“He wasn’t just telling history and collecting stuff. He was writing about a lot of people he grew up with, collecting many things he’d actually used or heard about during boyhood,” says Joe Walsh of his father, Dr. Harry Walsh that authored the landmark book, Outlaw Gunner. Covering some market hunting tools-of-the-trade and old-ways practices while speculating when the last punt guns were likely fired on the Chesapeake Bay–because some old habits died hard–gives way to stories about who Joe’s dad was a duck hunter, father, historian and stalwart conservationist.
“Earth, our home, sits like. jewel in the center of infinity. Ours is the only planet capable of sustaining life as we know it. We share a common environment with other members of the animal kingdom. We hunters must contribute to our own sport and to the preservation of these beautiful birds.” Dr. Harry Walsh, c. 1968
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Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Duck Season Somewhere. Think about the Chesapeake Bay. And what do you think about outlaw gunning? Am I right? What’s because it’s got a long sordid history. And not long after I started this podcast, I remembered a book I’d read written by Dr. Harry Walsh, named “Outlaw Gunner,” published in 2009. And I said, I got to find that guy. I’ve got to find that guy and get him on this podcast. And as I searched and searched and did my best on the internet, I ran across Dr. Walsh’s obituary. But as luck would have it, that algorithm in social media that puts the right people in our orbits more than it does the wrong people, I ran across his son, Mr. Joe Walsh, who is in the remote studio today. Joe, how the heck are you?
Joe Walsh: I’m great, Ramsey. How about yourself?
Ramsey Russell: Man, I’m fine. Now, where do you live out in Maryland?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, so I grew up down St. Michael’s area, and now I live on Tillman Island, which is way down the end if you go through Easton, out through there, and I know you’ve been down there. So it’s beautiful. It’s out there right on the Chesapeake Bay.
Ramsey Russell: And you grew up hunting the Chesapeake Bay with your dad?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I did. We grew up, we had a place on the Miles River which if you’re familiar with the area, is a great little, duck hunting area. And I was one of six kids. And, yeah, growing up when I was younger, we hunted the heck out of the area. So, yeah, I loved it.
Ramsey Russell: What do you remember most about hunting back in those days? You were telling me you’re about my age, so you would have grown up hunting back in the seventies, eighties?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, yeah. I mean, back in the sixties. So I grew, I was born in ’61. So I think I started out, shot my first duck and goose with a .410, which was no easy job. That was probably when I was seven years old or something like that. But, back then, we hunted with wooden decoys. And I didn’t know it then, but I was hunting over dad’s friends, people like Madison Mitchell, Charlie Joiner from Chestertown, Jess Urie, a lot of the famous decoy carvers. And we didn’t know any better, but we used them. And, we’d put out 60, 70 duck decoys, and geez, canvasbacks, redheads, you name it. It was great duck hunting.
Ramsey Russell: Then you told me on the phone the other day that, could I ask you, why did your dad write this book? And you said, well, he grew up in it. That was like his good old days. Is that kind of right?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, he did. So my dad was part of what I call the greatest generation. He was a great father. I was so lucky to have him. But I’ll tell you what, he grew up, he was born in ’24, right after, the Depression time. He grew up in that. He was one of six kids. He was the oldest. They didn’t have any money. My grandfather left him when he was probably 7 or 8 years old. So he had to help my grandmother raise the kids. So they hunted, fished. They did everything they could. They grew up in Chestertown, Maryland, just to survive, and that’s how he learned to do what he did. And between muskrat and shooting ducks. Then he got knew a lot of people growing up, and he hunted and fished all up and down the eastern shore of Maryland along Chesapeake Bay. But, it was a tough life back then, but that’s how he kind of got started.
Ramsey Russell: It’d been kind of tough to grow up around Chestertown, Maryland, back in the twenties and thirties, not be a duck hunter anyway, wouldn’t it?
