Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Riggs
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two to teach me.
Speaker 1: Cold fronts, Good night, nurse. It's cold and Arkansas folks
Speaker 1: a lot colder than we're used to and it's all
Speaker 1: because of a big old cold front. And normally we
Speaker 1: look forward to them because they usually ramps up the
Speaker 1: hunting this time of year, but these major ones they
Speaker 1: do just the opposite most of the time. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about coal from us today, but first I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you a story. This story is called Dynamite,
Speaker 1: Ice and Rice. I know more dynamite. I don't want
Speaker 1: you to think that my life was just full of
Speaker 1: stories and incidents that involved explosives, but there were a few,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't limited to dealing with beaver dams. And
Speaker 1: flooded timber. Not this time anyway. This was all due
Speaker 1: to a major coal front and duck hunting right after
Speaker 1: the turn of the century. The most recent one. My
Speaker 1: brother Tim and I were prepping for a group of
Speaker 1: hunters from the East Coast. A large percentage of our
Speaker 1: clients hailed from up and down the Eastern seaboard, and
Speaker 1: they always seemed to travel in herds. Now, other than
Speaker 1: a few exceptions, if we got one of those rascals,
Speaker 1: we got a whole passl of them. Not a problem.
Speaker 1: Tim and I would try. I had a limited number
Speaker 1: of hunters booking at the same time, to about eight,
Speaker 1: and we would split them up and hunt four to
Speaker 1: a guide for safety, and it's easier to hide a
Speaker 1: smaller number of folks in the woods, which is where
Speaker 1: we did the largest portion of our hunting. After all.
Speaker 1: That's why folks travel to Arkansas to duck hunt. They
Speaker 1: want to experience what it's like to have large groups
Speaker 1: of ducks falling into the timber and hovering above the decoys.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things, but seeing others see
Speaker 1: it for the first time is probably my most favorite
Speaker 1: of ault. It's one of those if you know you know, moments,
Speaker 1: and it has to be experienced in the flesh. Pictures,
Speaker 1: stories and even films don't do it justice. Feeling the
Speaker 1: air generated from the thump of beaten wings here, and
Speaker 1: chattering and quacking of drakes and hens as they jockey
Speaker 1: for position to land during the final approach, the splashing
Speaker 1: of feathered bodies as they turn graceful flight into what
Speaker 1: resembles amateur night at the dim Anglicien Derby for the
Speaker 1: final few feet of descent to the surface of knee
Speaker 1: deep water. That's the ticket, man, that's the show. That's
Speaker 1: what you pay your money for. That's what you see
Speaker 1: in your dreams when you lay down at night anticipating
Speaker 1: the next morning's hunt. It plays over and over in
Speaker 1: your head, and like that, one good golf shot out
Speaker 1: of a thousand bad ones keeps a golfer coming back
Speaker 1: to the tea box. The thought of having a chance
Speaker 1: to witness a spectacle such as I just described is
Speaker 1: what keeps a duck hunter spending his hard earned money
Speaker 1: to travel halfway across the country and the off chance
Speaker 1: that they might see it again or for the first time. Now,
Speaker 1: the group we had coming would see none of that,
Speaker 1: not even close, but they would see something just as incredible,
Speaker 1: record lows, the product of a blast of Arctic air,
Speaker 1: ice and snow. The can we talk about down here
Speaker 1: forever and folks up north would probably call a Tuesday
Speaker 1: was forecasted to hit a couple days before they arrived.
