You might be Old School if.....

[swamprooter]

You still have Mississippi's first issued duck stamp but it's not a stamp
You never heard of breasting a duck, everything was picked and waxed and cinched with a flame.
A Dixie Mallard was the rig if you could drive over to Arkie and buy one from the man.
Western Auto had a decent hunting supply arrangement

[crackhead]

This weekend we plucked some ducks to make a gumbo. While I was picken them I remembered you did two things at duck camp back in the day. Hunted in the a.m. and picked in the p.m. Or if you were lucky a member would run into town and a old black lady "hosie" would plucked em in her kitchen for 1 buck a bird.

Best thread thats been on here in a long time!! Keep em up.

Swamp my dad still to this day talks about his dixie mallard. He lost it and a lanyard that had 20 or so bands on it.

[Gumbo]

i have a dixie mallard...and have shot over live decoys (i hope the statute of limitations has expired for the interent game wardens) it used to be fairly common in LA when I was younger. Once the Fed's started following the duck migrations in the early 80's it went away....

[goosebruce]

I never bought a decoy anchor in my life until last year (big spark plug fan). Decoys used to be expensive, and you fixed and babied them. now they're disposable. the dang straps and string cost as much as the deeks.

I remember getting locked in the storage room to pick ducks as a kid. You NEVER breasted anything, cept if it was real cold and you had some lil ducks.

Lo brass peters hulls with a hot load of 7.5's somebody you knew loaded was the early season choice. chilly 5's for later on. I remember my dad bought me a 3 inch magnum with plans to get himself one day. He never did. And it didn't matter much.

A box of #4 buckshot in your Christmas stocking, in case you saw a goose. If da man caught you with it, it was for shooting beavers.

Never saw a snow goose until I was 12. Now Im 37 and arkansas has 3 to 4 million of them.

We always had a motor. a 9.9 johnson, the only new outboard my dad ever had, and the only one he ever owned outright. I cant even remember all the outboards Ive owned. Good years we had a boat. One year we even had a trailer. Shoot, that was hi cotton.

4 wheel drive? Heck no. Biggest co-ops that would fit on the back of a 2 wd truck, granny low, and all the kids where in the back of the truck jumping up and down for traction.` We only got stuck when we needed to be home at a certain time. Thanksgiving was a given. If it was dry, you left your lites on and had to walk out for a boost.

The point system was the most biological and etchical boondoggle to ever happen. Of all the old time stuff, its the thing I least miss.

Of all the old time stuff, some of which time has made us remember much more favoritly, only thing I really wish I could have for one more hunt was my dad. He died 2 weeks before I graduated hi school. His job was done I suppose, and I can only be grateful for that or I wouldn't be the man I am. But man I wish just one more time, he'd be there with me on a hunt. Id love to see his face when he sees my boys. When he sees my dogs. When he sees how we do it now, but remember how we did it then. Id love to see his face to see even though Im not rich, I got stuff to 'play' with we used to only dream about. Id love to see his face when he could see he did his job with me. All those morning he gave up birds and fish, to take his kids hunting, to make us men. Treat us like equals to make us become equals. Id love to see his face how little things he did, made us realize things about this world that changed us forever.... not him making a point, him simply living his life and being the best man he could be and us growing up like that and inspring us to be the same. My dad starting coughing at his 50th birthday party. He died a couple months later. I have finally in the last few months with my own problems, realizaed I have lived every minute since the day I knew he was dying, thinking Id never see 52 years old. My brother and I talked about it, for the first time EVER, last weekend, going hunting of course. He has the same nagging feeling. Crazy, maybe. But ya can't help how you feel. I never told anybody that, until him last weekend, why Id type that right here I cant really say. I resented people for a long long time that didnt know me from my dad, and resented others that did because their life is the same. Im past that now, finally, after only 20 years. Threads like this make me think of those days. Im sad for about 30 seconds, thinking I wish he was here. But then I laugh and think about how hes watching. For the first 2 years, I stopped at his grave and gave him the play by play, of every flight like you would for a buddy stuck at work. I finally stopped, I realized he saw em. He was hitting that 'dollar' call and bringing em back for me. He was there, just like he is in everything I do. travis

[swamprooter]

who in the world can follow that?.......awesome goose

[crackhead]

Solid read goose. Over the last two years I havea really made a point to hunt with my dad. For years I went where the birds were, be it on public land or Arkansas, now its more important to spend EVERY hunt I can with him. My grandfather was a coon hunter so my dad was taught how to hunt by his uncle "uncle pots was how he was know to everyone". Now I listen to dad tell stories about how in pots later years he couldnt call as good or had enough air to blow a call so he allways would carry dad with him to call and do all the foot work. While the ducks would work dad's butt hole would be hanging out his skivies b/c pots would be over there saying "call tommy, dammit call, you got to call all the way into the blocks". Now dad is saying the same things to me. Its real scary to see someone's life make the full circle.