Joe Walsh: Yeah. He grew up in a great area. I mean, he’s got stories of people he hunted with that are legends in that area, now but he also used to run up and down the bay, down to Smith Island, Bloods worth Island, Hopper’s Island, which if you get down the eastern shore, there’s some just incredible duck hunting. Back when, even in my lifetime, there weren’t ducks like they used to be, but I remember just flocks of huge redheads, canvasbacks, but they would run down there because they had better duck hunting. Chestertown, I think, was a great goose hunting area, but they didn’t have the ducks like the lower Chesapeake had.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So when you grew up, your dad was still hanging on to those old decoys. I mean, I’m sitting here thinking, I got a lot of buddies now, I hunt over some cork decoys, and I’ve got a lot of buddies that hunt over wooden spreads, but I don’t know anybody that has hunted over Madison Mitchell’s and Jim Pierce’s and all that kind of stuff. I mean, those legendary carvers that were putting them out as just a matter of habit every day. And you grew up hunting like that?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, yeah. I mean, by then he was a doctor, when I was growing up in Easton. And, he operated on everybody. He had six kids to feed, and so he’d trade ducks, muskrat. I mean, he grew up eating that duck decoys. He was Charlie Joiner’s doctor. They were buddies. So he would barter for a lot of that stuff. But, also Ramsey, he growing up, he hunted with, he knew a lot of these market gunners, so he hunted. He’s used a punt gun, a battery gun, gunning lights, and by the time he got there, like you said earlier, that stuff was outlawed, but not on the lower eastern shore. They were still doing that. Now, they may not have been, doing the market gunning and selling them like they did in Baltimore and running them up the bay, but they still were feeding their communities. And so he did a lot of that stuff, and he collected, these old punt guns, these gunning lights, these batteries, the old decoys, which was kind of the precursor to him writing his book, “The Outlaw Gunner.”
Ramsey Russell: Well, now, see, the way I understand it, Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed in 1918, and still society by housewives, they needed somewhere to go buy mockingbirds and tanagers or ducks or whatever they were used to eating. And so for a period of time, it kind of hung on. But long after the federal government kind of modified it and started putting teeth on it, there were parts of the world that, parts of the United States, I should say, that old habits just wouldn’t die. So now, when you say your dad was growing up in that era, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act would have been when he was a very young man, back in the twenties and thirties, it would have been… kind of got some teeth into it. There really wasn’t a market for it. But yet a lot of those old artifacts were still being used.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, they were. The lower part of the eastern shore, Virginia, if you go down to that area, my favorite part of the world, they were doing that. Chincoteague, they’re still duck trapping and things like that. Once the Model 11 came out, that kind of did away with a lot of those guns. Cause those guns, the Remington, that thing was so efficient. But a lot of these folks were still doing that to feed their families. I mean, it was poor down there, used to be. So they had to do what they had to do.
Preserving a Lost Hunting Heritage
“He grew up doing that. He shot thousands of ducks and geese but by then he realized the bay was in decline, and a lot of these old timers were dying. So the way of life was slowly slipping away.” – Joe Walsh
Ramsey Russell: Golly. When he kind of started collecting that stuff as a younger man, much younger man, he wasn’t really collecting it for its antiquity value. He was collecting it as a way to continue hunting.
Joe Walsh: Well, a lot of that stuff by then was old and used up, so it depends. A lot of the times he would go there, and he was good friends with these, Charlie Todd, a lot of these old market gunners from down there and by then, the old sneak skiffs, which I love. Geez, I grew up, we had stuff all over our farm, guns, sneak skiffs, little boats. And so he was trying to preserve that stuff. It was a way of life. He watched the decline of the ducks on the Chesapeake Bay in his lifetime. And then he watched his stuff starting to rot away. He was before his time, Ramsey. So he’d see this battery gun sitting there, which we can talk a little bit about how they work. It’s all in the book. But he’d see it sitting in a barn rotting away, and he’s like, what are you going to do with that? So he’d bring it back, duck traps, punt guns. He had about seven or eight punt guns when I was a little kid, Old wooden decoys. And by the time 1965-1967 hit, we had a whole basement full of this stuff that he was preserving. And by then he’s like, look, we need to take action. He grew up doing that. He shot thousands of ducks and geese, but by then he realized the bay was in decline and a lot of these old timers were dying. So the way of life was slowly slipping away.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. Talk about how you all would hunt ducks. You and your dad, I assume some of your brothers and sisters. Did you all hunt with your dad?
Joe Walsh: Not so much. My two older brothers and I did probably the most. And I hung around, I loved it, which is why I’ve been so involved in it my whole life, all aspects of it. Dad had a lot of his patients and a lot of buddies he grew up with, and he’d set up hunts, and we’d go down to Hooper’s Island, and the guy would have black ducks and teal or whatever and have it baited up, and we’d go down there. We don’t obviously do that stuff nowadays, but its just ducks everywhere. I mean, it was great shooting. I remember going out with redheads, and he’d be like, well, we don’t need decoys where we’re going. But, Ramsey, he also taught me how to trap. He grew up and he got, I mean, there’s some great stories in the book, “The Outlaw Gunner.” And I would just stop and say, I think it’s, particularly for the younger generation, “The Outlaw Gunner” should be required reading not only to preserve the history of these people that used to do this for a living but also about conservation.
