This story, “Big Shots,” appeared in the June 1968 issue of Outdoor Life.
WRITINGS HAVE BEEN left us of how colonizing shoemakers used to build blinds along the shores of New England’s freshwater ponds, put out homemade decoys, and await geese while cobbling inside the blinds.
Their blunderbusses, flintlocks, and percussion muzzle-loaders were charged with everything from gravel and horseshoe nailheads to “boughten” pellets. When a voyaging squadron of Canadas lit and swam into the stools, the carnage was fierce and provided plenty of food, feathers, and goose grease for the community’s beds and bellies. Warm goose grease, mixed with powerful ingredients known only to midwives, became mothers’ friends in prayer and pregnancy.
The old-time goose hunter is described as a peculiar sort of being: weathered, weather-wise, half man, half goose, who probably dreamed of someday being listed as the maker of the Biggest Shot on record.
Now having been invited, both before and after the turn of the century, to swank goose-shooting clubs along that same coastal region, I know something of the old sport’s ways and means of pleasant but thoughtless decimation.
There were live decoys trained to fly out and entice entire flocks of wild Canadas coming in from the upcountry breeding grounds. There were luxurious quarters, camouflaged spring doors opening onto the decoys, card games interrupted by buzzers sounded by the keeper on his lookout tower, and hunters arming themselves and lining up behind the trap doors to pour a galling fire into the wretched dupes when the doors were flung open. I guess records are available to recount Big Shots of these days, but such shots are not confined in spirit to those times. Market hunters of later days could tell grisly stories of waterfowl mowed down en masse. And even in protective years on what is today the Mississippi Val ley Flyway, I have watched six-man crews operating from commercial pits equipped with buzzers and over looking corn-baited fields complete with live decoys. The tolls taken at such places were pretty sickening.
But from another standpoint, almost every honest, decent wildfowler has had experiences, accidental or otherwise, that qualify as Big Shots. I’ll recount a few that came my way-Big Shots that somehow just happened. All of these, incidentally, were within the legal limits of their day (many of which, one can see in looking back, were much too high).
Very early one cold December morning in 1890 when I was 10 years old, my father and I were at Wapanocca Club. Its lake and surroundings at that time were pris tine and swarming with wildlife, both native and mi grant. Today, Wapanocca is a federal wildlife refuge near Turrell, Arkansas.
My parent and his pusher, Osborn Neely, had their boat, while Aaron Jones, a colored lad with whom I played and hunted and fished, accompanied me in a small er craft. When we reached my dad’s blind in Walker’s Cove up on the big lake, Dad told us to continue to Bethel’s Point and hide in a patch of saw grass just beyond the blind. He gave me two shells with large shot, in case some geese came winging in to us from the nearby Mississippi River. Aaron and I were the same age and were learning through stern teaching to cope with the outdoors the hard way. We could both swim, paddle all day, and do a fair job of identifying the different species of ducks. We pushed into a clump of grass that hid us com pletely, tossed out half a dozen mallard blocks, and then sat back in the chill of the overcast morning to wait. My riad waterfowl were moving. I was using a 12 bore double-hammer gun by Bonehill. It was a bit heavy, but lads of that day took what was available. Aaron heard geese before I did. They were approaching from the Mississippi, about three miles away. Flock after flock streamed toward us. They milled about for a few moments, then made one sweeping circle and lit all around us, with the majority concentrated on a little bay off the open water.
The gaggling bunch wasn’t 20 steps away; we could see their eyes. During the excitement of their approach I had slipped my two heavy loads into the Bonehill. I aimed at the thickest splotch of black necks and let go the first tube. Then, as the mass of frightened birds took off with a smothering roar, I shot again.
Aaron shouted: “You done kilt ’em all!”
We waded around the shallows and collected nine honkers, and I had to reload and shoot only one cripple.
The club bag limit was 50 ducks a day, so with lots of birds flying we decided to wait awhile and not join Dad until lunch. We both shot “settin” and “flyin,” taking turns with the Bonehill, and we had 24 ducks in addition to the geese when we reached Dad’s blind.
We were questioned carefully about the Big Shot, and with all the evidence in, the verdict was “justifiable goose slaughter with at least one shot on the wing.” There were two other members shooting at Wapanocca that day, and though they got no geese, there were plenty to go around, including one each for Osborn and Aaron.
