Bear Grease - Ep. 86: Duck Stories

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

Waterfowlers occupy the ranks of the hardest core, most passionate, and ridiculous partakers of wild meat sources known. And they're great storytellers. This is our Duck Stories episode. We’ve searched the swamps and bayous for the best stories about skies being blacked out by mallard ducks, sunk boats, incredible dog retrieves and even gators. We really doubt -- even if you’re not a duck hunter -- that you’re going to want to miss this one. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. I've duck hunted my whole life, and I'd 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 wings as they fly by. You could touch them.

You could reach out and grabbed one. Waterfowlers occupied the ranks of the hardest core, most passionate and ridiculous partakers of wild meat sources that I know. I love them. so many reasons. America's wetlands are the crown jewels of this continent. Families should be taking their kids to tour 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 live 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 bios 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 going to want to miss this one. And they started lighting in the other end of that hole, and it was like you were rolling out a 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 Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant.

Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Yeah, the river rat. This is a river rat, because we're called river rats. And when I was dating my wife from Stuttgart, and back in the 70s, we had longer hair. And her daddy said, I won't say exactly what he said, but he said, you're going to date that long-haired river rat, S-O-B? And we've been married 46 years now.

I like Raspier Duck Call. But this is what, let me, I don't want to grill it. Here's what my daddy always used to say. The mating call. He caught her. I used to guide for years. That was champion Duck Collar and callmaker Jim Stinson of Clarendon, Arkansas. Jim is 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 of 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. us. Deer 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 for Mr. Jim Stinson later, but I want to get into this collection of stories. Some are funny, some are scary, but all highlight the migrable. of the duck. This first story is told by Jimbo Ron Quest. He's about as legendary a waterfowler 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 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 2020, if I'd have known them 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 is 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 early in the season, and the current dog I had, if any of y'all who listened to this watched any of the early R&T videos and heard a dog that whined a lot, her name was Katie. Katie was really mad at the ducks

and she was a really good duck dog. She was a pain in the butt to hunt with, but she was a really good duck dog. She was gone with a training buddy mine and them are Ron Lagarde at this particular time. I did not have her. She was off running a hunt test. So at that time, I was probably pushing 300.

We was hunting a big old beaver dead and 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 300, I was probably one of the most agile fat guys in Monroe County, Arkansas at the time. So I was walking out through this swamp, picking up ducks. And, you know, I was coming back and I 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 them. And I was coming back up to the blind with two handfuls of ducks.

So if you can imagine, and I see ducks lighten 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 direction, 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. And I got two hands full of the window.

of ducks, right? I got two limits in each hand and he's, boom, boom, I don't quit quit shooting. And I remember feeling the heat on my face. I remember I took my both hands, I covered my face and he shoots again. I'm like, quit shooting, quit and I'm screaming, quit shooting. And I remember feeling how hot my face felt. My hat was no longer on my head. And I remember standing there and I was a big guy. You know, I come from a construction background, poured 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 yell it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're okay. But I remember my hands being on my face. And I remember being nervous to pull my hand out. Because I thought I was going to 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 frayed just a little bit when I picked it up. So I guess what I got was a little of the percussion and the gas off him shooting in front of me. And, you know, a lot of folks would think that you would just go punch him in the nose or no. I had to go grab a hole to the blind. my knees went, 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. And I finally got where I could move a little bit. And I talked to you. I said, look, here, partner. 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 can see the threads there. That's a little too close for comfort, Bub. we're going to get in the boat and we're going to go back to truck 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 was just unbelievable 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 to shoot and if they just raise up and shoot I don't call the shot, you know, or a duck kind of falls in or one duck gets close and somebody shoots, I'm kind of jumpy. Almost overboard.

To this day, Jimbo says he'll find himself uncontrollably dropping his gun and hitting a 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 friend Scott Harness of Jacksonville, Arkansas. Scott is a pastor. He's a former U.S. military helicopter pilot and a lifelong duck hunter. Here's his story called the Tupelo break. 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 anytime 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 they usually conclude that question by saying, and you do all that for a duck. and they just wait for your response. 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 had it proven to me that it's really not about that. I had a friend that was wanting to get into duck hunting. And this was his first time. And he had been chomping at the bed.

