Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Few books have shaped the understanding of waterfowl history like The Outlaw Gunner.
In this episode, host Katie Burke sits down with Joe Walsh, son of legendary author Dr. Harry M. Walsh, to discuss one of the most influential books ever written about Chesapeake Bay waterfowling and market hunting.
Joe shares stories about his father’s life, his deep connections to the Eastern Shore watermen and market gunners, and the passion that drove him to preserve their stories before they were lost forever. The conversation explores everything from punt guns and battery guns to sink boxes, gunning lights, and the unique culture that developed around waterfowling on the Chesapeake.
The discussion also highlights Harry Walsh’s role in preserving waterfowling heritage, his early collecting efforts, his relationship with Ducks Unlimited, and the conservation ethic that ultimately emerged from witnessing the decline of waterfowl populations and traditional hunting communities.
Topics Covered
- The story behind The Outlaw Gunner
- Harry Walsh’s life and conservation legacy
- Market hunting on the Chesapeake Bay
- Punt guns, battery guns, and sink boxes
- Gunning lights and historical hunting methods
- Eastern Shore waterfowling culture
- Preserving hunting heritage through collecting
- The origins of the Waterfowl Festival
- How conservation ethics evolved over time
Listen now: www.ducks.org/DUPodcast
Send feedback: DUPodcast@ducks.org
SPONSORS:
Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails:
Whether you’re winding down with your best friend, or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award-winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
Creators and Guests
What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?
Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
I think they just were involved in the sick chapter.
Joe Walsh:A lot of people are
Katie Burke:like, oh, I started and I started. You know, got all the I mean, I don't you know, it's a great event. You know, I enjoy it year.
Joe Walsh:So I am.
Katie Burke:So I wanna get into the market gunning side of things.
VO:You're tuned in to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. Conserving wetlands, restoring habitat, and working to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow, and forever. From field tested hunting insights to the biggest conservation wins across North America, this is your front row seat to wetlands conservation in action. The DU Podcast proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're wrapping up a hunt with your best friend or kicking back with your crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment.
VO:Enjoy responsibly.
Katie Burke:Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. I'm your host, Katie Burke. And today on the show, I have Joe Walsh, who is the son of doctor Harry m Walsh, who was author of the outlaw gunner. And if you haven't read the outlaw gunner and you're a duck hunter, do that now.
Katie Burke:Like, go read it because it's kind of quiet reading is what I would say. Welcome to the show, Joe. How are you?
Joe Walsh:I'm great. I'm great, Katie. Thank you for having having me and the interest in my dad's book.
Katie Burke:Yeah. I read this let just say and think back when I read it. Well, I took this job over ten years ago, and this was probably one of the first things I read when I became curator for Ducks Unlimited. Because I grew up in Mississippi, so, like, this history was not talked about in the same way, like, where we had, like, you know, the market gunning and stuff was not as prevalent because people really couldn't get into the Delta at that time. That was why this was one of the first things I read because this was one of the things I was like, I had a gap in.
Katie Burke:So I read this, I think Dave Marrone here at DU gave it to me and I read it. Yeah. It's the best thing to if you need to learn about market gunning, that's the book. He does such a really good job and I think the thing that I connect with it first when I read it from being from a small town in the middle of nowhere. It's a tough topic when you're talking about Ducks Unlimited and conservation.
Katie Burke:Right? Because you're talking about market gunners. And he celebrates these guys, but it's not like a celebration of the action. Like, it's almost like a celebration in that these were people he knew and loved. Like, they were the people in the book were personal to him that he was writing about.
Katie Burke:Is that true?
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, so he, grew up, you know, right around the depression time, and he was one of six kids, and God forbid, my grandfather left, you know, my dad's family and his my my grandmother alone, so he was the oldest and had to support him. You know?
Joe Walsh:So at the time, they were very poor growing up in Chestertown, if you know on the the Chester River there. And they did all that stuff. My uncle, my my other uncles, and my you know, they, hunted up and down the bay and really was to survive and to eat. So as he did that, he went, down the bay through Culver County, which is where I live, Tillman Island, down through, you know, Cambridge, Hooker's Island, you know, Smith Island, and down Holland's Island, which is now underwater. And he knew all these hunters, and he, you know, they helped him, taught him the trade.
Joe Walsh:And so he became very good friends with him over the years, and they shot a lot of ducks and geese. And he did all that stuff. It's not he's didn't he's not doing a research book. He came to regret it, but so it's kind of a book labor of love. And there's a quote from an article that was done about, you know, somebody's gotta tell the story because all these friends of mine, these people are dying, you know, in the '19 late nineteen sixties.
Joe Walsh:So he wanted the first thing he wanted to do was to get the stories out to preserve the heritage and the stories from these people that
Katie Burke:he loved. So, yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah. Because I think about that, like, that's what I could why, I mean, I connected to it because I grew up in a small town where, like, there's a lot of gray area. Right?
Katie Burke:Like, in these places that are remote and, you know, like, I grew up in Ducks Unlimited, so I had that perspective. But not everybody I hunted with and grew up and were friends with were always had that thought. Right? And now as I grow up, I look back and go, yeah, that probably wasn't the best thing to do. But it was also, like, kind of, you know, the water you're in.
Katie Burke:Right? And it doesn't mean those people weren't good people. Like, they were great people. They are great people still, some of them. But especially some of my grandfather's generation, like, they shot a lot of ducks.
Katie Burke:Yeah. It's it's just what they did. And
Joe Walsh:You know, I like the kind I'd done presentations on the book. I updated the one you have. The older one was the was the blue cover one.
Katie Burke:That's the one that I read
Joe Walsh:originally. Yeah. And so it was going it was out of print, had been out of print in a hardback, and I got together with Schiffer, and, we used that couple of chapters from another book he'd written that was not published to come up with that one. So now there's a kind of a live version out there. It's great.
