A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting: The Decoys, Guides, Clubs, and Places, 1870s to 1970s

Foreword

 vii   The sport of waterfowl hunting began, for many of us, at an early age. As summer green turned to fall orange, we put on our boots and went afield with fathers, uncles, brothers, friends, and sometimes we went alone. I was introduced to waterfowl when my parents put a Flambeau bluebill decoy in my bathtub. From the tub I migrated to the garage, where I helped with cleaning and plucking duties, pulling the wax off of our harvest of fat mallards. Even before I was old enough to shoot a gun, my dad made sure I understood that duck hunting was not a right, but a privilege. My love for waterfowl—its conservation, management, and the hunt—was nurtured by my family. Near my hometown of Starkville, Mississippi, my dad leased property, a mixture of former soybean fields and bottomland hardwoods, that seasonally flooded from the backwaters of the Noxubee River. For us, the waterfowl season was a year-long affair. Each spring we pulled boards from water control structures to encourage growth of millet and smartweed and planted willow trees we made into duck blinds before each hunting season. Summer was a time to fight mosquitoes, cottonmouths, and the ever-persistent beaver. During fall we walked our oak flats to check on the year’s acorn production from a great stand of willow and cherrybark oaks, which provided food for wintering mallards and wood ducks. We prepped our willow blinds by adding natural vegetation, and as the days got shorter and cooler we awaited the northern fronts that would stir the humid air and bring the winter rains. When the rain ran off the hills and began to fill the bottoms, we began to anticipate the arrival of the ducks. Our first hunt was rewarding not only for the ducks we harvested, but also for the unforgettable sight of hundreds of birds rising, returning, and decoying to the habitat we constructed. Months of preparation had come full circle. foreword viii  FOREWORD Like countless young boys before and after me, I grew up on the rich legends and lore that make up the history of waterfowl hunting. I remember how my dad described the rafts of bluebills on Lake Michigan near his hometown of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, during the 1950s and 60s. He told me how he measured these “slicks” in miles and how he hunted the open water for the “butterballs.” He explained how these ducks traveled from their prairie and boreal forest breeding grounds to staging areas on lakes in the upper Midwest before heading to the Atlantic or Gulf Coast. Stories like these have entertained and influenced hunters young and old across North America’s wetlands, and that is what A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting presents to waterfowl hunters, watchers, historians, and other enthusiasts. It brings the reader back in time to when waterfowl hunting was a way of life and highlights how communities were connected to the land and marsh. This book provides a rich and detailed reflection on the people, the communities, the habitat, and the multitude and diversity of waterfowl and waterfowl hunting on the Texas Gulf Coast. A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting clearly affirms that waterfowling is more than the sport—it is the passing of heritage from generation to generation. Matt Kaminski Ducks Unlimited, Texas ...