Speaker 1: In Arkansas and South Arkansas anyway, any mention of snow
Speaker 1: and ice was anticipated as eagerly as Christmas. Any ice
Speaker 1: on the road meant school would be closed and the
Speaker 1: whole state was shut down with a quarter inch of
Speaker 1: ice or sleep. Literally, I ain't kidding. As a youngin
Speaker 1: I'd go to bed with snow and ice forecasted for
Speaker 1: the following day, having already made my plans on what
Speaker 1: I was going to be hunting the next day, tracking rabbits, quail, deer,
Speaker 1: whatever was in season or close to being in season
Speaker 1: was on the agenda. Then I'd wake up to find
Speaker 1: that the weather man had missed it. Once again, I
Speaker 1: waited for the bus and the cold matter than a
Speaker 1: mashed cat hating school and the weather man. But this time, however,
Speaker 1: he nailed it. Temperatures in the twenties and several inches
Speaker 1: of snow locked up the flooded woods, and Timber. Now
Speaker 1: we told our clients about how everything was locking up,
Speaker 1: but they wanted to come anyway, So Tim and I
Speaker 1: scrambled to find a solution. Now we had an eighty
Speaker 1: acre rice field at least next to forty acres of
Speaker 1: woods that bordered the world famous by Meat of Wildlife
Speaker 1: management area we called by a Meat of the Public
Speaker 1: Shooting Grounds or the Scatters, among other local names. But
Speaker 1: if hunters could get out to the main bow where
Speaker 1: there was some current, they would keep the ducks moving
Speaker 1: in and out instead of just sitting in there like
Speaker 1: it was a sanctuary. There would be plenty of people
Speaker 1: trying to get to those coveted open spots, so the
Speaker 1: competition in there would be fierce, but it would work
Speaker 1: to our advantage if we could just get some open water.
Speaker 1: The evening our hunters arrived, we scouted the rice field,
Speaker 1: which was fifteen minutes away from the camp. Now, ice
Speaker 1: was already a quarter of an inch thick, and the
Speaker 1: temperature wouldn't get close to thirty two for the next
Speaker 1: few days. We drove a four wheeler out in the
Speaker 1: ice and in the water in front of the skid
Speaker 1: blind we had brushed up in the middle of the field.
Speaker 1: We were breaking up a large area of muddy open
Speaker 1: water as we drove in circles and made it shine
Speaker 1: like a diamond. Of ducks coming in with the coal
Speaker 1: front and they were landing in it before we got
Speaker 1: back out on the turn road. To leave open water
Speaker 1: would be the key to our success and a struggle
Speaker 1: to maintain the blind would hold five people safely and comfortably.
Speaker 1: Now that meant we had to stagger our groups. But
Speaker 1: we had a plan that Tim would take his four
Speaker 1: hunters and get in there at daylight. The trailer we
Speaker 1: had for hauling the four wheeler would serve two purposes.
Speaker 1: Once we arrived, he unload the four wheeler, then hook
Speaker 1: it to the trailer to haul our hunters and all
Speaker 1: their plunder along the turn row out to the blind.
Speaker 1: He didn't hook the trailer and make a loop through
Speaker 1: the ice where we were going to put the decoys
Speaker 1: while our clients got in the blind. Now, once he
Speaker 1: had the hole opened up, he'd parked a four wheeler
Speaker 1: behind the blind and start hunting. Ten would hunt from
Speaker 1: the opening of shooting ires till around nine o'clock, and
Speaker 1: then I'd have my crew there where we parked our trucks.
Speaker 1: You're ready to swap out when he came out. It
Speaker 1: was a good plan. The best part was I got
Speaker 1: to sleep late. It had been a long season. My
Speaker 1: Nokia fifty one to ten cell phone started buzzing before
Speaker 1: seven o'clock. The message from ten was y'all come now,
Speaker 1: all caps and with several exclamation marks. Well that wasn't
Speaker 1: a good sign. It was barely shooting light outside and
Speaker 1: my crew had just started getting up and moving around.
Speaker 1: No doubt he's stuck or is having some kind of trouble,
Speaker 1: I thought. So regardless, I needed to get them open,
Speaker 1: get them moving with whatever had transpired at the rice field. Y'all,
Speaker 1: get your stuff up and let's go. We got to
Speaker 1: go right now. Something drong just now. If someone had
Speaker 1: been hurt, he would have said that, so I knew
Speaker 1: whatever the emergency was, it was hunting related and not
Speaker 1: an issue of life and death. So like herding cats,
Speaker 1: I finally got my folks and all their stuff in
Speaker 1: my bronco and we took off. I'd messaged him a
Speaker 1: couple of times to see if I needed to bring
Speaker 1: anything other than what he knew was in my ride,
Speaker 1: but he never answered. In my head, I'm thinking he's
Speaker 1: elbow deep in cold ice and mud, and I figured
Speaker 1: he couldn't answer. So about seven twenty when I pulled
Speaker 1: up to the property and saw Tim with the trailer
Speaker 1: loaded with all his hunters, making their way back toward
Speaker 1: us along the levee. Immediately my mind raised as to
Speaker 1: what we were going to do with these hunters. Now.
