Oyster Bayou Hunting Club

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host, Ramsey Russell. Join me here to listen to those conversations. Welcome back to Duck Season Somewhere, Chambers County, Texas. Which is way on the east side, it’s on the east side of Galveston Bay. And I’ve got a really interesting guest this morning, think you all are going to greatly enjoy. I got a lot of in boxes and text message, got a few phone calls 9-10 in total when people knew I was going to be spinning down through Texas and meeting people and hunting and everybody said you need to meet this guy, you need to have a conversation and their description of them range from iconic, to legendary, to long time, to historian and he’s all that and more. If you want to know somebody go spend the morning in the duck blind with them that’s exactly what we did this morning. Went out to impeccable setup, had a great duck hunt. We didn’t shoot our limit, but we shot birds and it was a lot of fun. They finished right, we saw some good dog work and I got to hear a little stories and scratch beneath the surface of today’s guest Mr. Gene Campbell of Oyster Bayou hunting club. How are you today Gene?

Gene Campbell: Very good, very nice to be here with you.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well I sure enjoyed this morning and the whole trip kicked off with that beautiful boudin stuffed pork chop for dinner last night, I knew, I was in the right place.

Gene Campbell: Yeah that was good. A matter of fact it was almost as good left over just a minute ago.

Ramsey Russell: It was absolutely as good. You know walking into your camp house last night. It’s just, there’s mounts, there’s memento, there’s gun cases, there’s just everything you’d expect of a duck camp. But what struck me the most was entire walls full of photos. And once I really scratched and looked at were, the one so old you can tell they are old because they just got that yellow, 1970s or 1960s color. So I mean, this whole camp reeks of a long, long history of duck hunting here.

Gene Campbell: Well, we’ve been at this camp for about 10 years. The other camp that we lost in Ike was actually more pictures every wall we had in that lodge was pictures that went back to the 60s. Just the biggest loss that I had with Ike was the pictures, not the building’s, not the guns, the boats, all of that stuff you can replace, but the pictures, I mean that’s just my personal history of every friend I’ve ever had.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah. I value photographs. Photographs of family members, of old friends, of kids now grown, of old dogs, boy here and you tell some stories last night at supper, I know you’ve seen some great dog work, but Gene introduce yourself to everybody listening right now, so they can get a feel for who you are.

Gene Campbell: Well, I’m fixing to be 73 and I still duck hunt every single day I can, if I’ve got something, I just got to do, I’ll go do it. But if it’s up to me, I’m going to duck hunt every day. There’s no doubt in my heart or mind that I love it as much right now as I ever did. It’s just been an absolute, it’s not a career but a lifelong love. I think the thing I like best about duck hunting is not so much the hunt itself, but it’s the preparation with all my friends. I have four lifelong friends who still got for me. They’ve been with me 30 to 40 years, my brother also. Going back I first duck hunted when I was six years old. My dad wasn’t a hunter but he was a fisherman.

Ramsey Russell: Was it here in Chambers County?

Gene Campbell: Well actually the first hunt was, it was in Chambers County, but it was in the, what they call the Wallace Ville project right now, but it was, before that it was a maze marsh and belonged to the maze family, a big cattle ranching and rice farming family. And there was a guest who was a member that I got to go with, got to shoot a double barrel 16 gauge and I’ll guarantee I can remember exactly what that shell smell like after I shot it, I carried it around for I don’t know how long finally lost it. But that was a great memory for me and one of the very few times I ever hunted with my dad. He loved to fish though, he wouldn’t eat fish or ducks or anything else. He is kind of meat and potatoes and that was it. But he was a good fisherman. I love fishing with him. And that’s what got me outdoors, as my dad got me outdoors.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve just, you made me think, I’ve always said I always believe having raised children myself, kids spell love TIME. It ain’t the duck or the dove or the deer, it’s the time with your family.

Gene Campbell: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Best when you’re a child. For a man that didn’t like the duck hunt maybe, it really did show his love for you won’t take you out and did that stuff.

Gene Campbell: Well, there’s never any doubt about that. We had some tough times because I was just a stupid kid, just like everybody else. But we started out loving each other and we ended up loving each other and right there a very short period of time, we had our difficulties and I’ll never forget him. He’s a great man. He’s as good a man as I ever knew.

Ramsey Russell: Well, what happened after you were six years old? Where’d you go from six years old to, how does that story go from a six year old hunter with a 16 gauge spent hole in his pocket?

Gene Campbell: Well, so he got me a BB gun after that and I didn’t spend a lot of time around the house. I had some buddies that like to go out and shoot the BB guns and whittle on trees and start fires and we did a little bit of trapping. We had more fun than should be allowed. I cannot believe that our kids nowadays can’t get to experience that kind of a childhood. I still think about it with all the detail in the world. One of my favorite sports was bullfrog shooting. So there’s a pond over on red hill that we used to go to and you come up on upon all the bullfrogs, they jump back in the water, but we crawl up in the trees and have our pellet guns and they’d get out on the bank and you wait for me to, you wouldn’t let him turn back around, you want them facing away. So when you shoot them they just hop out and you had them. I shot myself one day getting down out of the tree. I still got that BB in my arms. I feel it every once in a while when I push against it.

Ramsey Russell: Just rolled around a little bit.

Gene Campbell: So that was my first gun training act right there, so that’s when I learned not to point the gun at what you don’t want to shoot.