Joe Walsh:But but this article, if you don't mind, I I like I like to read some of my favorite stuff. Like, I'll go around and do talks on it. And this was an article done on dad, and one of them is somebody has to chronicle this history, and it's not easy to do. And the reason this isn't easy is it's the story of older men. This is written about 1969.
Joe Walsh:20 of my contributors have died since I started working. And it's not the story of gentlemen, sportsmen, but of men and women who have known cold, hunger, and want. These men hunted with mass production methods when conservation of our wild life was an unknown concept. Lack of economic alternatives drove most of these men to market gunning in the same situation many as upstanding gentlemen could find himself casting an outlaw's shadow. So it wasn't a thing back around the turn of this, you know, the nineteen hundreds.
Joe Walsh:Right?
Katie Burke:No. Neither. And then if you've been like, I've been on the Eastern Shore a lot. Like, I kinda one of the things I've I've loved doing, and I guess I can write you down this way, is I've made a real effort to interview these carvers on the Eastern Shore that are aging.
Joe Walsh:Right? Saw that. Yeah.
Katie Burke:Yeah. So I and I'm continuing to work on that because these stories need to be told. I think they need to be recorded and out there. So it's not especially, like, at that time too because, again, the landscape has changed, but it's an isolated place. It's not like it was easy to get to where these ducks were and where these people lived that went after these ducks.
Joe Walsh:Well, and that's the you hit the nail on the head, and that's why, you know, if you go down through, you know, where I grew up in this area, you know, there was law enforcement DNR back in the day, you know, and I'm an older guy now, but this goes back to when my dad was a kid in the thirties, the forties and stuff. But these islands are very, you know, hard to get to Smith Island and all the others. And so there wasn't a law a lot of law down there. And if they did show up, it was a very dangerous place if you were a fish and wildlife officer. You know?
Joe Walsh:And everybody knew everybody and somebody that they didn't know stuck out pretty quickly. So
Katie Burke:Yeah. Because it I mean, it didn't leave them a lot of options either for, like, getting food and like, especially when it got cold. So I got this, and I didn't even realize when I got this, but I ordered it, like, immediately when you came out with your second edition. Because the one I had, my first one was falling apart because we had gone through with so many. I So like, oh, yay.
Katie Burke:So I got the hardback. And I didn't realize until I was going through it because I guess I just bought it and have mostly used it. I use it as a reference tool a lot when I do exhibits, but the stories in the back from his new stuff, from his the unpublished stuff, they're very different. If someone has has this and hasn't gone back there, they're very different. They're more of, like, remind me of, like, Nash Buckingham's stories.
Katie Burke:Like, they're more of, like, less informational, like, less, like, recording history, more like storytelling.
Joe Walsh:So he he write you know, LL Gunner was, you know, a huge success. Think it came out in '71. By '72, it had sold 40,000 copies, which is incredible. Yeah.
Katie Burke:Yes. Duck hunting book. That's uncalled.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. So and and it is the bible. It's required reading. I get that all the time. I have people route reach out to me.
Joe Walsh:So I wrote this other book before he passed away in 2009. Couldn't get it published. You know? So I've thought about try work on it. I need some more because he got older.
Joe Walsh:His style changed a little bit. But there were two chapters that I've, and I got reference here, but two chapters I particularly love. And one was on hunting in the island country. And that chapter, I pulled out of the old. I went over it with Schiffer, but pulled out of the book that hasn't been published.
Joe Walsh:And it's true story. Names were changed of of hunting down in Holland Island before it went under. And it got its name Holland from, like, I think, a a British ship had run aground there with a bunch of Holland gin. Anyway, little known fact that may be interesting or not. But you know, in the turn of the century, they had, like, six hunt six hunting skiffs there.
Joe Walsh:You know, it was it's a pretty cool setup. So he he wrote this book kind of as as a remembrance of the days when he was younger hunting in these places, and there are two quotes. One's from the outlaw gunner, which I'll finish up with. But this one, and I can see in my dad, you know, he's very sentimental, kind of emotional guy. And he found this quote that's in that, and it says, he who journeys back to some remembered place with thoughts upon his heart of things he knew will often find they wear a stranger's face and awaken to find himself a stranger too.
Joe Walsh:And it's like that. You know? I I moved away from the Eastern Shore for a long time now. I'm back. I don't know anybody.
Joe Walsh:I love it. But he went back and wrote this book about Chestertown fishing, hunting. And, you know, but when you go back after years, probably like when you go back home, things change. You know? People change.
Joe Walsh:Right? So it's good that we have people that preserve that history.
OTM:Welcome to the Old Timer Minute, sponsored by Old Timer Knives.
Katie Burke:It's like one of my top three smells. It instantly, like, reminds you of someplace you wanna be, and it's the smell of four wheeler exhaust and muddy water. And people on this podcast listening know exactly what that smells like. When I say that to people, like, that don't dunk hunt, they're like, that's so weird. I'm like, no.
Katie Burke:It's a very specific smell, but by far that smell of four wheeler exhaust and muddy water is the best smell. Like, especially when you're coming in, like, early early in the morning when it's really cold and those four wheelers would first hit the water, he knew, like, you're gonna be having a good day that day. So, yeah, that's by far my favorite. It's top three smell of all time.
OTM:Visit the oldtimer.com.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Okay. So that leads me to a question that the more, like, this was coming up, I knew I was gonna talk to you, and I was just thinking about you know, because I've again, I've read this book many times for the information to use for my job and stuff, but I had to reflect on your dad for this. And I thought about that because I know when you grow up in a small place, a lot of people don't leave small places. It's rare that someone goes and becomes a physician and, like, goes to medical school.
