00:00:05 Speaker 1: I've duck hunted my whole life, and I've never seen this happen like this. And ducks are literally landing beside the blind, water splashing up in the blind. We can fill the air off of their their wings as they fly by. You could touch them, You could have reached out and grabbed one. Water Fowler's occupied the ranks of the hardest core, most passionate, and ridiculous partakers of wild meat sources that I know. I love them for so many reasons. America's wetlands are the crown jewels of this continent. Families should be taking their kids to turn the swamps rather than Disneyland, because in the mud and the reeds and the flooded timber is where real magic and mystery happens. It's where one of the greatest and most celebrated bird migrations on planet Earth unfolds every fall like a recited poem. And the river rats who know it, who see it, who lived for it, are the dad gum duck hunters. And oh do they have stories. This is our duck Stories episode. I've searched the swamps and boos for the best stories about blacked out skies, sunk boats, incredible dogs, and even gators. I really doubt, even if you're not a duck hunter, that you're gonna want to miss this one. And they started lighting in the other end of that hole, and it was like you were rolling out of carpet. A thousand ducks all of a sudden just started rolling right up to us. One of the most incredible hunts that I've been on over there. I got chill bumps on my arm right now talking about it. My name is Clay Nukelem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and likely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f HF gear American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place that we explore. Yeah, the river rat, this river rat because we're called river rats. And uh, when I was dating my wife from stud guard and back in the seventies, we had longer hair and uh, her dad he said, I won't say exactly what he said, but he said, you're gonna date that long haired river rat SLB, you know, And we've been married forty six years now. But I like Raspbi or duck Ham. But this is what I mean. I don't want to really Here's what my daddy always used to say. He caught her. That's how I used to guide for a year. That was champion duck caller and callmaker Jim Stinson of Clarendon, Arkansas. Jim as a craftsman and a hunter who's dedicated a big part of his life to this mysterious and ancient migration of waterfowl on the Mississippi Flyway. The consistency of their arrival is like the rising and setting to the sun. It will happen, and they will come. When wild beasts are this predictable, you can be guaranteed the predators take note, perhaps even their DNA signals to them from recesses untraceable, that they're coming. Humans since their arrival in North America have waited on the ducks, and they still wait today. The human bond wild places and beasts is innate, undeniable, and magnetic. And when this much passion accumulates in the same place, it overflows, and humans do what humans have always done. They tell stories. And these stories are really all that we have that can't be taken from us. Dear horns burn and house fires, shotguns get stolen, meat is consumed and burned as human fuel. Our bodies wear out, and old men can't go anymore. But stories last even beyond our lives. We'll hear a lot more from Mr Jim Stinson later, but I want to get into this collection of stories. Some are funny, some are scary, but all highlight the migration of the duck. This first story is told by jimbo on Quest. He's about as legendary a water fowler as they make these days. He's a world champion duck caller, a former outfitter. He's worked for call companies, and he currently works for Drake Waterfowl. Jim is telling me this story late in the evening from a duck lodge in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, and it's in the heart of duck season. This story is called shell Shocked Man. You know you ask about telling stories about either being funny or near death or whatever they may be. This one is somewhat as weird as it is to say a near death experience. That being said, here's the scenario. So back in when I was in the commercial hunting business, and we had a place we hunted that was pretty good. If other places weren't producing, we would rotate folks through this one spot. Hindsight being if I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have been doing that. However, you're making man, these people are paying us to go duck hunting. They want to shoot ducks, so you put them, give them every opportunity you can. Anyway, we'd had a group of hunters that morning, had a great hunt, and it was just one of those special days. It was a major flight, major migration day. It was just happening. It was when I think back on it, just the opportunity to have lived it. It's cool. I would like to have that opportunity again. On top of that, we were entertaining folks and trying to make sure folks were happy. Well, it was already this season and the current dog I had. If if any of y'all who listened to this watched any of the ever early r NT videos and heard a dog that winds a lot, her name was Katie. Katie was really mad at the ducks, and she was a really good duck dog. She was a painting the butt to hunt with. But she was a really good duck dog. She was gone with a training buddy mine and then were row on lagars. At this protector time, I did not have her. She was off running a hunt test. So at that time I was probably pushing three hundred. We was hunting a big old beaver dead and in a big old swamp, and it was hard to get around, and we was picking up ducks and shooting ducks. And while I might have been near three hundred, I was probably one of the most agile fact guys in Monroe County, Arkansas at the time. So I was walking out through this swamp picking up ducks, and you know we I was coming back and had two handfuls of ducks, and ducks were hitting the decoys. You didn't have to call at him, didn't have to blow at him. And I was coming back up to the blind too handfuls of ducks, so if you can imagine, and I see ducks lighting to my left and I said, y'all, don't shoot, don't shoot. So there's a guy about he's not quite where you are. He may be a little past, but not far, and he's shooting this day action, and I'm walking towards the window, if you can put this in perspective, and I said, don't shoot, don't shoot, don't shoot. I got two hands full of ducks, right, I got two limits in each hand, and he's boom, don't quitch heat, quit shoot, And I remember feeling the heat on my face, and I remember I took my both hands that covered my face and he shoots again. I'm like, quit, shoot and quit and I'm screaming quit shooting. And I remember feeling how hot my face felt. My hat was no longer on my head. I remember standing there and I was a big guy, you know. I come from a construction background, poor concrete for living, worked on farms, put up a lot of hay, you know. I mean, I was just one of them kind of guys. And I remember being nervous and finally I