Ramsey Russell: How old were you when you got into duck hunting big time? When that just hooked you in and you just, it just became that obsession like it all becomes with us.

Gene Campbell: 18 – 17 Right in there. Just as soon as any of my friend’s got a car, we started duck hunting, we did a little bit of dove hunt, but the duck hunt is what I really loved. The season never lasted long enough, I couldn’t wait for it to start. We had, my dad had put us on a little lease called Nelson’s. And it had three big old reservoirs that they used for rice irrigation and they were just fantastic, they had wigeon grass, like old pond weeds  some years, they were just full of ducks. Gadwall and wigeon some teal, we’d shoot a mallard or two every once in a while. Just a fantastic place for a kid to go out and hunt wasn’t anybody else around so we really love that place. From there we moved into the timber and it had already become the Wallace ville project, I had a couple of places I really like to go and there’s a pretty good little hike from the river, but we run a boat up the river, walk away back in that Cyprus marsh back there and I really love that there were enough mallards back then that you could actually go out there and have some luck. I remember one time we always wanted to make it better, we always wanted to be as effective as we possibly could and so we decided to put a blind up in one of the cypress trees. We took a 55 gallon drum and we carried it up there on a little scooter and we couldn’t figure out how to get it up there. So we put some steps in that tree and I strapped it on my back and carried it up there, finally got it tied down up there. First time we came back to use it was about a foot deep in water from the rain.

Ramsey Russell: How high up a tree was it?

Gene Campbell: It was probably 25 ft. Its pair of good ways.

Ramsey Russell: Sure it was. And I guess, that’ve been awesome. I’ve never I’ve just not that’s something like that I had in my bucket list is getting on the elevator position to shoot waterfowl.

Gene Campbell: That was fun.

Ramsey Russell: What was Chambers County and the surrounding area? What was it like then?

Gene Campbell: Well, that marsh there in the bottoms it was probably, because they graze cattle and there wasn’t a water control barrier that was as invasive as the one that’s there now. It was a much more natural marsh, lots of wigeon grass all the time. Of course, all this time there’s been a little subsidence and groundwater pumping that’s caused it to be a little bit deeper and there’s places that the wigeon grass can’t grow and it’s not the habitat it used to be. When we were hunting back there, you might see 10 people in a day and that would be people on the on the river, but they let them use air boats up there now and that’s really invasive and disturbing to the wildlife there. And you see a lot more people the birds really don’t get a chance to set up in there, they’ll find them in the refuge

Ramsey Russell: Was the refuge here back in the 50s and 60s?

Gene Campbell: Yes, 1962 for an aquatic wildlife refuge. Russell Clapper was the first refuge manager and he had a guy over here called Freddie Asher who lives, used to live right over here, they both passed away now. He was a good wildlife manager, they had about 15,000 acres starting out and they managed it with about three people, they had a guy that ran equipment, Freddie ran equipment, took care of the water control, all the projects that they did and there weren’t that many back then were all contracted out and then one refuge manager and I’ve known, this is a different subject, but I’ve known every refuge manager and had a relationship with them. All this time the current refuge manager, I know her quite well. Project leader is a personal friend of mine and he’s a duck hunter. He’s got a dog, he trains his dog all the time. He’s a good guy.

Ramsey Russell: That’s really good. And you all used to shoot a lot of mallards and that’s when you talk to folks down in this part of coastal Texas now that’s becoming a rarity.

Gene Campbell: It is a rarity. And we’ll have a typically, we’ve got some real nice habitat we’re right next to the wildlife refuge and they’ve got some incredible habitat too, they do a good job. Our stuff typically does not hold mallards that well and what we’ll see is a migration or a wave of mallards. And strangely enough, the biggest wave of mallards that we see is usually early in the season, we’ll see them, they’ll fly down, it’s like a test flight and as far as I can understand, I think they just back up and they probably after that first initial migration, they’ll back up to around the freeze line and they’ll stake pretty close that freeze line. We’ll see them a little bit if you get a real tough northern, we’ll see some come down but they’ll go right back up.

Ramsey Russell: Back when you were growing up in that era, I guess the, when we start thinking about the 55 gallon drums sitting in the barrel, you were 17, 18 years old, would have been looking at what the mid late 50s.

Gene Campbell: That would have been a little later than that.

Ramsey Russell: Early 60s?

Gene Campbell: Yeah, early 60s.

Ramsey Russell: What was the goose hunting culture? The waterfowl hunting culture like in this part of Texas? Back in those days as you were just kind of cutting your teeth into it.

Gene Campbell: Well, I was into duck hunting and we would shoot a geese, shoot the geese if they’d come over but the west side of town is where the goose hunting was and it was really good here too. But there weren’t that many goose hunters. Forest West did a little bit of goose hunt, but Jimmy Goddard and Sonny Bowman they were the big goose hunters.

Ramsey Russell: And that have been over towards Eagle Lake?

Gene Campbell: Actually they were right here. They were on this bear ranch. Jimmy Goddard was up there around 10 and he shot the rice fields up there. Both good outfitters, Sonny was a perfectionist.

Ramsey Russell: Good goose hunters just normally are.

