane. But a few years ago, I think
Speaker 1: I think I had it proven to me that it's
Speaker 1: really not about that. Um. I had a friend that
Speaker 1: was wanting to get into duck hunting, and he this
Speaker 1: was his first first time, and he had been chopping
Speaker 1: at the bid. He moved from a northern state when
Speaker 1: he got down here. He he didn't grow up in
Speaker 1: a family that hunted, but he knew that he wanted
Speaker 1: to hunt, and he knew that I had taken several
Speaker 1: people on their first duck hunt, which is something I enjoyed,
Speaker 1: and he said, uh, I want to go, man, can
Speaker 1: can you take me? And he had shot ski and
Speaker 1: done a few other things to get ready, and I
Speaker 1: told him that I would. But we were literally at
Speaker 1: the last week of duck season, and I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, well go, I said, let's let's plan on
Speaker 1: doing it next year. He said, no, man, I want
Speaker 1: to go now. I said, you're gonna spend money on
Speaker 1: a duck stamp, and and we're you know and all that,
Speaker 1: and and we're at the end of the season, and
Speaker 1: we'd already had a hard season. We'd hunted a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of that year. And it's kind of like Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: After the meal, you've eatn all that you can eat
Speaker 1: in the top button, your pants are unfastened. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want anything else eating. Somebody brings you a
Speaker 1: turkey sandwich and they said, hey, would you like to
Speaker 1: have a turkey sandwich tomorrow? You would, but not today.
Speaker 1: You know, we're at the end of the season. I've
Speaker 1: had my field of duck hunting, and I don't really
Speaker 1: want to go. But I got this guy chomping at
Speaker 1: the bit, and he just wants to go. Duck hunting.
Speaker 1: That's all he wants. And finally I told him, I said,
Speaker 1: I just feel like we have zero chance of killing anything.
Speaker 1: And um, he said, I don't care. I just want
Speaker 1: the experience. I want to go. I'm ready. He had
Speaker 1: had a few items to to go duck hunting with.
Speaker 1: He had a coat, some gloves, a cap, and a
Speaker 1: few other things, but he didn't have any waiters. And um,
Speaker 1: finally I agreed. I said, Okay, we'll go. And our
Speaker 1: only opportunity to go was the very last day of
Speaker 1: duck season and we went to a place I'd hunted
Speaker 1: for a number of years. It was just a a
Speaker 1: tupelo break and it was just full of these old
Speaker 1: growth tupelo trees. In fact, it was it was beautiful
Speaker 1: there there. In the fall, these these twopelo trees with
Speaker 1: the leaves would turn just this bright, bright yellow, and
Speaker 1: they would fall from the trees and they would land
Speaker 1: on the water, and it was just like black glass
Speaker 1: with these yellow boats, if you will, floating all across
Speaker 1: the top. It was stunning, and um, we decided we'd
Speaker 1: go there. The unfortunate thing is is that this particular
Speaker 1: place does not hold ducks late in the season. Ever,
Speaker 1: not that it's unlikely that you're going to see a duck.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely impossible. But this guy wants to go anyway.
Speaker 1: So we get there, and the only place that we
Speaker 1: can actually hunt, because he doesn't have any waiters, is
Speaker 1: an old blind that's sort of out in the middle
Speaker 1: of this this tupelo break. And so we make our
Speaker 1: way out there in the boat, and um, to my chagrin,
Speaker 1: I guess it had been the blind had been there
Speaker 1: a lot longer, And it's been a lot longer since
Speaker 1: we've been there than what I thought. And the whole
Speaker 1: roof was rotted off of it, and the floor wasn't
Speaker 1: far behind it. In fact, I told him when he
Speaker 1: got into the blind, I said, listen, stand close to
Speaker 1: the tree, because that's probably the strongest point. Looks like
Speaker 1: the floor joyst could give it any any moment, you know.
Speaker 1: And so he gets out and and kind of gets
Speaker 1: close to the tree. My son's with us as well,
Speaker 1: and he gets out, gets in. So I go out
Speaker 1: to to throughout the decoys, and and what what once
Speaker 1: was a really beautiful broad hole has now grown up
Speaker 1: with buck brush, and so it's it's turned from one
Speaker 1: big piece of water to a several clusters, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe ten foot in diameter of water, and which further
Speaker 1: tells me that there's just no way we're gonna kill ducks.
Speaker 1: Ducks are not gonna come into this big thicket, you know,
Speaker 1: to to light. But I throw the decoys out anyway,
Speaker 1: and I stick out a mojo, which is just a
Speaker 1: spinning wing decoy that mimics, you know, ducks when they're
Speaker 1: flapping their wings, and it's a real good attractive And
Speaker 1: I make my way back to the blind, and when
Speaker 1: I get in the blind, we're all kind of setting
Speaker 1: there before shooting hours, and in my mind I just
Speaker 1: run through, what are we really going to get out
Speaker 1: of this? And in my mind, I thought, you know
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. We're gonna enjoy each other, have
Speaker 1: some conversations. I'm gonna drink a cup of coffee, We're
Speaker 1: gonna get in the boat, pick up decoys, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna go to town to eat a great breakfast. That's
Speaker 1: that's my expectation. But so risingly, about ten minutes before dayly,
Speaker 1: I start hearing wings and ducks start coming into the hold,
Speaker 1: which if you've duck hunted any time at all, you
Speaker 1: realize that when ducks come in while it's still dark,
Speaker 1: if they come in numbers, that means they've been in
Speaker 1: this place before. And if ducks have been in a
Speaker 1: place for very long, um, and they haven't been messed with,
Speaker 1: then they tend to attract other ducks. And I said,
Speaker 1: this is a good sign. And so we shift from
Speaker 1: you know, just getting breakfast to hey, we might actually
Speaker 1: kill a duck. And I looked at my friend and
Speaker 1: I said, I think you're gonna kill a duck. And
Speaker 1: he's quivering like a six month old lab puppy that's,
Speaker 1: you know, in his first hunt. But the finally shooting
Speaker 1: hours come and ducks are coming in now, really coming in,
Speaker 1: and numbers, I mean, it's unusual numbers. I'm I'm completely surprised.
Speaker 1: My buddies like, when can we shoot? When come we shooting?
Speaker 1: I just told him, I said, I just hold on
Speaker 1: for a second. I said, let's just let these ducks
Speaker 1: come in and let's just let's just hold on. And
Speaker 1: as the light really gave way, I looked into this
Speaker 1: guy for as high as I could see. Ducks, even
Speaker 1: at altitude, are committed. They're like on a string, coming
Speaker 1: into this place. I've duck hunted my whole life, and
Speaker 1: I've never seen this happen like this. And ducks are live,
Speaker 1: literally landing beside the blind, water splashing up in the blind.
