HISTORIC DUCK HUNTING STORIES THE GOLDEN AGE OF DUCK HUNTING

By HISTORIC DUCK HUNTING STORIESHistory

HISTORIC DUCK HUNTING STORIES THE GOLDEN AGE OF DUCK HUNTING episodes

August 06, 2025 E64 HISTORIC DUCK HUNTING CLUBS PRE CIVIL WAR
E64 LISTS 17 OF THE EARLIEST DUCK CLUBS IN AMERICA, ALL ORGANIZED BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR, SOME OF THE MOST FAMOUS DUCK CLUBS SUCH AS WINOUS POINT, CURRITUCK SHOOTING CLUB AND MORE.
36 min
July 07, 2025 E63 PRELUDE TO E 16 THE EVOLUTION OF DUCK CALLS
The evolution of the duck call began some 45,000 to 50,000 years ago or earlier and this episode takes you from that time frame up until E16 which was starts in 1854.
18 min
June 17, 2025 E 62 DUCKS CAME FOR RICE, HUNTERS CAME FOR DUCKS AND THEY BOTH MET IN THE GRAND PRAIRIE
Year after year, waterfowl have followed the ancestral Mississippi Flywayand made their usual stops, where along the way they feasted abundantly in theforested White River bottomlands on acres of high-energy pinoak acorns andaquatic plants, like wild millet, Chufa, and smartweed.
Before rice production came to the Grand Prairie,ducks were found foraging in the small prairie wetlands, seasonal herbaceouswetlands, the vast flooded bottomland, hardwood forests of the White andArkansas Rivers, and other smaller meandering rivers and bayous.
Once rice had been plantedfor the first time in the first decade of the twentieth century in theeast-central part of the state, it spread rapidly throughout the Grand Prairie,mainly in the counties of Arkansas and Prairie and small sections in westernMonroe and eastern Lonoke during that decade and especially during the 1920sand the 1930s. Doing so, prairie lands, bounded by the bottomlands of four streams, the White andArkansas Rivers, Bayou Meto, and Wattensaw Bayou, could not exist and was converted tofarmland, so the prairies essentially vanished after 40 years.
Rice changed the flyway intwo ways. For one, it moved a lot of the waterfowl migration from theMississippi River westward to the rice-growing regions of Arkansas. Second, italso shifted lots of waterfowl from overflying Arkansas and going to the ricefields of Louisiana. No place in the Grand Prairie of eastern Arkansas prior tothe construction of reservoirs reaped rice’s benefit more so than the twinlakes of Jacob’s Lake and Pecan Lake in Arkansas County.
1 hr 16 min
May 31, 2025 E61 REFLECTION
The day after Memorial Day, I reflected back to Vietnam and the loss of my best friend when out on night patrol. He had just been in Vietnam after going through basic training for seven days. On the seventh night, he was shot in the neck by a sniper and died. I miss him dearly and Memorial Day made me reflect back on life and what is important.
15 min
April 19, 2025 E60 THE CHESAPEAKE OF THE WEST
With their primary breeding grounds inprairie Manitoba, the eastern continental population of canvasbacks stagedduring the fall in the olden days on Lake Cristina and Heron Lake in Minnesota;the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair and Saginaw Bay in Michigan; the IllinoisRiver in Illinois, in Iowa along the Upper Mississippi, and Lakes Poygan, Puckaway, Butte des Morts, Winnebago, Winneconne, and Koshkonong in Wisconsin. Lake Koshkonong was the countless hosts of migratory waterfowl which knew it from a time before a white man ever gazed upon its waters.