said, are you done? Are you done? I yelled, yeah, yeah, you're okay. But I remember my hand's been on my face, and I remember being nervous to pull my hand because I I thought I was gonna see two hands full of blood and I didn't. I said, I'm okay. I looked at my hat and the bill of my hat was frey just a little bit when I picked it up, So I guess what I got was a little of percussion and in the gas off the off him shooting in front of me. And you know a lot of folks would think that you just go punch him in the nose or No. I had to go grab a hole to the blind my knees. When my knees went to jelly, I couldn't move. I just had to sit there a minute just to kind of let everything work itself out. Um. And I finally got where I could move a little bit, and I talked to you. I said, look here, party, I said, you may not. I thought I was in danger, I said, but I felt the heat on my face. I said, here's my hat. After I pulled up out of the water, you could see the threads there. That's a little too close for comfort. Bub Um, we're gonna get in the boat and we're going back to the truck and and then the rest of these folks will finish their hunt out. And luckily they did, and it was a fantastic hunting day. We shot lots of birds. It would just umbelieve. It's a day that goes down in history It's one that you'll never forget for two reasons, one for how good the hunting was, and two for Jimbo getting his hat shot off. And to this day, there's times I'm hunting with folks and if I don't know they they're going to shoot, and if they just raise up and shoot and I don't call the shot, you know, or duck kind of falls in, or one duck gets close and somebody shoots, I I'm kind of jumpy, almost overboard. To this day, Jimbo says he'll find himself uncontrollably dropping his gun and hitting the deck in a duck blind when he hears an unexpected shot. The moment scared him. There are, however, other types of stories that shape us at a foundational level, the ones when things go really right. The second story is told by my friends Scott Harness of Jacksonville, Arkansas. Scott is a pastor. He's a former US military helicopter pilot and a lifelong duck hunter. Here's his story, called the Tupelo Break. You know, you know, growing up in Arkansas, I think part of the culture of our state has all been influenced by duck hunting. I mean, there's not very many people who have grown up here that don't at least understand it. But still, even at that, I think I fielded the question of why do you duck hunt? You know, so many times and and any time that there's somebody on the outside looking in, what they'll do is they'll say, you know, you go through all this cold water, and they name the time you get up and how much money you spend, and and they usually conclude that question by saying, and you do all that for a duck, and they just wait for your response. And and for years I had a hard time answering that question, because when you put it in that context, it does sound a little insane. But a few years ago, I think I think I had it proven to me that it's really not about that. Um. I had a friend that was wanting to get into duck hunting, and he this was his first first time, and he had been chopping at the bid. He moved from a northern state when he got down here. He he didn't grow up in a family that hunted, but he knew that he wanted to hunt, and he knew that I had taken several people on their first duck hunt, which is something I enjoyed, and he said, uh, I want to go, man, can can you take me? And he had shot ski and done a few other things to get ready, and I told him that I would. But we were literally at the last week of duck season, and I told him, I said, well go, I said, let's let's plan on doing it next year. He said, no, man, I want to go now. I said, you're gonna spend money on a duck stamp, and and we're you know and all that, and and we're at the end of the season, and we'd already had a hard season. We'd hunted a whole bunch of that year. And it's kind of like Thanksgiving. After the meal, you've eatn all that you can eat in the top button, your pants are unfastened. You know, you don't want anything else eating. Somebody brings you a turkey sandwich and they said, hey, would you like to have a turkey sandwich tomorrow? You would, but not today. You know, we're at the end of the season. I've had my field of duck hunting, and I don't really want to go. But I got this guy chomping at the bit, and he just wants to go. Duck hunting. That's all he wants. And finally I told him, I said, I just feel like we have zero chance of killing anything. And um, he said, I don't care. I just want the experience. I want to go. I'm ready. He had had a few items to to go duck hunting with. He had a coat, some gloves, a cap, and a few other things, but he didn't have any waiters. And um, finally I agreed. I said, Okay, we'll go. And our only opportunity to go was the very last day of duck season and we went to a place I'd hunted for a number of years. It was just a a tupelo break and it was just full of these old growth tupelo trees. In fact, it was it was beautiful there there. In the fall, these these twopelo trees with the leaves would turn just this bright, bright yellow, and they would fall from the trees and they would land on the water, and it was just like black glass with these yellow boats, if you will, floating all across the top. It was stunning, and um, we decided we'd go there. The unfortunate thing is is that this particular place does not hold ducks late in the season. Ever, not that it's unlikely that you're going to see a duck. It's absolutely impossible. But this guy wants to go anyway. So we get there, and the only place that we can actually hunt, because he doesn't have any waiters, is an old blind that's sort of out in the middle of this this tupelo break. And so we make our way out there in the boat, and um, to my chagrin, I guess it had been the blind had been there a lot longer, And it's been a lot longer since we've been there than what I thought. And the whole roof was rotted off of it, and the floor wasn't far behind it. In fact, I told him when he got into the blind, I said, listen, stand close to the tree, because that's probably the strongest point. Looks like the floor joyst could give it any any moment, you know. And so he gets out and and kind of gets close to the tree. My son's with us as well, and he gets out, gets in. So I go out to to throughout the decoys, and and what what once was a really beautiful broad hole has now grown up with buck brush, and so it's it's turned from one big piece of water to a several clusters, you know, maybe ten foot in diameter of water, and which further tells me that there's just no way we're gonna kill ducks. Ducks are not gonna come into this big thicket, you know, to to light. But I throw the decoys out anyway, and I stick out a mojo, which is just a spinning wing decoy that mimics, you know, ducks when they're flapping their wings, and it's a real good attractive And I make my way back to the blind, and when