Katie Burke:So what about your dad and the drive to go do that and leave? What was different about him? Because that is not always the case, especially even back then.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. So that's a great question. You know? And like I said, I've gone around and done presentations on the book.
Joe Walsh:You know? It's obviously my favorite topic, but I'm a huge fan of my dad. He came up poor like that, didn't have any money. I've got some great stories about how outrun the the game wardens in Chester County back in the day, and locals would probably remember that. But, you know, they didn't have any money.
Joe Walsh:Had to care of my uncles as the oldest. So he put himself through, went to Washington College, got a scholarship, which is a school in Chestertown. Midway through that, World War two came up. And being a swimmer, a hunter, and the all things he did, he joined the precursors of the Navy Seals, which was the scouts and raiders, you know, back in that time. He had hard training and stuff like that.
Joe Walsh:He fought in the Pacific Theater. You know, he they didn't talk about that a lot. The dad was right there. He was tough. He was a wrestler, a boxer.
Joe Walsh:And, so he came back, didn't have any money, trying to go back to school, and he started working actually on a research vessel in Annapolis for fish and wildlife. So he did that for a year or two, got some money, allowed him to go to Washington College. Then he wanted to go to med school. He put himself I just can't imagine doing that. I mean, I have a work ethic, but not like that.
Joe Walsh:You know? Then he went put himself through medical school to become a doctor, worked in Long Island for a while doing his residency, and he spent a lot of time out that area hunting. But then he came back home to the Eastern Shore. And back in the day, 1950s, sixties, he was it. You know, he ran the emergency room, any type of surgery that came in.
Joe Walsh:I remember dad, you know, getting him in middle of the night doing that. But he was very driven in everything he did. So
Katie Burke:My dad was the dentist of our county.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. There you go.
Katie Burke:So The only one.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Right. Right.
Katie Burke:Right. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. Because people just don't especially even then, they really don't leave.
Katie Burke:But I guess World War two helps. So when he was on the boat in Indianapolis and had that time with fish and wildlife, is that what led him because I have a lot of questions about that, like, his conservation career too. Is that, like, the first his first, I guess, thinking about conservation in that way?
Joe Walsh:Yep. Fun. Probably. He had he had to support his family, and it was different. So he grew up in an age when Yeah.
Joe Walsh:They didn't think about conservation. They they were hunting to eat. The the thought of killing something and not eating it or a duck. You know? Not the
Katie Burke:one I'm thinking of.
Joe Walsh:But, like foreign thing.
Katie Burke:And even it's that way in Mississippi still. Like Yeah. What I would say and I guess this is really what I'm asking is even though that still never come, like, conservation in that like, I don't that's not what I mean. I mean, like, I would say, like, my dad is very big into conservation. He's a big duck hunter and still duck hunts, but it's more of a changing and I I do see it in Chestertown when I come through and on the Eastern Shore, like, the preserving of a place.
Joe Walsh:Yeah.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Yeah. It's changed and changing all the time. Do you think that is what affected it and made him think about that? Just his love for that area?
Joe Walsh:Yeah. I think so. He came back from the war. He went back to see his old friends. He kept in touch with he'd go down.
Joe Walsh:They were older. The ducks were gone. I mean, the ducks that they saw, the flocks of red hot heads in Hopers Island, and I saw some of it as a kid. That was in the sixties. But before that, oh my god.
Joe Walsh:Just they they were everywhere. They were. There were all kinds of pintails. And he went back, and it was gone. There was not you know, it was very little of that.
Joe Walsh:These people now had to, you know, find a different way to make a living. And and, you know, they could blame themselves partly, but but they could blame overdevelopment pollution. And it really hit him it really hit him hard. And that's the book was about preserving the heritage of the Eastern Shore and these people he loved, but it was more about conservation. He stopped hunting.
Joe Walsh:I stopped hunting when I was 15. I hunted a lot before that. And, he stopped hunting, you know, late sixties, early seventies just because he, you know, he's like, gotta you know, he felt bad kinda about what he did, but he also saw the need to do this, which is what brought about the Waterfowl Festival after writing the book as a way to try and to give back. I think that's kinda what you're asking. Right?
Joe Walsh:That's where
Katie Burke:it started. Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly it. Because I just I just think about that in terms of just growing up with someone who was a hunter who hunted a lot.
Katie Burke:I have this very similar dad. I think we have similar dads in that way. He was a huge
Joe Walsh:hunter. Yeah.
Katie Burke:He hunted a lot, and he devoted most of his adult life to Ducks Unlimited and youth hunting and teaching kids about the outdoors. And but I just see him as a grandfather now. And I would say his big thing now is, like, he just likes to go, and he likes to be there and he wants to preserve this place that he loves. There's like, you know, the Mississippi Delta is part of that. So and when I go to the Eastern Shore, that was one of the most surprising things.
Katie Burke:I lived in Philadelphia for a while, but I started going to the waterfowl festival the last few years. And when you go out there, it's it's a very ducky place. Yeah. It's like, you don't you don't expect that getting off a plane in Baltimore and crossing the
Joe Walsh:river. Yeah.
Katie Burke:Yeah. But I don't think people really realize how special the Eastern Shore is for waterfowl in that culture.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's all about it's a way of life here. And, you know, he saw the best of it, and I think as he was getting older, he saw the worst of it. And and so he and a bunch of people from Eastern got together to make it happen.
Joe Walsh:And jeez, what are we? Fifty five years now or something like that. You know, over 6,000,000 to, you know, waterfowl conservation is is, you know, is a a great gift to Talbot County in the area as well. You know, it's taken a lot of people to keep that thing going. You know, Ducks Unlimited as well.