He moved from a northern state. When he got down here, 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, I want to go, man, can you take me? And he had shot skeet 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 plan on doing it next year. He said, no, man, I want to go now. I said, you're going to spend money on a duck stamp and we're, you know, on all that. And we're at the end of the season. And we'd already had a hard season.

hunted a whole bunch that year. And it's kind of like Thanksgiving after the meal. You've eaten all that you can eat. The top button, your pants are unfastened. You know, you don't want anything else to eat. And somebody brings you a turkey sandwich. And they say, 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 fill 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 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 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 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 tuplow break, and it was just full of these old-growth tuplow trees. In fact, it was beautiful. During the fall, these These two-blow trees would, 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 we decided we'd go there. The unfortunate thing 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 two-polo break. And so we make our way out there in the boat, and to Masha Green, I guess it had been, the blind had been there a lot longer, and it had been a lot longer since we'd been there than what I'd 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. It looks like the floor joyous could give it any moment, you know. And so he gets out 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 throw out the decoys. And what once was a really beautiful broad hole has now grown up with buck brush. And so it's turned from one big piece of water to several clusters, you know, maybe 10 foot in diameter of water, which further tells me that there's just no way we're going to kill ducks.

Ducks are not going to come into this big thicket, you know, 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 attractant. 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 going to do, we're going to enjoy each other, have some conversations, I'm going to drink a cup of coffee, we're going to get in the boat,

pick up decoys, and we're going to go to town and eat a great breakfast. That's my expectation. But surprisingly, about 10 minutes before daylight, I start hearing wings, and ducks start coming to the hole, 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 in numbers, that means they've been in this place before. And if ducks have been in a place for very long 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 going to kill a duck. and he's quivering like a six-month-old lab puppy that's, you know, in his first hunt. But finally shooting hours come, and ducks are coming in now, really coming in, in numbers. I mean, it's unusual numbers. I'm completely surprised. My buddy's like, when can we shoot? When can we shoot?

And I just told him, I said, now just hold on for a second. I said, let's just let these ducks come in and let's just hold on. And as the light really gave way, I looked into the sky. 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 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 they're flying through that and I mean just you could touch them you could reach out and grabbed one

my friend's still ready to shoot and I'm like no we're just going to set here we set in this two blow break and we watched ducks by fives tens 20s just pile in there until finally you could not have put another duck in this hole. In fact, I looked over at my roboduck or the mojo with the little metal wings.

They've landed on it and they've bent 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 where you are. But these ducks, they don't care. They're going to come in anyway. They didn't care if we were there. They had made their mind up. This was a great place and they were going to 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 gadwals. even a few wood ducks. There's some whedging in there. And all of them are just having the big time, just all around us. And my friend's still ready to shoot. He's still like, what do we get to shoot? I was like, just look around for a second. And I'll explain to you later. Well, we're not going to shoot right now. And we just watched these ducks for, I don't know how long, several minutes. And they just, it was amazing. It was a moment that I had never experienced, even though

I've been duck hunting 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 99% 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 when I go back into my mind, this is what helped me understand that duck hunting's not about killing ducks. It didn't matter how many ducks were in the strap 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 you spend the money and

you travel is because in the end, you're a collector of stories. 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 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 sitting 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 that old Ithaca 12-gauge 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 a story of somebody you hunted with and they're not here anymore. Those are things that we collect. And so when it comes down to it, a duck hunter doesn't duck hunt for a pile of duck meat. A duck hunter doesn't Duck hunt for a trophy even. A duck hunter or duck hunts because duck hunters collect stories. We, that's what keeps us going. Is the stories of the past and the possibility of the story in the future will make you get up way before daylight when it's really cold and stomped through ice and throw out 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 mundane hours, hardship, and failure. Honestly, this psychological sensation of betting on the future

is 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 35 years. I was mayor of Clarenin for 11 years. And I probably blew 95% of the duck calls Alan Taylor made because he was older and just didn't have the wind. And he'd come up to the store 30 times the day. What's this need? Well, it needs a little more wrath.

Yeah, I want a little higher ring. Well, I said, yep, well, you need to cut some more reed off. Let's get it higher. And then he got, I guess he was kind of like a grandpa to me. We were just great friends. We drank coffee at the J&M Hotel. And we drink coffee every morning. He was a different man.

