August 8, 2025 • 22 mins
One man's trash is another man's treasure. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Both of these phrases describe fortune and misfortune depending on how you view the discarded, lost, or found item. Brent shares a crazy story of a found item from 40 years ago that sat neglected in a box until he found it again and learned its historical significance. A rare duck call whose value can't be measured by money alone. You're gonna like this one. It's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to this Country Life.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm your host, Brent Reeves from cone hunting to trot
lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I want you to stay a.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This
Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters
Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate.
I've got some stories to share. The Dixie Mallard Duck cof.
There's an old saying that I've heard all my life
that goes like this, Every now and then, even a
(00:47):
blind hog will find an acre. Now, I've taken the
meeting to be that even the unskilled, unlucky, and generally
unsuccessful can achieve a modicum of greatness, even by chance.
I've done that on more than one occasion, my wife
and children being pinnacle examples of my fortune. I'm going
(01:08):
to give you another example of that old saying right now,
and the story is the whole episode. We've got a
lot of ground to cover, so let's get started. In
nineteen eighty three, the hunting pressure on public land was
a lot different than it is now, but it was
(01:30):
still having to share the woods with utter hunters, and
my brother Tim and I shied away from those well
known public places like the ones that had made Stuttgart, Arkansas,
the place for folks to duck hunt. Green timber duck
hunting remains the experience of all experiences as far as
(01:50):
we are concerned, and we could do that right where
we lived, in our sacred saline river bottoms. In the
timber company land we were hunting on was as public
as it got except for the deer hunting in the
days before leasing hunting clubs staked out their areas through
generational gentleman agreements. Deer Camp A hunted from this map
(02:15):
feature to that map feature, encompason the hundreds of not
thousands of acres of upland and river bottom timber. Deer
Camp B started where Deer Camp A's claim stopped, and
so it went for all of the tens of thousands
of Timber Company acres owned by the Potlatch Lumber Company,
(02:36):
a timber concern that purchased the land and all the
timber that grew on it inheriting the deer Camp claims
from the Southern Lumber Company and the Bradley Lumber Company.
In nineteen fifty eight, both of which operated lumber mills
on each side of town in Warren, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the
(02:57):
train that ferried pine chips from one mill to the
other was the same one that I and a fellow
sophistic had hopped on in front of the West Side
Elementary shortly after getting off the school bus, trading a
day of sixth grade education for cigarettes, snooker, and cheeseburgers
from a diner in the middle of town. But that's
(03:19):
not what we're talking about, not today, So let's get
back to the duck hunting. Deer camps claimed deer hunting
rights only on potlatches, land. Squirrels, coons, turkeys, rabbits, quailed
and ducks were there for anyone who wanted to go.
Deer season wasn't nearly as long back in the day,
but really only the first week counted. That's when folks
(03:42):
took vacation businesses closing.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
School let out. You heard me right, school let out the.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Monday on the first week of deer season. Whether you
deer hunted or not, you didn't go to school. Now,
on the flip side of deer hunting was everything else
most folks I knew had squirrel dogs or coon dogs,
or pir dog or any combination of them. The outliers
were the duck dogs. Few folks had them, and fewer
(04:11):
folks duck hunted. And while it would be years before
Tim or I ever owned the Labrador retriever, fetching our
own ducks in the flooded timber of the Saline River
bottoms wasn't a chore, especially considering that we were the
only folks there. We never ran into anyone, and we
spent a large portion of our time walking sloughs and
(04:34):
boughs and hardwood flats that fluctuated in depth with the
amount of rain. Beavers were our most valued allies, and
the dams they built in the fall shoved water out
into the flat woods, all the acrons of the red
oak family and the preferred varieties of mallards. They lay
patiently waiting for the water to rise and the ducks
(04:55):
to find them as they rested and fed along their
migration and followed the ever the rising river water that
crept along the landscape, and good years with adequate duck hatches,
rain and coal fronts. The only difference between the flooded
timber of the self proclaimed duck capital of the world
of Stuttgart and the river bottoms where we lived was
(05:17):
the zip code. Some folks didn't believe me when I
told them that they were running all over creation chasing
ducks while Tim and I were smashing them right out
the back door. Of course, I didn't tell them until
it was all over and the leasing started. But for
several years when the conditions were perfect in Stuttgart, the
(05:37):
conditions were good at home. That's how it worked. We'd
