doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Sneak Shooting for Canvasback

King,

I'm sure you never sold any. *wink*

I'm assuming that was black ducks or broadbill yes?

I can't imagine anybody paying $2 a pair for oldsquaw or scoter.

How much were geese?


Destry

I think 2$/pr was the rate here for cans as well. Packed in barrels, and shipped to "the big city".
The birds I see are north of the iron bridge down on the water among the sand bars going into St Louis.

My home is where William Mershon of conservation fame and an article entitled "Railcar named Saginaw" hunted canvasbacks in the rice fields. Rails too.
When I walk down to the marsh I often imagine Bill with his bp Mayfair fowler walking the same inter urban rail grade. He hunted it before diking and pumping was the norm.
The duck hunting is always very good.

We have very few cans that pass through our area so they are only shot rarely,however there is a very long history of shooting Black Brant from layout boats that hunt offshore with large decoy spreads.Will attach a couple pics of yours truly out on our local bay a couple years ago. BTW, thank you for the address of the layout boat website,wasn't aware of it. Good to know that there are a few others that get their jollies from having breakers roll over their boat occasionally!!!
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Terry,
Nice!!! I'm hopefully going to kill my first brant next month. Carried a gun for one 7 days on Tangier Island a few years back but he never showed up.

Zapper,
That's the same Mershon who wrote the great book on the Passenger Pigeon isn't it? You say Great Lakes Region, what part of the Region are you actually from? And by ClapperZapper I assume you must be a railbird gunner as well.



Destry

Are you in Saginaw? Mershon did a lot of shooting on the rice marshes along the Saginaw River prior to all flood control dikes being constructed. It sure destroyed a lot of natural habitat. Now we have to pay to maintain dikes and pumps and hunt flooded corn. All in the name of progress I guess....Another tidbit that I find interesting is that Mershon always used a 16bore. Even when his buddies were using the big 10's in the goose pits of ND.

MH, I've hunted clapper rails from that boat. Chincoteague Is, Yes?

That's Bill alright. He would get off the interurban about 400 yards from my house, and hunt the celery beds by the river. Reading his papers, and poking through his collection, I really gained an appreciation for the early conservationists.
We can't always see the big picture, sometimes it's because we don't want to.

Destry, I didn't have to sell because my mother was a fisherman's daughter married to a RCAF bomber pilot who joined up Sept. 1, 1939 and was shot down by Germany's top nightfighter July 3, 1942 and spent the rest of the war on the escape committee---he made three unsuccessfully---in Stalag Luft III.

We even had oranges when the general merchant could get them; our neighbours could afford them only for Christmas stockings. Geese in those days were scarce on our shore, not polluted with them as we are now. Same $2 pair for whistlers, coots, eiders, oldsquaw, bluebills and blacks, the money an invisible commerce.

All the best, Destry. I anticipate seeing your shining face again.

Clapper,

Nope, but pretty close. That was in Wachapreague, Virginia actually. I was shooting with an old fella named Milton Stranton. Here's a picture of him poling me along the tide ditches:



King,

I'm assuming your Dad made it home after that ordeal by the way you tell it. Quite a story, you should write a book about all your family tales. I've got that corker you told us over on the Parker BBS saved in my file for "Tales of the Parker Gun" whenever I get enough stories together to seriously start putting it together. I'm thinking of making another run up your way during next season. I never did get that eider duck and that was the reason I came. Well that and to "collect your money" for joining the PGCA. *wink*

Dad made it home in good shape although, tired of waiting for the boat home, he flirted with a courtmartial for liberating a BOAC Short Sunderland to fly home via the Azores. Only problem he didn't know the flying boat was also moored from its keel. and had two engines started when the Royal Marines came aboard. What got him off---well, who's going to cashier a guy with long and distinguished service anyway---was his question to the arresting MP's "Where's the wet canteen?"

Dad's dearest friend, George Harsh, in charge of security for The Great Escape, was with him on that caper. George joined the RCAF after being pardoned for performing a successful appendectomy on a prisoner during 12 years on a Georgia chain gang. It's a remarkable story related in his biography Lonesome Road (Norton) Library of Congress No. 69-14699. What George didn't say in the book was that he saved more than 100 black inmates during a night fire by smashing a door with an axe and breaking chains holding prisoners by the ankle.

George died in Toronto Sunnybrook Hospital January 24, 1980 with his air force friends in Canada. He had redeemed himself, this great American, and his book is a tribute to the indomitableness of the human spirit. On that note, Destry, I'll be sending along 2008's without coercion, thanks. Your 10 gauge was certainly persuasive. Let me know when you're coming this way. All the best, King