Speaker 1: We can fill the air off of their their wings
Speaker 1: as they fly by where the blind once had a lid,
Speaker 1: that they're flying through that. And I mean, just you
Speaker 1: could touch them, you could reach out and grabbed one.
Speaker 1: My friends still ready to shoot, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna set here. We sat in this two
Speaker 1: blow break and we watched ducks by fives, tens, twenties
Speaker 1: just pile in there until finally you could not have
Speaker 1: put another duck in this hole. In fact, I looked
Speaker 1: over at my robo duck or the mojo with the
Speaker 1: little metal wings. They've landed on it and they've been
Speaker 1: its wings and it's convulsing in the water, making this
Speaker 1: horrible noise, and any other time that would be like
Speaker 1: a death sentence to wherever you are. But these ducks,
Speaker 1: they don't care. They're gonna come in anyway. They didn't
Speaker 1: care if we were there anybody. They had made their
Speaker 1: mind up this was a great place and they were
Speaker 1: gonna have a party, and all of them were there,
Speaker 1: and we sat there and we listened to these ducks
Speaker 1: and every variety is there. You've got mallards, you've got gadwalls,
Speaker 1: even a few wood ducks. There's some widget in there,
Speaker 1: and all of them are just having the big time,
Speaker 1: just all a round us. And and my friends still
Speaker 1: ready to shoot. He's still like, what what do we
Speaker 1: gonna shoot? I was like, just just look around for
Speaker 1: a second and I'll explain to you later. Well, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna shoot right now. And we just watched these
Speaker 1: ducks for I don't know how long, several minutes, and
Speaker 1: they just it was just it was amazing. It was
Speaker 1: a moment that I had never experienced, even though I've
Speaker 1: been duckhating my whole life. We did eventually shoot. Here's
Speaker 1: what's funny. I can't right now tell you exactly how
Speaker 1: many ducks we killed. I'm nine sure we all limited out,
Speaker 1: which would be obvious, but I don't really know. And
Speaker 1: here's what's funny. It was after that particular day that I,
Speaker 1: when I go back into my mind, this is what
Speaker 1: helped me understand that duck hunting is not about killing ducks.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter how many ducks were in this trap
Speaker 1: for that trip, what I realized was is that duck hunters.
Speaker 1: What motivates a duck hunter isn't the number of ducks
Speaker 1: that you kill, but it's the stories that you collect.
Speaker 1: And I think in the mind of any duck hunter,
Speaker 1: the reason why you endure the hardship, the reason why
Speaker 1: you go through the cold and and you spend the
Speaker 1: money and you travel, is because in the end, you're
Speaker 1: a collector of story. And you go to any duck hunter,
Speaker 1: he'll look you in the face and he'll give he
Speaker 1: can give you a dozen incredible stories. Now, what's funny
Speaker 1: is that even some of the hardship becomes fodder for
Speaker 1: this archive that we keep in our mind. Because that
Speaker 1: trip we went and we fell on the water and
Speaker 1: we got cold, that becomes part of the story. Or
Speaker 1: that time the boat sank or or you had to
Speaker 1: break ice or whatever it is. All that's part of
Speaker 1: the story. But then there's that other part where you
Speaker 1: remember setting next to your granddad and he's calling in ducks,
Speaker 1: and you remember what it was like to set there
Speaker 1: with him and him pull up at that old Itaca
Speaker 1: twelve gate shotgun and catch those ducks on the wing,
Speaker 1: and you were so impressed at how good he could
Speaker 1: hunt and how he could call, or maybe it was
Speaker 1: the story of somebody you hunted with and they're not
Speaker 1: here anymore. Those are things that we collect and and
Speaker 1: so when it comes down to it, a duck hunter
Speaker 1: does it duck hunt for a pile of duck met
Speaker 1: A duck hunter doesn't duck hunt for a trophy. Even
Speaker 1: a duck hunter duck hunts because duck hunters collects stories.
Speaker 1: We that's what keeps us going is the stories of
Speaker 1: the past and the post ability of the story in
Speaker 1: the future will make you get up way before daylight
Speaker 1: when it's really cold, and stomp through ice and throughout
Speaker 1: decoys in the hopes that today will be one of
Speaker 1: those exceptional days. Exceptional days of hunting are the fuel
Speaker 1: of almost everything we do as hunters. We're constantly reaching
Speaker 1: for that pristine moment, and we often go years without
Speaker 1: experiencing the type of day we're constantly reaching for. I
Speaker 1: do anyway, Incredible days make up for mondane hours, hardship,
Speaker 1: and failure. Honestly, the psychological sensation of betting on the future.
Speaker 1: It's probably a lot like what a gambler feels like.
Speaker 1: When I asked Mr Jim Stinson to tell me a
Speaker 1: single story, he couldn't do it without telling me a
Speaker 1: bigger story of how he got his start and making
Speaker 1: duck calls. Stories are connected. I just wanted to let
Speaker 1: Mr Jim talk. You're about to hear about his relationship
Speaker 1: with famed duck call maker, the late Alvin Taylor. Here's
Speaker 1: Mr Jim. I had a liquor store for thirty five years.
Speaker 1: I was mayor of Clarining for eleven years, and I
Speaker 1: probably blew of the duck calls Alan Taylor made because
Speaker 1: he was older and just didn't have the wind. And
Speaker 1: he come up the store thirty times a day. What's
Speaker 1: this need? Well needs a little more wrath? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want a little higher ring. That's yep, Well you need
Speaker 1: to cut some more. Read off, let's get it higher.
Speaker 1: And then he got uh. I guess he was kind
Speaker 1: of like a grandpa to me. We were just great friends.
Speaker 1: We drank coffee at the U. J and M Hotel,
Speaker 1: and we drink coffee every morning. He was a different man.
Speaker 1: You had to had to know him because if you
Speaker 1: couldn't blow a duck call, he wouldn't sell you a
Speaker 1: duck call. He take away from you. He said, nope,
Speaker 1: because and I understand that now that I make them.
Speaker 1: If somebody's blowing that duck hall and they don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing, they people say, oh, I don't want
Speaker 1: to Stanson call. That don't sound good. I contest called
Speaker 1: when I was younger, and I blew album's call I
Speaker 1: want the Music City open. I got him so old
Speaker 1: now I can't remember. Eighty nine ninety something like that.