Gene Campbell: They are. And he and one of his buddies always hunted together. They were on these big Canada’s that used to come back here. He also his blind on the bear ranch not this portion but the big portion that turned into the wildlife refuge east unit. There was a place they called Goose Reus Slough. And it wasn’t a snow goose roost, it was a Canada goose roost. And that’s where those big Canada’s used to come. But he would go back here behind this portion and he would shoot them regularly. Then he might go back there and scout them 4 or 5 days, 6 days and see where they were landing. He’d be hunting for 4 or 5 geese. That’s all that we’re back here but he was going to get those geese.

Ramsey Russell: That’s all in right there. He wanted them.

Gene Campbell: It was all in. That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Because I just been talking to Rob Sawyer I became aware of a history, at the history of coastal Texas, water fowling that I didn’t know and I hunted here I passed right by this cabin several years ago with some friends of mine, I’m going to hunt with them tomorrow right here. And they described to me that this was a lot of rice country at one time. Now, back when you were growing up and cutting your teeth, was it rice country like then or was it still growing?

Gene Campbell: So but after I got into hunting it was much smaller than it was when they first started out and I don’t remember the exact dates but 50s. When they first started out rice was a big money crop, the farmers that were here, there were most of the flat ground down there, they covered all that flat ground, they took the cows out, put the rice in, there’s rice patties where you can still see a portions of the levees that go all the way down into the marsh, they’re actually marsh now and some of that subsidence, but some of it was so valuable let’s just take a chance. They built reservoirs all over the place, there’s reservoirs everywhere around here that aren’t used for irrigation anymore they’re kind of lost habitat if you don’t manage them. And reservoirs are tough, every five years you got to do something major to make a reservoir work out for you.

Ramsey Russell: You saw, I mean, as you were growing, you saw that big expansion.

Gene Campbell: I did.

Ramsey Russell: You’re 17, 18 years old and you went to Vietnam. Did you raise your hand and say I want to go or how did that come to be?

Gene Campbell: Well, I don’t think anybody ever wants to be forced into the military and particularly when you’re a kid, there are a wonderful few that do and I’m so proud of them I can’t tell you. But I wasn’t one of those. I went to A&M my freshman year and it was just core and I love the core, the military there was something about it I really liked, but I got on scholastic probation and I knew that I was going to get drafted and I did not want to get drafted and not have something to say about what I was going to be doing. So I went to the recruiter and I said, Hey I’m really interested in aviation, I know you’ve got this warrant officer flight training program and I’d like to try to attend that. He said, okay, it’s a four year commitment and take your tests and we’ll do a physical and if you qualify then you’re in. Well, all of that went well, I went into Rescue Avenue to the federal building and we took the oath and the guy calls us out. There’s an officer that day, calls two of us out, takes us in his office and says boys because of some of your earlier indiscretions, you will not be able to be classified top secret and the Hughes helicopter program was top secret so I was out. So that didn’t take and I didn’t want to go in under any other condition for four years. So I said, well I’m just going to let him draft me. And my draft number came up in about a month and a half so and it was fine.

Ramsey Russell: And you were just infantry then?

Gene Campbell: Infantry. So I went in they didn’t pick infantry right off, I went to Fort Polk, I hate to waste your time with this but I just like telling this story.

Ramsey Russell: Tell us who you are. Go ahead.

Gene Campbell: Went to Fort Polk, took my basic they put us in advance infantry training, it was obvious we’re going into the infantry then. At the end of that they took two people out of my company those two people got to go to Fort Benning Georgia to the NCOCS and even though I was in for a short period of time when I graduated from that, I was E5, I was a sergeant. They sent me to Fort Ord California as an assistant drill instructor for a basic training unit. And we did an infantry basic training unit and got a little leadership on the job training and then they sent us over. I went over, I was in the 25th Infantry Division, close to a little town called Tay Ninh. It’s so pretty over there, you just can’t believe it. That’s the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen.

Ramsey Russell: Were there rice fields?

Gene Campbell: There was a lot of rice fields but the rice fields are a little bitty. And these rice farmers would plant an individual seed in a small patty and grow it and then they would transplant it into a little bit larger patty and they go through two of these rotations like this and they’re out there squatted down, walking around planting and –

Ramsey Russell: Individual seeds.

Gene Campbell: But beautiful crops. We got to eat a lot of rice over there.

Ramsey Russell: I bet you all did. Did you see any ducks around in rice fields?

Gene Campbell: Well, there was some ducks and fortunately, I was already a duck hunter, we had an M-79 grenade launcher with a buckshot round and I didn’t shoot but three of them because I got in trouble for it. But I did get to go duck hunting successfully in Vietnam.

Ramsey Russell: Did you know what kind of ducks they were?

Gene Campbell: No idea. I really and I’m a birder now, so I really should go back and look at that but I’m just not ready to go back to Vietnam.

Ramsey Russell: I understand. I do understand. You did do a little duck hunting over there, I know you saw some action but you got back home and then what?

Gene Campbell: Well, I got back home and I was always interested in mechanical things, motors, boats all of those kind of things and I had a boat, as a matter of fact going back a little bit further and wasting more of your time, I got to tell you this one story. So I was about 7 years old and we were building our own go carts we would use a 2/12 for the main body and then 2/4 for the front axle with an axle strapped to it usually strap that axle to it you just drive a 16 penny nail on both sides of it and bend it over. And that was good enough you just put some more nails and if it started falling off. So you steer it with a rope and had a solid back axle they’re real simple and I had a 1.5 horsepower Briggs on it and we ran that thing pretty hard all summer and finally burned the motor up. Well it was the end of summer and my dad just happened to have a lawnmower with exact same motor on it and one of those real type lawnmowers. And so we borrowed it for the rest of the winter used my dad’s lawn mower motor with that he never knew about it, he died never knowing about this. We put that thing back on and it ran fine. So we never got caught and during that next summer,

Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty handy for a kid, that’s pretty handy talent, mechanical talent I’m telling you right now.