Ramsey Russell: Exactly. And I would. Which is why it was important to me to do this podcast. We do have a lot of younger listeners as well as older, and we probably got a lot of older listeners who have never read the book. Well, I know for a fact I’ve been on the Internet lately, that book is still available. It may be in its second edition now, but it’s still widely available.
Joe Walsh: Yeah. Right, right. So about three years ago or so, it was out of print, and I actually tried to buy it back from the publisher because it has the old blue hardcover, but they stopped printing it. They came up with a paperback that I didn’t care for as much. So I approached the publisher about, look I want to put a hardback copy. I want to redo it. There’s a lot of notes. My dad had written a book called “My River” that had never been published, so I’m still working on that, but there were two chapters I really liked, so they agreed to go ahead and reprint it. And it’s got a yellow cover, dust jacket now. But I added, I updated some of the information, Ramsey, updated the pictures, put color pictures, and then I included two chapters from his other book, too. But, yeah, it’s available now, and you can find it on the Internet, or I’ve got a website, too, if you want to check it out.
Ramsey Russell: What was his favorite duck?
Joe Walsh: I would say the redhead or the canvasback. He loved canvasbacks. And nothing better than a corn-fed. And I have some stories there, although I don’t want to incriminate the old man. But, yeah, those were his favorite ducks.
Ramsey Russell: One thing I read. I think I saw this on your Instagram page. It was like a lantern but it wasn’t like a globe all the way around it. It’s more like a lantern that went out like a spotlight. And somewhere along the way I read that with the advent of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and as things kind of went a little more underground to feed families, I’m trying to think of who was telling me this story the other day that they started hunting at night more, and it was something about those lights on the front of the boat. They said as they skiffed up into rafts and flipped on the lamp, the ducks would start swimming to them. Have you ever heard that?
A Window into the World of Market Hunting
“They would have an automatic shotgun…slowly skiff up…and the ducks would get mesmerized by the light. It was very effective and it was outlawed as well.” – Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh: Oh, yeah. There’s a whole chapter on that “The Gunning Light”. And it’s interesting. I mean, he probably had collected a dozen of those in his time. And you can still find them. There’s a lot of reproductions out there. And the story on the gunning light is ducks would be set up just before sundown, and then as it gradually got darker and darker, and they would see a raft of ducks they wanted to go after, they’d have the light on, and the ducks would kind of get used to it, and then they would gradually paddle this little sneak skiff over and it. This light, Ramsey, might be sitting on top of a battery gun, which is like a four barrel, twelve barrel setup, that has one trigger. It might be set up with a punt gun. But the way I know dad used it and others was they would have an automatic shotgun. In the book there’s a picture of an old Belgian Browning that had an eleven-shot extension on it.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, it looks like it over under but the bottom is an extension. And then they would slowly skiff up, you know, paddle up to this group of ducks. You had to be very careful. You had to be very quiet. Certain lights would work but they would get mesmerized by it. There’s a couple stories in there about how the market gunners used it.
Ramsey Russell: Okay, I’m just fixing to ask you. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I was going to ask you, what was it? What was the quality of light they were looking for?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, so it would be like a kerosene lantern, what they might have used for lighting the house back in those days. And then it had a mirror behind it. It was in a wooden box above it. There was like a heat discharge. a And then you could slowly and the ducks couldn’t judge the distance of the light, and they weren’t that afraid of it. So as it got closer, in the story book, there’s a story of the young ducks would actually swim into the side of the boat, and you’d have to hit the side of the skiff to get them to put their heads up and then pull the trigger. Oh yeah, it was very effective, and it was outlawed as well. But those gunning lights are just really collectible. They’re great to see.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen those. I’ve seen pictures of the battery guns and there in eastern Maryland, I’ve seen them on display. What gauge would you say those were? Four gauge? Two gauge?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I mean, they varied. I mean, Dad had, he gave all of his collection to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael’s. They have a lot of stuff in there. And then the Fish and Wildlife Service, he gave, if you go to some of the state, the refuges like Chincoteague and some of the others had some of his stuff there. In Shepherdstown, West Virginia, there’s a training center, and they have quite a bit of his stuff there too. But it might be eight gauge, four gauge. He had several that were twelve gauge. And they were like old, like flintlock or old, in the beginning, old guns that they would just saw the barrels off and they would put it on one common stock, so it’s amazing. But they were very dangerous. There’s a story of this guy losing, or one of them, the firing out the side and hit him in the side. He still survived, but, these watermen really took their lives in their hands firing these guns.
