Duck Hunting, 1930s Style plus Jon and a Duck

Jon is sharing hunting photos from his family album. These days, "Ducks Unlimited" has a lot of work to do--ducks were once so abundant that the Sampson boys(Gene, Johnnie, Vake) could enjoy hunting them and count on bringing home two or three braces of birds each trip . I can recall even in the 1950s seeing flyways much more crowded than they are today.
      I might already have recorded the duck-hunting story Jack LaChappelle told to illustrate the analytical nature of  Vake's  mind.  The two were duck-hunting when  Vake felt his rain gear being lightly peppered with bird-shot.  He asked Jack, "What size shot are you using?"When Jack answered, "Number 8 birdshot" (or whatever size they would have used), Vake said, "Well goddammit, you just shot me with number 8 birdshot."   
     By the mid- or late 1950s, I remember telling Vake that I wished he wouldn't shoot the wood ducks because they were so pretty.  He agreed, and I don't remember his even hunting duck after that. And Johnnie built houses for the wood ducks and fixed them to the trees around his Woahink Lake place, since they like to nest in hollow trees.
  But back then,  the routine was to hunt them, pluck them, singe the pinfeathers with the torch that was used in the plumbing shop, draw them, and cook them for dinner.  Eating, you had to be careful of biting into a piece of lead buckshot.

Flushing out the birds

Johnnie (left)

Johnnie, Anon, Vake, Everett Goodman, Uncle Buck Goodman

Jon
 

   Frank Horn comments: 

Those were good words about hunting in the "old days" There were so many water fowl migrating through Utah that we had problems with the newly installed radar at SLC [Salt Lake City] that was supposed to pick up aircraft, not flights of geese, ducks, etc. When hunting season opened, the hunters would roust huge flocks of water birds, and the rather inexperienced controllers complained a lot.