catch the overflow of ducks during the big migration years,
and we named a fringe location that would be good
when the regular places were great. It was forty miles
one way trip from where we stood in the middle
of the river bottoms in Cleveland County to ground zero
(06:00):
of the public shooting grounds near Stuttgart, and the average
flying speed of a Mallard duck is somewhere around thirty
or forty miles an hour. I know folks that drive
farther than that to work every day. Forty miles ain't
no step for a stepper, as they say, which explains
why on more than one occasion we killed ducks in
the bottoms that had crawls full of rice Why were
(06:25):
they leaving the food laden richness of the rice fields,
where their travel routes were undisturbed and wide open for
acres and acres to fly for an hour in pitching
the decoor through a hole in the canopy that required
acrobatics unmatched by the most skilled of test pilots.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Why were they doing that? I don't know. Why were
two boys that had the same thing out their back
door driving an hour and a half to walk into
a place they'd never hunted, just to say they went
hunting in a place so popular it had more than
one name. The Scatters by meta, the shooting grounds, the
(07:05):
public shooting grounds all referred to one seemingly magical place
that holds almost as many memories from me now as
my beloved river Bottoms do. Maybe that's why we went,
because of the romance of it. All the books we'd read,
Tim reading them first and passed them down to me.
(07:26):
Duck hunting was our thing, mine and his.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I learned to love it because he did, and I
loved him. I pestered and pestored him to go to
the Scatters, and finally he took me.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I was old enough to go by myself.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I wasn't eighteen, I was close to it, but we
always duck hunted together if we were able in this
trip would be no different. We pulled into the parking
lot that had ten to fit fifteen trucks already there.
We'd gotten there later than we planned, and it was
(08:04):
close to sunrise. Seeing that many vehicles in one spot
where we'd be walking in behind folks in a place
we'd never been, well, it was more than disheartening. But
we'd committed and we were gonna check this box and
do the best we could. We had it out the
same trail to everyone else had, judging by the sloppy
(08:26):
boot tracks that led from the similarly swampy parking area
into the flooded woods. By the time the sun started
sneaking up, we'd walked about a quarter of a mile
from the truck and could hear folks calling, but none
were very close to where we were. We saw some
preening feathers on the water floating and the ones that
(08:47):
get left when ducks are sitting around relaxing, nibbling and
fixing their clothes, the waterfowl version of primping. Tim found
a little hole in the timber and we dropped a
eleven decoors scattered around in the open, and number twelve
had blown out of the back of the truck somewhere
between New Edinburgh and where we'd parked. Avowed to look
(09:09):
for it on the way back home. Ducks started flying
and the others started shooting before we did, and I
felt like I had really wasted the morning. You only
get so many of these mornings, and at that stage
of our hunting lives, shooting ducks may not have been
the most important part of the activity.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Pardon.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It wasn't far then, as if right on que. We
got a small group to work, and after making loop
after luke, they settled into the hole, each of us
calling begging him through the tree tops until they hit
the water fifty feet in front of us. Tim holler,
get them, and we stepped out from behind the trees.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The ducks got up and we started shooting.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
He got two and I got one. That was the
only group that came in, and we couldn't have been
more happy. We saw a lot of ducks flying, but
they weren't working our area, and slowly we began to
hear the calling and the shooting from the other groups
subside until we were the only folks left. Not being
(10:11):
known as quitters, we stayed until we had to leave
to be out before the midday deadline. We slashed our
way back to the parking lot, arriving on a slightly
different course than we left on. The scatters are known
for that, and even today with the advent of GPS,
every year you hear about someone who wound up spending
(10:33):
the night because they were lost, some even burning decoys
to stay warm. Regardless, we'd made it back, and had
that parking lot been a indicator of the heavenly rapture,
it had happened, and neither one of us had made
the cut. Everyone was gone, just my truck, me and
(10:54):
Tim and an acre of ankle deep, sloppy buckshot, mud
and gravel. Well, if this was the rapture, that twelfth
decoy wasn't going to do us any good, because heat
that night and for the rest of eternity was not
going to be a problem. But in despite the fact
that we got a little off course on the way out,
(11:16):
I was feeling good about what we'd done. We followed
a road map to a parking spot, walked into a
place where'd never been, and brought out a mess of ducks,
calling them in and shooting them the right way after