Ramsey Russell: Bet they did. Well, it’s like when you look at a battery gun, it’s like if you kind of spread your fingers out on your hand. So it was a wide pattern. I mean, it would have been four discharges. And it’s almost like they didn’t want each pattern to overlap. So it was very spread out on the bow of that boat, and it wasn’t on a 50 or 60 yard wide pattern.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I can imagine. But a lot of them, they just fired all at once. So it had a common channel, and the gun barrels might be staggered in length to come up with a different pattern, kind of what you’re talking about. So for maximum, kill on all the ducks.
Ramsey Russell: I wonder how they evaded law enforcement. Or was there just not any law enforcement? Because here’s what I’m saying is it sounds like that would carry a long way over water and, a game warden could hear it. How in the world did they not come into port with a skiff full of birds and not get caught?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I mean, if you go to Tangier Island, Smith Island, some of those places later on after they were outlawed, they’re desolate. You maybe had one game warden down there, and I’ll tell you what, everybody else knew each other. It was a close community. And that game warden took his life in his hands. And I have nothing but respect for game wardens.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, you better believe it.
Joe Walsh: Let me tell you, it’s a tough job, and thank God we have them. But back then, I think some of them lost their lives, going after these duck trappers. And it was a close community and they knew anybody that wasn’t from around. So it would have taken them a long time to get in there. And by then they had everything hidden. But eventually, they caught up with them and, quite a few of them got arrested, guns got confiscated, and that was the end of it.
Ramsey Russell: You reckon there’s still a lot of those artifacts just laying around the Chesapeake Bay? For example, I can remember Bobby Jobs telling me one time when he was a little boy, he worked for Mister Mitchell, who was a undertaker.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, right.
Ramsey Russell: And he said it was kind of spooky up under the man’s shop, there was a coffin. Well, it turned out it wasn’t a coffin. It was an old sink box or something. One of those old layouts, and I mean, do you reckon there’s still a lot or is it all been collected up?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I think it’s been collected. I mean, Dad’s stuff, he probably had four or five sink boxes. The Maritime Museum, St. Michael’s, has got a double lay down sink box. They’ve got a single he had. Fish and Wildlife Service has a sit down box that he got from, like, Ocracoke down in North Carolina. They’ve got an icebox which they would slide out, and lay down in that. But you had to be a brave soul to get, you know, I mean, it is coffins exactly right and if you didn’t do it right. In cold water like that, can you imagine? That thing’s easy to sink. It’s a good way to die.
Ramsey Russell: You wouldn’t last long, would you?
Joe Walsh: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: One of the stories I remember in your daddy’s book, and it’s been too long, and I left the house in a bad mood today. My wife was even in a worse mood because I tore the house apart trying to find my copy. But one of the stories I remember is how those old timers like that would bait ducks. And maybe they would go out and feed them in this area, and they would put a long pole, or they put a buoy, like a crab pot buoy out there. And the ducks recognized it. And then when they show up, to be sure, the game warden didn’t catch them hunting over it, they pick it up in the dark and move it 50, 60 yards away and stick it out and hunt it. I mean, did you ever hear any stories like it?
Joe Walsh: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a story in the book about that on the use of corn and they did. Yeah. And I mean, these aren’t stories, and these people in this book aren’t made up. This is stuff that was done. And if Dad didn’t do it, he knew people that did. But you’re exactly right. They’d feed them, put the corn right by the stake, just like you’re saying. And then when they went to hunt they’d move the stake over in front of the blind, and there was nothing in front of the, you know, there’s nothing there at the stake, but the ducks were coming to the stake, the corn may have been 100 yards away and eaten by then, so they were smart about it. So it depends where they were. But that story, I think, that particular story, was in the Chestertown, Kent County area.
Ramsey Russell: What are some of the stories your dad told around the supper table or in the duck blind that may not even be in the book, that may not even have anything to do with outlaw gunning? What are some of the favorite stories you remember about your dad?
