who do we owe a thanks to?

[Chris S.]

I think about this a lot. Who do we owe a thanks to for getting us started in waterfowling? For some its there father, grandfather, or uncle. For other it may be a friend. Who ever we owe a thanks to there is always a neat story that goes with it.

I will start for me I was raised by a single mother so guns and hunting was not in our house. At 9yrs old we moved to a small shore town here in NJ. we moved in around Nov. or Dec. I know this because the family down the street had really cool boats with marsh grass on them. It was a father and son and winter after winter on Sat. Mornings I would wait for them to come home and see what ducks they got that day. At 14 my mother finally gave in and let me get my first gun. Good old 870 I still hunted with last year. I couldn't wait to go duck hunting. It worked out well that the son was older then me and went off to school so I got to hunt a lot with his dad. That started the addiction for me. I left NJ for a while but when I came back in 2008 I jumped back into duck hunting head first and love every second of it. For me I owe a thanks to the Ferguson family for the great traditions and knowledge they passed on to the kid down the street.

So how did you get your start?

 

[Carl]

I owe my Dad and my Uncle Jimmy for all my passion for hunting and fishing. They both got me hooked on hunting before I could even tote a gun and I never looked back.
Dad was an avid duck hunter (as avid as one could be in the area of PA we are from) when he was in his 20's & 30's. He told lots of stories about his duck hunting days before he had a pile of kids.
My Uncle Jimmy was also an avid hunter and fisherman. He was more of a rabbit/small game hunter than ducks. He always has a great beagel, when we were kids, he would pick me & my cousin up before daylight, hunt rabbits all day and drop us off, completely worn out, at dark.
We didnt duck hunt much, I got started on this addiction in 1996 on my own. But its rooted in the hunting tradition my Dad & Uncle Jim instilled in me.

 

[Dave Diefenderfer]

I owe one of our own here on DHBP...John Bourbon. No hunters in my family, though I was interested enough in Scouts, to take the Hunter Safety class while at Camp Minsi in PA back in the 70s. when I moved to Vermont I became interested.... met John at a retriever class.... he had his chocolate Sully, and I had a black dog, Onyx. We became training friends and then hunting partners for some 20+ years now....

 

[Rob Robertson]

First hunter in My Family. Dont know what the draw was. Moved to the Country when I was 13. Saw ducks on some of the ponds. My Dad borrowed me a 16 gauge bolt action. I was hooked. Jumped ponds till I was 17. Then I could Drive. Read everything I could find on Duck Hunting. Bought some decoys and gave it a Try.

My life has never been the same since.

My First duck 1975

First Duck hunt on Lake Texoma 1980.

1982 Getting Better at it.

2000 Showing My Sons how its done

Now getting My Grandson ready

 

[Rich Hohler]

My dad hunted in his younger days but had his eye shot out in his mid teens so needless to say he did not get me started on hunting. A high school buddy got me started back in the 70s and I've been addicted since. To my dads credit, he never tried to steer me away from hunting because of his mishap and we have spent a lot of time together fishing and frogging over the years. My dad is 83 now and can't spend much time in the boat and I miss those days on the lake with him but he is always happy when we get together for a frog leg and fish fry.

 

[Tom Modin]

Nobody duck hunted in my family we learned the mistakes the hard way in our group in the early 90's. We were amazed that you could hunt ducks a couple years later for 60 days and shoot six of them compared to the 30/3 we started with.

 

[bvullo]

Robert Region and Larry Beck, two good old coon asses from Alexandria Louisiana. I met Robert who was the president of the Central Louisiana Retriever Club through Larry when I was stationed at England AFB. Larry was my civilian boss and I purchased a black lab puppy. He introduced us and we've been great friends since. I had never duck hunted in my life but when these guys took me the first time I was hooked. To this day its my passion. The base has since closed to the Air Force years ago, Larry took a job in Oklahoma and Robert and his hunting and dog training partner, best friend and wife Linda are still there living just down the road from Catahoula Lake. They continue to train dogs professionally and pass the wonderful world of duck hunting to their son in law and grand son.

 

[John Bourbon]

Dave, 20 years has flown by. I'm glad you still enjoy it. I think about Sully and Onyx quite a bit. What I wouldn't give to have them both back.

John

PS, my father got me started on hunting. With him it was deer hunting. I learned duck hunting from a couple of guys I went to school with, Ned and Jerry, way back in my early teens.

 

[Al Hansen]

Great thread, Chris. I have to begin with my folks who were the most understanding mom and dad, a boy could ever have had. They were afraid of guns, however, I became the first one to have a gun and become a "hunter" in the family. Secondly, I had 4 mentors who took me under their wing and helped me learn all about duck and pheasant hunting. From there on it just became this unbearable disease that got worse and worse as I grew up. Almost flunking out of college is not cool but those who cared about me back then would not have understood if I told them what a great year I had hunting pheasants and ducks around Mankato, Minnesota where I went to school. That senior year of mine was a dandy.
Other than that, I found myself going to Alaska because the Pacific Flyway is hatched up there. As a 25 year old kid I sure had fun doing my thing for those 8 wonderful years in God's Country.
When I retired, little did I know how lucky I was to have at my disposal another section of God's Country. Little did I know that there were ducks here, yes, in the desert. Life is Good.
Al

Almost looks like one of those new GHG black duck/mallard hybrid decoys that they now have. This is a Mexican duck/mallard hybrid.

