Tales from Reelfoot Lake area By James H Rogers

By: James H Rogers

When I was a young duck hunter in the 50s my brother and I would buy Peters High Velocity shells because they were less than a dollar a box. About seventy five cents I think. The only problem was when you got them wet they would swell up on the crimp end and not work in a pump or semiautomatic shotgun.

We were just kids out hunting by ourselves. We didn’t have the super warm clothes and boots that are available now. While setting in the duct blind freezing, we would take the fired paper hulls of our Peters shells, split them with a knife and burning them to warm our hands.

We went hunting on a river bar one afternoon. It was snowing and I didn’t have antifreeze in my 1953 Ford. I drained the radiator every night and filled it with water when we went somewhere. I crawled under it and closed the radiator petcock. Johnny and I filled it with water and grabbed our gear and guns. We also took a bucket for water. The Mississippi River was flooded so we had to drive up to the bend and go around the top of the bar to get there. When we arrived I crawled under the car and opened the radiator drain and removed the cap.

The ducks were really flying. We were at the edge of a flooded cornfield and the ducks were trying to land but there were so many they had to funnel in. My brother shot a suzy about 45 or 50 yards away. She went down but ran along the ground . Johnny took off after her splashing through snow, ice, frozen mud and a little water. He fell down a couple times and finally got the duck. I concentrated on the big flock in front of me. I just needed to get a little closer. As I was practicing my best sneakiness it dawned on me Johnny wasn’t back. It was snowing so hard, it was hard to see very far. I could just make him out about one hundred yards away sitting in the mud and snow. I yelled at him but no answer. I started walking his direction. He wasn’t moving.

Now you have to realize that my brother loved to duck hunt and was always the first one there and the last to leave. The closer I got to him I realized he was just setting there with his gun laying in the mud beside him. He had his hip boots off and his socks in his hands. His beard was covered with ice. I looked at him and asked why he had taken his boots off. He said that he had broke through the ice, fell down and got water in his boots. He took his boots off, removed his socks and tried to wring them out. They had frozen in his hands in a wad and he couldn’t pull them apart. He was sitting there saying something I didn’t quite understand. Wait, I think he said “Take me home”. I couldn’t believe it. Ducks coming in by the hundreds and I hadn’t fired a shot.

I ran to the car, crawled under in the snow and closed off the drain. I grabbed the bucket and went to the waters edge and started stomping a hole in the ice. I carried a couple buckets full before filling the car and replacing the radiator cap. I cranked it up so it would start warming up and went to help Johnny out of the field. He never did get his socks on just those thin rubber boots. But we did make it home OK, to a nice warm kerosen stove. Of course back then it was a coal oil stove.

We went through all of this for one duck. That was the most ducks I have ever seen in one place.

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