Joe Walsh: Oh, wow. Yeah. He was a great storyteller. And one, it’s not about ducks, but it’s about muskrats. He would eat them. He’d have patients that would bring him muskrat. We’d be all sitting around the dinner table eating whatever, chicken, and he’d come in and there’d be a pot of rats in front of him, and I’m sure, I’m not criticizing, but I tasted it, it was okay. But real quick, so let me just tell, because it’s a funny story. He used to trap. He’d go out with 50 or 60 traps in the marsh, and he’d walk miles and set them out, and he’d bring them back. He’d sell the furs, they’d eat some of them. But there was this pair of wardens in Chestertown. This is a true story, Bozie and Ivans. And basically, Dad was very secretive, before he went to school or whatever, he’d go early in the morning, and he’d check his traps, or he’d set them out for the next day. And it was expensive to have those traps back when you didn’t have any money. So the story he would tell that he’d love to tell was he didn’t smoke. He never let any of us kids smoke, he was a doctor. So he goes out to pick his traps up one morning after putting them out the night before, and he’s like, “I knew they were all full. They all had muskrats.” And so I’m sitting there. I was always very careful at this marsh. I’d lay down there for 20 minutes and just look around the marsh to see if I saw anybody because by then the game wardens were around, and this time, he saw some smoke, and he could smell cigarette smoke. And it was one of the wardens across the marsh. So he quietly picked up, and he probably had 40 traps out, Ramsey. So he snuck around behind him, said he was about 4 miles from the house in Chestertown, went down the dirt road, saw their cruiser there. And he was so mad because he knew they were going to come in and take his traps out, that he went in and he let air out of three of the tires. So he walks the 4 miles back to Chestertown. They come back, and they tried. They came to his house, tried to bust him for it. They had all his traps, but there was nothing they could do. And then the end of that story, he’s in Easton operating, and Bozie or one of them comes in, whatever, 30 years later, however long later, comes in the operating room, and Dad’s got to operate on him. And so they were swapping stories. By then they were friends and stuff. And Dad was a little younger than they were. And Dad tells them the story, says, “Well, how was that walk back from flattened your tires?” And I know there were a few curse words, but that’s a pretty funny story.
Ramsey Russell: That’s a great story. What did your dad talk about the changes on the Chesapeake Bay between the twenties, the sixties, seventies, eighties when you were coming up?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I think huge changes between overdevelopment, a lot of the hunting spots now had, big houses or were in the process, runoff polluting the bay, the grasses when Agnes hit, Hurricane Agnes, I don’t know, when that was 70, the early 70s or something, was the end of the grass, which a lot of it supported the bay, crabs, ducks, and overshooting, I think to a certain extent, maybe not, but the habitat changed. So we just saw a huge decline in the ducks. And that’s when he decided it was time to do something about it. And that would have been, like I said earlier, around 1967, 1968. He had this huge collection in the basement. So he wrote the Outlaw Gunner to preserve, all his friends by then, he had all these stories. He had all these pictures of his market gunning buddies, and, a lot of them had already died by then.
Ramsey Russell: Wow
Joe Walsh: So a big part of it, Ramsey, was to preserve all that stuff. The other part of it was, he, like you mentioned in the beginning, he was probably the founding figure behind the Waterfowl Festival that started in 1971, but it was his baby. He was the president. The first couple of festivals were all his collection. They set it up at the high school and some of the other places, but then the whole town of Easton rallied behind it. I got a copy of a letter that Ducks Unlimited sent him the first or second year, and it was for like a $10,000 donation. They weren’t sure the festival was going to do well. And it did great. And as of last year, I think they have contributed about $6 million. It’s a lot of work every year. To the listeners, if you’re out there, go to Easton, check it out. It’s a lot of fun, goose calling contests, there’s an artifact exhibit in the high school. It’s named after my dad, Dr. Harry Walsh’s exhibit. So it’s a lot of fun, Ramsey.
Ramsey Russell: Well, the whole town. I was there last year, and it beyond, like you say, that the festival itself from the exhibitor set up around the high school to the basketball court, just slap full of collectible type stuff. You got the live duck, the live goose. But the whole city, the whole town of Easton is somehow involved with this Waterfowl Festival for a week. It’s unbelievable. You go downtown, go to a bar, go to an antique store, go to a restaurant, and the whole town has embraced this Waterfowl Festival. And to me it’s like a bucket list destination just to go, just to wet your beak a little bit into that culture and that very special place along the Chesapeake Bay.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I mean, 53, 52 years coming up. So, I’ll be there. You’ll see me out in the high school. Love to meet anybody that comes by. But yeah, I say it’s a bucket list thing. It’s a lot of fun, it’s not cheap to put it on, but the proceeds go to preserve and waterfowl heritage. There’s a lot of different organizations that are involved in that now. So Waterfowl Chesapeake, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. So just come and have fun, maybe do some hunting during the hunting season, which was how it was originally set up.