Gene Campbell: It was fun. It was a lot of fun. When I was 16, I had some lawnmower and money and some other money, I bought a motorcycle, 160 Honda from the same company that I went to work for later on with marine. I went everywhere in that thing. One of my buddies and I went to Mexico a couple of times. We rode that thing everywhere and my parents never knew about it until I was about 18 by that time I wrecked it and started racing it because it was so torn up. But I did a little bit of motorcycle racing. Love to work on motorcycles, love to work on boat motors too.

Ramsey Russell: This part of the world, it must have been a good living to be made working on boat motors.

Gene Campbell: It was and there still is. It’s just so hard to find a really good boat mechanic because all the motors that they’re making now have got so many, capsulized components. You’ve got to have a computer, not just a computer, you’ve got to have the program and the program only comes from the dealers and the dealers can only get the program if they have qualified trained mechanics. So it’s tough to get in that business. And most of the guys that work on boats and motors if they don’t want for a big dealer, they’re working at a big disadvantage because that software, you just can’t get it.

Ramsey Russell: And you were still duck hunting while you were doing boat mechanicing.

Gene Campbell: That’s a great thing. Boat mechanicing and motorcycle mechanicing those are mainly summer sports and as teal season came up I would take time off on teal hunting. And winter came up I just quit and I’d be gone they knew I was going to be gone, worked out great for them and me, they didn’t have to pay me and I didn’t have to go to work, I’d just go play. I met, after I got back from Vietnam, I met Forest West. He was a big time outfitter. Good, good duck hunter, good fisherman. The way I met him, I knew him by reputation, the way I met him, my wife and I were looking for a home and there was a house three bedroom house out in Old River. So we went out there and I walked in and I hadn’t never really seen him before I’d seen pictures but it’s never the same. So he looked familiar to me and there’s mounted ducks and guns all over his house and he had Labradors in the backyard and I said, I introduced myself and we’re here to see your house. I said, what, are you Forest West? He said, yeah, I’m Forest West. So we got to talking, we got to be friendly and he was in the middle of putting together the original Los Pathos at Champion Lake. There were a number of elevated tree blinds there that he was trying to get in shape and the old log cabin, was in pretty rough shape and he was going to open it as lodge. So, I helped him that whole summer. Every day I could get off, I’d go out there and help him, I didn’t want any money, I just wanted to help. Teal season came around I helped him get set up out there in the marsh and on the bear ranch and he said man I am so sorry that I don’t have a spot for you, but I really appreciate you coming out here and I was working on some of his equipment that wouldn’t work out too well. He had a key that kept breaking and I saved some of his, doctors that were out there hunting one day and that he couldn’t stand it anymore he said, okay if you want to hunt you can hunt that pond right there and it’s an old marsh pond with some pit blinds in it that he put out there it was his main spot and none of those other guys wanted to go down there, you had to pick the customers up at either the rice land hotel or the lodge and then drive all the way down to the highland bridge, run all the way down intercostal back up East Bay bayou and then pull the boat over and then run away back up in the marsh.

Ramsey Russell: It was just, it was a long hard fight getting there.

Gene Campbell: It was really, I couldn’t wait. It was a dream come true and the birds were there for a couple of years like you can’t believe, well you can believe, but the hunting was so good. There were so many teal, so many pin tails. We were shooting 10 ducks piece and there were many days that we’d get the limit and 40 or 50 ducks. That’s a lot of shooting. Had some good, real good habitat that was right next to us that was owned by the P land club and they managed it real well and that was our feeder stock and we had an east west flyway, just a fabulous place to hunt. Hunted for Forest for three years he was always a great boss, a really good friend and I hated to leave him, but I just couldn’t afford staying. Joe Lago gave me an opportunity, said, hey, if you want to get into business, I’ve got this little piece of marsh down here called Eagle Hoff lease. And I met another guy named J. W. Bones and he and I kind of partnered up and went back there and we hunted there for a couple of years.

Ramsey Russell: And that was your introduction into guided hunting?

Gene Campbell: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: What, when and where we are? About 70s?

Gene Campbell: 74 through 77 and then 77 through 79 on the Eagle Hoff and then they sold the ranch and when they sold the ranch to US Fish and wildlife generally Go camp of [**00:31:52] fourth of it. And it was the best fourth, that’s where we hunt now. So we moved over to the bigger ponds on the bottom end of that Bear ranch and that’s where we carried our people for a long time. We still have all those ponds, still have those all those relationships, my relationship with the Lago’s family goes back to, well I actually met Joe Lago in 66 that’s the first year ever hunt here.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be darned. Well tell me some stories from back in the early days getting into the guiding and outfitting especially I’m so curious as to the quality of the hunting in this part of the world, there’s all that rice, there’s all that marsh, which was a whole lot different 50 years ago than it is now and I’m also just curious as a young man, you’re getting into guided waterfowl hunting and I know a lot of folks listening right now are themselves young people getting into guide business today. But what was it like then? What are some of your fondest memories? What are the good, the bad, the ugly of just getting into that from both mechanicing?

