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Since no one bit on my Chick question but supposely:
Cylde Hancock taught and influenced Chic Majors
Chic Majors taught and influenced Butch Richenbach
Butch Richenbach is still spreading his love in Stuggart to the youth once a week for free calling lessons

I got to meet and spend some time with Cylde Hancock's daughter last season in Lodge Corner, Ar for a few days while we hunted her land next to Bayou Meto. She trusted me as a student of duck call history and let me toot on her fathers call he won the World Championship with in the 40's or 50s........nostagia!

Great post....
Good to know there are others out there.

swamprooter wrote:Since no one bit on my Chick question but supposely:
Cylde Hancock taught and influenced Chic Majors
Chic Majors taught and influenced Butch Richenbach
Butch Richenbach is still spreading his love in Stuggart to the youth once a week for free calling lessons

I got to meet and spend some time with Cylde Hancock's daughter last season in Lodge Corner, Ar for a few days while we hunted her land next to Bayou Meto. She trusted me as a student of duck call history and let me toot on her fathers call he won the World Championship with in the 40's or 50s........nostagia!

I was a kid sitting between my grandad and father on the hood of a 1970-something buick on the levee above the Greenville marina at Lake Ferguson when some whipper snapper ugly as sin from Arkansas showed up at the world championship as i remember, when it was held in Greenville, and beat the town favorite, a fella by the name of James Baker that was a research forester in Stoneville. Mr baker lived 3 houses down from us on fava Drive back then and blew a double reed Yentzen. He showed us boys how a piece of tin foil between the reeds gave it "that special buzz". He'd practice on summer nights when everyone was generally outside and grilling or whatever and daddy and other neighbors would grab their calls and chime in with him. That scrawny Arkansan was blowing a "new fangled" call, grandad said; a single reed call. That Arkansan that relegated Mr. Baker to second place was young Mr. Richenback. He was blowing a Chick Majors call. The rest is history. I was there, like Forrest Gump, watching it happen, but at the time I only loathed the stranger that knocked my neighbor-hero from what surely we thought at the time rightfully his title. Course two decades later when I saw my neighbor-hero at a crawfish boil, all he remembered and talked about was the day I handed his son, my age, the biggest red eared slider ever caught in Washington County and it bit a plug smooth out of his stomach and my raising 3 kinds og hellwhen he tossed my prize over the fence and back into the ditch...wasn't my fault boy didnt know how to handle such a prize and has the scar on his tomach to prove it to this very day

swamprooter wrote:Since no one bit on my Chick question but supposely:
Cylde Hancock taught and influenced Chic Majors
Chic Majors taught and influenced Butch Richenbach
Butch Richenbach is still spreading his love in Stuggart to the youth once a week for free calling lessons

I got to meet and spend some time with Cylde Hancock's daughter last season in Lodge Corner, Ar for a few days while we hunted her land next to Bayou Meto. She trusted me as a student of duck call history and let me toot on her fathers call he won the World Championship with in the 40's or 50s........nostagia!

de

wish i woulda been keepin up with this post cause i could of answered it.. i heard butch talkin about it this past weekend

Bankermane wrote:Bought all my wstuff at Gibson's Discount which was later bought by Howard Brothers. I grew up hunting in East Ms. Didn't know you could kill ducks in the morning. Get to a beaver pound about 4:30 and shoot till 9:00 PM. Could see 4 foot of flame coming out of the barrell. may have had a J.C. Higgins pump. Hunted out of a car and walked in.

I'm with you Bankermane. To my knowledge, there weren't any prime morning holes in Newton Co.
This made me think about my first "duck hunt" that I was invited on. I must have been about 10 and my brother in law called me one night and said that he would take me the next afternoon after school but for me not to tell anybody about it????
Well he picks me up in his VW Bug and off we go. I may have been 5' tall and I borrowed my fathers coveralls and waders and he was well over 6'. I looked like the Staypuff Man.
Well we start our walk downhill to the beaver ponds. Must have been 30 acres flooded. He dropped me off on the edge of the water and the only advice he gave me was not to walk out from the dam or near the beaver huts because the water was deep there. He didn't say squat about any beaver runs!
Well he takes off and heads around the pond to the other side and all I was thinking was that I was left in a gar hole. So being the genius that I was, I decide to wade further out in the lake. Remember me mentioning the beaver runs? Next step and there was no bottom. I didn't weigh enough to sink and me feet floated up like a cork. I couldn't get them down so I had to swim to the next tree so I could push my feet down.
I finally regained my composure and drained the water out of my gun in time to kill my first, second, third, and fourth ducks. Two drake Mallards, one Susie, and one drake wood duck.
I was wet to the core, but I knew right then that the good Lord had blessed me with an opportunity that day to pursue these beloved creatures and I've been after them ever since.
That day I carried my Remington 20 guage pump (on a Browning Patient that is sitting beside me tonight in my gun cabinet).
You say old school, yes I am but I feel like a youth everytime I see that sunrise in a blind.