Speaker 1: If he's driving back, he's obviously not stuck, so the
Speaker 1: rice field must be frozen up beyond opening up. I figured, man,
Speaker 1: they hadn't been there forty five minutes from the time
Speaker 1: shooting ears opened up until now, and I had no
Speaker 1: idea what we were going to do next. But Tim
Speaker 1: must have a plan. Wouldn't have called me to come over.
Speaker 1: We're sitting in the bronco and I turned to the
Speaker 1: guys that were with me. I said, boys, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on, but don't look like we're gonna
Speaker 1: be hunting here today. Their disappointment was obvious, even though
Speaker 1: they didn't say anything. But I was disappointed too. Now.
Speaker 1: As they got closer, one of them said, look at
Speaker 1: all those ducks. I looked out across that field, and
Speaker 1: ducks were piloted into that rice field from every direction.
Speaker 1: I looked back at the trailers. Tim got closer and
Speaker 1: it was filled with mallard ducks and smiling duck hunters.
Speaker 1: I started laughing. I said, y'all, get y'all, get your
Speaker 1: stuff together. The B team is going in now. Tim
Speaker 1: said it was an absolute dream. They couldn't spook the
Speaker 1: ducks out of the field. All his hunters were wanting
Speaker 1: to tell their buddies about what they'd done, but I
Speaker 1: was in a hurry to get them out there. Who
Speaker 1: knew how long this would last, and I wanted all
Speaker 1: of them to have every opportunity to shoot ducks that
Speaker 1: we could give them. So I got my boys loaded
Speaker 1: up and we looked back at that rice field that
Speaker 1: had a tordinata of ducks bombiting that muddy water. I
Speaker 1: told Tim, y'all can wait here if you want. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be back in a few minutes. He didn't wait,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't wrong. Tim and his crew went back
Speaker 1: to fix breakfast for all of us. It took us
Speaker 1: longer to get ready at the camp and get there
Speaker 1: than it did for us to shoot five limits of ducks.
Speaker 1: Wave after wave of ducks being pushed into the area
Speaker 1: where that coal front were falling into the decoys. It
Speaker 1: was too cold to have my lab out there, so
Speaker 1: I was picking up dead ducks and live ones were
Speaker 1: still dropping in. As high as you could see a duck,
Speaker 1: you could call at him, and immediately they locked up
Speaker 1: and fell like a rock. Wings were pressed close to
Speaker 1: their sides, and they sounded like a jet engine as
Speaker 1: they gained speed, getting closer and closer. No circling, no, nothing,
Speaker 1: straight down, like they were on a string. We were
Speaker 1: back at the camp before Tim could get the biscuits done.
Speaker 1: We'd shot ten limits of mallards tag team style. But
Speaker 1: what about tomorrow? What were we going to do about tomorrow?
Speaker 1: Most folks are judging their jobs by their last performance.
Speaker 1: A duck guide has to sell himself on what he's
Speaker 1: going to do next, and I had no clue what
Speaker 1: we were going to do. That ice would be too
Speaker 1: thick to break with the four wheeler. Tim had a plan, though.
Speaker 1: He knew what we were going to do next, and
Speaker 1: what we were going to do next was going to
Speaker 1: be just as entertaining as what we had just done.