Gene Campbell: Well, it was an easy move for me because I love the sport. I love the duck hunt. And I think when I first got into the business and for maybe the first 6 or 8, 10 years, I like to pull that trigger, I really like the shooting sport aspect of it. I love the decoys and I immediately went to big spreads, we were shooting 4 or 500 decoys at a spread and of course we left them out full time but our ponds our big ponds back there they’re flyway ponds, those are birds that are flying from one area to another area and you can trick enough of those in a day to make a good hunt. Some of the pond as you get further up to the top or not so much you have to leave it alone for a while and then go hunt them. But that I guess the most fun that I had, I mentioned it a little bit earlier is the relationships that you start to develop. I remember my first hunt with my first customer, he is the same guy that was hunting with me on Christmas Eve when my wife went into labor with my daughter. He’s the same guy that was fishing on channel marker number 68 with me, when my wife went into labor with my son, same guy, Johnny Braniff. And we had a long relationship, we hunted together fish together down the chandelier islands, another, well, there’s so many examples. I’ve still got so many of my original customers that are still capable of hunting. I’ve got some 80 year olds, I got some 70 year olds. I hunt on Saturday morning, every Saturday morning with the same guys, they’re my age. When I first got started hunting in the bear ranch, they were hunting right across the bayou at the p land Club. And when they lost that, they came to me and I said, man, I tell you what I’ve been listening to you guys shoot since the mid-70s. Why don’t we do this? So every Saturday we’ll go out there and hunt good, bad, better doesn’t matter what it’s like when we get through we got some chairs, we set the chairs up. If its warm weather we’re drinking, we’re going to drink some champagne and need some tamales and if it’s cold weather is Bloody Mary’s and tamales.

Ramsey Russell: They’re probably getting from the same restaurant they’ve been getting from all these years the tamales.

Gene Campbell: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: That’s very interesting. Were there still mallards back in those days? Wil you shoot mallards at all?

Gene Campbell: We shot some mallards not that many, pin tales were our forte. Pin tales and green winged teal.

Ramsey Russell: Pinpoint ducks.

Jean Campbell: They were just so many of them and strangely enough even with all the wigeon grass we shoot some wigeon we were actually shooting more wigeon than we were gadwall then and that’s really changed. We don’t get to sell them the wigeon anymore but we get gadwall on it all the time ever do.

Ramsey Russell: Jimmy was talking about that this morning I noticed the spread was all gadwall and green winged teal. What else has changed since those days?

Gene Campbell: I guess one of the most noticeable things is the difference between presentation of typical duck hunter. What he looks like, how he hunts, what he hunts with, when I first started it didn’t matter what you had. If you had a raincoat didn’t matter if it leak long as it was camo. If you had waiters, they didn’t count either, they didn’t have to be $500 apiece. I remember I wore red balls for a long time and I had the rubber in the live rubber glues because they tear a lot, they tore a lot. My shotguns, I shot an 870 forever and it was a better gun I think than today’s 870s. It lasted a long time.

Ramsey Russell: How do that contrast with today’s typical duck hunter?

Gene Campbell: Well, everybody’s got, they got whatever the latest name brand is and you see that change a lot. I like Sitka it’s made well, but I just used the Cabela stuff before that it was good too, it wasn’t a stylish looking and there’s a bunch of other good ones out there, it’s just what I’m familiar with. People are willing to spend, it’s like a $500 fishing reel, I mean that’s a line storage device and people started paying $500 for reels and now they’re paying $500 for coats and you can get a coat that will do pretty much the same thing for $100 or $125. And we weren’t paying anywhere close to that. The guns were cheaper, the guns are shooting right now highly technical high dollar, super expensive and I’m shooting one of those too, but it was a gift.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah, I guess I’m a modern day duck hunter. I really think back to the old days wearing Hodgeman hip boots or waiters and though that material they made that stuff out of would last a long time. But God just in terms of comfort and performance, especially if I’m halfway across the world, I want a gun that is going to do what they say and going nut. And I like performance clothes that are lighter and drier and warmer and thinner. I can remember being young and you look like the Michelin man, if you were warm on a cold day and now you don’t, now you look like you’re going to church is just that thin now, but it works. So there’s been some good advancements. What about the, I get the difference in the presentation and the looks and like I think of my granddad wearing on cold day wearing his Canvas zip up one piece aviation suit that he got from the military and brought home and they were just real practical people that way. But have you noticed any changes in all these years as you’ve been doing this 50 some odd years maybe just like prevailing attitudes or have you noticed changes?

Gene Campbell: And I think, we’ll absolutely everybody has if they’ve been around for a while, the difference now, I think is probably the social media has promoted everyone’s opinion. So everybody’s got an opinion out there. There’s some poor attitudes that are exposed.

Ramsey Russell: Like what?

Jean Campbell: Well let’s just,

Ramsey Russell: Not to put you on the spot.

Jean Campbell: I’ve always believed in the listing rather than talking. I’d rather not talk badly about somebody else, but it seems to be that it’s an opportunity for other people to, and we’ve got a Facebook page but I never post, I’m just a lurker. My son does all that and if you ever post one time then you’re ignoring everybody else so you can’t do it, I can’t do it. So I’ll let him handle that. And we see a lot of comments and a lot of jealousy and adversarial attitudes and that’s the thing I don’t like about social media. If it could be a little more positive, I think it would be better. And I just believe waterfowl hunters may have been a little more positive back when there weren’t so many reasons for them not to be and there right in your face all the time now. I enjoy social media up to a point.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about some of those reasons in terms of a real happy hunter a generation or two ago with a lot simpler equipment, a lot more fundamental hunting versus maybe now a more invested duck hunter that may have an Instagram for a bunch of different reasons. What are some of those reasons you think?