I get in the blind, we're all kind of setting there before shooting hours, and in my mind I just run through, what are we really going to get out of this? And in my mind, I thought, you know what we're gonna do. We're gonna enjoy each other, have some conversations. I'm gonna drink a cup of coffee, We're gonna get in the boat, pick up decoys, and we're gonna go to town to eat a great breakfast. That's that's my expectation. But so risingly, about ten minutes before dayly, I start hearing wings and ducks start coming into the hold, which if you've duck hunted any time at all, you realize that when ducks come in while it's still dark, if they come in numbers, that means they've been in this place before. And if ducks have been in a place for very long, um, and they haven't been messed with, then they tend to attract other ducks. And I said, this is a good sign. And so we shift from you know, just getting breakfast to hey, we might actually kill a duck. And I looked at my friend and I said, I think you're gonna kill a duck. And he's quivering like a six month old lab puppy that's, you know, in his first hunt. But the finally shooting hours come and ducks are coming in now, really coming in, and numbers, I mean, it's unusual numbers. I'm I'm completely surprised. My buddies like, when can we shoot? When come we shooting? I just told him, I said, I just hold on for a second. I said, let's just let these ducks come in and let's just let's just hold on. And as the light really gave way, I looked into this guy for as high as I could see. Ducks, even at altitude, are committed. They're like on a string, coming into this place. I've duck hunted my whole life, and I've never seen this happen like this. And ducks are live, literally landing beside the blind, water splashing up in the blind. We can fill the air off of their their wings as they fly by where the blind once had a lid, that they're flying through that. And I mean, just you could touch them, you could reach out and grabbed one. My friends still ready to shoot, and I'm like, no, we're just gonna set here. We sat in this two blow break and we watched ducks by fives, tens, twenties just pile in there until finally you could not have put another duck in this hole. In fact, I looked over at my robo duck or the mojo with the little metal wings. They've landed on it and they've been its wings and it's convulsing in the water, making this horrible noise, and any other time that would be like a death sentence to wherever you are. But these ducks, they don't care. They're gonna come in anyway. They didn't care if we were there anybody. They had made their mind up this was a great place and they were gonna have a party, and all of them were there, and we sat there and we listened to these ducks and every variety is there. You've got mallards, you've got gadwalls, even a few wood ducks. There's some widget in there, and all of them are just having the big time, just all a round us. And and my friends still ready to shoot. He's still like, what what do we gonna shoot? I was like, just just look around for a second and I'll explain to you later. Well, we're not gonna shoot right now. And we just watched these ducks for I don't know how long, several minutes, and they just it was just it was amazing. It was a moment that I had never experienced, even though I've been duckhating my whole life. We did eventually shoot. Here's what's funny. I can't right now tell you exactly how many ducks we killed. I'm nine sure we all limited out, which would be obvious, but I don't really know. And here's what's funny. It was after that particular day that I, when I go back into my mind, this is what helped me understand that duck hunting is not about killing ducks. It didn't matter how many ducks were in this trap for that trip, what I realized was is that duck hunters. What motivates a duck hunter isn't the number of ducks that you kill, but it's the stories that you collect. And I think in the mind of any duck hunter, the reason why you endure the hardship, the reason why you go through the cold and and you spend the money and you travel, is because in the end, you're a collector of story. And you go to any duck hunter, he'll look you in the face and he'll give he can give you a dozen incredible stories. Now, what's funny is that even some of the hardship becomes fodder for this archive that we keep in our mind. Because that trip we went and we fell on the water and we got cold, that becomes part of the story. Or that time the boat sank or or you had to break ice or whatever it is. All that's part of the story. But then there's that other part where you remember setting next to your granddad and he's calling in ducks, and you remember what it was like to set there with him and him pull up at that old Itaca twelve gate shotgun and catch those ducks on the wing, and you were so impressed at how good he could hunt and how he could call, or maybe it was the story of somebody you hunted with and they're not here anymore. Those are things that we collect and and so when it comes down to it, a duck hunter does it duck hunt for a pile of duck met A duck hunter doesn't duck hunt for a trophy. Even a duck hunter duck hunts because duck hunters collects stories. We that's what keeps us going is the stories of the past and the post ability of the story in the future will make you get up way before daylight when it's really cold, and stomp through ice and throughout decoys in the hopes that today will be one of those exceptional days. Exceptional days of hunting are the fuel of almost everything we do as hunters. We're constantly reaching for that pristine moment, and we often go years without experiencing the type of day we're constantly reaching for. I do anyway, Incredible days make up for mondane hours, hardship, and failure. Honestly, the psychological sensation of betting on the future. It's probably a lot like what a gambler feels like. When I asked Mr Jim Stinson to tell me a single story, he couldn't do it without telling me a bigger story of how he got his start and making duck calls. Stories are connected. I just wanted to let Mr Jim talk. You're about to hear about his relationship with famed duck call maker, the late Alvin Taylor. Here's Mr Jim. I had a liquor store for thirty five years. I was mayor of Clarining for eleven years, and I probably blew of the duck calls Alan Taylor made because he was older and just didn't have the wind. And he come up the store thirty times a day. What's this need? Well needs a little more wrath? Yeah, I want a little higher ring. That's yep, Well you need to cut some more. Read off, let's get it higher. And then he got uh. I guess he was kind of like a grandpa to me. We were just great friends. We drank coffee at the U. J and M Hotel, and we drink coffee every morning. He was a different man. You had to had to know him because if you couldn't blow a duck call, he wouldn't sell you a duck call. He take away from you. He said, nope, because and I understand that now that I make them. If