Joe Walsh:I remember, early days. I got the first Waterfowl Festival poster behind me, and I got a letter from the first Ducks Unlimited chairman, you know, at the first $10,000 donation in 1972. You know, thanks, dad. You know, the note is your ideas take and wing. Now, you know, one thing in the book, and I'll read it so I don't forget about it again.
Joe Walsh:I hate to read stuff, and I wanna read a couple. I wanna read a a good outlaw gunning story.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Have more more specific questions.
Joe Walsh:Me do this. This is not bad writing for a redneck from Chestertown, my dad. But so at the end of the outlaw gunner and this is I really think if you listen to the words is is important and where the festival came from and where he was coming from. Earth, our homes, sits like a jewel in the center of infinity. Ours is the only planet capable of sustaining life as we know it.
Joe Walsh:We share a common environment with our other members of the animal kingdom. As we destroy their habits, we destroy our own. We hunters must contribute to our own sport and the preservation of these beautiful birds without the preservation of our natural resources and the habitats, you cannot help but wonder what chance a poor old duck has. You know? And that's kinda sums it up, and it sums up the DU myth in quite a bit as well.
Joe Walsh:It's up to us to, keep it going. Right?
Katie Burke:Yeah. I love and I do his that festival. I'm very glad he did that because that's one of my favorite fest like, I always tell everyone, if you can go to one, go to that one. It's a really neat festival.
Joe Walsh:He did. Truth be. He he started first couple years as a surgeon in Easton. After three years, I'm one of six. So we have a lot of a lot of mouths to feed.
Joe Walsh:So after three years, Bill Perry, there was a whole group of people that that really kept it going all the years. But
Katie Burke:So is it true that I don't remember where I heard this, but is it true that they were a DU chapter? That's yeah. That's always the rumor of Easton. It was started by a Ducks Unlimited chapter. At least someone said that.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. I don't think so.
Katie Burke:I didn't is that the rumor? Yeah.
Joe Walsh:Is that a rumor? They were very involved, and
Katie Burke:I'm
Joe Walsh:trying
Katie Burke:to remember
Joe Walsh:the guy, who was the head of Ducks Unlimited at the time. And they were. They were all on board. They were part of the steering committee. I can't remember the guy's name.
Joe Walsh:He was a good friend to dad's. So but but the the idea came from the book originally, but then everybody got together. And maybe after, you know, I'm not a 100% sure that I know DU has been very involved in it, you know, over the years as well. Yeah.
Katie Burke:I was just that's always been the rumor. And I was and I was like, where does that come from? So, yeah, it's a rumor. I think they just were involved in the same chapter.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. A lot of people are
Katie Burke:like, oh, well, I started and I started. You know, I got all the I mean, I don't you know, it's a great event. You know, I enjoyed every So Okay. So I wanna get in to the market gunning side of things and have one question before we take a quick break, and then we'll come back and get into that. But so with the Eastern Waterfowl Festival and your dad's, when did he become what?
Katie Burke:He was a collector. Right? So when did he start collecting the stuff? I mean, is that besides what he probably had when he was young, but when did he start purposely collecting?
Joe Walsh:Yeah. I mean, he was way ahead of his time there. So he, as he was right as he was going out and seeing people after World War two, he was before anybody saw the value of a gunning skiff, a punt gun, a battery gun, some of these decoys, you know, before Bill Mackey even, probably some of these guys were doing it. I mean, hey. Dad was collecting this stuff, and they were in our basement and all.
Joe Walsh:You know? So, yeah, he was very, very early in that part of it.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Because that's what whenever I think about the festival side of it with the decoy show and
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. And all
Katie Burke:the, yeah, the tables and stuff. So he would have been super early. I I've known John Sullivan for a while, and I was like, he probably has many of your dad's stuff. Probably, he bought a lot from your dad, I would assume so. Hey.
Katie Burke:He's a four c.
Joe Walsh:He's a thank god for John. He's definitely carrying the heritage. Right?
Katie Burke:Alright. Well, we'll take a quick break, and we'll be right back.
VO:Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
Katie Burke:Alright. I'm here with, Joe Walsh. And okay. So let's get in, and we're talking about his dad's book, The Outlaw Gunner. Okay.
Katie Burke:So I wanna get into the book and the collection behind this book because one thing that's extremely unique about the Eastern Shore and the Chesapeake Bay is the history of market gunning. It is there is market gunning across the country, obviously, through that time on the Mississippi River and everything, but nothing like it was in the Chesapeake Bay and on the Eastern Shore. It's the the main area. It's where all the punt guns come from and everything. So I kinda wanna get into your dad's collection and kind of how he picks to like, what he wanted to write about, like, through because he kinda the book is laid out by different methods.
Katie Burke:Right? It's basically, like, different methods of hunting for a market gunner, which I love. Because, like, if you wanna learn about punt gunning Yeah. Yeah. It's all there.
Katie Burke:Right. You just roll to there. Yeah. So what are your favorite parts of his collection or even the book? Like, what are your or do you have stories that go with that as well?
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. I prompted you on that one. I do. You know?
Joe Walsh:So the collection is, you know, a love for the different type of of hunting. You know? And and back what dad really liked about these guns, I mean, if you look at it, they still punt gun in England. And and, you know, the ones on the shore are really called pipe guns because it's old pipe that these creative and talented woodermen put together. They couldn't afford to get punt gun, which is named after the type of skiff they used from Britain.
Joe Walsh:You know? So you'll see those. They're very expensive. They had shells, but we were using black powder, shot, and things like that. So it was the ingenuity of the Eastern Shore, yeah, North Carolina, wherever they were, Long Island, I think, started it, to come up with these guns, and the favorite is the punt gun.