Gene Campbell: Well, one of the best reasons I can think of it is, so you and I go out and we’re going to go out there and we’re going to hunt we’re going to have we’re going to shoot eight ducks between us and we’re going to have a really good time. We’ve been friends for a long time. What a day now? So, but it doesn’t matter we had a great time out there

Ramsey Russell: We had a wonderful time.

Gene Campbell: But you and I know better. But if a young guy goes out there and has a good time with his friends and shoots a few ducks goes back and opens up at that social media page. Somebody got more than he did and somebody else is going to answer his post, well, you should have been with me or there’s always that little chipping away.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like ego boosting.

Gene Campbell: It is.

Ramsey Russell: And my grandfather was in that way. He was just, he was going out to hunt with his friends and get some ducks to roast. And it wasn’t a lifestyle, it wasn’t a passion and it wasn’t his ego and it wasn’t his self-esteem. It was just what he did. He went duck hunting.

Gene Campbell: It used to be the personal relationships. It was, there was not a competition. My customers go out, we would have a great time, we would talk to each other, I’ve been around the world with my customers as their guests, that’s one thing I learned a long time ago, If somebody invites you to do something with them it’s because they want to do something with you. If you turn them down once, they may invite you again. But if you turn them down twice, you probably never get that invitation.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they’re going to think you don’t want to spend time with them.

Gene Campbell: So in doing that you create a friendship that will last a lifetime. My best friend right now, Mike Camer. He lives up in Conroe, he’s older than I am, has a little trouble getting around from time to time. But he duck hunts every chance he gets. If he’s healthy enough, he’s coming duck hunt. If he’s not healthy enough he sends his sons and his grandson’s. They’ve already hunted with us four times this season. And I love hunting with them, I’ve gone fishing with them and all over the place, been hunting with them all over the place. And there’s a dozen other relationships, maybe a 100 more relationships that I’ve got, that you would consider a career long relationships. But I think for me the relationships, and it doesn’t matter if it’s with your best friend or with somebody you’ve been hunting with for four generations and you’re hunting with their great grandson. It doesn’t matter who it is, it’s the relationship. And I’ve got my grandkids that are hunting with me, I got one, that’s 18, he’s a freshman up at A and M right now and my granddaughter’s 13, she’s not accomplished duck hunter, but she can hit a duck. And loves to shoot, we take her out to the sporting clays range. She does pretty good. But that’s part of my whole family. My son is right here with me, you met him. He’s a good duck hunter, he’s a good fisherman. He’ll take us over if I ever get to a point where I can’t do it.

Ramsey Russell: I say it all the time I’m blessed, you are blessed too Gene because you get to do what you love, which is to duck hunt, but to spend time with people and I was a different man when I was a teenager in my 20s and but I guess you just go through these different stages and to where now I’m as happy going out and shoot half dozen ducks or shooting ducks, I don’t know the numbers at the end of the season. I don’t care. It’s just, it’s the times in the blind, the rituals and traditions and the dogs and the food and the stories and the people and the emerging friendships and I feel like I’m always learning something, so where I get the duck hunt a lot and you do too. When I look back through my photo albums, it’s the people that stand out, the people holding those ducks, the people smiling at the dinner table. That is the, and that’s one thing I love about this podcast businesses it’s getting to meet people and hear stories. What about the, one thing I noticed real quick, I’m a biologist know a little bit about something, but man, you’re beyond the ducks and the people, you’re big into the habitat, the total game. I mean, there’s not a whole lot of folks I hunt with on a daily basis that can point out the plants and the ecology and the life cycle and the importance and like yourself, you talk like a biologist out there in the field. I mean, you really are knowledgeable and what those ducks are doing. The pin tails, like the fall panic comes and something else and I can pull the water off and I can manage it and get this response and get this kind of duck coming in. I’m just guessing that was learned out in the field, bursting yourself into that ducks world.

Gene Campbell: Absolutely. And because I loved it. I love the habitat and I’ve always been kind of a freak when it comes to watching things grow and trying to remember, I took notes for years and years about how the summer went for a given plant and try to remember that, okay, we can expect this because it’s been real dry or we can expect this because we likely disked this and we know what the seed bank is. We know because we kept water on it all year that our aquatics are going to be more robust than they would be if you just do a late flooding. I think what most people miss and the habitat part of this game is that these are waterfowl and water is not the key. It’s just one of the components. You’ve got to have some depth. It’s like a good football team anybody can go out there and play a couple of innings with their best players but if you don’t have any depth, you don’t have any, they eat all that good stuff. That’s just sitting on the top and there’s nothing else in that seed bank for those birds to get. You need depth. You need, you got to have rice for early in the year for the blue wings. And then you’ve got to have rice for that first week or two after that you need to seed the plants in the late winter you got to have aquatics. If you don’t have all of those right there, your habitat is not going to hold up.

Ramsey Russell: You’re describing an entire complex.

Gene Campbell: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: That’s it. That will satisfy a lot of different lifecycle requirements that waterfowl have from the time they show up early season to the time the season closes them and beyond that when they hang around begin imprinted on your property, they have different needs. Is that right?