You had to know him. Because if you couldn't blow a duck call, he wouldn't sell you a duck call. He'd take it away from you. He said, nope. And I understand that now that I make him. If somebody's blowing that duck call and they don't know what they're doing, they people say, ooh, I don't want a Stenson call. That don't sound good.

I contest called when I was younger and I blew Alvin's call. I won the Music City Open and I got them so old now. I can't remember, 89, 90, something like that. It was 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 he said, Jim, you've been wanting me to teach you how to make duck calls, so I'm going to 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 was 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, 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 85 duck calls left because that's how many tuned for it. And when he passed away, they sold in a week. They were all gone. But then he told me when he got sick, he said, okay, I'm quitting. You go ahead. 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 at Phelps custom calls make some good ones. But 40 or 50 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 going to call a duck man sizzle reel. I'll tell you one story. This is when we were still allowed to take a houseboat up. And we took Dr. Eilvidence houseboat up, set it on the mouth of 7 mile, 1987, 12 inches of snow came. And we didn't have CB, you know, we didn't have cell phones or nothing back in those days. But being a farmer, I had a radio. that we talked on a repeater. Well, Dr. Eiff didn't let his brownie shotgun

laying up against the truck. Well, it took us 45 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. We got up called and told Daddy to have Sidney go get Dennis's gun.

We're not coming back to town for it. And so we didn't even get up hard because it was snowing 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 four limits.

It was just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. But it was 12 inches of snow, nobody else could put their boat in. We had one boat come in, and it was Ed Jenis the Game Warder. He's the only guy that came up there. Of course, he checked us and everything was okay. But 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 hole. We used it for years after that, and we'd liable to have four or five boats in that hole. And it was just awesome. It was a small hole, and you'd like to 150, 200 ducks. That wouldn't be one group.

But what happened, when these ducks start circling, might be 60. But there's another group over here, well, they would join up, and it'd be just like a tornado. We'd like to see the ducks come into the blunders. low the trees. So we don't shoot the first ones that 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 that, he was getting older, daddy wanted to shoot them when they first coming in, and they filled that hole up. I mean, it 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, one volley, three people. Daddy said, he said that was unbelievable. And he's seen a lot, 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 to take 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. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a fool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there. But he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions. From remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever. You get your podcasts. Here's a couple of close calls for Mr. Jim. Have you had any near-death experiences while, Doc Honey? Have you ever sunk a boat?

Have you ever had a wreck? I fell off the houseboat into 26-foot water with my chest waiters on. I'm not saying my life flashed in front of me, but all I could think about was my wife because people have drowned up here. And I had water filling up in my chest waiters. Well, Dr. Yevinton, my buddy, he said I wanted into water three seconds.

Well, I got it. It felt like three minutes. And he pulled me up. And he's smaller than I am, but we changed clothes. And I wore his clothes. We went hunting. It didn't stop us. And but one time, it was in 19th, New Year's Eve, 1970.

David Brown, his father was the undertaker here and I. We went in his boat. My daddy and Al went in the mother one and his nephew went another one. And ducks were slow that day. And David Brown, and I said, we're going to go look for ducks. Now, this was a day when you had a 9.9 mercury or something, you know, or Evan Rood with a shear pin in it. If you had a 15-horse motor, you had a big motor.

There's none of these boat races that go on now that go 45 miles an hour. And we went, what slow I told, well, Dad, we're going to go down here and look for some ducks, and we'll go to this spot over here. And he said, okay, and we'll meet you up at the Jane and for lunch. Well, we moved, went across the river where we weren't supposed to be, where we told him you weren't going to go there. And we did, and we sheared a pen. And I spent the night in the river that night, the year.

Two young men from Desark, 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 houseboat where 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 us. It was those guys from Desert. And I could hear the sawmill whistle, that sawmill 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 18 years old.

And we just hitting these two ridges. It wasn't going nowhere. So the boat had, you'd sheared a pin, which meant you'd hit a stump or something. Yep. The motor wouldn't work. So you docked, you got on land.

It was knee-deep water. We were walking around. The timber was flooded. Yeah, pulling the boat. And at 5 o'clock that afternoon, we had anything to eat. Well, we saw a duck swimming, and we shot the duck, started plucking the duck, had gangrene. We didn't have any matches or anything to cook it with.