Joe Walsh:Basically, dad collected seven or eight of them from people that he knew. They were up in barns. They were hidden. They were falling apart, and there was a lack of appreciation for, you know, what he saw as a very valuable item. So, you know, punt guns, then there was the battery gun, then I'll read a story to you.
Joe Walsh:But the battery gun was you know, at after the age of the flip lock, these ingenious woodermen came up. They would cut the barrels down, come up with a single kinda channel for the gunpowder, and then the way the battery gun is set up, it's like three barrels, seven barrels. I've seen a dozen barrels of, like, 12 gauge, four gauge, whatever lined up, and they were angled out. Some were shorter than others to widen the pattern. They were more dangerous than punt guns.
Katie Burke:Yeah. They look like bombs. We have a eight we have a eight barrel one in the museum.
Joe Walsh:Oh, you do? Well, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Katie Burke:And it I don't I look at it all the time and think, I would never Yep. I mean, it's just in a wooden box.
Joe Walsh:Sorry. So let me read you a, so let me read you a story. I wanna read you a good punt gun story. Right? Alright.
Joe Walsh:And then I'm gonna read you if if we got time. Alright? Then I'm gonna read you a you know, and these are true stories. The names were changed. Okay?
Joe Walsh:So my favorite chapter in the book is one called Jake and his big gun. And, Jake, there's a picture of him with his Christmas goose and one of the only pictures of a real skiff, turn of the century with a punt gun sitting in it that he had just used to go out. You know, it was back in the day, you weren't really taking pictures. Although back then, it was legal. Okay?
Joe Walsh:So it was around 1900 when marking gunning was legal. Ray Todd of Cambridge tells the story about hunting Holland Island with Jake Parks. There were once four big guns in use here on the island. When there was a great deal of game about, all four guns in the sneak skiffs would unite. During the day, the men that worked at oystering or fishing but kept a crafty eye on the fowl.
Joe Walsh:So you know how they would do it? They'd have these big punt guns that are basically a large version of a cannon. They'd lay it in the skiff. There was a whole technique, and then they would paddle out on the the flocks of ducks. So all day long, think of this, they're waterman.
Joe Walsh:We have been sailing through oystering and stuff like that through a large black rafts of ducks, which had just moved into the area. Then gunning had been poor, and with no moon, it looked like tonight would be good. You could hear the redheads meowing the same as a bunch of cats as we got our guns ready. There was the solid roar like thunder every time they flew. Most of the islanders expecting a good hunt were there to see us off.
Joe Walsh:All four boats eased slowly through along the shoreline into position as the sun set. We skipped right down its path at a flock of redheads over a half mile long and nearly as wide. Can you imagine all those redheads? They swam right into us, so they're out at night even though it was not well, even though it was not dark yet. These birds were young and had probably never been shot at before.
Joe Walsh:They were so thick, you couldn't place a feather between them. And this sounds horrible, but, again, no conservation. They would take these birds to sell them, and this might help them live for the rest of the year. By morning, we had killed more than a thousand ducks. They brought three fifty a pair in Baltimore, and it was the best night's work we'd ever done.
Joe Walsh:So think about the turn of the century, 1900. Sounds horrible now, but, you know, they weren't really doing it for fun. They were there to support.
Katie Burke:They were there to yeah. It was their job.
Joe Walsh:Okay. So can I read the other story real quick about the battery guns? Okay.
Katie Burke:Yes. I wanna hear the one.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. You'll be stuck with me reading the stories all the time. Believe fine with them there. Again, Don Elliott, fishing bays around Hoppers Island tells this story. The year was 1926 that everything went to pieces in my life.
Joe Walsh:The only money available was in ducks, and I became a pirate duck hunter. I collected four of the largest muzzleloading guns and made an nice battery. Things worked out fine for nearly two years. Ducks were plentiful, and the market was good was good. Soon I was out of debt and making a nice living.
Joe Walsh:One night while gunning alone, I went into a large flock of bran. There must have been 5,000 of them feeding under a fake moon. I just lay there looking at them. It'd more foul than I'd ever been close to and a sight I'll never forget. I don't remember having pulled down on them, firing the battery gun, but when I came to, the skiff was gently rubbing against the bank.
Joe Walsh:One eye was completely blind and the other nearly so. My head was spinning as I began to understand what happened. With the shot, the gun had broken off her straps. You know, they'd strap it on the bow of the little skiff and come back, striking me in the face and the chest. I had lost five teeth, and I had a broken jaw.
Joe Walsh:The skiff had drifted more than three miles after I'd made the shot. So and these are true stories of people that my dad. So yeah.
Katie Burke:Anyway. Yeah. That doesn't surprise me at all. When you look at that thing I mean yeah. No.
Katie Burke:It's a wooden box attached to metal barrels.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're fascinating. And, the maritime museum, you know, and back to his collection a little bit, he had he got these from, these people and and probably this exact battery gun, he had, and he had probably seven or eight of them. And they're all pictures in the book of the artifacts.
Joe Walsh:And, basically, at the time, 1970, 1969, he was looking for a place to do them because they were all in our basement. Had I known then what I know now, I would have appreciated all the decoys and everything more. But he gave them to lot of half the collection went to fish and wildlife. So he had four sink boxes, John Holly bushwhack boats, five or six sneak skiff, six or seven punt guns, all you know, hundreds of decoys. But he gave a lot of it to fish and wildlife down at Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge.
Joe Walsh:They were gonna do a museum that kinda didn't work out, unfortunately. Yeah. But anyway, some of them are stuff still there. And then the the, Maritime Museum in Saint Michael's did a great job preserving. So if you go there now, there was a building there that they're changing, which was the Waterfowl Building, but now they have a new building.
Joe Walsh:And I was just there over the weekend. They did a wonderful
Katie Burke:his sink box?
Joe Walsh:No. The one on display, I don't think is his.