Gene Campbell: That is absolutely correct. We also hold our habitat through the breeding season. So we’ve always got some water for the model ducks and whistling ducks they always breed here. We’ve got them on our property, there’s ducks on our property year round. But it’s not just the ducks, it’s all the wildlife, the shore birds and wading birds, all of those birds depend on those. This is a huge migratory alley right here and all those birds come through here. I’m a birder, I’d love to go birding but I still shoot ducks. But the burning is a big deal for me. And so we manage we’ll try to manage an area where it’ll support not only the waterfowl, but it will support the wading birds and the shorebirds too.

Ramsey Russell: We sure saw a pile of them today. I mean more than I’ve seen all season anywhere else. Back in the day and the heyday, I think you told me yesterday out there at the truck, there were one time 50,000 acres of rice in this bottom and now there’s about 15,000 acres. And I’ve heard people say, well, that’s a step down. But then I come out there and we hunted empowerment this morning it’s flat full of nice wildlife desirable food sources and habitat components. Would you say that the less rice has hurt waterfowl utilization out over in this part of world?

Gene Campbell: I think it’s affected the geese more than anything else. Along with us losing a lot of our rice crop up, a lot of it went over to Arkansas, they got cheaper water, their grants a little better this is just old gumbo here. It takes a lot of work and you don’t get a lot out of it. But the geese moves the ducks I don’t think it affected them that much. I think the ducks are still dispersed about the way they were 50 years ago. I don’t know how many there were 50 years ago, don’t know anybody else that knows how many there were 50 years ago, but it wasn’t much more. May have been a little bit more than 50 years ago. We had a two duck limit. So we’ve had some troubles in the past. So maybe we better think about 100 years ago.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. It wasn’t, it really may not have been 50 years ago. I just know that when I was in college and got hooked line and sinker into duck hunting, the limit was two mallards and that was all it took to go out with three or four guys and everybody shoot two mallards. I was in, I was all in at that point. And now my dad, I talked to him, one of the last conversation I had and he didn’t come when I grew up, he hunt his little boy got out, well he made a real good pot of coffee and it was a cold morning, we’ve been hunting the river and I stopped by to see him on the way in and we had all those mallards, green heads from the river, few green wings, whatnot and I don’t know, I just started trying to pick in about like the good old days back and back when he’s a little boy and he like son the good old days are now.

Gene Campbell: Now that they are right down.

Ramsey Russell: He said, go look at the bottom of your boat at all those mallard, he said the good old days or now. He said, we didn’t shoot ducks like it back when I was growing up, not in Mississippi. And that meant, he said six ducks a man. He said, that’s a good duck. He said the good old data now and there’s a lot to think about that. Gene I just want to ask this question because back in those good old days, 10 point pin tails, I know you sit out in that one hole, you shot a lot of limits a lot of times. But they weren’t all just great days with easy limits were they?

Gene Campbell: Lord No. It probably, I’m not to tell this, but it is beyond the statute of limitations. So it was a young guide mistake. We’re out one day and we’re having a slow hunt, so these, the shore birds flew by and they look real similar to jack snipe. So I figured, well, it looks so much like a Jack snipe maybe it’s a Wilson’s stipe and they named those as a game bird. Well, we shot into and knocked down about 12 or 14 of them and I put them, I didn’t, they wouldn’t fit on the strap so I put them in a bag and we took them out, put them in the back of my truck and I went up to the check in station up there where Joe Lago stayed and I met a guy named Charles Stutts in baker[**00:54:01]

Ramsey Russell: I met him yesterday.

Gene Campbell: What a guy. Biologist for Texas parks and wildlife for 40 years or longer. One of my most important resources for what I know right now came from that man right there. So he says, well how did you do son? I said, well it was real slow duck hunter we shot some Wilson’s snipe and he says Wilson’s snipe? Can I see them? I said yeah come on. So he comes over and said, now I’m going to tell you right now those are real good to eat but they are not Wilson’s snipe they are Dowitcher.

Ramsey Russell: Dowitcher’s. Little shore birds with long pointed beaks like snipe.

Gene Campbell: And we saw some of those this morning.

Ramsey Russell: We did. But you live and you learn, you grow. And I’m 54 years old, I’ve been duck hunt a lot of place a long time, but I still feel like I learn stuff. One last thing I want to ask you about is, my buddy Steve Biggers. When I told him I was coming over here to meet with you and record you, he talked about you with such reverence. I know that you raised him, you gave him a start and he describes the great detail and the blinds, the camo, the situation to getting to clients to the blind without having a slog a quarter mile through the mud. I mean, he really, why do you think that was important to you? I mean, there’s a lot of duck guys this day, they just mud ride out the blind slog, I mean, but then there’s guys like yourself that really go that distance. How did that come about? Why do you think that was important?

Gene Campbell: Well over the period of time the people that I started out hunting with they were young men. And we had some kind of sloppy plans and not a lot to them, we might use a 55 gallon drum and build seats on each side of it and no covers, very cold they leak, you’d have to slosh it and to get into them. But as these customers started getting a little older, started complaining a little bit and they were my friends by then, we started developing some ideas and we built our first big wood ground blinds.

Ramsey Russell: Like we hunted in this morning?