somebody's blowing that duck hall and they don't know what they're doing, they people say, oh, I don't want to Stanson call. That don't sound good. I contest called when I was younger, and I blew album's call I want the Music City open. I got him so old now I can't remember. Eighty nine ninety something like that. It was, oh, a long time ago. I blew in the world. I blew in the state year after year after year. But Alvin got sick. He started he got cancer, and uh, he said, Jim, I'll you've been wanting me to teach you how to make duck calls, So I will teach you how to make a duck call. And he taught me and David Gaston from Alabama. Well, he let me make some calls. Well that went on for about a year. Then he got his cancer and he called me one day and said, Jim, come down here. Well, I thought something wrong. I locked a liquor store up and ran down to his house and he said, people are walking out of my duck call shop. Something's wrong, go in here and blow my duck call. I went in there, and every one of them squealed, I said, Alvin. He tried to set it himself, didn't want to bother me. He said, Okay, that's how I know how many calls he had left when he died. He died about a week later, he had eighty five duck call left, because that's how many I tuned for him. And when he passed away, they sold in a week. They were all gone. But then he, you know, he told me when he got sick, he said, okay, I'm quittin. You go ahead, and you can start now. And that's when I started making duck calls. Today, Alvin Taylor, duck calls are sought after. Some even say they bring a higher return on your investment than money in the bank. And if you're new to the waterfowl world, as I am, you'll learn that people collect duck calls. Today. There are thousands of custom makers across the United States. Even old Jason Phelps that Phelps custom calls make some good ones, But fourty or fifty years ago, there weren't nearly that many. So these old makers calls are very sought after. Here's a string of stories from Mr Jim that I'm gonna call a duck man sizzle real. I'll tell you one story. This is when we were still allowed to take a how boat up and we took Dr. The Evidence house boat up, set it on the mouth of seven mile seven twelve inches of snow game and we didn't have cbe you know, we didn't have cell phones or nothing back in the day, but being a farmer, I had a radio that we talked on repeater. Well. Dr Everton left his brownie shotgun leaning up against the truck. Well, it took us forty five minutes to go from this landing a half a mile up the river. You could not see. We had to put both boats together. We didn't know if we were going upstream or downstream. So that was that night. That was that night we got up called and told Daddy to get to have Sidney, go get uh Dennis's gun. We're not coming back to town for it. And so we didn't even get up harder because it was known so hard. But we decided to go hunting and everything was white and I have never seen that many ducks in my life. You would be driving your boat to go to a duck hole and hundreds of ducks are just jumping up in front of you. We decided let's just pull over and seriously, in five minutes we had we had four limits. It was just bam bam, bam, bam bam. But it was twelve inches snow. Nobody else could put their boat in. We had one boat come in and it was Ed Jennie, the gay warden. He's the only guy that came up there. Of course he checked his and everything was okay, but that that was a that was a great hunt. You know, we were younger. Snow in Arkansas and waterfowl hunting are known to produce some incredible hunting. It's hard to imagine that many ducks. But Mr Jim is just getting started. My daddy and his friend Mike Booker found a found a hole. We used it for years after that and we levely have four or five boats in that hole and it was just awesome. It was a small hole and you'd like to hundred ducks. That wouldn't be one group. What would happen when these ducks starts circling might be sixty, but there's another group over here where they would join up and it'd be just like a tornado. We like to see the ducks come in below the trees, so we don't shoot the first ones to come in, and you just let them. They fill that hole up and then they hit the water and go straight to the buckbrush and it's just continuously and we have done that several times. The one time I took Daddy was getting older that he wanted to shoot him when they first coming in and they filled that hole up, I mean, he was just black and Mr Sidney called the shot and they jumped up and we shot and we got our limit that one group. I mean, it was so many ducks were there, and you try to kill green three people, Daddy said, He said that was unbelievable, and he's seen a lot of a lot of that. There's something special about hearing an older gentleman called his father daddy, and you're left with no doubt of how proud Mr Jim was his elderly father on a great duck hunt. When you talk to these guys, I'm amazed at how rare these black the sky out with duck occurrences are. The average duck hunter never sees it. But the lore of such mornings fuels duck hunting passion. It's what these guys live for. And with the migration patterns changing with agriculture and shifting weather patterns, these mornings are becoming increasingly rare. Here's a couple of close calls from Mr Jim. Have you had any near death experiences while the boat? Have you ever had sell off the house boat into twenty six ft of water with a chest? Waiters on. I'm not saying my life flashed in front of me, but all I can think about with my wife because people have drowned up here, and I had water filling up in my chess. Waiters, well, dr you over to my buddy. He said, I wanted in the water three seconds. Well I got it felt like three minutes. And he pulled me up. And he's smaller I am. But we changed clothes and I were his clothes. We weren't hunting. He didn't stop us. And but one time, it was in nineteen New Year's even eighteen seventy. David Brown, his father was the undertaker here and I we went in his boat. My daddy and Alf went to mother, and and and his nephew went another one, and the ducks were slow that day, and David Brown and I said, we want to go look for ducks. Now, this was the day when you had a nine point nine mercury or something, you know, or Evanrue was a sheer pin in it. You didn't if you had a fifteen horse motor. You had a big motor. There's none of these boat races that go on now that go forty five. And we went or what's slow? I told, well, Dad, we're gonna go down here and look for some duck and we'll go to this spot over here. And he said, okay, and we'll meet you up at the Jane Effort lunch. Well, we moved went across the river where we weren't supposed to be where we told him we didn't weren't gonna go there, and we did, and we sheared a pin and I spent the night in the river. That night, the coldest neither year. Two young men from des Ark. They got wet, but they both died that night. But those guys died because they hypothermia, you know, they got wet. They