From its beginning, the Koshkonong marsh wascovered with from one to two feet of water and filled entirely with wild riceand in a few deep-water places wild celery grew. During the fall and springmigration, the marsh was literally alive with mallards, teal, and otherdabbling ducks with a few canvasbacks and redheads in a few deeper areas. Thenthe dam in 1851 was built which raised the water level enticing more wildcelery to grow and year after year it grew more and the canvasbacks came ingreat numbers. Then the dam was made higher in 1874, which raised the level ofwater even higher and once again more wild celery grew while the wild ricereceded closer to the shore. Then the canvasbacks came in greater number whichwas beyond computation and the mallards departed for the most part to thesurrounding marshes boarding on the sides of the lake. Furthermore, during summer,thousands of young canvasbacks could be seen as the result of the breedingseason unconscious of the fate that awaited them within a few months from thehands of sportsmen and market hunters.
But all of this changed with theoverharvesting of canvasbacks, the introduction of carp, the extended raisingof the dam, the onset of WWI, the Dust Bowl Years, pollution, the drainage ofthe numerous marshes which existed outside of the boundary of the lake and thedrainage of other small wetlands near the lake along with their ancient hangoutson the lake being covered with the dwellings of the white man which added extrahunting pressure on waterfowl using the lake and increased use of the lake forleisure motorboating which ran many waterfowl off the lake.
1 hr 14 min
March 14, 2025 THE THREE PILLARS OF TRAP SHOOTING PART IV
There are in every sport remarkableindividuals that become legends, and thesport of trap shooting as we know it today belongs to three of the mostinfluential and remarkable marksmen in trap shooting history, in what I call TheThree Pillars of Trap Shooting: Ira Paine, Adam Bogardus, and Doc Carver. Thelatter two are in the Trapshooting Hall of Fame and certainly deserving of thehonor; Paine is not, Why? I don’t know, but, perhaps, it may be that historianshave recognized him more of a pistol and revolver shooter than a shotgun trapshooter, spending a great deal of his time as he grew older pistol and revolvershooting. But that doesn’t seem to hold much weight as Carver was certainlyknown as much for his rifle shooting as he was for his shotgun shooting, maybemore so for his exhibition rifle shooting.
Maybeanother reason Paine is not in the Trap Shooting Hall of Fame is that when hefirst started shooting and for several years afterwards, it was in the dayswhen they used black powder, shot muzzleloading shotguns at wild pigeons, from fiveunknown traps with shotgun held below the elbow until “pull” was called, thepurpose being to place the shooter in the same unprepared condition at the riseof a bird as he was supposed to be at the rise of a bird in actual fieldshooting. This was the modus operandi both in England and America along withshooting 21-yard rise from ground traps. Paine, William King, John Taylor,Miles Johnson, and Edward “Ned” Tinker were considered giants in those days ofwild passenger pigeon matches, attested to by their scores they made indifferent matches.
Andmaybe another reason is because he died at age 53, so his short life spanshortened his shooting career, while Bogardus was 80 at the time of his deathand Carver was 87. But he lived long enough to see feathers fly in akaleidoscopic dazzling shower when he broke his patented feather-filled glassballs as his eyes never forgot how to look along a shotgun barrel.
Thereare so many stories and incidents about Ira Paine’s pigeon, glass ball, andexhibition shooting career that it is impossible to relate all of them. Butthere are some which must be told to make this story complete, so I would liketo give you just a short summary of why I think he should be and needs to be inthe Trapshooting Hall of Fame.
1 hr 52 min
January 25, 2025 E58 TRAP SHOOTING PART III
A continuation of Part I and II of Trap shooting, with Part III covering the three great trap shooters of the time--Captain Adam Bogardus, Doc Carter, and Ira Paine. It covers the period of time when pigeon trap shooting had advanced from live pigeon shooting to glass balls to Ligowsky clay pigeons.
1 hr 19 min
January 06, 2025 E57 HISTORY OF TRAP SHOOTING PART II
E57 is the history of trap shooting in the United States from its beginnings in the 1820s after the sport had cross the Atlantic Ocean from England. It goes from wild pigeon shooting to glass balls to clay targets, and listen as you will discover how trap shooting developed and progressed in America. E57 covers three famous trap shooters in the early days--Captain Adam Bogardus, Doc Carver, and Ira Paine. E57 picks up where trap shooting began in England. E58 will pick up where E57 leaves off and will be podcasted in the near future.