When dad was a little kid pots had an english calling duck that went to the blind with em. All pots would do is poke it with a little stick and it would quack its little ars off. Pots loved to kill ducks so much he would have his coons rake up acorns in down town Clarksdale to put around our hole's.

[Double R 2]

[quote="MSDuckmen]
Once I had 195 points as I took a black duck as my last duck when I was sitting with 95 points in ducks before the shot. [/quote]

Helluva shoot, and helluva great thread. Best thread that's been open here in awhile. I missed the halcyon days of Mississippi duck killing by a few years; I was in grade school when the point system was strong. I remember rubber hip boots and lead, I remember butt scooching 3 wheelers in mud (and getting off to push for reverse). Remember shooting Remington Mohawks and wish I still have a few boxes on hand for posterity. No such things as "chokes"; it was part of the barrel taper and you bought the gun for its intended purpose based on the barrel's choke. I never heard Cowboy Fernandez until I was a little older, but remember grandad listening to Earl Dennison's LP while demonstrating kinda-sorta similar sounding calls on his metal-reed call that bears the same name. Still have the call, nylon fishing line lanyard and all; the recording got tossed out when dad set up house for his new wife. Managed to hang onto the 50's era Mercury 5 hp motor that dad, Uncle and Grandad plied the waters of their duck camp with too. Breasting ducks and doves was a sin, and I remember the old man describing that shiny piece of leg metal on a mallard in the kitchen sink as "government tag" before pitching it in the trash bin with the wings, feet and entrails (less, of course, the hearts, gizzard and livers). That was later on, when times, or sherrifs, had changed and he no longer carried them to the Greenville Jail. I remember him cleaning out his billfold and pitching his stamps and licenses in the trash too after the season, nothing special back in those days. Not ducks, but I also remember the emotional trauma I experienced even at the tender age of about 6 watching him clean out his huge tacklebox of all those wooden plugs - more than I dreamed of ever owning at the time - and hauling them to the curb to make room for "fancy plastics that catch more fish". Which is all to say I still kick myself in the balls for not realizing as a teenager, and even a few years beyond that, the special sentimental if not actual values some of that stuff would represent later in my life: I now painfully recall the day in college while hunting up near present-day Trimcane WMA that the last 5 of "his" paper mache decoys, fully half of my inventory at the time, became waterlogged and sank during an otherwise unmemorable duck hunt! Lead wasn't legal then, but it was near the time I depleted the few remaining rounds of Remington Mohawks anyways. Maybe the old man would have had it no other way.

[Roach]

Some of my first "real" duck hunts were on the Res. Back then you could register your blind and they would give you a little sign to put by it.
We had a big pocket up by Pipeline Road that we had our blinds around and we would put out about 8 doz decoys and no telling how many milk jugs were left out there.
The guy that had the blind "across the woods" from us could really call. I loved to hear him cut loose. However, he only had a doz decoys I think. I would hit the ole Yentzen with a chuckle and they would come to us on a string. Good times.

[crackhead]

Me and Super T on a hunt from a few years ago. I dont know if you can see it or not but the boards on the back of our blind have been in that hole for over thirty years. When ever we redo it we keep em on the blind so not to f up the mojo.

[Roach]

[Gumbo]

i have a video (old betamax) that wa taken when i was a teenager on a hunt with the old timers shooting over live decoys....don't know where it is but want to find it...

[novacaine]

Roach- don't you recognize that painted camo pattern? That is the original delta boy duck blind pattern that has been passed down from generation to generation. From my extensive research on the subject I have found that with the introduction of spray paint many years ago, you started to see a transition from the hurried brush strokes of yester year to a smoother arcing motion with this new fangled paint in a pressurized canister!!!!!!! This pattern is still used by many of us to this day. Try using this method and help us carry on a fine delta boy tradition.Thank you for your support.

[ACEINTHEHOLE]

[Deltamud77]

I don't know if this counts as truly old school like the point system and what not, but something people hunting for less than 15 years will not remember is actually having hipped up rows in flooded fields. I am not talking about the no-till rows of today, I am talking about rows that seem to be knee high. It was great way to test the temperature of the water if you know what I mean.

I can also remember seeing my first synthetic stock gun and thinking it looked like something off of lasertag and that it was just some fad that would come and go.

[crackhead]

These cats are as old school as it gets. Uncle Pots is the one on the far right.