found him sitting on a log. Some man came down to the house boat where uh, the lady folks. Was because they looked for us all night long and said, well, they found two bodies. My dad always said, if I could have got there, I think I would have hit that guy, because you don't tell women folks that. But it wasn't other. It was those guys from Desart, and I could hear the saw mill, potlets, saw meal whistle, but we were between two ridges, and I remember it. I could tell you take an hour to tell you that, but I remember it. We were pushing and pushing and hitting these two ridges. We didn't know. We were eighteen years old and were just hitting these two ridges. Wasn't going nowhere. So you were you, You had the boat, had you'd shared a panel man, you hit a stump or something and the boat wouldn't work. You got on land, was knee deep water. We were walking around flooded, yeah, pulling the boat. And at five o'clock that afternoon we hadn't anything to eat. Well, we saw duck swimming and we shot the duck. Started plucking the duck lad gang green. We didn't matches or anything to cook it with. So that was the five thirty that night when we pulled all night long and kind of scary. We're here pushing and pulling this boat and my my foot got tangled up in the root wad, and David was pushing on the back and I went plumb underwater, and I mean I was absolutely shivered. We got to some shallow water and I tried to lay down and go to sleep, and my head was next to the gas can and I woke up dry heaving. My buddy was sitting in the shallow water, running in place. And we did that all night long, and then the next morning somebody was duck hunting, and we kept on holler and at him. David was a holler and I would holler, and David were the holler and I'd holler. The guy wouldn't answers, so we're trying to move the boat toward him, and he finally answers. Well we got there. It was a man from stud Guard had a He had an Evan root nine point nine like we did at night point five, nine point five whatever it was, and he had the same odor. He gave us a sheer pin. He said, to you, the two boys, everybody's looking for I said, yeah, and uh, you had the airplane search. We saw the airplane come over anyway. He he told us how to get out because we didn't hunt over there. That if it be in these bottoms where I'm at now, I don't even need accomplish or nothing. I know the wood, but didn't know those wood. And he told us how to get out. We got up there on got to the highway and walked up there and there was a car there, and these guys finally come out and they said, because they knew us, brown stid that everybody's looking for. You said, well, we got lost, and would you give us a ride back to town? He said, yeah, you help us load everything up and we'll we'll take you. There's Mr new Kirk out here from Honey Creek And they gave us a ride back to town. And everybody was so glad to see us. And uh, of course you get back home. And these old timers say, well, why didn't you just take your spark plug out and cut a piece, you ge shirt off, sticking in the gas and crank it. You get a fire started. And he was an eagle scout. David was an eagle scout. We didn't think about nothing like that. And like I say, don't don't cell phones. But to this day, David has a GPS, he has matches, he has everything, and another backpack. But he's prepared now for that now. Of course, now you've got cell phone and GPS IS. Wasn't gps IS and that's what really ruined the hunting up here. If you didn't know where you were going, they couldn't follow you. We'd put false tax, put those eyes and we'd have the road go over here. We just shut the We go there every morning, I know, the big tree. We shut the light off and we just go there waiting for yet to turn off the river. And you go through the woods to go about two miles back in there, and then you hear them out. They're still out there and following that trail and rung kicking their engine and up and everything. But uh, and then people got the GPS and then they started telling all their friends. You know, the friends have never even been here before. Of course, when you got to coordinates to you don't go straight to that hole. And I don't know why some holes are better than others, but they are. You know, some holes down here killed ducks. And if you get to it first, and that's what the race is. I'm too old for that. We've got a boat now that Dennis's son in law put it to six o'clock boat, so we don't have to go up at four o'clock no more. And you know, they take care of us like I used to take care of the other old men. And that's like all these bands. I didn't kill all these ducks, but the old men didn't want to go chase down the cripples and everything. Mr Jim has a lanyard that hangs down to the middle of his chest. It's lined with duck bands from the back of his neck all the way to the two hanging duck calls around the middle of his Torso if I was guessing, I'd say there are fifty plus bands. Duck bands are aluminum bands on the feet of ducks that have been captured by some gaming fish department and tagged. When a hundred kills and the duck, it is a major trophy and they're able to keep the bands. You gotta kill a lot of ducks to even get a single band. Somebody who has a bunch of bands, it indicates that they've done a lot of duck hunting. So that's what this whole band thing is. About here's Mr Jim David and I would go get the ducks, and I keep that knife there, and I get a banded duck. I got cut the band off and put our wouldn't say a word, you know. So uh and after they yeah, and after they see all my bands getting bigger, there's old men started cranking their motors up and they and they went and got their own ducks. But uh, it was fun. Oh man, I can't tell you. I don't know if you have something you like. Like. We love duck hunting. I mean I deer hunt, I squirrel hunt, I cat fisher in the river, catch my limit every day. It's unbelievable. I mean the resources here. Mr Jim Stenson is an old school can saw a duck man, and they aren't making him like him anymore. I just loved hearing him talk. I'll tell you another guy that I love to hear talk, and that's Bear Greece's own Brent Reeves. He's a long time Low Country river bottom duck man himself. He was a waterfowl guy for twenty six years. When I first met Brent, and I'm certain they'd send him in undercover. I called him a hillbilly, and he said, I quote, I ain't no hillbilly. I'm from the flat land. We had hillbillies mowing our grass. True story. And to Gary Newcomb semi shrouded but sometimes not so shrouded disapproval. I did quite a bit of commercial grass mowing, even after I had a college degree. Anyway, Brent has uncountable great duck hunting stories. This is just one. And hey, Brent's gonna bring up the specific name game of a famed Arkansas Game and Fish owned wildlife management area in Arkansas. Typically I wouldn't call out a place by name, but trust me, this place has been found out. You'd be better off exploring if you're looking to explore someplace else. But to you water