1 hr 27 min
November 30, 2024 E56 PIGEON AND CLAY TARGET SHOOTING ORIGIN PART I
let
me tell
you about the origin of trap shooting,
which began in England. Reporting
on sporting events in England began
in the 1710s and 1720s, this at a time
when the population of England
began to double between 1700 and 1800, and a new leisure class of titled,
gentry and upper-middling groups emerged.
Wagering needed winners and losers, so wagering
and
gambling has long been ingrained in British society. Clearly hunting was a rural
sport. But in pigeon shooting it attracted rural and city spectators, the
landowning aristocracy and gentry, farmers, townfolks, and countrymen, even
though the pigeon enclosure grounds could be a few miles outside a town. But it
was innkeepers and tavernkeepers who contributed probably the most at its
inception as they gained financial benefit form hosting pigeon shooting and
they existed in taverns
and inns up and down England for over a millennium, the best were
located
on turnpikes near large towns and cities, a turnpike being a road kept up in good shape by levying a toll on the
user such as coaches and stages. In these
establishments, wagering was generally associated with some form of sport
such as horse racing,
cockfighting, cricket, and pigeon shooting
where the latter had an enclosure,
along with their other functions of providing refreshments, food, lodging,
meetings, and trade activities.
Realizing the
potential for revenue that could be generated, inns’ and taverns’ keepers began promoting many
contests. The two played a highly
significant commercial role, often
helping arrange, advertise,
and host pigeon-shooting
matches. London was the key center for pigeon shooting and contests,
tied to the inn-and tavern subculture, and aristocratic gambling patronage, and
crowds were often large.
It was wagering most
especially the high stakes “wagers” between
wealthy individuals on sporting contests that generated media coverage, wider
spectator interest, a larger betting market, and growing numbers of events,
increasingly on a commercial basis. Wagering encouraged the development of pigeon
shooting rules and
regulations in which to create “fair play”
in gambling terms and to avoid subsequent disputes.
For spectators,
wagering provided a strong
form of identification with the shooters
and the sport. The wagering of the
wealthy also gave real impetus to the
emerging sport of pigeon shooting. It was a sport that
required matching and eventually
handicapping, which were attempts to equalize
competition and create an uncertain outcome that encouraged wagering. In pigeon
shooting, matching shooters was part of the
ritual surrounding contests, encouraging status, honor, prestige, dignity, and
respect.
So, this preamble
hopefully gives you the listener of my
podcast some idea of the origin of
pigeon shooting, of how it all
started, along with its earliest
development in England. And, in doing so, I believe you will marvel at
how well they shot with the old, clumsy, untrustworthy, smoothbore, muzzleloading
flintlocks using
black powder, for
when
the
shooter fired, there was an appreciable moment of time between the instant of
pulling the trigger and the
instant when the shot left the muzzle, and if the priming
was damp or blown away by the wind, the gun could not be fired at all,
and with black powder,
which they used, shooting with a double barrel on a windless day, the smoke would
hang
in front of the muzzle and blind the shooter on
many occasion preventing him from firing
his second barrel. If
that wasn’t enough, they had to hold the butt end of
the gun below the elbow until the pigeon was on the
wing. It seems a miracle that pigeon shooters
could manage
all these
inferior weapons so effectively.
let
me attempt to tell
you about the origin of trap shooting,
which began in England. Furthermore, I
must be forthright and tell you that
the exact time when pigeon shooting and matches came into vogue
that I have found no authentic
records verifying such, as
newspapers did
not begin reporting
on sporting events in England until
in the 1710s and 1720s, this at a time
when the population of England
began to double between 1700 and 1800, and a new leisure class of titled,
gentry and upper-middling groups emerged.