Ramsey Russell: It’s around the split, I mean, so I know that Saturday, the calling contest stuff going on, it’s opening the first or second split, and because a lot of people are coming back from duck hunts.
Joe Walsh: Yeah. Down in Tilghman, there’s a lot of good duck hunting down here, goose hunting and stuff outside St. Michaels in the area. So I know they did pretty well last year, from what I heard.
Ramsey Russell: I’m gonna go back to you all hunting over those Madison Mitchell type decoys. It’s hard to say when you start talking about the old timers like this. Did he have any sentimental attachment to those decoys or was it just a tool?
Joe Walsh: It was a tool, I think. And he really, now he’d get mad. I remember running over a Mitchell with the boat when I was putting decoys out. We had a whole stack of them. And I had a Charlie Joiner canvasback with an axe one time by accident. But he had those. But he also as he collected Ira Hudson from Chincoteague, Doug Jester, some of the big, didn’t really have any Wood brothers, but mostly that, he had some North Carolina birds, because he was down in North Carolina, spent a lot of time in that area. But his interest, Ramsey, was mostly in guns. And I’m not that big of an expert on old guns. But Dad had a collection of old guns you wouldn’t believe, and they’re all in museums now, but he knew a lot about, knew a lot about that.
Ramsey Russell: Were they all kind of skewed towards the market hunting era and that outlaw era.
Joe Walsh: Oh, yeah exactly. Guns he’d seen growing up and people had used. We loved the punt guns. We had two of them in our TV room growing up, sitting on the wall that were used. God knows how many ducks those guns killed, and they were the real thing.
Ramsey Russell: When do you reckon, if you had to just guess based on his stories and his influence, when would you say the last punt gun was likely fired on Chesapeake Bay?
Joe Walsh: Wow, that’s a really tough question.
Ramsey Russell: Lastly, I’m being meticulous, but really, I mean, when do you reckon the last big punt gun undercover with the lamp and all? It would have been in the sixties, seventies, as late eighties.
Joe Walsh: As I think maybe the forties. I hear people talk about hearing punt guns and shooting now, but I doubt it. But I got to think it would have been the forties, maybe the fifties or something. And what happened really, maybe earlier than that. I mean, they could have done it as, as a ceremonial type thing, but the new automatic guns were so much easier, so much more dependable. There’s a story of a guy by the name of Atlee Lankard that had a Remington Model 11, and every year he had to replace the wood and stock because it would wear out. He said, that gun, there’s pictures of it, killed 150,000 ducks.
Ramsey Russell: Golly.
Joe Walsh: I mean, it’s actually at the Havre de Grace museum now. They have some of Dad’s stuff on loan there. Let’s say the battery, white battery guns are there. And there’s that guns there. But I think it really was a matter of function. The other guns are so dangerous, Ramsey. And then they came out with these new automatics, and they were so much safer, easier to use.
Ramsey Russell: Well, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was initially passed in 1918. It’s been amended many, many times. So you’re talking about the last punt gun. It may have been mid-forties, World War Two thereabouts. And I can see where a lot of boys were overseas. Maybe somebody said it would be a good time to go sneak out and fire off a couple of shots. But when do you think guys like that actually would have been still killing? How late might they have still been killing 150,000? Killing that many ducks during the season? I mean, going out with those guns and wearing them out like that? I mean, yeah, sixties, seventies.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I think in the twenties, they had to have a ready market. There’s a big write-up on Atlee, and I met him when I was a little kid. But I think it was the twenties when they could actually go in and sell them. They had to have a market for them. And back then they wouldn’t bother shooting ruddy ducks or some of the other ducks, mostly concentrated on canvasbacks and redheads or mallards and black ducks and things like that. But I got to think he probably shot them after that, I guess. But when they really shot a lot was when they had a ready market for them.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I mean, you hear stories going back to sixties and seventies, I mean, folks, I guess there’s a few outlaws still around who still don’t know how to count to six, you know what I’m saying? Or whatever the case may be. But I just wondered when that really big stuff was still going on. How late it might have still happened around the Chesapeake Bay because old habits die hard. I mean, if you talk about a guy going out in the thirties and forties, even, you’re looking at two or three decades after the Migratory Bird Treaty. I mean, that’s a long time. Everybody kind of knew by then there were laws in place. And still there’s a few old guys out there trying to sell them ducks. We talk to a guy, for example, Joe we talked to a guy down in Louisiana, that was in the seventies, down in Avoyelles Parish. They were still shooting a lot of ducks.