letting them finish on water. Now, while I changed out
my canvas waiters i'd bought it the farmer's co op,
(11:37):
I saw the barrel of a duck called barely discernible
in the mud beside my tire. I picked it up,
and I could see that it had been there for
quite a while. I slung the mud off and out
of it, and I showed it to Tim, and I
dropped it in the left hand pocket of my green
army field jacket i'd bought at a surplus store. We
planned to clean it up and see more about it
(11:58):
when we got home, but I forgot about it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
It's to ten.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It was set in the pocket of that surplus jacket,
hanging in the back of my closet for I don't
know how long before I found it again, and when
I did, I put it in a box, only to
be stored away with a bunch of hunting items and
keepsakes that got moved from assignment to assignment over the
next thirty years, until a few years ago when I
(12:30):
ran across that old friend once again. This time I
wasn't in a hurry to get somewhere else, and I
recognized it immediately by it still having some of the
mud from that parking lot stuck inside that wooden barrel.
Instantly I was back to that morning that started out
somewhat suspect but ended with a group of ducks decoyed
(12:52):
into the water that I can remember to this very moment,
as if it were this.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Morning, there would be one hundred.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It's more in our futures, Tim and I would guide
people there within the confines of the shooting grounds for
nearly thirty years, starting a decade after that first day,
the day I found this old call, I now held
in my hands a small piece of black string, still
attached to the barrel as a makeshift lanyard. The frayed
(13:24):
is telling the tale and the fate of the hunter
and how he lost that call, A wooden piece of
turned wood that was nondescript, with no high gloss finisher,
colorful decals, or engraving. Mud turned the powder when I
touched it, and wiped it away almost as clean as
if it had never been there, no cracks in the barrel.
(13:47):
I wiped it off with a damp cloth until no
dirt or residue from that day I found it remained.
I went to the hardware store and bought a can
of linseed on I put on a coat when I
got back home.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
That's when I saw it.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
On the insert, the part that holds the read at
the end of the call, you know where the where
the sound comes out, are three thin, close parallel lines
cut into the wood as it spun on the callmaker's lead,
and one more during the collar where the insert and
the barrel met, and then three more at the widest
(14:22):
part of the barrel in.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Another setting near the end.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But in between the two decorative sets of thin lines
on the barrel of the call, there's a brand, a
one word brand the callmaker burned into the call, and
it reads Dixie in all capital letters. And when I
saw it, I sat back in my chair. Could this
(14:48):
really be what I'm looking at? Could what I found
forty years ago? That languished in the pocket of an
old hunting coat and moved from home to home as
I stumbled my way through life, each time shedding myself
of items that I didn't want to include in the move,
but miraculously hung on to a piece of real Arkansas
(15:10):
duck hunting history.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, that's exactly what I'd done.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I'd found an original Dixie Mallard duck call, a highly
collectible assault after call made by the man himself in
the nineteen forties. That man's name was Chick Chick Major.
Chick was the nickname of Darcy Manning Major. He was
(15:39):
born in eighteen ninety four and was a well known
figure in the world of duck hunting and duck calling
in Arkansas. He was instrumental in the development of the
distinctive Arkansas style duck call, an absolute legend not only
in the annals of Arkansas duck hunting, but to the
call making and collecting world at large. The Chick Major's
(16:03):
Dixie Mallard duck hall has been a staple for hunters
and collectors since he started producing them for himself.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
When other hunters heard them, they wanted them too, and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
The first production calls started in nineteen forty one at
a time and completely by hand, and for.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Ten years he burned Dixie into each barrel before they
left his workbench.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
That would continue until nineteen fifty, when the decorative decals
replaced the Dixie brand. Now, fortunately for me, By this time,
the interwebs had been invented, and I found the contact
information of a man named Don Cahill. Mister Cahill married Brenda,
one of Chick Major's daughters, and had continued on the
(16:49):
legacy of the call making.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
After mister Major passed away.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
In nineteen seventy four, Don Cahill continued on the legacy
of building the Dixie Mallard calls starting in the next year.