Speaker 1: We planned to hunt after the sun came up the
Speaker 1: next day. It would give us time to safely put
Speaker 1: our plan into action. We had acquired two sticks of
Speaker 1: tovekx tovax more or less replaced dynamite than that. It
Speaker 1: was safer the store and handle back then you could
Speaker 1: legally buy it. That's enough of that. That's not the
Speaker 1: important part of the story. Anyway. Our plan was to
Speaker 1: blow a hole in the ice that had become a
Speaker 1: lot thicker through the night. Breaking it with a four
Speaker 1: wheeler wasn't possible any longer. We could do doughnuts without
Speaker 1: even trying. All ten of us were walking on the ice,
Speaker 1: jumping up and down, trying to make a hole, slipping
Speaker 1: and falling and generally risking life and limb. At one
Speaker 1: point I looked around and everyone had fallen and was
Speaker 1: on their backs, flopping around like someone had kicked over
Speaker 1: the shining bucket in the bottom of the boat. It
Speaker 1: was slick, and I'm not sure we could have broken
Speaker 1: through with a truck. Enter tovex Tim with the explosives prepped,
Speaker 1: He lit the fuse and we retreated to the relative
Speaker 1: safety to witness the festivities. How long you cut that
Speaker 1: fuse for tens old about any time now, And with
Speaker 1: that it detonated with a large boom. Our clients were
Speaker 1: cheering from the levee After they had all taken refuge
Speaker 1: behind the four wheeler trailer about one hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: Tim and I had tucked in behind the duck bline.
Speaker 1: The results were less than we'd hope for, but we
Speaker 1: had managed to knock a hole in the ice, a
Speaker 1: hole almost big enough sticky foot in. Now we had
Speaker 1: one more stick left, but decided against putting it in
Speaker 1: that hole for fear of reckon the laser level filled
Speaker 1: that we had leased. Doubtful the farmer would have appreciated
Speaker 1: a big low spot in this dead center where we
Speaker 1: were hunting the coming spring when planting time came, So
Speaker 1: we all worked as hard as we could to make
Speaker 1: that hole about the size of a kitchen table. The
Speaker 1: biggest chunks of ice we slid into the ice that
Speaker 1: we could that we couldn't break, or just lay it
Speaker 1: on the outside of the hole. Then we threw three
Speaker 1: decoys in it and called it good. It was all
Speaker 1: we could do, and it worked like a charm. The
Speaker 1: wind was steady, and the ducks that were coming in
Speaker 1: were all migrators and looking for a place to sit,
Speaker 1: no matter how small the hole was they wanted water.
Speaker 1: It was literally the perfect storm. Temput all our hunters
Speaker 1: into the blind and we stood behind it and we
Speaker 1: shot another full ten man limit that afternoon, just like
Speaker 1: we'd done the day before when we alternated groups. On
Speaker 1: the third day, we were frozen solid and our guests
Speaker 1: got an early start back home. We tried to talk
Speaker 1: them out of coming at the beginning, but they wanted
Speaker 1: to experience an Arkansas duck on now. While they didn't
Speaker 1: get it in the classically historic sense, what they did
Speaker 1: get was an experience with some Arkansas flare, and that's
Speaker 1: just how that happened. Cold fronts, Man, We looked forward
Speaker 1: to cold fronts as much as anything done. Number One,
Speaker 1: it's going to start giving you some relief from the
Speaker 1: heat that is the south. And number two, if you're
Speaker 1: a duck hunter, it usually means more ducks are coming.
Speaker 1: Ducks only go as far south as they have to.
Speaker 1: They're fueling up to make it through the winter, select
Speaker 1: a mate and travel back north to make more ducks.
Speaker 1: So if stut guard Arkansas is as far south as
Speaker 1: they need to go to have food and water, that's
Speaker 1: where they'll spend the winter. If it stays warmer further
Speaker 1: north will be their cold weather home. It's been my belief,
Speaker 1: not from schooling, but from observation over the past almost
Speaker 1: fifty years of chasing them, that ducks are energy hoarders,
Speaker 1: and they're only going to burn enough to sufficiently stay
Speaker 1: healthy enough to do what ducks do this time of year,
Speaker 1: which again is to prep for making more ducks. Snow
Speaker 1: and ice that cover and freeze all the food sources
Speaker 1: up yonder force all the waterfowl to make tracks to
Speaker 1: my neck of the woods. I remember watching the weather
Speaker 1: man talking about all better bundle up and have plenty
Speaker 1: of firewood on hand. There's a big coal front coming now.
Speaker 1: My wife can hear a forecast like that, and she
Speaker 1: starts inventoring wool socks and seeing how many she can
Speaker 1: put on at the same time, just to stay inside.