Joe Walsh: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Over bait at night, and the local barber was kind of the community distributor. And I think he told us, gosh, I think $3 a pair for mallards or something like it. And that’s a long time. I mean, that’s my lifetime. That ain’t back in the way old days. That’s my lifetime. That kind of stuff still going on, which is why I asked.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I think Dad, when he was doing it, when he had a Belgian Browning, like a lot of these guys were doing, and they may have used a gun and light, but they would be in a skiff and then sneak up on them. And I think that’s what a lot of these folks did. Some of them were still trapping. They would trap ducks. And they were, if you go down to Chincoteague, that was a big deal down there. They did a lot of that.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve never really heard of that. I’ve trapped ducks pursuant to leg banding and stuff like that. Talk a little bit about that, Joe, I’m not familiar with trapping ducks for commercial purposes.
Joe Walsh: Yeah. I mean, so there’s a great chapter again in the book, give everybody homework. But it talks about, and there’s a picture of a trapper being caught and a story about, you know, one game warden. He had to try and arrest this trapper out in the middle of the marsh. And these guys were tough and pretty wildly. But they’d set up, there’s a variety of different ways of doing it, but there’s like this V-type of trap, and they’d put corn around it and inside it. Once the ducks got in there, obviously, they couldn’t get back out. It was a tough way to die if you were a duck. Some of them would be put in at low tide. They’d go in there, canvasback or whatever would go underwater, and then it would be underwater, and they couldn’t get back up, and they’d drown. And there’d be a lot of ducks in those. But there was a variety of ways that they did that back then.
Ramsey Russell: By the time you’d come along, your dad was duck hunting. Decoys and shotguns. What kind of gun did he use? And what kind of gun did you all grow up using after you evolved in automatic?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, right. I mean, I grew up, when I was little, I guess, like most hunters, I don’t know, maybe it was me, but, I started out with a 10 or 20. But I think I shot my first goose when I was 6 or 7. And then moved up and my favorite gun was that old Belgian Browning. I love that gun. I had it, I’m looking at it right now. It’s the one that’s in the book. And I love the heck out of shooting that gun. I mean, I had a side-by-side I liked to shoot. But when we went out, Dad, he didn’t want to waste shells on, ducks that you couldn’t eat or he didn’t like to eat. He really liked black ducks and other ducks like that.
Ramsey Russell: He stuck just to the table fare ducks, not just ducks. Some parts of the world now guys, I ain’t saying there’s anything wrong with this at all, by all means, shooting. But I’ve been to parts of the United States shooting where buffleheads and hooded mergansers are the bread and butter ducks. And, boy, for me down here, spoiled, and hunting some of the other types of species, that’s a tough day. He stuck with just those meat ducks. Did you all grow up eating a lot of duck?
Joe Walsh: We did, yeah. Yeah, I loved it. My mom had recipes for good ducks. And there were only a couple. If bufflehead came in, he wouldn’t waste shot on them. Just more of a preference, but sea ducks, certainly not an old squaw or a scooter or something like that. But that was just his preference. That’s how we grew up. And he wouldn’t. He taught us rules and to respect. If you weren’t going to eat it, don’t kill it. And that’s one of the things that I talk to people about is, if you’re going to go out and hunt, I understand. I love to hunt. I get it. But only shoot what you’re going to eat.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. I’m assuming he never breasted ducks, that they were whole picked.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, probably. Yeah, that’s probably right.
Ramsey Russell: What do you reckon his favorite way to cook canvasback was, to eat canvasback or to eat his favorite ducks? Did you all have a family recipe?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I mean, here everything was cooked with like, onion gravy and mushroom gravy, even muskrats and ducks and things like that. As I got older, I loved to breast them out and cook them on the grill, but not my dad. He wanted them to slow cook in a pot, and with a lot of gravy and stuff like that. And he talk about Louisiana. He had some friends down in, like to cut off, Galliano in that area. He loved teal. He hunted with, there was a game warden who was a friend of his down there, trying to remember his name. And some of the Cajuns that were big carvers who were at the Waterfowl Festival were really good friends with my dad when they came up. So they had a pirogue. We had two pirogues when I was growing up. He’d gotten them from the little wooden dugouts, but a good teal is probably best eaten when he was hunting.
