Beaver Dam remains hallowed ground
Sunday, January 22, 2006
TUNICA, Miss. -- Any waterfowler worth the cork in his duck call knows this is hallowed ground.
Legendary outdoors writer Nash Buckingham propelled it into virtual mythic proportions during his writing career in the first half of the 20th century.
This ground, or water to be correct, is known by duck hunters far and wide as Beaver Dam, where Buckingham spent many a day shooting ducks and telling tales at the Beaver Dam Hunt Club, considered by many the birthplace of modern waterfowl conservation.
This lake, decades and decades ago a bend in the Mississippi River just south of Memphis, is the epitome of duck heaven. There's open water, cypress brakes galore and duck weed. Nearby, agricultural fields supplement the nutrition of the lake's aquatic vegetation.
Beaver Dam is privately owned by a variety of families, which meant its exclusivity matched its notoriety. An invitation to hunt Beaver Dam was considered priceless by a dedicated waterfowler.
The hair bristles on a wingshooter's neck at the sound of whistling wings dropping out of the dawn sky into a hole in the cypresses.
That was the exact feeling that Mike Boyd decided he needed to share.
The 50-year-old farmer owns 100 acres of that cherished lake, although his grandfather had no idea his purchase would lead to such lofty status.
"My grandfather bought this farm in 1949," said Boyd, who started Beaver Dam Hunting Services several years ago with his son, Lamar. "He bought two sections of land and this is the extreme northeast section of that land. He didn't really know what he was buying at the time he bought it. He was originally from outside Cleveland, Miss.
"Nobody in my family had ever duck hunted. They were all turkey hunters, deer hunters. Back in the early '80s, a friend of mine who was at one time head of the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service), an old buddy, Bob Jones -- we went hunting one day and he said, 'You ought to think about guiding duck hunts out of here. You've got something really special that a lot of people would love to see.'"
"My grandfather pretty much told all the grandkids that he would give you any place on the farm to build a home," he said. "That was a no-brainer for me. I took a piece of land that was not in cultivation right there on the banks of a place I love and built me a house. I mow up to the edge of Beaver Dam. I wouldn't trade it for the world."
Preceding the Boyds on Beaver Dam was the Owen family, who settled the area around the time of the Civil War.
"Sterling Owen, came from Spring Hill, Tenn., during the Civil War and settled at Austin, Miss.," said Will Owen Jr., 38. "When the river changed course, (Austin) was burned during the war. Then they moved the county seat to what is now Tunica. He became an M.D. some time during the war. I assume they started farming back then. I really don't know."
What Owen does know is a little history of duck hunting on Beaver Dam.
"It's changed a lot, just the fact that beavers have changed it," he said. "It's opened up lot more. When Nash Buckingham talks about jump-shooting ducks, he was talking about in the buck brush. They had to cut trails through the buck brush. You could not go through unless stayed on trails.
"The ducks were still in there. A lot of times they'd get in pockets on the trail. They would paddle around a bend and the ducks would get up and they'd shoot them."
Bid buck brush goodbye While the beavers and nutria were busy mowing down the buck brush, Owen admits he was too busy with athletics and the opposite sex to appreciate what was at his back door.
"My dad, Will, took me for the first time and I just about froze to death," Owen recalled of his first duck hunting trip. "I killed my first duck with my uncle, Sterling."
A football injury was the catalyst that turned Will into a diehard duck hunter.
"Remember what happened to Joe Theismann?" Owen asked. "That was me my junior year in high school. I got hit below the knee and my leg was broken in six places. I couldn't do anything else, so I started duck hunting."
Hooked is what Owen is now.
"I've gone every day this season except two," he said. "My wife wouldn't let me go on Christmas, and it was a good idea that I didn't go on New Year's Day. We'd been to wedding the night before."
Owen's blind on Long Pond reveals the result of being in a spot where the ducks want to land. Spent shells and empty boxes line the bottom of the blind.
When we stepped into the blind, the beam of the flashlight on the blind floor caused great exhilaration to a waterfowler frustrated by the duck-less, mild winters of south Alabama.