Gene Campbell: Just like those. When we put those out in the marsh and that’s wet. I mean when we dug the holes for those things, we just got out of the boat and used a shovel. You cut it out like that and reach down and get it and throw it out and then you pump that blind hold that blind over it, pump it blind down, fill it up with water and it go down in there and then you put the steaks around it. And one of those blinds, in my blind which is very similar to the one that you hunted in this morning. That was Tim Woolford in my blind and right hand blind is 26 years old. 26 years old is made out of the ground contact, half inch plywood treated ground contact to before, stainless steel nails, lots of sealer in between it and then on the outside of it, we chop gun those with fiberglass, leave the inside open if they can breathe, they’ll last a long time and it’s leaking a little bit right now and I was a little bit worried about it, but it kind of quit. So I got my fingers crossed on that one, but I got another one ready to go. And we’ve built 50 of those over the years and they’re in almost every place that we hunt right now. They’re not easy to put in. We’ve got, to get to these blinds that that’s the other part of it, we used to have boardwalks that were 3 or 400 yards long. And if they got I said we’re just impossible people to get on there and if you want to fall in the water you all you got to do is so well that things only four inches wide and they just fall right off, it might be 12 inches but 12 inches is only 4 inches when you tell them it’s 4 inches in the dark. But we had some good times with that. What we did we found a mud boat, it had a V8 motor in it. Just came from Louisiana. We took that thing and we went from the cattle walk all the way to a blind. It took us about three weeks to do it. You run a thing, just run it wide open up onto the ground like that and where it would cut it’s when you throw it into reverse and it would wash all that out. But we made about a three mile long boat road with that thing and that is actually legal even today if you’re on private property you can still do that. So we don’t need to mention that because we’re still doing it a little bit.

Ramsey Russell: Well it sure have been a beautiful morning getting to go out and see that. I love duck hunt, I love the next duck over the decoy. I’ve got a sweet spot for blue wing teal and I don’t know why. Do you have a favorite duck?

Gene Campbell: The favorite time of the year for me is teal season there now we’ll have some spectacular hunts later on in the year. But the blue winged teal because they’re so numerous and they’re almost predictable. They decoy so well everything about them, they will react to a duck call, it’s just a real cooperative duck and it’s a real good way to get kids and keep customers happy and get a lot of action, doesn’t last very long. The mosquitoes usually aren’t that bad, even though we’re at the marsh, sometimes they’ll be a little bit bad but we can spray them back. I love teal season. I like the late winter hunts too though they’re the least successful hunts the further into the winter you get the less successful things are.

Ramsey Russell: You think that because of hunting pressure?

Gene Campbell: I think hunting pressure, you’re shooting the same ducks day after day. It’s a lot of those things there, but that’s when you get the most spectacular action. You’ll see the green winged teal in groups of 400 or 500 sometimes and if you, you’ve seen it, if you ever see that there are three stacks up pin tails lined up one behind the other calling shot, shoot at the last ones first, of course you can’t shoot but a couple one time. But that’s beautiful I love that. Galwall are nice and predictable. But late season dynamics, in the early teal season, that’s my two favorite times. The most successful time is usually the first month of duck season.

Ramsey Russell: Gene. I appreciate you being here. I really do. I’ve enjoyed hearing your stories and I know everybody has. One last question, what are your thoughts regarding the future of duck hunt? We’ve talked about the past, we’ve talked about the present, what are your thoughts regarding the future of duck hunting, here and elsewhere?

Gene Campbell: I think it’s going to get more expensive. I think that the old guys are going to be pushed out of it real early because they came up to public land anymore. They’re just not physically capable and something I want to work with fish and wildlife in the hunting areas try to improve. I think that will change. I think that the public hunting areas will become more numerous and possibly better hunting conditions.

Ramsey Russell: Why better?

Gene Campbell: I think better because public is going to demand it. I’m demanding it and I haven’t made a lot of progress yet, but I got a couple of years and I go to the friends of anabolic refuge meeting every month and I’m a duck hunter and I’ve got a couple of other duck hunters that are on that board too. So they’re familiar and comfortable with us.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you make a good point, because I hear a lot of people say, well I’m not political. How can you be a gun owner of a duck hunter not be? I mean, we’ve got to work with we’ve got to let our voices known.

Gene Campbell: Absolutely. And it’s not really that political it’s because I’m friends with everybody on the board. Refuge is always well represented either the project leader or the refuge manager will be there and they’re there more than willing to listen. We have funding sources that are at our disposal, you have to work for them. But if I bring a project up that’s going to make it better for the duck hunters on that thing, they would support me. I just got to find the right one and access for the older and the very young hunters is one of the things that I’d like to improve possibly have one of the better hunting blinds. This is just for old guys and real young guys because it’s easy to get to going to keep it real nice, make sure there’s some action there and give the, I’m an old guy now I couldn’t go out there and hunt like those boys do but I’d sure like to go back out there. I spent a long time out in that marsh. I’d like to go see it again.

Ramsey Russell: Gene, I appreciate you, I very truly do. Folks, you have been listening to Mr. Gene Campbell oyster bayou hunting club in Chambers County, Texas. Is this the easternmost county as we go into Louisiana?

Gene Campbell: No.

Ramsey Russell: One more county.

Gene Campbell: There’s actually two.

Ramsey Russell: Basically, we’re on the east side of Galveston Bay to put you on a map. But anyway folks, thank you all for listening. Duck Season Somewhere. See you next time.