Speaker 1: It was, oh, a long time ago. I blew in
Speaker 1: the world. I blew in the state year after year
Speaker 1: after year. But Alvin got sick. He started he got cancer,
Speaker 1: and uh, he said, Jim, I'll you've been wanting me
Speaker 1: to teach you how to make duck calls, So I
Speaker 1: will teach you how to make a duck call. And
Speaker 1: he taught me and David Gaston from Alabama. Well, he
Speaker 1: let me make some calls. Well that went on for
Speaker 1: about a year. Then he got his cancer and he
Speaker 1: called me one day and said, Jim, come down here. Well,
Speaker 1: I thought something wrong. I locked a liquor store up
Speaker 1: and ran down to his house and he said, people
Speaker 1: are walking out of my duck call shop. Something's wrong,
Speaker 1: go in here and blow my duck call. I went
Speaker 1: in there, and every one of them squealed, I said, Alvin.
Speaker 1: He tried to set it himself, didn't want to bother me.
Speaker 1: He said, Okay, that's how I know how many calls
Speaker 1: he had left when he died. He died about a
Speaker 1: week later, he had eighty five duck call left, because
Speaker 1: that's how many I tuned for him. And when he
Speaker 1: passed away, they sold in a week. They were all gone.
Speaker 1: But then he, you know, he told me when he
Speaker 1: got sick, he said, okay, I'm quittin. You go ahead,
Speaker 1: and you can start now. And that's when I started
Speaker 1: making duck calls. Today, Alvin Taylor, duck calls are sought after.
Speaker 1: Some even say they bring a higher return on your
Speaker 1: investment than money in the bank. And if you're new
Speaker 1: to the waterfowl world, as I am, you'll learn that
Speaker 1: people collect duck calls. Today. There are thousands of custom
Speaker 1: makers across the United States. Even old Jason Phelps that
Speaker 1: Phelps custom calls make some good ones, But fourty or
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, there weren't nearly that many. So these
Speaker 1: old makers calls are very sought after. Here's a string
Speaker 1: of stories from Mr Jim that I'm gonna call a
Speaker 1: duck man sizzle real. I'll tell you one story. This
Speaker 1: is when we were still allowed to take a how
Speaker 1: boat up and we took Dr. The Evidence house boat up,
Speaker 1: set it on the mouth of seven mile seven twelve
Speaker 1: inches of snow game and we didn't have cbe you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't have cell phones or nothing back in the day,
Speaker 1: but being a farmer, I had a radio that we
Speaker 1: talked on repeater. Well. Dr Everton left his brownie shotgun
Speaker 1: leaning up against the truck. Well, it took us forty
Speaker 1: five minutes to go from this landing a half a
Speaker 1: mile up the river. You could not see. We had
Speaker 1: to put both boats together. We didn't know if we
Speaker 1: were going upstream or downstream. So that was that night.
Speaker 1: That was that night we got up called and told
Speaker 1: Daddy to get to have Sidney, go get uh Dennis's gun.
Speaker 1: We're not coming back to town for it. And so
Speaker 1: we didn't even get up harder because it was known
Speaker 1: so hard. But we decided to go hunting and everything
Speaker 1: was white and I have never seen that many ducks
Speaker 1: in my life. You would be driving your boat to
Speaker 1: go to a duck hole and hundreds of ducks are
Speaker 1: just jumping up in front of you. We decided let's
Speaker 1: just pull over and seriously, in five minutes we had
Speaker 1: we had four limits. It was just bam bam, bam,
Speaker 1: bam bam. But it was twelve inches snow. Nobody else
Speaker 1: could put their boat in. We had one boat come
Speaker 1: in and it was Ed Jennie, the gay warden. He's
Speaker 1: the only guy that came up there. Of course he
Speaker 1: checked his and everything was okay, but that that was
Speaker 1: a that was a great hunt. You know, we were younger.
Speaker 1: Snow in Arkansas and waterfowl hunting are known to produce
Speaker 1: some incredible hunting. It's hard to imagine that many ducks.
Speaker 1: But Mr Jim is just getting started. My daddy and
Speaker 1: his friend Mike Booker found a found a hole. We
Speaker 1: used it for years after that and we levely have
Speaker 1: four or five boats in that hole and it was
Speaker 1: just awesome. It was a small hole and you'd like
Speaker 1: to hundred ducks. That wouldn't be one group. What would
Speaker 1: happen when these ducks starts circling might be sixty, but
Speaker 1: there's another group over here where they would join up
Speaker 1: and it'd be just like a tornado. We like to
Speaker 1: see the ducks come in below the trees, so we
Speaker 1: don't shoot the first ones to come in, and you
Speaker 1: just let them. They fill that hole up and then
Speaker 1: they hit the water and go straight to the buckbrush
Speaker 1: and it's just continuously and we have done that several times.
Speaker 1: The one time I took Daddy was getting older that
Speaker 1: he wanted to shoot him when they first coming in
Speaker 1: and they filled that hole up, I mean, he was
Speaker 1: just black and Mr Sidney called the shot and they
Speaker 1: jumped up and we shot and we got our limit
Speaker 1: that one group. I mean, it was so many ducks
Speaker 1: were there, and you try to kill green three people,
Speaker 1: Daddy said, He said that was unbelievable, and he's seen
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of that. There's something special
Speaker 1: about hearing an older gentleman called his father daddy, and
Speaker 1: you're left with no doubt of how proud Mr Jim
Speaker 1: was his elderly father on a great duck hunt. When
Speaker 1: you talk to these guys, I'm amazed at how rare
Speaker 1: these black the sky out with duck occurrences are. The
Speaker 1: average duck hunter never sees it. But the lore of
Speaker 1: such mornings fuels duck hunting passion. It's what these guys
Speaker 1: live for. And with the migration patterns changing with agriculture
Speaker 1: and shifting weather patterns, these mornings are becoming increasingly rare.
Speaker 1: Here's a couple of close calls from Mr Jim. Have
Speaker 1: you had any near death experiences while the boat? Have
Speaker 1: you ever had sell off the house boat into twenty
Speaker 1: six ft of water with a chest? Waiters on. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying my life flashed in front of me, but
Speaker 1: all I can think about with my wife because people
Speaker 1: have drowned up here, and I had water filling up
Speaker 1: in my chess. Waiters, well, dr you over to my buddy.
Speaker 1: He said, I wanted in the water three seconds. Well
Speaker 1: I got it felt like three minutes. And he pulled
Speaker 1: me up. And he's smaller I am. But we changed
Speaker 1: clothes and I were his clothes. We weren't hunting. He
Speaker 1: didn't stop us. And but one time, it was in
Speaker 1: nineteen New Year's even eighteen seventy. David Brown, his father
Speaker 1: was the undertaker here and I we went in his boat.