Speaker 1: All I hear him saying is Brent, you better get outside.
Speaker 1: The critics are stirring now as I'm telling you all this.
Speaker 1: I've been locked in the house for the past three
Speaker 1: days because a particularly big coal front came through, bringing snow, ice,
Speaker 1: and single digit temps in a historically low water year
Speaker 1: that froze the water. We did have while giving the
Speaker 1: lowest duck numbers recorded in the past twenty five years,
Speaker 1: the old boot in the breeches, kicking them on down
Speaker 1: the road. The light at the end of the tunnel
Speaker 1: is it'll start warming up in the next day or
Speaker 1: so and the ducks should start moving back in before
Speaker 1: duck seasoned plump slips away. Now that's the ebb and
Speaker 1: flow of coal fronts. Low duck numbers and unprecedented lower
Speaker 1: There was a time when I wouldn't have missed a
Speaker 1: minute of it, and Tim and I would have been
Speaker 1: somewhere where there was open flowing water, even in this
Speaker 1: severe cold, because there's one thing that's one hundred percent
Speaker 1: guaranteed in nature, and that there is no one hundred
Speaker 1: percent guarantees all the water doesn't freeze, all the ducks
Speaker 1: don't leave, and all the duck hunters don't stay home.
Speaker 1: Derek Reynolds a man who was first introduced to me
Speaker 1: and Tim when he was a teenager. He wanted to
Speaker 1: duck hunt and needed someone to take him, and we did,
Speaker 1: and Derek became a member of our family. He now
Speaker 1: has a beautiful family of his own, and he became
Speaker 1: a staple at our guide service when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: and if we'd ever had an official mascot, it would
Speaker 1: have been him. And once they got to do with
Speaker 1: cole fronts, well, I'll tell you. Derek sent me in
Speaker 1: tim a pitcher this morning. It was ten degrees and
Speaker 1: Derek and a friend of his were posing with two
Speaker 1: limits of ducks. There was some open flowing water in
Speaker 1: the background. The picture made me shiver just looking at it.
Speaker 1: An aluminum boat with frozen mud, dirty snow, and covered
Speaker 1: with ice. The mount of clothes those boys were wearing
Speaker 1: reminded me of Randy in the movie A Christmas Story.
Speaker 1: My response to this text was heck yeah, But in
Speaker 1: parentheses I wrote, I'm glad I wasn't there, but that
Speaker 1: was a lie. I would have been there. I've been
Speaker 1: stoke for the past three days to get out and
Speaker 1: see what's shaking in the woods. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it's habit and learned behavior or genetically ingrained in
Speaker 1: me to be outside when it's cold, but that's where
Speaker 1: I want to be. Maybe cold fronts affect me just
Speaker 1: like they do other creatures. Now, I don't have any
Speaker 1: scientific data to back that up, but I bet there's
Speaker 1: something to it. I do know the coon stay in
Speaker 1: the den for the most part where I live when
Speaker 1: it's this cold, so cutting whaling loose would be more
Speaker 1: like an exercise and futility. If I wanted to tree
Speaker 1: a coon outside of his den, and with my duck
Speaker 1: holes frozen up and dear not moving much, I've had
Speaker 1: to lay up in the house and wait out the
Speaker 1: cold TIMPs, just like an old boor coon, getting more
Speaker 1: anxious every day. Then, when I thought staring out the
Speaker 1: window at iced over roads and snow was going to
Speaker 1: be my new hobby, a road greater and a salt
Speaker 1: truck passed by my house. Then Michael Rosemand called and said,
Speaker 1: get your stuff together. I've got some beagles and we're
Speaker 1: going rabbit hunting. Man, old man, how I love a
Speaker 1: cold front in this country life of mine. Thank y'all
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Chuck a big log in that
Speaker 1: fireplace that'll still be burning when you get back home.
Speaker 1: Bundle up and get yourself outside, take someone with you,
Speaker 1: and enjoy the gifts of winter. We don't know how
Speaker 1: many of these we're going to get, and we need
Speaker 1: to take advantage and revel and the ones we did
Speaker 1: Until next week This is Brent Reed signing off. Y'all
Speaker 1: be careful.