Katie Burke:Oh, that thing's amazing.
Joe Walsh:They have a couple of them there. There's a single man, and they actually the guys, when dad died, did a great the maritime museum did a great job. They brought this two man I have pictures of it. This two man sink box into the high school in Easton, and they did, Bill Miller and a bunch of people did a nice, John John John was there. They did, you know, Kim and Ronnie.
Joe Walsh:I don't if you know, Kim Newcomb and Ronnie, but they did a great job setting it up, you know, with a bunch of stuff from the book. But they have that they just had an exhibit they set up recently, and they have some really cool stuff with decoys, battery guns, punt guns, and that stuff, but it's at the maritime.
Katie Burke:It's a really good collection. That new building's really great. It was really cool in the old building, but in this building, they can really pull the the boats or you can see all the boats. Like, you can see it's not, like, you know, in the corner with stuff all on top of it. They're like the boat itself is on display, which is really neat.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Yeah. That's good stuff. I love I
Joe Walsh:love looking at that. So, and then there's others. You go to the Haber Grace Equine Museum. There's a the battery white battery guns to ads. That stuff on loan from Fish and Wildlife, where they do the training center in West Virginia for Fish and Wildlife.
Joe Walsh:They have some really cool displays. It's not open to the public, but I've gone there. They have a lot of dad's collection that's left over in there. And we're trying to restore captain Johnny Marshall's skiff right now. So we're short of funds, but I'm working on that because Fish and Wildlife wants to display it.
Joe Walsh:They already restored one of the punt guns. So, but they've done a good job preserving some of that stuff for the years.
Katie Burke:Yeah. That's really neat. I love this. The sink boxes, I think, are some of my favorite of that era. I mean, they lasted a lot longer just because it's just kind of ingenious how it works.
Katie Burke:Like, you think about it and you don't think like, oh, like, you you have to really think about it. When you see the pictures, though, they look invisible on the water, and it's really interesting. Did he ever hunt out of sink boxes?
Joe Walsh:Yeah. I don't know as much. He was more of a a punt gun. The most devastating way was once the, the auto, you know, Browning's autos came out.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Joe Walsh:They would use those in skiffs because you had you know, he had a really cool in the book, there's a picture of he called it deadly combination because there's a Browning auto five or a five, whatever, that had an extension that would hold about 10 shells, and it looks like an over under. Yep. But it was just an extension to shoot. And between baiting ducks and all, that was it. But but, you know, the sink box, I don't think he did that.
Joe Walsh:He had a couple of them. You know, if you go to Haverde Grace and New York, really, and and Oak, you know, the the Outer Banks as well. You know, some great stories on, sink box hunting, all the decoys. There's a story in there, dad, I like to tell about in Ocracoke during World War two. You know, a German, British ship was sunk off of Ocracoke.
Joe Walsh:Couple, god forbid, British sailors washed up on the beach. They'd outlawed the sink box by then. And so they had these old boxes there, and they buried two of the sailors because they looked like a coffin.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Right? They're basically yeah. They're coffins.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the the cool thing is, like, I got one of my wing ducks back there, but, you know, the metal wing ducks kept it down. So if it got too rough, you had to be careful, but that kept the wings down so they would have weight.
Joe Walsh:And then it had to be watertight, and then they would use, like, the wooden wing ducks to kinda hide, and there'd be thousands of decoys. And, you know, that's
Katie Burke:a whole
Joe Walsh:other story. Yeah.
Katie Burke:Yeah. And I feel like a lot of times they would be in at least, like, in John's book, I think he talks about it more as as guided hunts. Like, they would take the guy and put them in the sink box. Less market gutting, but more of those, like, oh, we drew the guy from New York came down and did the and we put him in the sink box sort
Joe Walsh:of situation. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a little out of my dad's.
Katie Burke:He covered it. But he was Now that you say that, I think about that. Like, yeah, that's gotta be more like that. You know, the one thing when I was kinda going back through it, and I never thought about it, and just, like, listening to him read, like, he tells the story, when he talks about the logistics of firing, like, the punt gun, like, oh, we needed to shift our weight forward so the barrel would drop. Yeah.
Katie Burke:I don't think I love that part. That's one of my favorite parts, listening to how, like, just the minute day of, like, the things he had to do in the boat just to make sure that the shot because, otherwise, it was shot over even a shot over their heads. It wouldn't you
Joe Walsh:know, like, right above them. There's a guy by the name of Isaac Langford who's from Crisfield area. And I was a little kid, but I had the opportunity to meet him. There's a picture of him with these two DC made, and he's actually making he made my dad a punt gun or two, and he made him a battery gun. And so he's making the stock for at a walnut.
Joe Walsh:And, when I was little, we'd go to the refuge, and they do, like, a decoy, you know, kind of exhibit, and a lot of dad's artifacts were there, like, 1971 or so. And he actually talked about how they would do that, the big punt gun. So they would lay in the sneak skiff, if you know what that looks like. It's a long, very sleek, very, cool looking little skiff. The end of the bowel the end of the bowel would protrude from the bowel of the skiff, maybe two or three inches or so.
Joe Walsh:They'd have it loaded from shore all ready to go. And once they got on the ducks, they could pivot forward in the boat to bring the bow down back. You know? And they did that more probably with the battery gun because they would have been closer. But, anyway, that's how they did it.
Joe Walsh:And I've got another story with basically, they would take old burlap bags, fill them with straw, and they would cushion the stock in the back of the gun. So because it would kick, obviously. Obviously. There was a kick board on the side of the skiff inside to keep the gun from going through the skiff. But what the hunter would do is have the you know, have his arm protruded out to the right a little bit, hugging the gun, basically.