In nineteen seventy five, Now I contacted mister ky Hill
and described the call I'd found way back when, and
then rediscovered a couple more times in my trove of
treasures as I moved around, and I sent him a
(17:14):
picture of it to see if it was in fact
an old Dixie Mallard call. He said, yep, that's an
old one made during the nineteen forties. And we talked
about it for a while and visited about duck hunting
in general, and tried to make plans to talk in
person where he could see the call for himself. Our
(17:35):
schedules never allowed for the visit. Time marched on and
mister k Hill passed away in November of twenty twenty three.
Don's son, David, had taken over the business several years
prior to this passing, and has now as a little
over a year ago, turned the reins over of the
call company to the fourth generation, his son, Tyler Cahill,
(17:59):
the great grandson of Chick Major. I spoke with each
of them about this call I have recently and was
pleased to find out that they still have a legacy
passion for call making that runs deep, not only in
the history of their family, but in the history of
Arkansas and duck hunting as well. That makes them a
part of my family, or me a part of theirs,
(18:23):
however you want to.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Look at it.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
And while talking to Tyler, I skirted the question of
his manufacturing progress in today's world of CNC machine and
three D printing and AI generated content. I didn't want
to hear that something his great grandfather could have never
envisioned would be how these calls were being made today,
So I skipped forward to Hey, Tyler, I have a
(18:49):
first generation call. How do I go by getting one
of yours? A fourth generation called to match it? I'm
sure I expected wasn't what I received, He said, Well,
mister Brennan, I picked up a lot of orders and
it takes about three and a half hours to make
one that doesn't include the tuning. And I stopped him
(19:13):
right there, You making these by hand, Tyler. Oh, yes, sir,
just like my great grandfather.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Man.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I can't tell you how happy that made me to
hear him say that in today's world where just the
other day, a friend of mine sent me a picture
of me from high school that he turned into a
video of me interacting with the camera. And I never
know exactly what to believe, what's right and what aim
(19:43):
But this man, this was different. Here's a family legacy
and heritage built on craftsmanship and a utilitarian arnt that
is continuing now in its eighty fifth year and fourth generation.
It's better than that. Nothing, nothing's better than that. These
(20:05):
are the stories of the people that deserve to be
told and remembered, not just for the sake of nostalgia,
but for the sake of how we got where we are.
In a way, that duck call is a cave painting.
It's a piece of Americana that continues to tell a
relevant story just by being I met the third and
(20:28):
the fourth generations of Ca Hills this week, and I
talked to both of them about our common interest and
love for duck hunting. Several years ago, I had the
pleasure of sharing those same thoughts with the second generation
of that call making family. The only one I never
had the pleasure of talking to was the patriarch, the
first generation, mister chick Major himself, as I was but
(20:51):
a slip of a lad of eight when he died.
I'm sitting here looking at this old piece of hand
turned walnut and cedar. I can feel the cold wind
of the day I found it forty two years ago.
I can hear Tim and I call them those ducks,
and the sound of their wings as they settled into
the decoys with a splash. I can hear our boots
(21:14):
as we waded through the timber back to the truck
and fill the wet, gritty, muddy barrel of that call
as I snatched it from the mud and gravel, like
King Arthur pulled Excalibur from the stone. I may not
have had the pleasure of speaking to Chick Major. The
Chick Major speaks to me every time I look at
that call. I thank you so much for listening. I'm
(21:37):
gonna post some pictures of that old call on my
social media and if you're interested in learning more about
the folks who made and make them, check out Dixie
Mallard duck Calls on Instagram and Facebook. If you're a
duck hunter, you owe it to yourself to find out
where we came from. And there's no better place to
start than with Chick Major and his family. Now, the
(22:00):
Public Timber Project is another page I.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Encourage you to check out.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
They've got a great mission and a goal of all
of us working together to better share the places we
all love so much.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
There's some good folks doing some good things.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
They really could use your support and your help and recognition.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
We need to get the word out there about it.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Check out Clay Bow's Bear Grease the Render, and Lake's
news show Backwards University.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
How could you not like it? His name is Lake
forbidness sake.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
So until next week, this is Brent Reeves signing off.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Y'all be careful
Welcome to this Country Life.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm your host, Brent Reeves from cone hunting to trot
lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I want you to stay a.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This
Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters
Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate.