I needed to include a picture of my best hunting partner, ever! Chili is one of those dream dogs that came true.

 

[Ed L.]

Always interesting to me how others get started. My story starts with my dad and my great uncle, Clarence Olsen to most and "Kike" to his friends. Never understood that one but I called him Kike too. Chris, my dad was raised by a single mother and when he married my mother her uncle got him started. My dad started taking me with him on short hunts when the weather permitted when I was 5. I got to carry my BB gun when I was 7 and for my 8th birthday I recieved a single shot 20ga. I got to go that year and carry my gun while dad carried the shells. I shot my first squirrel that year and learned the lesson of how to handle the excitement as well as the guilt of knowing you killed something and how important gun safety really is. Then we went home and cleaned it and ate it. I've never looked back. I'll say my first real hunting season was when I turned 9 and I got the responsibility of handling my own ammo and cleaning my game all by myself. Kike and dad have been gone for a long time now but this will be my 48th hunting season.

 

[Paul Meisenheimer]

Unlike many others I grew up in the north and I was born into a family of hunters and outdoorsmen. As a child my first home was in the woods about 90 miles south of James Bay. Both my father and mother hunted and my mother was a crack shot, outshooting most men with a rifle. Home movies shot on 8 mm show the family in boats, canoes and snowshoes hunting, fishing and camping. Curiously we hunted just about everything except ducks. When I was 13 we moved south and moose, bears, wolves, etc just didn't make the list of local animals. More like deer, coyotes and ducks. We had a place on a fairly major river and I would often canoe and fish... before school, after school, weekends... anytime I could. At fifteen I was old enough to hunt on my own and I saved my money and bought a Mossberg 500 20 ga. It was a major step up from my dad's single shot Cooey 12 ga. I also came across four mallard decoys and I was set. I started canoeing and jump shooting ducks on the river and soon graduated to some local swamps with seriously good shooting in standing timber. Most of the time there wasn't another hunter to be seen. It was much later in life that I realized how good I had it as a teen. At sixteen I got a used pickup and I was good to go. Along the way I talked a few of my friends into joining the adventure and we had some really good times. My parents were very supportive and encouraged my interest but allowed me to make my own way.

One of my really good friends who I met when we moved south was also a transplanted northerner. Steve is still my best friend and we hunt and fish together every year. We live hundreds of miles apart but don't miss an opportunity to get out for just about everything except ducks. We are both avid bow hunters and we hunt moose, deer and bear with the bow. A few years back when I took a bull moose, a bear and a buck all in a two week period he was with me every day. We have fished together about 12 days so far this year.

My 82 year old mother still loves to get out fishing but she hasn't fired a gun in years. My two brothers and sister who all grew up hunting no longer do although they would if they had the time and someone to do it with. I am the only member of the family left who hunts and I am still passionate about chasing ducks.

 

[Denis Cruts]

Wow, its threads like this that really make you think. I guess I would have to thank the pages of Outdoor Life magazine that got me started. As a kid growing up in the sixtys and early seventys I coulden't wait for the next month publication to come out. Took my first mallard, a hen with a bolt action 16 gauge in '71. on Lake Hopatcong. In 1985 I bought my first sneakbox from Sammy Hunt, for the next 12 years or so I gunned the Barnegat Inlet area. That was when you didn't need to take a loan out for fuel and tolls.

 

[Tom Hickman]

My next door neighbor, an advid waterfowler when I was 13. Even though my dad was a hunter (upland birds) the first time on the jersey marsh (Little Egg Harbor,NJ) I was hooked. I have lived in Florida and now in VA, but I have managed to find places to go and even just recently purchased a barnegat bay sneakbox to hunt with. I get some very strange looks from the jonboat crowd wondering what it is that I am hunting out of , just get's me further away from the "big" boats. Waterfowling doe it get any better than that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Andrew H]

Great thread.

I, owe my interest to a complete stranger, whom I will never meet. I've been fortunate to spend much of my life on the water on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Directly behind my family's house is a great little bay with marsh islands. For as long as I can remember there have been duck blinds in the marsh and in the open water. I remember fishing the duck blinds with my Dad as a kid; however, no one in my family hunted.

Several years ago we were in the back yard on a blue-bird January day, and we could hear gun shots in the marsh. We got the spotting scope out and were able to locate a father, his two sons and their dog just sitting on one of the islands with some decoys out front. After watching them for quite a while, I turned to my Dad and said that it looked like fun but certainly not an easy sport to just "try out." Well the moment stuck with me and about a year later I organized a guided hunt with some friends, borrowed a shotgun from my grandfather and went hunting for two days. We didn't have much success over the two days, but I was hooked.

That first guided hunt has now become an annual event- and in a sign that all things come full circle - includes the Dads.

 

[Anthony A]

Mr. Alexander Molnar. A close family friend from the same village back in Hungary as my dad, although a bit older than him. He hunted low budget, nothing fancy, much of it was homemade down to the orange vest (from old lifejackets) to his snowshoes.

By the time I was old enough, 15, his son had already gone and married and he didn't have a partner. His son preferred snowshoe hares, but he himself loved duck hunting. I could wrie pages and pages, but suffice to say that I learned a lot from him, notjust about hunting, but about life.