Wagering needed winners and losers, so wagering
and
gambling has long been ingrained in British society. Clearly hunting was a rural
sport. But in pigeon shooting it attracted rural and city spectators, the
landowning aristocracy and gentry, farmers, townfolks, and countrymen, even
though the pigeon enclosure grounds could be a few miles outside a town. But it
was innkeepers and tavernkeepers who contributed probably the most at its
inception as they gained financial benefit form hosting pigeon shooting and
they existed in taverns
and inns up and down England for over a millennium, the best were
located
on turnpikes near large towns and cities, a turnpike being a road kept up in good shape by levying a toll on the
user such as coaches and stages. In these
establishments, wagering was generally associated with some form of sport
such as horse racing,
cockfighting, cricket, and pigeon shooting
where the latter had an enclosure,
along with their other functions of providing refreshments, food, lodging,
meetings, and trade activities.
Realizing the
potential for revenue that could be generated, inns’ and taverns’ keepers began promoting many
contests. The two played a highly
significant commercial role, often
helping arrange, advertise,
and host pigeon-shooting
matches. London was the key center for pigeon shooting and contests,
tied to the inn-and tavern subculture, and aristocratic gambling patronage, and
crowds were often large.
It was wagering most
especially the high stakes “wagers” between
wealthy individuals on sporting contests that generated media coverage, wider
spectator interest, a larger betting market, and growing numbers of events,
increasingly on a commercial basis. Wagering encouraged the development of pigeon
shooting rules and
regulations in which to create “fair play”
in gambling terms and to avoid subsequent disputes.
For spectators,
wagering provided a strong
form of identification with the shooters
and the sport. The wagering of the
wealthy also gave real impetus to the
emerging sport of pigeon shooting. It was a sport that
required matching and eventually
handicapping, which were attempts to equalize
competition and create an uncertain outcome that encouraged wagering. In pigeon
shooting, matching shooters was part of the
ritual surrounding contests, encouraging status, honor, prestige, dignity, and
respect.
So, this preamble
hopefully gives you the listener of my
podcast some idea of the origin of
pigeon shooting, of how it all
started, along with its earliest
development in England. And, in doing so, I believe you will marvel at
how well they shot with the old, clumsy, untrustworthy, smoothbore, muzzleloading
flintlocks using
black powder, for
when
the
shooter fired, there was an appreciable moment of time between the instant of
pulling the trigger and the
instant when the shot left the muzzle, and if the priming
was damp or blown away by the wind, the gun could not be fired at all,
and with black powder,
which they used, shooting with a double barrel on a windless day, the smoke would
hang
in front of the muzzle and blind the shooter on
many occasion preventing him from firing
his second barrel. If
that wasn’t enough, they had to hold the butt end of
the gun below the elbow until the pigeon was on the
wing. It seems a miracle that pigeon shooters
could manage
all these
inferior weapons so effectively.
let
me attempt to tell
you about the origin of trap shooting,
which began in England. Furthermore, I
must be forthright and tell you that
the exact time when pigeon shooting and matches came into vogue
that I have found no authentic
records verifying such, as
newspapers did
not begin reporting
on sporting events in England until
in the 1710s and 1720s, this at a time
when the population of England
began to double between 1700 and 1800, and a new leisure class of titled,
gentry and upper-middling groups emerged.
Wagering needed winners and losers, so wagering
and
gambling has long been ingrained in British society. Clearly hunting was a rural
sport. But in pigeon shooting it attracted rural and city spectators, the
landowning aristocracy and gentry, farmers, townfolks, and countrymen, even
though the pigeon enclosure grounds could be a few miles outside a town. But it
was innkeepers and tavernkeepers who contributed probably the most at its
inception as they gained financial benefit form hosting pigeon shooting and
they existed in taverns
and inns up and down England for over a millennium, the best were
located
on turnpikes near large towns and cities, a turnpike being a road kept up in good shape by levying a toll on the
user such as coaches and stages. In these
establishments, wagering was generally associated with some form of sport
such as horse racing,
cockfighting, cricket, and pigeon shooting
where the latter had an enclosure,
along with their other functions of providing refreshments, food, lodging,
meetings, and trade activities.