Fowler's this story will mean more when you hear where it's at. Here's Brent telling me a story called the green Head Carpet. Gosh. I have so many memories my brother and I over the twenty six years that we ran a guide service in the little community of Raydale, Arkansas, which is south of stut Guard and it's right on the Arkansas River where our lodge was. My brother and I we had some some guys who were decoy makers, and they came. They wanted to come over and they wanted to trade some goose decoys for a duck hunt. So we thought, oh, it seems like a pretty good deal. And they were man, they were just they were soon for nice guys, and yeah, we did the deal, said y'all come on, just bring some decoys and we'll hunt to three days. So I remember it was back in about four or five I guess that we were hunting Buckingham Flats and buy meat up. Buckingham Flats is like four hundred acres and it's kind of tip cornered to the southern end of the boy Meta Wildlife Management Area and it didn't get a lot of hunting pressure at that time. There were several times on weekends when there was a lot of ducks when we pulled in to buy me to the Buckingham parking lot and there there may not be any other vehicles there, and especially during the week there was there was no kind of pressure whatsoever. So this particular time, it was like a Tuesday or Wednesday, these guys came over and we scheduled it that way just to ensure that, you know that we wouldn't have a lot of crowds. So we get over that day and we get all our stuff and we walk in and there are no other vehicles in the parking lot when we get there, so when when we walk, it's probably a half a mile walking there to the hole. It was what we called the sit Log Hole, and it's narrowest part about twenty five or thirty yards wide at the at the widest part it was about fifty or sixty yards wide, and it was probably a hundred and fifty yards long. The wind that day was perfect. It was coming out of the south and it was blowing right straight from when one into that hole to the other. And we got there and we got set up. We threw out probably two dozen decoys. It was before Christmas. It was like in the first part of December. I remember there were still leaves on the trees and it was a perfect morning. There was no clouds, but ducks were not flying at daylight. They just they didn't do anything. So we're just sitting there having coffee and talking about things that duck hunters talk about when when they're standing next to a tree in the flooded tim Member in seven thirty eight o'clock wherever the ducks had been on, whatever rice field they had been on, they all decided, it seemed like it once to come back to the timber to rest, and you could hear them coming. We were in mid conversation. I don't remember if it was my brother one of the other guys said, hey, y'all, do y'all hear that? And all of a sudden, ducks were everywhere, and they were going in every direction, and there was no rhyme or reason to to what they were doing. And we even had ducks that were trying to trying to come into the hole without us calling, but they were getting bumped out of the hole by other ducks that were there coming from the other directions. So it was just like a clipped the wings on a thousand ducks and dumped them out of the box. And they were just tumbling and going everywhere, but none of them were coming into hole. So we started calling. We started calling, and they started getting getting a pattern together, they started getting organized, and we were on the southern end of that whole of the set log hole, facing to the north, and the wind was at our back going straight down there. And after it seemed like ten minutes of just calling and working ducks, but it was probably two or three minutes when we started working them around when they all got together and they started landing. They started landing the other end a hundred and thirty yards away from us, and I thought, oh my gosh, we've seen this wonderful event take place of it seemed like a million ducks, all green head, all mallards that worked over the timber, that short timber, and finally got together and they're gonna light too far away, And I thought, you know this, all this effort was for nothing. And I said, oh man, they're too far, They're too far. My my brother said, just just wait, just wait, and they started lighting in the other end of that hole, and it was like you were rolling out of carpet. Ducks poured into that narrow opening and they just started when one sat down, another one sitting down right in front of and they just walked. A thousand ducks all of a sudden just started to rolling right up to us. And as they got to us, we remained still and they went behind us. They were landing all around us, and the ducks were still in the air, and my brother holler, let's get them. We stepped out and we started shooting, and we shot four limits of mallards, all green heads, in one volley. It was the one of the most incredible things that I had ever witnessed. Uh and my brother was there, and the guys that that brought the decoys. When they got back home, they sent another batch of decoys. They had such a good time that they actually paid twice for what we'd agreed on. But it was one of the most incredible hunts that I've been on over there. I got chill bumps on my arm right now talking about it. But that was him. That was a good one. The ducks came in like you were rolling out of carpet. He said, that's powerful imagery. We're gonna circle around and come back to Scott Harness. He's got a duck story that involves cold blooded critters. This story is titled Gators. You know, I got into duck hunting just a little bit late. My dad didn't. He didn't like duck hunting. A matter of fact. He said, I can't imagine why I would go out and hunt a flying liver. That's what he said. You know, So when I first started duck hunting, I found a friend. I found a couple of buddies that they were duck hunting. I was probably nineteen. I had one friend from Louisiana that had had experienced duck hunting and he duck hunted in the in the marshes of Louisiana and then so we went together. But he's a gadgety guy. If you if you, if you know duck hunters like this, they just have like this, these gadgets. They're always looking for another mechanical advantage or what else can we get. And so he calls me on the phone with Danny's super excited and he says, man, I've got this boat. He said, there's a type of boat we used to hunt out of in Louisiana. He said it's a motorized p row I had no idea what that was, but he was so excited about I was like, Wow, this is gonna be great. Let's do it. And so he and I decided to go to a a particular ox bowl like that we had hunted pretty much in central Arkansas. So we get there in the morning and this is the first time I've seen the boat, and so when I see it, the first thing that kind I'm taken by is that it's really shallow. It's not a very deep boat. And uh, he and I. Let's just say, he and I are magnums when it comes to human beings, you know. Um, and