Speaker 1: My daddy and Alf went to mother, and and and
Speaker 1: his nephew went another one, and the ducks were slow
Speaker 1: that day, and David Brown and I said, we want
Speaker 1: to go look for ducks. Now, this was the day
Speaker 1: when you had a nine point nine mercury or something,
Speaker 1: you know, or Evanrue was a sheer pin in it.
Speaker 1: You didn't if you had a fifteen horse motor. You
Speaker 1: had a big motor. There's none of these boat races
Speaker 1: that go on now that go forty five. And we
Speaker 1: went or what's slow? I told, well, Dad, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go down here and look for some duck and we'll
Speaker 1: go to this spot over here. And he said, okay,
Speaker 1: and we'll meet you up at the Jane Effort lunch. Well,
Speaker 1: we moved went across the river where we weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to be where we told him we didn't weren't gonna
Speaker 1: go there, and we did, and we sheared a pin
Speaker 1: and I spent the night in the river. That night,
Speaker 1: the coldest neither year. Two young men from des Ark.
Speaker 1: They got wet, but they both died that night. But
Speaker 1: those guys died because they hypothermia, you know, they got wet.
Speaker 1: They found him sitting on a log. Some man came
Speaker 1: down to the house boat where uh, the lady folks.
Speaker 1: Was because they looked for us all night long and said, well,
Speaker 1: they found two bodies. My dad always said, if I
Speaker 1: could have got there, I think I would have hit
Speaker 1: that guy, because you don't tell women folks that. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't other. It was those guys from Desart, and
Speaker 1: I could hear the saw mill, potlets, saw meal whistle,
Speaker 1: but we were between two ridges, and I remember it.
Speaker 1: I could tell you take an hour to tell you that,
Speaker 1: but I remember it. We were pushing and pushing and
Speaker 1: hitting these two ridges. We didn't know. We were eighteen
Speaker 1: years old and were just hitting these two ridges. Wasn't
Speaker 1: going nowhere. So you were you, You had the boat,
Speaker 1: had you'd shared a panel man, you hit a stump
Speaker 1: or something and the boat wouldn't work. You got on land,
Speaker 1: was knee deep water. We were walking around flooded, yeah,
Speaker 1: pulling the boat. And at five o'clock that afternoon we
Speaker 1: hadn't anything to eat. Well, we saw duck swimming and
Speaker 1: we shot the duck. Started plucking the duck lad gang green.
Speaker 1: We didn't matches or anything to cook it with. So
Speaker 1: that was the five thirty that night when we pulled
Speaker 1: all night long and kind of scary. We're here pushing
Speaker 1: and pulling this boat and my my foot got tangled
Speaker 1: up in the root wad, and David was pushing on
Speaker 1: the back and I went plumb underwater, and I mean
Speaker 1: I was absolutely shivered. We got to some shallow water
Speaker 1: and I tried to lay down and go to sleep,
Speaker 1: and my head was next to the gas can and
Speaker 1: I woke up dry heaving. My buddy was sitting in
Speaker 1: the shallow water, running in place. And we did that
Speaker 1: all night long, and then the next morning somebody was
Speaker 1: duck hunting, and we kept on holler and at him.
Speaker 1: David was a holler and I would holler, and David
Speaker 1: were the holler and I'd holler. The guy wouldn't answers,
Speaker 1: so we're trying to move the boat toward him, and
Speaker 1: he finally answers. Well we got there. It was a
Speaker 1: man from stud Guard had a He had an Evan
Speaker 1: root nine point nine like we did at night point five,
Speaker 1: nine point five whatever it was, and he had the
Speaker 1: same odor. He gave us a sheer pin. He said,
Speaker 1: to you, the two boys, everybody's looking for I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you had the airplane search. We saw the
Speaker 1: airplane come over anyway. He he told us how to
Speaker 1: get out because we didn't hunt over there. That if
Speaker 1: it be in these bottoms where I'm at now, I
Speaker 1: don't even need accomplish or nothing. I know the wood,
Speaker 1: but didn't know those wood. And he told us how
Speaker 1: to get out. We got up there on got to
Speaker 1: the highway and walked up there and there was a
Speaker 1: car there, and these guys finally come out and they said,
Speaker 1: because they knew us, brown stid that everybody's looking for.
Speaker 1: You said, well, we got lost, and would you give
Speaker 1: us a ride back to town? He said, yeah, you
Speaker 1: help us load everything up and we'll we'll take you.
Speaker 1: There's Mr new Kirk out here from Honey Creek And
Speaker 1: they gave us a ride back to town. And everybody
Speaker 1: was so glad to see us. And uh, of course
Speaker 1: you get back home. And these old timers say, well,
Speaker 1: why didn't you just take your spark plug out and
Speaker 1: cut a piece, you ge shirt off, sticking in the
Speaker 1: gas and crank it. You get a fire started. And
Speaker 1: he was an eagle scout. David was an eagle scout.
Speaker 1: We didn't think about nothing like that. And like I say,
Speaker 1: don't don't cell phones. But to this day, David has
Speaker 1: a GPS, he has matches, he has everything, and another backpack.
Speaker 1: But he's prepared now for that now. Of course, now
Speaker 1: you've got cell phone and GPS IS. Wasn't gps IS
Speaker 1: and that's what really ruined the hunting up here. If
Speaker 1: you didn't know where you were going, they couldn't follow you.
Speaker 1: We'd put false tax, put those eyes and we'd have
Speaker 1: the road go over here. We just shut the We
Speaker 1: go there every morning, I know, the big tree. We
Speaker 1: shut the light off and we just go there waiting
Speaker 1: for yet to turn off the river. And you go
Speaker 1: through the woods to go about two miles back in there,
Speaker 1: and then you hear them out. They're still out there
Speaker 1: and following that trail and rung kicking their engine and
Speaker 1: up and everything. But uh, and then people got the
Speaker 1: GPS and then they started telling all their friends. You know,
Speaker 1: the friends have never even been here before. Of course,
Speaker 1: when you got to coordinates to you don't go straight
Speaker 1: to that hole. And I don't know why some holes
Speaker 1: are better than others, but they are. You know, some
Speaker 1: holes down here killed ducks. And if you get to
Speaker 1: it first, and that's what the race is. I'm too
Speaker 1: old for that. We've got a boat now that Dennis's
Speaker 1: son in law put it to six o'clock boat, so
Speaker 1: we don't have to go up at four o'clock no more.