Im definatly old school...... yall be talking bout the good ole days when the men were men and the cows stayed nervous.... uninsulated rubber Red Ball waders and the 6 knot suspenders , cotton gloves usually soaking wet bout 2 min. into the hunt, lead shot, frozen water for a week cept for the rivers... float hunting....walkin bout 3 miles to get to THE HOLE in rubber waders.!!!!!. packin 3 doz dekes in burlap potato sacks... running seagrass string through the top to make it close... piling painted burlap potato sacks on the front of your boat and float the river. Take inner tubes and use trotline string to make a seat paint the tubes camo or tie poatato sacks on top of em and float in the sloughs used for both hunting and fishing.. Notice we used alot of burlap potato sacks. That was caommo material back then fellas. I worked in a grocery store back then so they werent to hard to come by.. Man those were the days that mother nature would put you through the test and test your endurance...... man I loved it all...still do today cept for the comming home and couldnt tie your shoes or zip up your coat with you hands cause they were so cold you couldnt use them..... running cold water on them just to warm them up...... Oh yeah for you younger fellas info if you were to happen to get that cold on your handS DONT RUN HOT WATER ON THEM USE COLD......hot will make you think your hands caught on fire.....Thanks for the post and bringing back those memories of long since yester year

I started out on a Mallardtone and moved up to a D-2 Olt. Wore the $30 thin "Jap" waders from Gibson's that stunk so bad of rubber that they gave you a headache the first few times you wore them, and they were tight as frog skin on you with zero insulation. Steel shank lace up rubber boots with the bright green laces. My dad was wearing those Duxbak olive green hollofil jackets with the tan ribbed collar and cuffs (and I still wear one today)...and the Duxbak caps with the drape that snapped in the back...all purchased from Heath Bros on the square in Grenada.

A well-trained retriever was unheard of, and retrievers in general were few and far between. Dad handed me down the old '56 3hp Johnson Seahorse that spun 360 for reverse after he got a new '72 6hp with throttle on the tiller - woohoo! The most desired shell for timber shooting was the blue Peter's high brass 7 1/2 shot with #4s for the open water....usually the black ones were all I could afford. Dad shot an 12ga A-5 and I shot a Remington 16ga Model 11 until I got a new 1100 (30" full) for my 14th birthday. Those were the days.

....and I always wanted a W.C Cross call, but didn't get one until about 10 years ago...it is my most coveted duck call.

An earlier post mentioned the canvas hunting pants with the knit cuffs.........I have 2 pair of them that I got from L.L. Bean; they were very comfortable and good for duck hunting or quail hunting because they could be tucked into rubber knee boots, hip boots or upland boots......I have them put away for memories because I do not think my 2008 fat gut (38") will fit into a 30 inch pair from the 70's....LOL


Also, I bought my father a pair back in the early 70's for Christmas; they were the poplin kind with the flannel lining, but they still had the knit cuffs. He wore them on just about every duck hunting trip for the next 8-10 years. L.L. Bean had some good stuff back in the day.

acornman

It's amazing that we survived the old days. Freezing that a@@ off standing in hip deep water with uninsulated waders and cotton gloves. You had to be either a tough s.o.b. or crazy and it helped to be both. Don't get me wrong, I would love to go back in time to do it all over again. I still remember the days when tornadic ducks fogging into your decoys was a fairly common occurance. I would gladly put on those uninsulated waders and my great big michellin man down filled coat just to see the tornado ducks of my youth

I remember shooting a goose of the pond behind the barn with a 22. I had thought I killed the biggest duck in the world. That was 1959. Few years later I learned number 5 lead would knock the be jeezus out of a duck at 30 yards and paper hull shells did not like water. I so remember Daddy buying Me those water proof shells for the 12 gauge. Who remembers the old style paper wads where you could make a pumpkin slug.

yes....you are talking about the old nitro paper wads which I have used to reload many 16 gauge shells with. They were standard equipment before plastic shot collars and cups.

acornman

[quote="GulfCoast]
Gibsons was the BOMB! They had all the cool Mann's Jellyworms that no one else carried. Then stupid Wal Mart showed up and killed them. I loved Gibsons.[/quote]

I had one in bike riding distance from my house. I use to buy wooden arrows for my 20lb fiberglass bow, bb's and fishing lures there. Every once in a while I will run across something with the pink Gibson price tag on it. Things sure were cheap then

tombstone wrote:[

I still have crank baits from Gibson's Going Out of Business sale 20 years ago. I bought about 30 of them for $1 a piece.

Saw my first mesh Decoy sack in Magic Mart there in Indianola about 1973..Rode my bike up there to get some pellets. It was on an end cap.Boasted it had straps and rot proof. I didn't replace my national gaurd army green duffle sack with the clip on the strap to years later.....I have been through alot decoys bags since then but i bet that army duffle would still hold up..

+1 on the potato sacks.....we used peanut sacks, would come up to farish street to the peanut man to get 'em....used them for everything...boat camo, blind camo and decoy bags. I took a many a nap on a pile of peanut sacks in Dad's old jeep....
called 'em croaker sacks....