With 10 minutes still left before legal shooting hours, the ducks were piling into Long Pond.
From the first command of "Kill those ducks" to the final fatality in a five-man limit of 30 ducks, mostly gadwalls, it took just a few minutes more than two hours.
Gadwall capital Owen said that blind has been in existence for about 20 years with similar results.
"Conservatively, I'd say we take 1,000 ducks a year at that spot, so that's at least 20,000 ducks," he said of Long Pond. "And that's conservative. Opening weekend we had eight people in one blind and four in the other. We were back at the dock by 8 o'clock with 72 ducks.
"That's why it's called the gadwall capital of the world. I think it's the duck weed. You can look out on the open lake and the ducks are lined up in the edge of the duck weed. They look like maggots they're so thick."
Owen knows the duck weed plays a part in the lake's attraction to waterfowl, but he also knows there are other intangibles.
"That's always being debated," he said. "There are lakes around here just like it. I know people who have actually taken areas that were natural areas and think they can improve them by draining them and planting a crop like corn, but they end up ruining them. I know two people who have done that. The next thing you know they don't even hunt them any more.
"And there have been a few years that the ducks have eaten all the duck weed, and you can just quit hunting early. When it's slow on gadwalls, from about nine on, the mallards are coming out of the fields and come to Beaver Dam to rest. Ducks always work better in the morning. The sun is up on the decoys and they just work better.
Owen said he's had some fine hunting in green timber in other places, but nothing compares to Beaver Dam.
"I don't know that there is another place where you can go to the same blind every morning and shoot 60 days," he said. "Nobody can explain why they keep coming in there and why you can go out every day and shoot. I won't try to explain it. It just happens."
College connection Ernest Ladd IV of Mobile was fortunate to be one of Owen's college buddies at Rhodes College in Memphis. Every year, Owen brings his pals in for a hunt.
"It's just phenomenal," Ladd said. "I've never been any place where the ducks just keep coming in like that. It's definitely a special place."
Boyd is just as baffled as to what makes Beaver Dam so attractive to waterfowl.
"It's just one of those places that ducks want to be," Boyd said. "It's on their map. It's imprinted in them. If there are ducks in the area, we're going to have ducks on Beaver Dam. I mean they've been coming here for thousands of years. It's just in them. I don't know why it's one of those places. It's hard to create. You can't create a place like that. It's just a natural place that they like to be. I don't know if it's the proximity to the river. I just don't know why they pour in there, but it's just always been that way.
"They feed in the fields, but they always come in and out of Beaver Dam. We kill a high percentage of gadwalls. We kill mallards and wigeons and teal, but most of what we kill are gadwalls, and I know the duck weed attracts them."
Anyone familiar with the Mississippi Delta knows, oxbow lakes with cypress brakes abound all along the river.
"I've got friends who have places similar to Beaver Dam within five or 10 miles," Boyd said after watching 30 ducks fall from the sky earlier that morning. "They've got duck weed, but they don't have the number of ducks that Beaver Dam does.
"I wish I could answer that, but I can't. I'm just glad to be a part of it ?you better believe it."
In your face The quality of the hunt is also what separates Beaver Dam from other waterfowl meccas.
"If the ducks are doing what they should do, it's an open choke deal over the decoys," Boyd said. "Thirty yards is a long shot. And that's the way I like it. It's effective and you don't cripple a lot of birds. It's just one of those up close and personal duck hunts.
"It's a special place, and I really don't know why. It's a lot deeper than we understand. I was talking to a guy the other day and said, 'Nash Buckingham made it famous. The Good Lord made it special.'"
-- For more information, call Beaver Dam Hunting Services 662-363-6288 or 662-357-0279.
For information about the Tunica area, call 888-488-6422 or visit www.tunicamiss.com. By the way, the Tunica RiverPark facility on the banks of the Mississippi houses an excellent museum. The Tunica Queen, a 300-foot paddle-wheeler, docks at the park and offers riverboat cruises during the warmer months.
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