I've got some stories to share. The Dixie Mallard Duck cof.
There's an old saying that I've heard all my life
that goes like this, Every now and then, even a
(00:47):
blind hog will find an acre. Now, I've taken the
meeting to be that even the unskilled, unlucky, and generally
unsuccessful can achieve a modicum of greatness, even by chance.
I've done that on more than one occasion, my wife
and children being pinnacle examples of my fortune. I'm going
(01:08):
to give you another example of that old saying right now,
and the story is the whole episode. We've got a
lot of ground to cover, so let's get started. In
nineteen eighty three, the hunting pressure on public land was
a lot different than it is now, but it was
(01:30):
still having to share the woods with utter hunters, and
my brother Tim and I shied away from those well
known public places like the ones that had made Stuttgart, Arkansas,
the place for folks to duck hunt. Green timber duck
hunting remains the experience of all experiences as far as
(01:50):
we are concerned, and we could do that right where
we lived, in our sacred saline river bottoms. In the
timber company land we were hunting on was as public
as it got except for the deer hunting in the
days before leasing hunting clubs staked out their areas through
generational gentleman agreements. Deer Camp A hunted from this map
(02:15):
feature to that map feature, encompason the hundreds of not
thousands of acres of upland and river bottom timber. Deer
Camp B started where Deer Camp A's claim stopped, and
so it went for all of the tens of thousands
of Timber Company acres owned by the Potlatch Lumber Company,
(02:36):
a timber concern that purchased the land and all the
timber that grew on it inheriting the deer Camp claims
from the Southern Lumber Company and the Bradley Lumber Company.
In nineteen fifty eight, both of which operated lumber mills
on each side of town in Warren, Arkansas. Coincidentally, the
(02:57):
train that ferried pine chips from one mill to the
other was the same one that I and a fellow
sophistic had hopped on in front of the West Side
Elementary shortly after getting off the school bus, trading a
day of sixth grade education for cigarettes, snooker, and cheeseburgers
from a diner in the middle of town. But that's
(03:19):
not what we're talking about, not today, So let's get
back to the duck hunting. Deer camps claimed deer hunting
rights only on potlatches, land. Squirrels, coons, turkeys, rabbits, quailed
and ducks were there for anyone who wanted to go.
Deer season wasn't nearly as long back in the day,
but really only the first week counted. That's when folks
(03:42):
took vacation businesses closing.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
School let out. You heard me right, school let out the.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Monday on the first week of deer season. Whether you
deer hunted or not, you didn't go to school. Now,
on the flip side of deer hunting was everything else
most folks I knew had squirrel dogs or coon dogs,
or pir dog or any combination of them. The outliers
were the duck dogs. Few folks had them, and fewer
(04:11):
folks duck hunted. And while it would be years before
Tim or I ever owned the Labrador retriever, fetching our
own ducks in the flooded timber of the Saline River
bottoms wasn't a chore, especially considering that we were the
only folks there. We never ran into anyone, and we
spent a large portion of our time walking sloughs and
(04:34):
boughs and hardwood flats that fluctuated in depth with the
amount of rain. Beavers were our most valued allies, and
the dams they built in the fall shoved water out
into the flat woods, all the acrons of the red
oak family and the preferred varieties of mallards. They lay
patiently waiting for the water to rise and the ducks
(04:55):
to find them as they rested and fed along their
migration and followed the ever the rising river water that
crept along the landscape, and good years with adequate duck hatches,
rain and coal fronts. The only difference between the flooded
timber of the self proclaimed duck capital of the world
of Stuttgart and the river bottoms where we lived was
(05:17):
the zip code. Some folks didn't believe me when I
told them that they were running all over creation chasing
ducks while Tim and I were smashing them right out
the back door. Of course, I didn't tell them until
it was all over and the leasing started. But for
several years when the conditions were perfect in Stuttgart, the
(05:37):
conditions were good at home. That's how it worked. We'd
catch the overflow of ducks during the big migration years,
and we named a fringe location that would be good
when the regular places were great. It was forty miles
one way trip from where we stood in the middle
of the river bottoms in Cleveland County to ground zero
(06:00):
of the public shooting grounds near Stuttgart, and the average
flying speed of a Mallard duck is somewhere around thirty
or forty miles an hour. I know folks that drive
farther than that to work every day. Forty miles ain't
no step for a stepper, as they say, which explains
why on more than one occasion we killed ducks in
the bottoms that had crawls full of rice Why were
(06:25):
they leaving the food laden richness of the rice fields,
where their travel routes were undisturbed and wide open for
acres and acres to fly for an hour in pitching
the decoor through a hole in the canopy that required
acrobatics unmatched by the most skilled of test pilots.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Why were they doing that? I don't know. Why were