I was like, you know, with he and I on that boat, and he'd already addressed it out. It's got this really big deep cycle battery in it. He's put a troller motor on the front of it, and dead in the middle of this boat is a Briggs and Stratton motor. And this is a direct drive, so literally there's a drive shaft coming off of the shaft of the motor going to a prop that's underneath this boat, which means that there's no reverse, but it also means when the motors running the prop spinning, we set the boat down in the water and uh immediately, I look, even before we put anything in it, the boats just not stick and out of the water enough for me to feel comfortable. I write it up though, is is just maybe my inexperience, Maybe I just don't understand certain things because these people have done it before, and you know, maybe you just go along with it. So we piled decoys in there. He gets in the front. I get in the back, and and we're about to go out into the swamp. I mean, in this motorized p row thingy. And I've got a cuban spotlight, which was the spotlight of choice of duck hunters back in the day. And and I've got it connected to a deep cycle battery with alligator clips, and I'm ready to go. Well, anyway, we got to start the motor in this thing. And and he's it does have electric starting. He's cranking on it, cranking on it, cranking on, cranking on it, and finally I smell gas. I'm like, I think you've got it flooded. Now this is before daylight, so it's pitch dark. We're on the bank. This swamp is nothing but water and a thicket. That's all it is. It's got twoplow tree, cypress, tree, cypress knees everywhere, water and a thicket. Um. And he's cranking on this motor. Finally he says, you know, I think you're I think it's flooded. Um. He said, But you know, as long as you got that light on, it seems like that it's not cranking as fast. So he thought that was maybe putting too much with a draw on the battery, so I turned the light off. He goes to cranking on the water. He holds it wide open, which is something you do with a motor that's flooded, and about that time, in the dark, the motor comes to life, about the third revolution, and when it does, it's wide open and it's direct drive. Literally in a half a second, it felt like we are careening through this swamp on plane. Now this is a place that you would have had to pick your way through in the daylight, and we're cutting through it wide open, crossing things, cover crossing log jams. I'm waiting any moment I realize we're gonna hit a cypher street. There's no way that we can, you know, get very far before we run into something. But to my chagrin, we literally go probably a hundred yards out into the middle of the swamp before finally he gets this motor turned off, and I think he literally reaches back and grabs a spark plug wire and turns it off. We do this all in the pitch dark. Never there's a light on. Right, we have no idea. I've lost my head year half my equipment has been ripped off of me as we're cutting through the swamp, and and there we are. UM had one little pinlight in my pocket and I got it out and I shined it into the bottom of the boat. The boat is literally completely full of water, and and there may be a quarter of an inch of the boat still sticking out of the water. We've we've run over enough things that's dipped up under enough water where this boat is ready to sink at any second. And I told my friend, I said, le's way to daylight. Let's don't do a thing. Stay real still, don't move, and at daylight we'll put together a plan. And daylight came around and we we we tried to paddle with our hands back, but every time you'd lean to the edge of the boat, it would take on more water. And any minute it's gonna sink. We know it is. I have no idea how deep of water we're in, but we're in the middle of a swamp. Now. After rewond the tape, just a little bit, tell you one quick story. When I used to fly, I used to fly helicopters for the army. We used to fly in this air particular area, and we never flew over this swamp. And I was always told by the elder pilots that I flew with. The instructor pots I flew with, they would say, don't ever fly with that swamp because there's alligators in it. And I mean literally, they would avoid this thing. If if we had to fly ten minutes, fifteen minutes out of our way to fly around the swamp, we would do it. No one ever flew over this swamp, and uh, you know, at first, I thought that's just kind of you know, folklore, But as every pilot I got with, they would never fly off that direction. So I'm in the middle of this swamp in a boat that's sinking. That's in my that's on my mind. Okay, So finally we decided that we're gonna try to pull this boat half sunk up to a set of cypress trees. I'm gonna try to step out, and then we're gonna try to find some way of bailing water out of it. We don't really know how, but we feel like that's at least the start of a good plan. And so we get up to this group of cypress trees. I go to raise up and step out, and immediately the boat takes on water and it sinks as fast as you can imagine, just go straight to the bottom. I stand up and by the time I stand up, the boat rests on the bottom of this this lake and it's about neck beat um, maybe a little less maybe chesty. Well, my friends behind me, and if we look at each other, I go, what are we gonna do? Now? You know, both us they're standing in and water fortunately wasn't super bad cold, which made me nervous because in my mind, all I'm thinking about it's these alligators. So we're trying to make up our mind what we're gonna do with this boat and how we're gonna get the water out of and how we're gonna get back. And we're in the middle of nowhere, and it's one of those days that was hardly any other hunters out there, any other day that it's just filled with people, but there was nobody there, and so we're out there trying to figure out how we'll get the water out of the boat. But as we as we're doing that, as I'm moving around, um, suddenly something swims into my leg and I can feel it through my waiters literally kicks off of my leg and pushes and it and it leaves awake in the water. You can see the current from whatever this is that as it's swum past me and it's circling, I mean literally it is. It is swimming in a circle and it's coming back. The second round it comes by, hits me again. I'm trying to get the gun off my shoulder. I mean, I I said, and I mean I know it's an alligator. I Am about to be eaten by an alligator in the swamp. I was warned never to fly over, and I'm in it, you know, chest deep, and I'm gonna die eating by an alligator. And so I ut my gun out and I've literally got the muzzle of my gun in the water because this thing keeps swimming by and you can see and it's really erratic, and I'm like, this is a feeding frenzy. I don't know anything about alligators, but it's like sharks. I've seen shark week. It's coming and about the third or fourth round, I mean, I'm trying to track it with my gun under the water. My buddy is trying to get his