Joe Walsh:And then this trigger was maybe four, five inches long. They would slap the trigger, and the gun would actually go through their arm and kinda come back. So they would go back, recoil through the bags, and then, you know, that's how they do. You do wanna have it so it stopped hard. You know, that's how people will kill.
Joe Walsh:Right? Then it would pro go through. And there's just yeah. So that's that's kinda that's what you're talking about. Right?
Katie Burke:Yeah. And you think about that. I was like, I never thought about this, but they never have, like, trigger guards on them because they couldn't put a trigger guard. They lose their hand or their fingers.
Joe Walsh:Well, yeah. I mean, the trigger was right under there, they'd
Katie Burke:That's the idea. They had to, like, just do it that way. Because the I there's one that was in the museum that was custom. It was a punt gun that was on Mississippi River. It was a custom punt gun, and it had a trigger guard on it.
Katie Burke:But, think about it, it like, if you did it on those big pipe guns, though, it would just Yeah. That would be That's a that's a feasible idea.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yeah. There's a story. Well, here, let me read. I think I'm gonna read you another one.
Joe Walsh:Okay? Usually start my presentation with this. This is another friend of dad's. Okay? So alone in the cold darkness of the Chesapeake Bay, the punk gunner clung desperately as only a drowning man pen to his overturned sneak skiff.
Joe Walsh:He knew he was gonna die, and there was nothing he could do to help himself. The skiff with just enough flotation kept rolling and sliding away. It had not been designed to float in this fashion. His boots and coat laden with water were like anchors, and he could not get them off. His own strong constitution and the relatively warm late fall water were the only reasons for being alive, but his numbed hands could not hold out much longer.
Joe Walsh:So one simple mistake had placed him in this position. Ed Marshall of Smith Island explained as his memory rolled back more than fifty years. His father was away, and with the know it all of youth, he had borrowed his big gun. Usually, the shock of the free and lazy recoil was taken up by two bags of sea oats. One about the gun and the other in the stern.
Joe Walsh:He had substituted sand, and the increased resistance had caused the gun to jump out of her chalk and cap size the boat. He was eventually saved by an overdue steamer casting her out her light out about for a harbor buoy. He was nearly another market gunning victim trying to make a living on the Chesapeake Bay.
Katie Burke:I mean, yeah, I would imagine. And that you're dealing with tides too in a crazy way. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Walsh:That was all tough down there. Yeah.
Katie Burke:Yeah. It's tough. So before, like, you go, I wanna talk about because I feel like we talk about punt guns and the battery guns, but a big part of this were the gunning lights. And yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the gunning light?
Katie Burke:Because we have a really cool one. I think it's from Ed Zimmer. It was on loan from Ed Zimmer.
Joe Walsh:Okay.
Katie Burke:And I love it. But, yeah, I feel like they're we don't talk about the lights enough, but they were deadly, those lights.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Yes. So they, you know, the lights he had, I don't know how many of them. He's got some that went back to the civil war. I mean, some of this stuff goes back two hundred years, right, or more.
Joe Walsh:And, so he had some really cool ones, and and they actually used them up into the fifties and sixties, but they would use it generally with a or a browning type of auto, sneak up. And on the ducks, they were on corn, and they could shoot them lot. But, again, I hate to keep reading, but nobody tells the story of the gunning light better than my dad's. So that's a good question. So the idea of using a gunning light to hide behind while night shooting may well be something we borrowed from the Indians.
Joe Walsh:The light is probably the single most deadly devastating method of duct destruction ever devised. Say that fast. Kerosene lamps were the finest of gunny lights that were ever developed. They consisted of a simple wooden box with two planes of glass forming a v. This was then equipped with a smoke bell and several holes for ventilation.
Joe Walsh:Behind the lamp was placed a reflector. Why the light is so effective is explained by many factors. Waterfowl are accustomed to reflected lights on the water, the moon, stars, passing boats, and they have no fear of the lights. In addition to distance is difficult for ducks to estimate when viewing a light in front of them. Nothing can be seen but the faint light as the hunters approach in a slow deadly stalk.
Joe Walsh:So they'd be very quiet, and they really couldn't. If you think about it, they would just see the light, and they couldn't judge the distance. By the time they did, it would be too late for the dogs.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Poor ducks. Poor ducks. Poor ducks.
Joe Walsh:Right. Poor ducks. I agree.
Katie Burke:Yeah. And I do I do like that he includes in this book I don't know if people talk about it, but I do like one of my favorite chapters in this book is on, the use of corn. When I was a kid, I'd have to drive around and listen to old men talk all the time with my dad and all their methods of how they would plant stuff to get ducks to come in. I was like, we've been doing this a long time. They've just found different ways to do it Yeah.
Katie Burke:And also make it legal.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. No. No. That's right.
Katie Burke:So
Joe Walsh:Yeah. I mean, I even in my lifetime, you know, and I'm sure it's still used now. It's very controversial. You know? But like I said before, by the seventies, my dad had stopped cunning.
Joe Walsh:My my uncle Mike was a game warden. He was a federal game warden. He was tough. You know? But even back then, you know, dad, if he wanted if he wanted ducks, he wanted something to eat mom to cook it, then, you know, there were he wanted black ducks, canvas backs, or something like that, and he wasn't above using some corn to get it.
Joe Walsh:And one time, the corn was out. My uncle called my dad and said, Harry, what the hell are you doing? We can see the corn. So don't hunt. Go tell the boys not to go out and hunt.
Joe Walsh:But another breeding, the technique of flock shooting with an automatic shotgun and the judicious use of corn constitutes the deadliest method of duck destruction ever devised. Commended power of this tool to concentrate waterfowl is well known. Given enough room and enough bait, all the waterfowl in one region could be concentrated into one area. There are lot of art behind baiting, but its day has come thank come and gone, thankfully. But
Katie Burke:Oh, yeah. It's although we had I mean, we still deal with it some, like, on our not with ducks, but with Yeah. People bait turkeys in our where we are. Oh, is that yeah. Okay.