It was to be nearly 30 years before I got to make another Big Shot at Wapanocca. When I came of age in 1901, I could no longer accompany my parent to the club as a guest. In 1919 he passed on and I inherited his membership. In the meantime, I had bagged a lot of geese and swans.
And so, in 1921, it was another cold morning, one of those dark-of-the-moon mornings that wildfowlers adore. Aaron Jones, grown into a stalwart parent and head pusher at Wapanocca, wasn’t with me that day. His number had been drawn by another member. My pusher that day was Mose, and a top hunter he was, too. Mose and Aaron both are gone now.
Mose had been a decorated soldier in World War I. In fact, he was wear ing his olive-drab woolens and his over seas cap for hunting garb.
I was in the sporting-goods business at the time, and I was testing some new shells sent to me by Western Cartridge Company of East Alton, Illinois. These were new 12 gauge, short shotcolumn, progressive-burning powder charges that appeared the next year as Super X. They were loaded with 4’s, and with the shells Western had sent a Burt Becker-bored Askins and Sweeley shotgun-a 9¾-pound gun chambered for three-inch cases.
On this morning, by coincidence, I drew Walker’s Cove, where my father had hunted the morning I made the Big Shot on geese with Aaron. Since that time a lot more saw grass had grown into Wapanocca, and a small clump of it was about 150 yards off the willow-lined shore at Walker’s Cove.
I put my live-decoy coop on the saw grass clump. Since the mud bot tom was firm the coop made a perfect seat. Mose took our Dan Kidney duck boat back into the willows, and I went to work.
It didn’t take long to acquire a limit of ducks, which was 25 at that time, but I dragged things out waiting for mallards. I had heard geese that morning when hundreds left the lake for the river, but I hadn’t seen one.
I was all set to call Mose to fetch the boat and pick up when, away across the lake, coming from Trexler’s Corner, I spotted a low-flying line of geese approaching. There were 18 of them, and I hoped for a right and left from the big gun so I could call it another happy day.
Suddenly, to my right, between Bethel’s Point and Miller’s Island, geese began honking invitationally. The approaching line of low-flying Canadas swerved abruptly and, apparently just out of range, swung across my front. Angered by such desertion, but deciding that there would be a real test for the new shells and gun, I stepped through the saw grass, swept the big weapon’s tubes swiftly ahead of the al most overlapping geese, and let drive one shot. Far out I could plainly follow the short, dense shot column as it ripped and whitened the water just a bit short of the honkers.
Then, to my utter amazement, four geese tumbled one by one out of the line-stone dead, not even a kicker. I heard a shout, and turning I saw Mose throw his overseas cap aloft. It hung up in a willow and he had to shake it out.
What had happened? At first I was confident that not a one of the big fowl was killed by direct-level hits, but by ricochets. The range was tremen dous, my lead totally conjectural. I can still see the spray splashing up and fly ing off those 4’s. A more likely ex planation, however, is that a portion of the shot string held up beyond what I saw striking the water and hit the birds. It’s no trouble to memorize such incidents during a long lifetime.
Around 1935 I was employed by the late J. N. (Ding) Darling, the famed cartoonist and conservationist who conceived the idea of the National Wildlife Federation and served as its first president. At that time Ding was chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey.
My job was to examine sites for future waterfowl refuges in what is today the lower Mississippi Valley Flyway. We had a request from a lumber concern at Electric Mills, Mississippi, above Meridian, to survey their property’s several lakes as potential waterfowl refuges.
The company’s operations were enormous and very interesting. I recall they had been cutting in the vicinity for 16 years and had 20 more years to go. And they were among the pioneers, from the conservation angle, in practicing reforestation.
So, with the late Speed Fry and two of his crackerjack shooting dogs, I drove from my home in Memphis, Tennessee, to Electric Mills. We were put up at the president of the company’s home. He was absent but had left word with his house staff that we were to be shown every courtesy, including some of the best quail shooting in the country.
One afternoon, while hunting afoot in some particularly good coverts, I got separated from Speed and sat down on a log to listen for a shot so I could lo cate him. I was in the middle of a glade that opened off a sedged bay. Looking up, I suddenly saw a well bunched bevy of bobwhites heading past me and flying not more than six feet above the ground. They were really making time.
I snatched up my bird gun, one of Winchester’s early Model 21’s, swept it past the birds, and touched off a tube — all I had time to do. It literally rained quail.