two boys that had the same thing out their back
door driving an hour and a half to walk into
a place they'd never hunted, just to say they went
hunting in a place so popular it had more than
one name. The Scatters by meta, the shooting grounds, the
(07:05):
public shooting grounds all referred to one seemingly magical place
that holds almost as many memories from me now as
my beloved river Bottoms do. Maybe that's why we went,
because of the romance of it. All the books we'd read,
Tim reading them first and passed them down to me.
(07:26):
Duck hunting was our thing, mine and his.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I learned to love it because he did, and I
loved him. I pestered and pestored him to go to
the Scatters, and finally he took me.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I was old enough to go by myself.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I wasn't eighteen, I was close to it, but we
always duck hunted together if we were able in this
trip would be no different. We pulled into the parking
lot that had ten to fit fifteen trucks already there.
We'd gotten there later than we planned, and it was
(08:04):
close to sunrise. Seeing that many vehicles in one spot
where we'd be walking in behind folks in a place
we'd never been, well, it was more than disheartening. But
we'd committed and we were gonna check this box and
do the best we could. We had it out the
same trail to everyone else had, judging by the sloppy
(08:26):
boot tracks that led from the similarly swampy parking area
into the flooded woods. By the time the sun started
sneaking up, we'd walked about a quarter of a mile
from the truck and could hear folks calling, but none
were very close to where we were. We saw some
preening feathers on the water floating and the ones that
(08:47):
get left when ducks are sitting around relaxing, nibbling and
fixing their clothes, the waterfowl version of primping. Tim found
a little hole in the timber and we dropped a
eleven decoors scattered around in the open, and number twelve
had blown out of the back of the truck somewhere
between New Edinburgh and where we'd parked. Avowed to look
(09:09):
for it on the way back home. Ducks started flying
and the others started shooting before we did, and I
felt like I had really wasted the morning. You only
get so many of these mornings, and at that stage
of our hunting lives, shooting ducks may not have been
the most important part of the activity.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Pardon.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It wasn't far then, as if right on que. We
got a small group to work, and after making loop
after luke, they settled into the hole, each of us
calling begging him through the tree tops until they hit
the water fifty feet in front of us. Tim holler,
get them, and we stepped out from behind the trees.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The ducks got up and we started shooting.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
He got two and I got one. That was the
only group that came in, and we couldn't have been
more happy. We saw a lot of ducks flying, but
they weren't working our area, and slowly we began to
hear the calling and the shooting from the other groups
subside until we were the only folks left. Not being
(10:11):
known as quitters, we stayed until we had to leave
to be out before the midday deadline. We slashed our
way back to the parking lot, arriving on a slightly
different course than we left on. The scatters are known
for that, and even today with the advent of GPS,
every year you hear about someone who wound up spending
(10:33):
the night because they were lost, some even burning decoys
to stay warm. Regardless, we'd made it back, and had
that parking lot been a indicator of the heavenly rapture,
it had happened, and neither one of us had made
the cut. Everyone was gone, just my truck, me and
(10:54):
Tim and an acre of ankle deep, sloppy buckshot, mud
and gravel. Well, if this was the rapture, that twelfth
decoy wasn't going to do us any good, because heat
that night and for the rest of eternity was not
going to be a problem. But in despite the fact
that we got a little off course on the way out,
(11:16):
I was feeling good about what we'd done. We followed
a road map to a parking spot, walked into a
place where'd never been, and brought out a mess of ducks,
calling them in and shooting them the right way after
letting them finish on water. Now, while I changed out
my canvas waiters i'd bought it the farmer's co op,
(11:37):
I saw the barrel of a duck called barely discernible
in the mud beside my tire. I picked it up,
and I could see that it had been there for
quite a while. I slung the mud off and out
of it, and I showed it to Tim, and I
dropped it in the left hand pocket of my green
army field jacket i'd bought at a surplus store. We
planned to clean it up and see more about it
(11:58):
when we got home, but I forgot about it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
It's to ten.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It was set in the pocket of that surplus jacket,
hanging in the back of my closet for I don't
know how long before I found it again, and when
I did, I put it in a box, only to
be stored away with a bunch of hunting items and
keepsakes that got moved from assignment to assignment over the
next thirty years, until a few years ago when I
(12:30):
ran across that old friend once again. This time I
wasn't in a hurry to get somewhere else, and I
recognized it immediately by it still having some of the
mud from that parking lot stuck inside that wooden barrel.