Speaker 1: And you know, they take care of us like I
Speaker 1: used to take care of the other old men. And
Speaker 1: that's like all these bands. I didn't kill all these ducks,
Speaker 1: but the old men didn't want to go chase down
Speaker 1: the cripples and everything. Mr Jim has a lanyard that
Speaker 1: hangs down to the middle of his chest. It's lined
Speaker 1: with duck bands from the back of his neck all
Speaker 1: the way to the two hanging duck calls around the
Speaker 1: middle of his Torso if I was guessing, I'd say
Speaker 1: there are fifty plus bands. Duck bands are aluminum bands
Speaker 1: on the feet of ducks that have been captured by
Speaker 1: some gaming fish department and tagged. When a hundred kills
Speaker 1: and the duck, it is a major trophy and they're
Speaker 1: able to keep the bands. You gotta kill a lot
Speaker 1: of ducks to even get a single band. Somebody who
Speaker 1: has a bunch of bands, it indicates that they've done
Speaker 1: a lot of duck hunting. So that's what this whole
Speaker 1: band thing is. About here's Mr Jim David and I
Speaker 1: would go get the ducks, and I keep that knife there,
Speaker 1: and I get a banded duck. I got cut the
Speaker 1: band off and put our wouldn't say a word, you know.
Speaker 1: So uh and after they yeah, and after they see
Speaker 1: all my bands getting bigger, there's old men started cranking
Speaker 1: their motors up and they and they went and got
Speaker 1: their own ducks. But uh, it was fun. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you. I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: something you like. Like. We love duck hunting. I mean
Speaker 1: I deer hunt, I squirrel hunt, I cat fisher in
Speaker 1: the river, catch my limit every day. It's unbelievable. I
Speaker 1: mean the resources here. Mr Jim Stenson is an old
Speaker 1: school can saw a duck man, and they aren't making
Speaker 1: him like him anymore. I just loved hearing him talk.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you another guy that I love to hear talk,
Speaker 1: and that's Bear Greece's own Brent Reeves. He's a long
Speaker 1: time Low Country river bottom duck man himself. He was
Speaker 1: a waterfowl guy for twenty six years. When I first
Speaker 1: met Brent, and I'm certain they'd send him in undercover.
Speaker 1: I called him a hillbilly, and he said, I quote,
Speaker 1: I ain't no hillbilly. I'm from the flat land. We
Speaker 1: had hillbillies mowing our grass. True story. And to Gary
Speaker 1: Newcomb semi shrouded but sometimes not so shrouded disapproval. I
Speaker 1: did quite a bit of commercial grass mowing, even after
Speaker 1: I had a college degree. Anyway, Brent has uncountable great
Speaker 1: duck hunting stories. This is just one. And hey, Brent's
Speaker 1: gonna bring up the specific name game of a famed
Speaker 1: Arkansas Game and Fish owned wildlife management area in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Typically I wouldn't call out a place by name, but
Speaker 1: trust me, this place has been found out. You'd be
Speaker 1: better off exploring if you're looking to explore someplace else.
Speaker 1: But to you water Fowler's this story will mean more
Speaker 1: when you hear where it's at. Here's Brent telling me
Speaker 1: a story called the green Head Carpet. Gosh. I have
Speaker 1: so many memories my brother and I over the twenty
Speaker 1: six years that we ran a guide service in the
Speaker 1: little community of Raydale, Arkansas, which is south of stut
Speaker 1: Guard and it's right on the Arkansas River where our
Speaker 1: lodge was. My brother and I we had some some
Speaker 1: guys who were decoy makers, and they came. They wanted
Speaker 1: to come over and they wanted to trade some goose
Speaker 1: decoys for a duck hunt. So we thought, oh, it
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty good deal. And they were man,
Speaker 1: they were just they were soon for nice guys, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we did the deal, said y'all come on, just bring
Speaker 1: some decoys and we'll hunt to three days. So I
Speaker 1: remember it was back in about four or five I
Speaker 1: guess that we were hunting Buckingham Flats and buy meat up.
Speaker 1: Buckingham Flats is like four hundred acres and it's kind
Speaker 1: of tip cornered to the southern end of the boy
Speaker 1: Meta Wildlife Management Area and it didn't get a lot
Speaker 1: of hunting pressure at that time. There were several times
Speaker 1: on weekends when there was a lot of ducks when
Speaker 1: we pulled in to buy me to the Buckingham parking
Speaker 1: lot and there there may not be any other vehicles there,
Speaker 1: and especially during the week there was there was no
Speaker 1: kind of pressure whatsoever. So this particular time, it was
Speaker 1: like a Tuesday or Wednesday, these guys came over and
Speaker 1: we scheduled it that way just to ensure that, you
Speaker 1: know that we wouldn't have a lot of crowds. So
Speaker 1: we get over that day and we get all our
Speaker 1: stuff and we walk in and there are no other
Speaker 1: vehicles in the parking lot when we get there, so
Speaker 1: when when we walk, it's probably a half a mile
Speaker 1: walking there to the hole. It was what we called
Speaker 1: the sit Log Hole, and it's narrowest part about twenty
Speaker 1: five or thirty yards wide at the at the widest
Speaker 1: part it was about fifty or sixty yards wide, and
Speaker 1: it was probably a hundred and fifty yards long. The
Speaker 1: wind that day was perfect. It was coming out of
Speaker 1: the south and it was blowing right straight from when
Speaker 1: one into that hole to the other. And we got
Speaker 1: there and we got set up. We threw out probably
Speaker 1: two dozen decoys. It was before Christmas. It was like
Speaker 1: in the first part of December. I remember there were
Speaker 1: still leaves on the trees and it was a perfect morning.
Speaker 1: There was no clouds, but ducks were not flying at daylight.
Speaker 1: They just they didn't do anything. So we're just sitting
Speaker 1: there having coffee and talking about things that duck hunters
Speaker 1: talk about when when they're standing next to a tree
Speaker 1: in the flooded tim Member in seven thirty eight o'clock
Speaker 1: wherever the ducks had been on, whatever rice field they
Speaker 1: had been on, they all decided, it seemed like it
Speaker 1: once to come back to the timber to rest, and
Speaker 1: you could hear them coming. We were in mid conversation.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if it was my brother one of
Speaker 1: the other guys said, hey, y'all, do y'all hear that?
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, ducks were everywhere, and they
Speaker 1: were going in every direction, and there was no rhyme
Speaker 1: or reason to to what they were doing. And we
Speaker 1: even had ducks that were trying to trying to come
Speaker 1: into the hole without us calling, but they were getting
Speaker 1: bumped out of the hole by other ducks that were
Speaker 1: there coming from the other directions. So it was just
Speaker 1: like a clipped the wings on a thousand ducks and
Speaker 1: dumped them out of the box. And they were just
Speaker 1: tumbling and going everywhere, but none of them were coming
Speaker 1: into hole. So we started calling. We started calling, and
Speaker 1: they started getting getting a pattern together, they started getting organized,
Speaker 1: and we were on the southern end of that whole
Speaker 1: of the set log hole, facing to the north, and
Speaker 1: the wind was at our back going straight down there.