I had just picked up the eighth and last bobwhite when up came a dog. He seemed as puzzled by what had happened as I was. I was shooting the then standard three-dram trap load with 1¼ ounces of No. 7½ shot. Not a bird was crippled.
I’ve often looked back upon that incident — a mere instinctive reaction to an unexpected happening-with sincere regret. I should, of course, have tried to mark the birds down, then waited for my hunting companion. But, again, they might have just kept on going and been lost to us. I’ll never know.
Another morning, in the 1920’s, I was after quail around our Lakeside Club’s Swan Lake in Arkansas with my old friend the late Hal Bowen Howard.
His nephew-in-law, Lovick P. Miles Jr., a lad home for the Christmas holidays, was with us.
Lovick and I were heading across a patch of corn stubble when a big bevy of quail flushed wild so far ahead that I hesitated to shoot. But remembering that in such cases a shot will often make the birds shorten their flight and pitch faster, I fired once. It was at least a 40-yard rise, and probably a senseless piece of business.
But Lovick yelled: “Some birds fell.” Our dogs came racing and soon hand ed in four rather widely separated dead birds.
Lovick said: “Another fell up yonder near that little clump of weeds.” And sure enough, one of the dogs found and fetched it. I won’t even attempt to explain such an accident, other than to figure that around 350 pellets in a trap load are a lot of shot. And now, back to the old Beaver
Dam Club near Tunica, Mississippi, for a wildfowl Big Shot. I have a picture of Hal Howard facing me from the bow of a duck boat and puffing on a cigarette. We had broken ice to reach a blind in the saw grass. Now and then one of us would rise and peep over the grass to see if any fowl were approaching.
I was shooting a heavy 10 bore L. C. Smith double loaded with No. 4’s. I stood up and spotted seven shovelers flying directly at us along the grass line. I waited until they were fairly close, then yelled. They started to flare, but bunched. I fired, and all seven shovelers hit the ice. I had to shoot one cripple.
One frosty morning long ago, also at the Beaver Dam Club, I bagged a club limit of 50 ducks by 9 a.m. I returned to the clubhouse, changed boots and guns, and walked east with my bird dogs — a setter and a pointer. We hunted through some new ground and emerged into a grassy clearing where I figure Highway 61 crosses today.
Both dogs suddenly froze in a thrilling point. I was shooting light-load No. 8’s in a tournament-grade Winchester pump with 26-inch cylinder bore barrel. I was in my early 20’s but had never accomplished what I was about to now.
The dogs were pointing about 20 yards apart, and I walked in between them. A pair of quail flushed to my left and I dropped them. A second later another pair boomed up to my right. Down they went. No other birds had yet flushed. I took another step for ward, and just ahead of me a third pair of bobs took off. I tumbled them. Six quail down in a semicircle with six shots, but definitely not a bevy rise. What went on here? I reloaded-and fast! Still, I felt I’d taken my fair share of any bevy. I clucked to the dogs and they retrieved the birds. Then we cast ahead.
Not 50 yards farther on, both dogs froze. There was more beautiful territory ahead, so out of curiosity I didn’t shoot-just flushed. About eight birds came up — the remnants of the bevy. I let them alone. I gave each dog a hug and a pat, along with a couple of sugar cookies.
Now the moral of that story is that if I’d missed a single one of those six easy shots, I should have started running. All of which causes me to digress a bit.
Actually, when I speak of Big Shots I mean one shot, or at most two shots such as I made on the geese as a kid. All my gunning life I’ve heard of men who, with autoloaders or pumps, could kill five or six quail from every covey rise. I’ve tried to do it many times but have never succeeded. Sure, it can be done when a big bevy has been feeding and rises in scattered section; just slowly enough so a gunner has time to select his shots. But not when a bevy zooms off all at once. You might, as I did, kill five or even eight with one wild shot, but that’s a different situation.
I’ve also heard all these years of the chap who can shoot from horseback and never miss. And of the guy who takes out a box of 25 shells and returns with 24 birds. Then there’s the fellow who is so good that he shoots his birds sort of off to one side so as not to put all his pattern into them and tear them up. I’ve shot all kinds of upland game with a lot of very fine shots, but I’m still looking for those three guys.