So that was at 5.30 that night. Well, we pulled all night long, and it was kind of scary. We're here pushing and pulling this boat, and my foot got tangled up in a root wad, and David was pushing on the back, and I went plum underwater. And, I mean, I was absolutely shivering. 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 hollering at him. David would holler and I would holler, and David would holler, and I would holler. The guy wouldn't answer. So we're trying to move the boat toward him. And he finally answered. Well, we got there, it was the man from Stuttgart. He had an Everett, Rood, 9.9.

Like we did, 9.5, 9.5, whatever it was. And he had the same odor. He gave us a shear pin. He said, are you the two boys everybody's looking for? I said, yeah. And he had an airplane search. We saw the airplane come over. Anyway, he told us how to get out,

because we didn't hunt over there. Now, if it'd been in these bottoms where I'm at now, I don't even need accomplished or nothing. I know the wood, but they'd know those would. And he told us how to get out. We got up there, 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. I said, Brown Stent said, 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 take you. There's Mr. Newkirk out here from Honey Creek, and they gave us a ride back to town, and everybody was so glad to see us. And, 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 of cheese shirt off, stick it in the gas and crank it and 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, no cell phones. But to this day, David has a GPS. He has matches. He has everything in another backpack. But he's prepared now for that now. Of course, now you've got cell phone and GPS. There wasn't GPS. 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 tacks, 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 trees. We shut the light off, and we just go. They're waiting for you yet to turn off the river.

You go through the wood, you go about two miles back in there, and then you hear them out there, still out there following that trail, and, wrong, kicking their engine up and everything. And then people, got the GPSs, and then they started telling all their friends, you know. The friends have never even been here before. Of course, when you got the coordinates, you're going to go straight to that hole. Yes.

And I don't know why some holes were better than others, but they are. You know, some holes down here, kill 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 6 o'clock boat. So we don't have to go up at 4 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 50-plus bands. Duck bands are aluminum bands on the first.

feet of ducks that have been captured by some game and fish department and tagged. When a hunter kills a banded duck, it is a major trophy, and they're able to keep the bands. You've got to 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'd keep that knife there. And I'd get a bandy duck. I'd cut the band off and put our wood. wouldn't say a word. You know?

At least you're honest, man. Yeah, and after they see all my bands getting bigger, those old men started cranking their motors up. And they went and got their own ducks. But 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 catfish here in a river catch my limit every day. It's unbelievable. I mean, the resources here. Mr. Jim Stinson is an old school Arkansas duck man, and they aren't making them 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 Grease's own Brent Reeves. He's a long-time, low-country river-bottom duckman himself. He was a waterfowl guide for 26 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 flatland.

We had hillbillies mowing our grass. True story. And to Gary Newcomb's 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 going to bring up the specific name of a famed Arkansas gaming 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 waterfowlers, 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 26 years that we ran a guide service in the little community of Raydale, Arkansas, which is south of Stuttgart, and it's right on the Arkansas River where our lodge was. My brother and I, we had 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 seemed like a pretty good deal. And they were, man, they were just, they were super nice guys. And yeah, we did the deal. Said, y'all come on, just bring some decoys. And we'll hunt two or three days. So I remember it was back in about 1994 or five, I guess.

And we were hunting Buckingham Flats in Biomedo. Buckingham Flats is like 400 acres. And it's kind of tip cornered to the southern end of the bio. Mehta 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'd pull in to buy me to the Buckingham parking lot, and there might not be any other vehicles there. And especially during the week, 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 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 we walk, it's probably a half a mile walk in there to the hole. It was what we called the sit log hole. And its narrow was part about 25, 30 yards wide at the, at the widest part, it was about 50 or 60 yards wide and it was probably 150 yards long. the wind that day was perfect it was coming out of the south and it was blowing right straight from one end of 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 they're standing next to a tree in the flooded timber.