Speaker 1: And after it seemed like ten minutes of just calling
Speaker 1: and working ducks, but it was probably two or three
Speaker 1: minutes when we started working them around when they all
Speaker 1: got together and they started landing. They started landing the
Speaker 1: other end a hundred and thirty yards away from us,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh my gosh, we've seen this wonderful
Speaker 1: event take place of it seemed like a million ducks,
Speaker 1: all green head, all mallards that worked over the timber,
Speaker 1: that short timber, and finally got together and they're gonna
Speaker 1: light too far away, And I thought, you know this,
Speaker 1: all this effort was for nothing. And I said, oh man,
Speaker 1: they're too far, They're too far. My my brother said,
Speaker 1: just just wait, just wait, and they started lighting in
Speaker 1: the other end of that hole, and it was like
Speaker 1: you were rolling out of carpet. Ducks poured into that
Speaker 1: narrow opening and they just started when one sat down,
Speaker 1: another one sitting down right in front of and they
Speaker 1: just walked. A thousand ducks all of a sudden just
Speaker 1: started to rolling right up to us. And as they
Speaker 1: got to us, we remained still and they went behind us.
Speaker 1: They were landing all around us, and the ducks were
Speaker 1: still in the air, and my brother holler, let's get them.
Speaker 1: We stepped out and we started shooting, and we shot
Speaker 1: four limits of mallards, all green heads, in one volley.
Speaker 1: It was the one of the most incredible things that
Speaker 1: I had ever witnessed. Uh and my brother was there,
Speaker 1: and the guys that that brought the decoys. When they
Speaker 1: got back home, they sent another batch of decoys. They
Speaker 1: had such a good time that they actually paid twice
Speaker 1: for what we'd agreed on. But it was one of
Speaker 1: the most incredible hunts that I've been on over there.
Speaker 1: I got chill bumps on my arm right now talking
Speaker 1: about it. But that was him. That was a good one.
Speaker 1: The ducks came in like you were rolling out of carpet.
Speaker 1: He said, that's powerful imagery. We're gonna circle around and
Speaker 1: come back to Scott Harness. He's got a duck story
Speaker 1: that involves cold blooded critters. This story is titled Gators.
Speaker 1: You know, I got into duck hunting just a little
Speaker 1: bit late. My dad didn't. He didn't like duck hunting.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact. He said, I can't imagine why
Speaker 1: I would go out and hunt a flying liver. That's
Speaker 1: what he said. You know, So when I first started
Speaker 1: duck hunting, I found a friend. I found a couple
Speaker 1: of buddies that they were duck hunting. I was probably nineteen.
Speaker 1: I had one friend from Louisiana that had had experienced
Speaker 1: duck hunting and he duck hunted in the in the
Speaker 1: marshes of Louisiana and then so we went together. But
Speaker 1: he's a gadgety guy. If you if you, if you
Speaker 1: know duck hunters like this, they just have like this,
Speaker 1: these gadgets. They're always looking for another mechanical advantage or
Speaker 1: what else can we get. And so he calls me
Speaker 1: on the phone with Danny's super excited and he says, man,
Speaker 1: I've got this boat. He said, there's a type of
Speaker 1: boat we used to hunt out of in Louisiana. He
Speaker 1: said it's a motorized p row I had no idea
Speaker 1: what that was, but he was so excited about I
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, this is gonna be great. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: And so he and I decided to go to a
Speaker 1: a particular ox bowl like that we had hunted pretty
Speaker 1: much in central Arkansas. So we get there in the
Speaker 1: morning and this is the first time I've seen the boat,
Speaker 1: and so when I see it, the first thing that
Speaker 1: kind I'm taken by is that it's really shallow. It's
Speaker 1: not a very deep boat. And uh, he and I.
Speaker 1: Let's just say, he and I are magnums when it
Speaker 1: comes to human beings, you know. Um, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, with he and I on that boat, and
Speaker 1: he'd already addressed it out. It's got this really big
Speaker 1: deep cycle battery in it. He's put a troller motor
Speaker 1: on the front of it, and dead in the middle
Speaker 1: of this boat is a Briggs and Stratton motor. And
Speaker 1: this is a direct drive, so literally there's a drive
Speaker 1: shaft coming off of the shaft of the motor going
Speaker 1: to a prop that's underneath this boat, which means that
Speaker 1: there's no reverse, but it also means when the motors
Speaker 1: running the prop spinning, we set the boat down in
Speaker 1: the water and uh immediately, I look, even before we
Speaker 1: put anything in it, the boats just not stick and
Speaker 1: out of the water enough for me to feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: I write it up though, is is just maybe my inexperience,
Speaker 1: Maybe I just don't understand certain things because these people
Speaker 1: have done it before, and you know, maybe you just
Speaker 1: go along with it. So we piled decoys in there.
Speaker 1: He gets in the front. I get in the back,
Speaker 1: and and we're about to go out into the swamp.
Speaker 1: I mean, in this motorized p row thingy. And I've
Speaker 1: got a cuban spotlight, which was the spotlight of choice
Speaker 1: of duck hunters back in the day. And and I've
Speaker 1: got it connected to a deep cycle battery with alligator clips,
Speaker 1: and I'm ready to go. Well, anyway, we got to
Speaker 1: start the motor in this thing. And and he's it
Speaker 1: does have electric starting. He's cranking on it, cranking on it,
Speaker 1: cranking on, cranking on it, and finally I smell gas.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I think you've got it flooded. Now this
Speaker 1: is before daylight, so it's pitch dark. We're on the bank.
Speaker 1: This swamp is nothing but water and a thicket. That's
Speaker 1: all it is. It's got twoplow tree, cypress, tree, cypress
Speaker 1: knees everywhere, water and a thicket. Um. And he's cranking
Speaker 1: on this motor. Finally he says, you know, I think
Speaker 1: you're I think it's flooded. Um. He said, But you know,
Speaker 1: as long as you got that light on, it seems
Speaker 1: like that it's not cranking as fast. So he thought
Speaker 1: that was maybe putting too much with a draw on
Speaker 1: the battery, so I turned the light off. He goes
Speaker 1: to cranking on the water. He holds it wide open,
Speaker 1: which is something you do with a motor that's flooded,
Speaker 1: and about that time, in the dark, the motor comes
Speaker 1: to life, about the third revolution, and when it does,
Speaker 1: it's wide open and it's direct drive. Literally in a
Speaker 1: half a second, it felt like we are careening through
Speaker 1: this swamp on plane. Now this is a place that
Speaker 1: you would have had to pick your way through in
Speaker 1: the daylight, and we're cutting through it wide open, crossing things,
Speaker 1: cover crossing log jams. I'm waiting any moment I realize
Speaker 1: we're gonna hit a cypher street. There's no way that
Speaker 1: we can, you know, get very far before we run
Speaker 1: into something. But to my chagrin, we literally go probably
Speaker 1: a hundred yards out into the middle of the swamp
Speaker 1: before finally he gets this motor turned off, and I
Speaker 1: think he literally reaches back and grabs a spark plug
Speaker 1: wire and turns it off. We do this all in
Speaker 1: the pitch dark. Never there's a light on. Right, we
Speaker 1: have no idea. I've lost my head year half my
Speaker 1: equipment has been ripped off of me as we're cutting
Speaker 1: through the swamp, and and there we are. UM had
Speaker 1: one little pinlight in my pocket and I got it
Speaker 1: out and I shined it into the bottom of the boat.