gun. He's he's scared too, And about that time it hits the far side away from me is it's making its circle and it comes up out of the water and it's actually the trolling motor. And so the troll and motor has broke off the front of the boat. It's still connected to the wires to the battery, but it's turned itself on and it's and it's just running in a circle under the water. That's what it was. So I really thought I was gonna be eaten. And eventually we did push the boat up into a compa trees and we dipped the water out of it and we gingerly paddled our paddle ourselves back to the bank and like a whipped puppy or tail between our legs, we we went home, but just thankful that we made it. We made it through it, and we did. We lived through it. No ducks, but what an adventure. Now that's a good story. It sounds to me like duck hunting is full of conundrums, and all of them for a duck. We couldn't tell duck stories without including a good dog story. Jimbo ron Quest is gonna tell us about the greatest retrieve he's ever witnessed. This story is called Katie. One of the things that passed out of me. My daddy was a big bird dog guy and a retriever guy, and it was always said that you relied one good woman and one good dog in a lifetime. So I will say that I have been allowed one good woman to miss Rosie, who I have absolutely out kicked my coverage on, takes care of me beyond the shadow of a doubt regardless of what I do. That said, I have probably had at this point, I wonta say with Tiny, I've had four dogs of a lifetime. I could, I could get poked up, teared up on on them right now, but I won't. So I have been fortunate to have some really great dogs. But everybody talks about what is the greatest retrieve, right what what's the best retreat? And I can tell you that all of them in a little Tiny's he's only two and a half, um, so he don't have as much bird experience as the rest of them. And he's had some Jim dandies. Man, he's a gold getter. And they've all made great ones. Charlie made one last year, forty five days pregnant center on a crippled tale. She was gone for forty five minutes, and I wasn't worried about her. Here find it. Here she come back. She don't caught that sucker. You know, just stuff you can't teach, right, you know, your hound man, you know there's things you can't teach. But but probably my all time favorite was an old dog I had named Katie bio Mede to Katie. She was a master hunter, but she was. She was with me through the gore days of commercial hunting and picked up untold thousands of birds. Well it's old dead. And then we hunted. You know, some years it was wet, some years it was dry, but always had a little water. And we had had was having a pretty good morning, not a great one, but a decent morning a hunting, and we had a bunch of motter to come in, a good little bunch of good volley. Everybody killed ducks. And she picked up all these ducks and there's a matter to him, and fell over here, and she went over and she hunted and hunted nut duck. She fountain and she chased it, and old duck beat her, and very few beat her. She was she She was. Her or my current dog Charlie were two of the best at working cripples I've ever seen. And this old duck beater her and she come back and got them the dog stand and hunt continued, and the morning slowed up that we wasn't shooting many and O Katy kept looking over and she'd look over and you can see her perk up. She kept looking over there, like what are you doing? You know? And I said, you let that duck beat you, didn't you? You know? She look not teaser, you know, I did you let that duck beats you? You're not gonna let that duck beats you, are you man? She looked at me and she look over and finally a little bit, it's getting slow, and finally said, put my hand over Katie, and she took off over her and she and now, look, I'm gonna preface this right now. If you were telling me this story and I had not seen it, i'd call bull dooo doo on it. But because I've seen it and I've seen this happen, I can't call bulloo do. I saw it in my own eyes. She goes a center, she goes over right to the last spot. She's on that bird, and she's kind of waters shallow, it's not swimming water, so it's kind of walking water, and the MUD's deep. It's just nasty. And she's walking around and she's got that nose on the water. And I've seen Charlie do this same thing. And she then she kind of kind of ease back on her haunches a little bit, get balanced, and she started taking them pause and digging and sticking her nose down, digging, sticking the next thing, you know, she took her nose down, she pulled them. Why don't he hand out bar but grabbing on with some weeds and pull it up out there and come back with it. And that was probably every bit of an hour after she had tried to catch that birden she didn't. I give her a hard time about it. Absolute best retreat every song. You're allowed one good woman and one good dog in a lifetime. Now that's a good statement. A man should consider himself fortunate if he has these two things. And I really like it when I hear a man honor the covenant he has with his wife. I heard Mr Jim Stenson and Jimbo do this in their stories. The whole ball and chain trope that you sometimes hear men say those things aren't funny to me. I like to see what a man honors his wife. Your life will follow the path of what you say. When you speak positively, you read positive stuff. When you sow negativity, you read negative stuff. Try it. I they're probably thinking of getting a little preachy. We might want to cut that out now. I leave it in. These stories of duck hunners paint a picture of one of America's most die hard and passionate groups of people. Waterfowl hunters are also one of the most conservation minded and well organized factions that you'll ever find. Delta Waterfowl and Duck's Unlimited are both incredible organizations, and there are uncountable other groups, many others that have saved millions of acres of American wetlands and are funded by the dollars of hunters. This is the story of the modern American hunter. We're the ones saving wild places and wild life, and at the foundation of it all is human passion that ignites when a hunter interacts with something far beyond his control, something bigger than him, like a mysterious, ancient and mystical migration, that makes him step out far beyond his comfort zone and hit the rivers and swamps in search of ducks. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease and hey, if you haven't heard, First Light has a growing new line of waterfowl gear, you should check it out. I am very much looking forward to trying it out in the Timber this year. Let us know what you think of this Duck Stories episode by leaving us a review on iTunes, and you can do me a favor by sharing our podcast this week with the worst duck hunter you know. Maybe this will inspire him. And you can follow me on Instagram and the TikTok at Clay underscore Nukem from Misty and I. We hope that you have a happy new Year. We'll see you next week on the Render