And as for killing quail, from horse back or mule, I’ll refer you to my old and valued friend Henry P. Davis of field-trial fame. Ask him about the morning he and I, mule-mounted, were bird hunting along 10-Mile Bayou at Lakeside. My saddle was tied on with only a piece of cord, and as I started to dismount for a shot the cord-stirrup broke and that tall red mule threw me one way and my gun the other, the gun so high that it fell and stuck up ward in a muddy cotton row.
It took me an hour to clean the gun, and we had to trek over half the coun tryside to recapture that jughead mule. In, I think, January of 1930, my cous in Captain Hugh Buckingham had me, his brother Lemmon, and the late Burr Chapman as guests at his Lake Arthur, Louisiana, duck club-a palatial houseboat hidden away in Grand Lake.
We had stormy passage to the club via motorboat, but the ensuing week brought delightful weather and superb sport. By club rule, all shooting stopped at 10 a.m. Motorboats picked up the hunters, and at noon each day came a gourmet luncheon. The cuisine easily equaled that of the famed old Delta Duck Club.
Afternoons gave a choice of bass fishing or snipe shooting, and the club’s Cajun guides each had a personal territory that afforded specialized shooting: mallards, teal, canvasbacks, and others. After an evening’s draw for guides, you could swap around to get the waterfowl gunning you desired.
The black coffee and ablutions came promptly at 3: 30 a.m. each morning, followed by a toe-curling breakfast. Then into motorboats for hair-raising dashes through tortuous canals and across rough water to dams far back in some vast marsh. From there you either walked or pushed in a pirogue.
My guide was a delightful Cajun named Adler Cohen, and he was equipped with two huge thermoses of coffee (without which any Cajun is helpless) and a cheery disposition.
At that time I was executive secretary for the American Wildfowlers (now Ducks, Unlimited). A few years before, when I was with Western Cartridge Company, I had become interested in the development by John Olin of coppercoated shot. This Louisiana foray seemed to offer a good chance to try out some of Olin’s copper-coated No. 3’s, so he had provided me with a box of three-inch cases loaded with four drams of powder and 13/s ounces of No. 3 shot for my 12 magnum. That morning found Adler and me on the spot by legal shooting time. We made short work of acquiring a mal lard limit. As the morning drew on, we noticed large flocks of Canada geese working over, and disappearing behind, a belt of saw grass perhaps half a mile behind our blind in the open.
Finally I asked Adler if he thought we could get close to them.
He said, “You tink you kin wade da far, my fran?”
I replied that if the bottom was as firm as it was where we were standing, I could make it on one leg, if necessary. So over we went, and I had the box of No. 3’s along for the big test.
It wasn’t bad wading. Nearing the main belt of saw grass, we sneaked from one clump to another and began to hear the guttural rumble of feeding geese. Crouching, we peered through the grass, and my mind flashed back to that hunt at Wapanocca.
Suddenly I began to fear I might make too much of a Big Shot and kill more than the then legal limit of eight honkers. I decided to flush them, but even then two blasts might be risky.
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I half straightened, raised the big gun, and whistled piercingly. Up went an acre of geese, wave on wave. Leaning into the heavy load’s recoil, with my ankles locked in mud, I fired twice. The only response was two clicks. I lost my balance, whirled, and, to save things generally, sat down in the water.
There was but one answer: In all the excitement, I’d simply forgotten to unbox the No. 3’s and load my gun.
Adler pulled me to my feet, and as long as I live I’ll never forget that gal lant Cajun for his sense of humor.
“One good ting, my fran,” he said. “De geese ain’t scared, and you ain’t bad wet, and de shells ain’t neither. Load up and we’ll get dem geese.”
He was right. In another five minutes there were several thousand geese milling over us. It was apparent they liked the place. We simply stood quietly and waited while their alarm sub sided. Then, bunch by bunch, they began pouring in, and this time the No. 3’s took a steady toll.
We tied the eight geese to a cord and floated them to the pirogue, where Adler broke out the coffee. It helped, but in the quiet reaches of the night I can sometimes still hear that pair of clicks.
Big Shot? Well, that’s one that got away.
Will hunters continue to make Big Shots? With wildlife resources apparently headed downhill in the face of progress, the chances of making a Big Shot of the kind I’ve described are certainly reduced. Still, some will probably be made.
But with today’s much lower limits on gamebirds, hunters would be wise to avoid trying to make such shots, since any of them would almost surely result in a game violation.
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