In 7.30, 8 o'clock, wherever the ducks had been on whatever rice field they had been on, they all decided it seemed like it wants to come back to the timber to rest. And you could hear them coming. We were in mid-conversation. I don't remember if my brother or one of the other guys said, hey, y'all, do y'all hear that? 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 they're coming from the other direction so it was just like a he clipped the wings on a thousand ducks

and dumped them out of a box and they were just tumbling and going everywhere but none of them were coming in the hole so we started calling and we started calling we started started calling and they started getting a pattern together. They started getting organized. And we were on the southern end of that hole, of the sit-log hole, facing to the north. And the wind was at our back, going straight down there. And after, it seemed like 10 minutes of just calling

and working ducks, but it was probably two or three minutes. When they started working them around, when they all got together and they started landing, they started landing in the other end, 130 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 heads, all mallards, that worked over the timber, that short timber, and finally got together,

and they're going to light too far away. And I thought, you know, all this effort was for nothing. And I said, oh, man, they're too far. They're too far. My brother said, 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 open and they just started when one sat down another one sat down right in front of them and they just walked a thousand ducks all of a sudden just started 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 hollered, 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 one of the most incredible things that I had ever witnessed, and my brother was there, and the guys that brought the decoys

when they got back home, they sent another batch of decoys. They had such a good time that they had, actually paid twice for what we'd agreed on, but it was one of the most incredible hunts that I'd been on over there. I got chill bumps on my arm right now talking about it, but that was a good one. The ducks came in like you were rolling out of carpet, he said. That's powerful imagery. We're going to 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. 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 19.

I had one friend from Louisiana that had experienced duck hunting, and he duck hunted in the marshes of Louisiana. And so we went together, but he's a gadgety guy. 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 one day and he'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 Piro.

I had no idea what that was. But he was so excited about it. I was like, wow, this is going to be great. Let's do it. And so he and I decided to go to a particular oxbow lake that we had hunted pretty much in central Arkansas. all. 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 I'm taken by is that it's really shallow. It's not a very deep boat. And he and I, let's just say he and I are magnums when it comes to human beings, you know. And I was like,

you know, with he and I in that boat, and he'd already dressed it out, it's got this really big deep cycle battery in it. He's put a trolle 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 motor's running, the prop spinning. We set the boat down in the water, and immediately, I look, even before we put anything in it, the boat's just not sticking out of the water enough for me to feel comfortable.

I ride it up, though, as just maybe my inexperience. Maybe I just don't understand certain things because these people have done it before, and maybe you just go along with it. So we pile decoys in there. He gets in the front. I get in the back. and we're about to go out into this swamp. I mean, in this motorized P-Roe thing.

And I've got a Cuban spotlight, which was the spotlight of choice of duck hunters back in the day. And I've got it connected to a deep cycle battery with alligator clips, and I'm ready to go. Well, anyway, we go to start the motor in this thing, and it does have electric start, and he's cranking on it, cranking on it, cranking on it, 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 two-blow trees, cypress trees, cypress trees, cypress knees everywhere, water and a thicket. And he's cranking on this motor. Finally, he says, you know, I think you're right. I think it's flooded. He said, but you know, as long as you got

that light on it, it seems like that it's not cranking as fast. So he thought that was maybe put too much of a draw on the battery. So I turned the light off. He goes to crank it on the motor. 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, crossing log jams.

I'm waiting any moment I realize we're going to hit a cypress tree. There's no way that we can get very far before we run into something. but to my chagrin, we literally go probably 100 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 the spark plug wire and turns it off. We do this all in the pitch dark. Never there's a light on it. We have no idea.

I've lost my head gear. Half my equipment's been ripped off of me as we're cutting through the swamp. And there we are. I had one little pin light 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 there may be a quarter of an inch of the boat still sticking out of the water. We've run over enough things that's dipped up under enough watered where this boat's ready to sink at any second. And I told my friend, I said, let's wait until 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 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 going to sink. we know it is. I have no idea how deep a water we're in, but we're in the middle of a swamp. Now, after rewind the tape, just a little bit to 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 pilots I flew with, they would say, don't ever fly over that swamp because there's alligators in it. And I mean, literally, they would avoid this thing. If we had to fly 10 minutes, 15 minutes out of our way to fly around the swamp, we would do it. No one ever flew over this swamp. And, 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 decide that we're going to try to pull this boat half sunk up to a set of cypress trees. I'm going to try

to step out and then we're going to 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 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 lake. And it's about neck deep, maybe a little less, maybe chest deep. Well, my friend's behind me and we look at each other and I go, what are we going to do now? Both of us are standing in water. Fortunately, it wasn't super bad cold, which made me nervous because in my mind all I'm thinking about is these alligators so we're trying to make up our

mind what we're going to do with this boat and how we're going to get the water out of and how we're going to get back and we're in the middle of nowhere and it's one of those days there was hardly any other hunters out there any other day that'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 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 as it's swum past me. And it's circling. I mean, literally, 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 said, 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 chest deep, and I'm going to die, eaten by an alligator. And so I get my gun out, and I've literally got the muzzle of my gun in the water because this thing keep swimming by and you can see it. 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's trying to get his gun. He's scared too. And about that time, it hits the far side away from me as it's making it circle.