Katie Burke:Oh, yeah. I shot a turkey probably three years ago, and when we cleaned it, its gullet was just full of corn.
Joe Walsh:So our
Katie Burke:our we had a neighbor, I guess, that was baiting.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. I picked a few ducks in my day that had a very similar very tasty, but at the same time. Yes. Yeah.
Katie Burke:Yeah. Or any stories that we haven't mentioned that you would like to mention?
Joe Walsh:I've I've gotten to go to the fish and wildlife, national conservation training center a couple of teyons, and they have some pretty cool stuff there. And one of the things there that they had a friend of my dad's was on the wall of pictures. Pictures. They They have have all all the the people over the years, fish and wildlife that have influenced, you know, and then that supporting them, supporting Ducks Unlimited in that. I mean, I think my dad, as he got older, he didn't see the type of positive changes to hunting, ethical hunting, to doing, you know, the preservation of ducks over development and all that.
Joe Walsh:So I'm hoping we can continue the tradition, and that will change at some point. But there was an interesting story by a a national fish and wild life guy. His name was Dave Hall. And Dave's on that wall, and and, I had met him as a kid. I think his son's still alive now who I traded messages with.
Joe Walsh:But as a kid, I got to had the great opportunity to go down in, Louisiana to get a P row. I have two P Row's now. And there was a guy by the name of Jesse Dewey, and Dave had this poachers to preachers program. And they would take outlaws, famous out. A lot of people know him who they listen to the podcast.
Joe Walsh:But he would take these people and try to reform them and then them have them go out to try and convert others. Dave's message here that I just kinda took a picture of and wrote it down is if hunting and fishing are done in the spirit of fair chase and within the confines of the laws, wildlife will be enhanced, not jeopardized. Hunters were the foundation of wildlife conservation, and without that interest, there would be much less habitat left in US. So, Dave, not hope this doesn't sound bad, but I've if you know Dave, Dave had a hat that was very famous, and his hat for fishing wildlife, and they have one there. It says ducks are limited.
Joe Walsh:So anyway but
Katie Burke:You know, that's that's the famous quote about Ducks Unlimited is when in 1937 when they were trying to come up with a name, they were saying, because we're being formed in Canada and all like, in The United States, we're in an incorporation, but in Canada, you're a limited. Limited. And they were like, well, we can't be Ducks Limited.
Joe Walsh:Yeah. Oh, is that right?
Katie Burke:I didn't know that. That's how we became Ducks Unlimited. Yes.
Joe Walsh:I gotcha.
Katie Burke:It's like, we can't be Ducks Limited. That's not what we want. So they changed it to Ducks Unlimited because that's yeah. All companies in Canada are limited, like, of that. Okay.
Katie Burke:Dry are limited.
Joe Walsh:I get that. That certainly makes a
Katie Burke:lot of sense, doesn't it? Yeah. So but and then you move to The US and we're in a corporation. But yeah. So I need to come meet you next time on the Eastern Shore and see you meet you in person because I do love this book, and I just love the Eastern Shore.
Katie Burke:I'll be up there again. I've got a few more people I'm gonna hopefully interview and drive around. I'll actually be in Chestertown, and I'm gonna go see the new museum there.
Joe Walsh:Oh, I haven't seen that yet. Yeah. I'm I've gotta go check that out. I saw your podcast on Lawson Tuts Lawson. That was awesome.
Katie Burke:That was I could've done that for three hours.
Joe Walsh:I I learned more about the wood Word Brothers in that one. I've gotta look. I'm not podcast person, but I think you've
Katie Burke:I'll just send you some because there's some really great ones. His is my one of my all time
Joe Walsh:favorite tech company. Yeah.
Katie Burke:He his recall was just Yeah. Unbelievable.
Joe Walsh:I I felt the exact same thing.
Katie Burke:Yeah. I'm gonna go well, Cooper Rossner is running the museum in
Joe Walsh:Okay. Yeah. I heard that. Good.
Katie Burke:So and then I'm trying to go I need to interview Bob White. I need to do that sooner rather than later.
Joe Walsh:Well, I'm a huge oyster fan. So if you I don't know if you like oysters, you guys, you're Midwesterners or whatever you're No.
Katie Burke:My mom is from Louisiana, so I love oysters.
Joe Walsh:Oh, alright. Well, that's there you go.
Katie Burke:Okay. Alright.
Joe Walsh:They're on me if you come
Katie Burke:to Eastern. Let me know. Okay. I love Eastern. Well, thank you for doing this.
Katie Burke:We could've talked about more of this. There's so much more to get into this. But maybe if I'm there, we can do one of these in person.
Joe Walsh:Sounds good. That's Yeah. Well, thanks for your interest in dad's book. I really appreciate it.
Katie Burke:Know, I use it
Joe Walsh:a lot to
Katie Burke:me. Honest. I use it all the time. And whenever I have a new staff person who's, like, helping me, that's one of the things they have to read.
Joe Walsh:Alright. I like that. Sounds good.
Katie Burke:Alright. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Joe Walsh:Sure, Katie. Thanks again.
Katie Burke:Alright. Thanks, Joe, for coming to the show. Thanks to our producer, Chris Isaac, and thanks to you, our listener, for supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
VO:That's a wrap for today's episode of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast brought to you by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. From post hunt unwinds to celebrations back at camp, Bird Dog delivers award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and check out ducks.org/du Podcast for more science, and all things waterfowl. Guest opinions are their own and don't necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited.
VO:Until next time, stay fired up, stay focused, and stay tuned to the Ducks.