Speaker 1: The boat is literally completely full of water, and and
Speaker 1: there may be a quarter of an inch of the
Speaker 1: boat still sticking out of the water. We've we've run
Speaker 1: over enough things that's dipped up under enough water where
Speaker 1: this boat is ready to sink at any second. And
Speaker 1: I told my friend, I said, le's way to daylight.
Speaker 1: Let's don't do a thing. Stay real still, don't move,
Speaker 1: and at daylight we'll put together a plan. And daylight
Speaker 1: came around and we we we tried to paddle with
Speaker 1: our hands back, but every time you'd lean to the
Speaker 1: edge of the boat, it would take on more water.
Speaker 1: And any minute it's gonna sink. We know it is.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how deep of water we're in,
Speaker 1: but we're in the middle of a swamp. Now. After
Speaker 1: rewond the tape, just a little bit, tell you one
Speaker 1: quick story. When I used to fly, I used to
Speaker 1: fly helicopters for the army. We used to fly in
Speaker 1: this air particular area, and we never flew over this swamp.
Speaker 1: And I was always told by the elder pilots that
Speaker 1: I flew with. The instructor pots I flew with, they
Speaker 1: would say, don't ever fly with that swamp because there's
Speaker 1: alligators in it. And I mean literally, they would avoid
Speaker 1: this thing. If if we had to fly ten minutes,
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes out of our way to fly around the swamp,
Speaker 1: we would do it. No one ever flew over this swamp,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, at first, I thought that's just
Speaker 1: kind of you know, folklore, But as every pilot I
Speaker 1: got with, they would never fly off that direction. So
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of this swamp in a boat
Speaker 1: that's sinking. That's in my that's on my mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: So finally we decided that we're gonna try to pull
Speaker 1: this boat half sunk up to a set of cypress trees.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to step out, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: try to find some way of bailing water out of it.
Speaker 1: We don't really know how, but we feel like that's
Speaker 1: at least the start of a good plan. And so
Speaker 1: we get up to this group of cypress trees. I
Speaker 1: go to raise up and step out, and immediately the
Speaker 1: boat takes on water and it sinks as fast as
Speaker 1: you can imagine, just go straight to the bottom. I
Speaker 1: stand up and by the time I stand up, the
Speaker 1: boat rests on the bottom of this this lake and
Speaker 1: it's about neck beat um, maybe a little less maybe chesty. Well,
Speaker 1: my friends behind me, and if we look at each other,
Speaker 1: I go, what are we gonna do? Now? You know,
Speaker 1: both us they're standing in and water fortunately wasn't super
Speaker 1: bad cold, which made me nervous because in my mind,
Speaker 1: all I'm thinking about it's these alligators. So we're trying
Speaker 1: to make up our mind what we're gonna do with
Speaker 1: this boat and how we're gonna get the water out
Speaker 1: of and how we're gonna get back. And we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, and it's one of those days
Speaker 1: that was hardly any other hunters out there, any other
Speaker 1: day that it's just filled with people, but there was
Speaker 1: nobody there, and so we're out there trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how we'll get the water out of the boat.
Speaker 1: But as we as we're doing that, as I'm moving around, um,
Speaker 1: suddenly something swims into my leg and I can feel
Speaker 1: it through my waiters literally kicks off of my leg
Speaker 1: and pushes and it and it leaves awake in the water.
Speaker 1: You can see the current from whatever this is that
Speaker 1: as it's swum past me and it's circling, I mean
Speaker 1: literally it is. It is swimming in a circle and
Speaker 1: it's coming back. The second round it comes by, hits
Speaker 1: me again. I'm trying to get the gun off my shoulder.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I said, and I mean I know
Speaker 1: it's an alligator. I Am about to be eaten by
Speaker 1: an alligator in the swamp. I was warned never to
Speaker 1: fly over, and I'm in it, you know, chest deep,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna die eating by an alligator. And so
Speaker 1: I ut my gun out and I've literally got the
Speaker 1: muzzle of my gun in the water because this thing
Speaker 1: keeps swimming by and you can see and it's really erratic,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, this is a feeding frenzy. I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about alligators, but it's like sharks. I've seen
Speaker 1: shark week. It's coming and about the third or fourth round,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm trying to track it with my gun
Speaker 1: under the water. My buddy is trying to get his gun.
Speaker 1: He's he's scared too, And about that time it hits
Speaker 1: the far side away from me is it's making its
Speaker 1: circle and it comes up out of the water and
Speaker 1: it's actually the trolling motor. And so the troll and
Speaker 1: motor has broke off the front of the boat. It's
Speaker 1: still connected to the wires to the battery, but it's
Speaker 1: turned itself on and it's and it's just running in
Speaker 1: a circle under the water. That's what it was. So
Speaker 1: I really thought I was gonna be eaten. And eventually
Speaker 1: we did push the boat up into a compa trees
Speaker 1: and we dipped the water out of it and we
Speaker 1: gingerly paddled our paddle ourselves back to the bank and
Speaker 1: like a whipped puppy or tail between our legs, we
Speaker 1: we went home, but just thankful that we made it.
Speaker 1: We made it through it, and we did. We lived
Speaker 1: through it. No ducks, but what an adventure. Now that's
Speaker 1: a good story. It sounds to me like duck hunting
Speaker 1: is full of conundrums, and all of them for a duck.
Speaker 1: We couldn't tell duck stories without including a good dog story.