And it comes up out of the water. And it's actually the trolling motor. And so the trolling 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 just running in a circle under the water. That's what it was. So I really thought I was going to be eaten. And eventually we did push the boat up into a comp of trees, and we dipped the water out of it. And we gingerly paddle ourselves back to the bank and like a whipped puppy, our tail between our legs, 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 duck dog story.

Jimbo Ron Quest is going to tell us about the greatest retrieve he's ever witnessed. This story is called Katie. One of the things that passed down to me, my daddy was a big bird dog guy and a retriever guy. And it was always said that you were allowed one good woman and one good dog in a lifetime. So I will say that I had been allowed one good woman to Miss Rosie, who I absolutely outkicked my coverage on. Takes care of me beyond a shadow of a doubt regardless of what I do. That said, I have probably had at this point, I'm going to say with tiny, I've had four dogs of a lifetime.

I could get choked up, teared up 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's the best retrieve? And I can tell you that all of them, and a little tiny, he's only two and a half. 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 go-getter.

And they've all made great ones. Charlie made one last year, 45 days. He's pregnant. Send her on a crippled teal. She was gone for 45 minutes. I wasn't worried about her. Finally, here she comes back. She doesn't cough that sucker.

You know, just stuff you can't teach, right? You know, you're a hound, man. You know there's things you can't teach. But probably my all-time favorite was an old dog I had named Katie. Buy me to Katie. She was a master hunter. But she was with me through the glory days of commercial hunting and picked up untold thousands of birds.

With this old deadening, we hunted, you know, some years it was wet, some years it was dry, but it always had a little water. And we had, was having a pretty good morning, not a great one, but a decent morning of hunting. And we had a bunch of miders come in, a good little bunch, a good volley. Everybody killed ducks. And she picked up all these ducks, and there was a mattard hen fell over here. And she went over there, and she hunted, hunted, and that duck, she found, and she chased it. And old duck beat her.

and very few beat her. She was, her or my current dog, Charlie, were two of the best at working cripples I've ever seen. And this old duck beat her. And she'd come back and got them to dog stand and the hunt continued. And the morning slowed up. We wasn't shooting many.

And old Katie kept looking over there. And she'd look over there and you can see her perk up. She kept looking over there. Like, what are you doing? You know, I said, do you let that duck beat? you didn't you? You know, she'd look. And I'd tease her. You know, I was, did you let that duck beat you? You're not going to let that duck beat you, are you? Man, she'd look at me and she'd look over her. And finally, after a little bit, if it's getting slow, I'd finally said, put my hand over,

I said, Katie. And she took off over here and she, and now look, I'm going to preface this right now. If you were telling me this story, and I had not seen it, I'd call Bull Doodoo on it. But because I've seen it, and I've seen this happen, I can't call bull do-doo. I saw it in my own eyes. I seen her. She goes over right to the last spot she's on that bird. And she's kind of water's 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 then she kind of, kind of eased back on her haunches a little bit to get balanced. And she started taking them paws and digging.

It's sticking her nose down. digging, sticking nose down. Next thing you know, she took her nose down. She pulled a matter of hen out, by her butt, grabbing on with some weeds, and pull it up out of there and come back with it. And that was probably every bit of an hour after she had tried to catch that bird and she didn't. I give her a hard time about it. Absolute best retriever ever saw. 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 Stinson 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 when 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 reap negative stuff. Try it.

Isaac, they're probably thinking I'm getting a little preachy. We might want to cut that out. Nah, leave it in. These stories of duck hunters paint a picture of one of America's most die-hard and passionate groups of people. Waterfow hunters are also one of the most conservation-minded and well-organized factions that you'll ever find. Delta Waterfowl and Ducks 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 wildlife. 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 this 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 them. And you can follow me on Instagram and the TikTok at Clay underscore Newcomb. From Misty and I, we hope that you have a happy new year. We'll see you next week on the render. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end.

when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce,

and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.