Instantly I was back to that morning that started out
somewhat suspect but ended with a group of ducks decoyed
(12:52):
into the water that I can remember to this very moment,
as if it were this.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Morning, there would be one hundred.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It's more in our futures, Tim and I would guide
people there within the confines of the shooting grounds for
nearly thirty years, starting a decade after that first day,
the day I found this old call, I now held
in my hands a small piece of black string, still
attached to the barrel as a makeshift lanyard. The frayed
(13:24):
is telling the tale and the fate of the hunter
and how he lost that call, A wooden piece of
turned wood that was nondescript, with no high gloss finisher,
colorful decals, or engraving. Mud turned the powder when I
touched it, and wiped it away almost as clean as
if it had never been there, no cracks in the barrel.
(13:47):
I wiped it off with a damp cloth until no
dirt or residue from that day I found it remained.
I went to the hardware store and bought a can
of linseed on I put on a coat when I
got back home.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
That's when I saw it.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
On the insert, the part that holds the read at
the end of the call, you know where the where
the sound comes out, are three thin, close parallel lines
cut into the wood as it spun on the callmaker's lead,
and one more during the collar where the insert and
the barrel met, and then three more at the widest
(14:22):
part of the barrel in.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Another setting near the end.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But in between the two decorative sets of thin lines
on the barrel of the call, there's a brand, a
one word brand the callmaker burned into the call, and
it reads Dixie in all capital letters. And when I
saw it, I sat back in my chair. Could this
(14:48):
really be what I'm looking at? Could what I found
forty years ago? That languished in the pocket of an
old hunting coat and moved from home to home as
I stumbled my way through life, each time shedding myself
of items that I didn't want to include in the move,
but miraculously hung on to a piece of real Arkansas
(15:10):
duck hunting history.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, that's exactly what I'd done.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I'd found an original Dixie Mallard duck call, a highly
collectible assault after call made by the man himself in
the nineteen forties. That man's name was Chick Chick Major.
Chick was the nickname of Darcy Manning Major. He was
(15:39):
born in eighteen ninety four and was a well known
figure in the world of duck hunting and duck calling
in Arkansas. He was instrumental in the development of the
distinctive Arkansas style duck call, an absolute legend not only
in the annals of Arkansas duck hunting, but to the
call making and collecting world at large. The Chick Major's
(16:03):
Dixie Mallard duck hall has been a staple for hunters
and collectors since he started producing them for himself.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
When other hunters heard them, they wanted them too, and.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
The first production calls started in nineteen forty one at
a time and completely by hand, and for.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Ten years he burned Dixie into each barrel before they
left his workbench.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
That would continue until nineteen fifty, when the decorative decals
replaced the Dixie brand. Now, fortunately for me, By this time,
the interwebs had been invented, and I found the contact
information of a man named Don Cahill. Mister Cahill married Brenda,
one of Chick Major's daughters, and had continued on the
(16:49):
legacy of the call making.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
After mister Major passed away.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
In nineteen seventy four, Don Cahill continued on the legacy
of building the Dixie Mallard calls starting in the next year.