Speaker 1: Jimbo ron Quest is gonna tell us about the greatest
Speaker 1: retrieve he's ever witnessed. This story is called Katie. One
Speaker 1: of the things that passed out of me. My daddy
Speaker 1: was a big bird dog guy and a retriever guy,
Speaker 1: and it was always said that you relied one good
Speaker 1: woman and one good dog in a lifetime. So I
Speaker 1: will say that I have been allowed one good woman
Speaker 1: to miss Rosie, who I have absolutely out kicked my
Speaker 1: coverage on, takes care of me beyond the shadow of
Speaker 1: a doubt regardless of what I do. That said, I
Speaker 1: have probably had at this point, I wonta say with Tiny,
Speaker 1: I've had four dogs of a lifetime. I could, I
Speaker 1: could get poked up, teared up on on them right now,
Speaker 1: but I won't. So I have been fortunate to have
Speaker 1: some really great dogs. But everybody talks about what is
Speaker 1: the greatest retrieve, right what what's the best retreat? And
Speaker 1: I can tell you that all of them in a
Speaker 1: little Tiny's he's only two and a half, um, so
Speaker 1: he don't have as much bird experience as the rest
Speaker 1: of them. And he's had some Jim dandies. Man, he's
Speaker 1: a gold getter. And they've all made great ones. Charlie
Speaker 1: made one last year, forty five days pregnant center on
Speaker 1: a crippled tale. She was gone for forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't worried about her. Here find it. Here
Speaker 1: she come back. She don't caught that sucker. You know,
Speaker 1: just stuff you can't teach, right, you know, your hound man,
Speaker 1: you know there's things you can't teach. But but probably
Speaker 1: my all time favorite was an old dog I had
Speaker 1: named Katie bio Mede to Katie. She was a master hunter,
Speaker 1: but she was. She was with me through the gore
Speaker 1: days of commercial hunting and picked up untold thousands of birds.
Speaker 1: Well it's old dead. And then we hunted. You know,
Speaker 1: some years it was wet, some years it was dry,
Speaker 1: but always had a little water. And we had had
Speaker 1: was having a pretty good morning, not a great one,
Speaker 1: but a decent morning a hunting, and we had a
Speaker 1: bunch of motter to come in, a good little bunch
Speaker 1: of good volley. Everybody killed ducks. And she picked up
Speaker 1: all these ducks and there's a matter to him, and
Speaker 1: fell over here, and she went over and she hunted
Speaker 1: and hunted nut duck. She fountain and she chased it,
Speaker 1: and old duck beat her, and very few beat her.
Speaker 1: She was she She was. Her or my current dog
Speaker 1: Charlie were two of the best at working cripples I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. And this old duck beater her and she
Speaker 1: come back and got them the dog stand and hunt continued,
Speaker 1: and the morning slowed up that we wasn't shooting many
Speaker 1: and O Katy kept looking over and she'd look over
Speaker 1: and you can see her perk up. She kept looking
Speaker 1: over there, like what are you doing? You know? And
Speaker 1: I said, you let that duck beat you, didn't you?
Speaker 1: You know? She look not teaser, you know, I did
Speaker 1: you let that duck beats you? You're not gonna let
Speaker 1: that duck beats you, are you man? She looked at
Speaker 1: me and she look over and finally a little bit,
Speaker 1: it's getting slow, and finally said, put my hand over Katie,
Speaker 1: and she took off over her and she and now, look,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna preface this right now. If you were telling
Speaker 1: me this story and I had not seen it, i'd
Speaker 1: call bull dooo doo on it. But because I've seen
Speaker 1: it and I've seen this happen, I can't call bulloo do.
Speaker 1: I saw it in my own eyes. She goes a center,
Speaker 1: she goes over right to the last spot. She's on
Speaker 1: that bird, and she's kind of waters shallow, it's not
Speaker 1: swimming water, so it's kind of walking water, and the
Speaker 1: MUD's deep. It's just nasty. And she's walking around and
Speaker 1: she's got that nose on the water. And I've seen
Speaker 1: Charlie do this same thing. And she then she kind
Speaker 1: of kind of ease back on her haunches a little bit,
Speaker 1: get balanced, and she started taking them pause and digging
Speaker 1: and sticking her nose down, digging, sticking the next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, she took her nose down, she pulled them.
Speaker 1: Why don't he hand out bar but grabbing on with
Speaker 1: some weeds and pull it up out there and come
Speaker 1: back with it. And that was probably every bit of
Speaker 1: an hour after she had tried to catch that birden
Speaker 1: she didn't. I give her a hard time about it.
Speaker 1: Absolute best retreat every song. You're allowed one good woman
Speaker 1: and one good dog in a lifetime. Now that's a
Speaker 1: good statement. A man should consider himself fortunate if he
Speaker 1: has these two things. And I really like it when
Speaker 1: I hear a man honor the covenant he has with
Speaker 1: his wife. I heard Mr Jim Stenson and Jimbo do
Speaker 1: this in their stories. The whole ball and chain trope
Speaker 1: that you sometimes hear men say those things aren't funny
Speaker 1: to me. I like to see what a man honors
Speaker 1: his wife. Your life will follow the path of what
Speaker 1: you say. When you speak positively, you read positive stuff.
Speaker 1: When you sow negativity, you read negative stuff. Try it.
Speaker 1: I they're probably thinking of getting a little preachy. We
Speaker 1: might want to cut that out now. I leave it in.
Speaker 1: These stories of duck hunners paint a picture of one
Speaker 1: of America's most die hard and passionate groups of people.
Speaker 1: Waterfowl hunters are also one of the most conservation minded
Speaker 1: and well organized factions that you'll ever find. Delta Waterfowl
Speaker 1: and Duck's Unlimited are both incredible organizations, and there are
Speaker 1: uncountable other groups, many others that have saved millions of
Speaker 1: acres of American wetlands and are funded by the dollars
Speaker 1: of hunters. This is the story of the modern American hunter.
Speaker 1: We're the ones saving wild places and wild life, and
Speaker 1: at the foundation of it all is human passion that
Speaker 1: ignites when a hunter interacts with something far beyond his control,
Speaker 1: something bigger than him, like a mysterious, ancient and mystical migration,
Speaker 1: that makes him step out far beyond his comfort zone
Speaker 1: and hit the rivers and swamps in search of ducks.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease
Speaker 1: and hey, if you haven't heard, First Light has a
Speaker 1: growing new line of waterfowl gear, you should check it out.
Speaker 1: I am very much looking forward to trying it out
Speaker 1: in the Timber this year. Let us know what you
Speaker 1: think of this Duck Stories episode by leaving us a
Speaker 1: review on iTunes, and you can do me a favor
Speaker 1: by sharing our podcast this week with the worst duck
Speaker 1: hunter you know. Maybe this will inspire him. And you
Speaker 1: can follow me on Instagram and the TikTok at Clay
Speaker 1: underscore Nukem from Misty and I. We hope that you
Speaker 1: have a happy new Year. We'll see you next week
Speaker 1: on the Render