Realizing the
potential for revenue that could be generated, inns’ and taverns’ keepers began promoting many
contests. The two played a highly
significant commercial role, often
helping arrange, advertise,
and host pigeon-shooting
matches. London was the key center for pigeon shooting and contests,
tied to the inn-and tavern subculture, and aristocratic gambling patronage, and
crowds were often large.
It was wagering most
especially the high stakes “wagers” between
wealthy individuals on sporting contests that generated media coverage, wider
spectator interest, a larger betting market, and growing numbers of events,
increasingly on a commercial basis. Wagering encouraged the development of pigeon
shooting rules and
regulations in which to create “fair play”
in gambling terms and to avoid subsequent disputes.
For spectators,
wagering provided a strong
form of identification with the shooters
and the sport. The wagering of the
wealthy also gave real impetus to the
emerging sport of pigeon shooting. It was a sport that
required matching and eventually
handicapping, which were attempts to equalize
competition and create an uncertain outcome that encouraged wagering. In pigeon
shooting, matching shooters was part of the
ritual surrounding contests, encouraging status, honor, prestige, dignity, and
respect.
So, this preamble
hopefully gives you the listener of my
podcast some idea of the origin of
pigeon shooting, of how it all
started, along with its earliest
development in England. And, in doing so, I believe you will marvel at
how well they shot with the old, clumsy, untrustworthy, smoothbore, muzzleloading
flintlocks using
black powder, for
when
the
shooter fired, there was an appreciable moment of time between the instant of
pulling the trigger and the
instant when the shot left the muzzle, and if the priming
was damp or blown away by the wind, the gun could not be fired at all,
and with black powder,
which they used, shooting with a double barrel on a windless day, the smoke would
hang
in front of the muzzle and blind the shooter on
many occasion preventing him from firing
his second barrel. If
that wasn’t enough, they had to hold the butt end of
the gun below the elbow until the pigeon was on the
wing. It seems a miracle that pigeon shooters
could manage
all these
inferior weapons so effectively.
1 hr 10 min
October 25, 2024 E55 THE OLD HOME PLACE HERB PARSONS
A True magazine article that chronicled Herb’s
accomplishments tagged him as the “Showman Shooter” and the moniker stuck.
On the way to an exhibition, Herb would stop at a supermarket
where he collected what he called his "groceries." He bought oranges,
grapefruit, potatoes, cabbages, turnips, and several dozen eggs. Wherever he
went, the town’s people were about to witness one of the greatest shooting
exhibitions of all time—a combination of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Annie
Oakley, Doc Carver, P.T. Barnum and a Vaudeville comedy routine.
In 55 frenzied minutes, Herb typically shot, non-stop, more
than 15 Winchester firearms 52 different ways at more than 800 targets, scoring
99 percent on them. The ones he missed, he said, were “hens.”
Herb was
hired in 1929 by Winchester to be a salesman for the Mississippi territory. Winchester
advertisements from the era called Herb the “Winchester Wizard.” He came to
epitomize the idea that being good with a gun was a way to become a better man,
and nothing could better illustrate just how valuable our Second Amendment
really is to all Americans. Upon Herb’s early passing in 1959 at age 51, he had
been a Winchester man for 30 years. His love of hunting and shooting was only
surpassed by his devotion to family and church.
38 min

About HISTORIC DUCK HUNTING STORIES THE GOLDEN AGE OF DUCK HUNTING

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Most duck hunters want to know what happened in the olden and golden days when the old timers pursued their love of duck hunting, but not everyone has the time nor patience to read through a bunch of…