In nineteen seventy five, Now I contacted mister ky Hill
and described the call I'd found way back when, and
then rediscovered a couple more times in my trove of
treasures as I moved around, and I sent him a
(17:14):
picture of it to see if it was in fact
an old Dixie Mallard call. He said, yep, that's an
old one made during the nineteen forties. And we talked
about it for a while and visited about duck hunting
in general, and tried to make plans to talk in
person where he could see the call for himself. Our
(17:35):
schedules never allowed for the visit. Time marched on and
mister k Hill passed away in November of twenty twenty three.
Don's son, David, had taken over the business several years
prior to this passing, and has now as a little
over a year ago, turned the reins over of the
call company to the fourth generation, his son, Tyler Cahill,
(17:59):
the great grandson of Chick Major. I spoke with each
of them about this call I have recently and was
pleased to find out that they still have a legacy
passion for call making that runs deep, not only in
the history of their family, but in the history of
Arkansas and duck hunting as well. That makes them a
part of my family, or me a part of theirs,
(18:23):
however you want to.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Look at it.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
And while talking to Tyler, I skirted the question of
his manufacturing progress in today's world of CNC machine and
three D printing and AI generated content. I didn't want
to hear that something his great grandfather could have never
envisioned would be how these calls were being made today,
So I skipped forward to Hey, Tyler, I have a
(18:49):
first generation call. How do I go by getting one
of yours? A fourth generation called to match it? I'm
sure I expected wasn't what I received, He said, Well,
mister Brennan, I picked up a lot of orders and
it takes about three and a half hours to make
one that doesn't include the tuning. And I stopped him
(19:13):
right there, You making these by hand, Tyler. Oh, yes, sir,
just like my great grandfather.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Man.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I can't tell you how happy that made me to
hear him say that in today's world where just the
other day, a friend of mine sent me a picture
of me from high school that he turned into a
video of me interacting with the camera. And I never
know exactly what to believe, what's right and what aim
(19:43):
But this man, this was different. Here's a family legacy
and heritage built on craftsmanship and a utilitarian arnt that
is continuing now in its eighty fifth year and fourth generation.
It's better than that. Nothing, nothing's better than that. These
(20:05):
are the stories of the people that deserve to be
told and remembered, not just for the sake of nostalgia,
but for the sake of how we got where we are.
In a way, that duck call is a cave painting.
It's a piece of Americana that continues to tell a
relevant story just by being I met the third and
(20:28):
the fourth generations of Ca Hills this week, and I
talked to both of them about our common interest and
love for duck hunting. Several years ago, I had the
pleasure of sharing those same thoughts with the second generation
of that call making family. The only one I never
had the pleasure of talking to was the patriarch, the
first generation, mister chick Major himself, as I was but
(20:51):
a slip of a lad of eight when he died.
I'm sitting here looking at this old piece of hand
turned walnut and cedar. I can feel the cold wind
of the day I found it forty two years ago.
I can hear Tim and I call them those ducks,
and the sound of their wings as they settled into
the decoys with a splash. I can hear our boots
(21:14):
as we waded through the timber back to the truck
and fill the wet, gritty, muddy barrel of that call
as I snatched it from the mud and gravel, like
King Arthur pulled Excalibur from the stone. I may not
have had the pleasure of speaking to Chick Major. The
Chick Major speaks to me every time I look at
that call. I thank you so much for listening. I'm
(21:37):
gonna post some pictures of that old call on my
social media and if you're interested in learning more about
the folks who made and make them, check out Dixie
Mallard duck Calls on Instagram and Facebook. If you're a
duck hunter, you owe it to yourself to find out
where we came from. And there's no better place to
start than with Chick Major and his family. Now, the
(22:00):
Public Timber Project is another page I.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Encourage you to check out.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
They've got a great mission and a goal of all
of us working together to better share the places we
all love so much.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
There's some good folks doing some good things.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
They really could use your support and your help and recognition.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
We need to get the word out there about it.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Check out Clay Bow's Bear Grease the Render, and Lake's
news show Backwards University.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
How could you not like it? His name is Lake
forbidness sake.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
So until next week, this is Brent Reeves signing off.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Y'all be careful
Host
Clay Newcomb
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