Ramsey Russell: You talk about making a gravy and that. You start getting down south by ten. That’s how they cook duck, they make gravy.
Joe Walsh: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they sure do. And they do their South Louisiana magic and I, oh, boy, it’s all good. I think you could put any kind of duck in those pots and make a gravy that’s good. But I do like the teal.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, right. I agree. I agree.
Ramsey Russell: Tell everybody again the name of this book is Outlaw Gunner. And you can buy it just about anywhere you buy books. I looked today, it’s widely available.
Joe Walsh: Yeah, yeah. So there’s the original edition, actually it came out in 1971, Ramsey.
Ramsey Russell: Okay, okay.
Joe Walsh: He wrote it around 1970, got it published in 1971. Then around 2021 or so, there’s a yellow-covered one and it’s the Outlaw Gunner second edition, and I updated it. And that one’s out there. I have a outlawgunner.com is my website, or you can find it out there anywhere. But I highly recommend, I’m biased, but I highly recommend you check the book out.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, I believe anybody listening, if you’ve not yet read Outlaw Gunner by Doctor Harry Walsh, get a copy. It’s a really good book. It’s a really, really good book. Joe, I got one last question for you. Lot of times when you talk to old guys that grew up back in those heydays, they saw the changes with the habitat loss, primarily, and the loss of bag limits. I mean, I had a question for your dad, I’d want him to describe the most ducks he ever saw flying over Chesapeake Bay. I can’t imagine hunting with you all, his kids in the seventies, seeing the number of birds he can remember having seen, you know what I’m saying?
Joe Walsh: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But did he ever have any contrition or regrets? I mean, you know what I’m saying? Not about his way of life, but just did he ever express any regret or wishes of something different?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, I mean, that’s a really tough question. I mean, first part, that’s why I spent so much time in Hooper’s Island, down that area. They’re just, in his day before, just thousands of redheads and canvasbacks. Sky would be black with them down there. Just unbelievable. But he grew up poor, and I’m sure he would have loved to have a better life particularly for his brothers and sisters. And it wasn’t easy. And he certainly made a good life for me and my brothers and sisters. He didn’t want his kids to go through it but they just made do. He never thought about that, Ramsey. I mean, he put himself through college. He put himself through med school to become a doctor. U.S. Fish and Wildlife, he worked for them for a while. He donated a lot of his stuff there.
Ramsey Russell: What did he do for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?
Joe Walsh: So, he came out of World War II. He was in the Scouts and Raiders. Dad was a tough guy. He was a boxer and stuff. And Scouts and Raiders was the precursor to the Navy Seals.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Joe Walsh: So, he came out of World War II looking for a job and he was a captain. And he had real great knowledge of the bay from his hunting days. But they had a research vessel out of Annapolis called the ALOSA, and he worked as captain on that for a couple of years and helped him get some money, get a job when it was tough after World War II. So he always liked Fish and Wildlife Service. But I would tell you this, by the time I’m older, but by the time dad was in his mid-fifties, he still hunted a little bit. He liked to eat ducks, but he killed enough then when he was really all about conservation.
From Market Gunner to Conservation Advocate
“But then in the end the last chapter was almost an impassioned plea for conservation…had those practices continued indefinitely, there would be no ducks and there would be no duck hunters because there’d be no ducks to hunt.” – Ramsey Russell
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, that’s just it, I’m fascinated. I think everybody is. When we talk about the old days, those old ways and old days, and market hunting, and black clouds full of birds and going out and flat shooting and coming in with 70, 80, 90, 100 birds. But that’s one thing about your dad’s book, I do remember is the last chapter was dedicated. He wrote about growing up, he wrote about those days. He wasn’t judgmental, as I remember reading it. He didn’t condemn them but he didn’t celebrate it. He just told the story. But then in the end, the last chapter was almost an impassioned plea for conservation. It ended on a conservation note that, I think he as much as said is, had those practices continued indefinitely, there would be no ducks and there would be no duck hunters because there’d be no ducks to hunt.
The Role of Tradition in Waterfowl Conservation
“Duck hunters are the ones that support the sport more than anybody. So there needs to be a balance though. You need to do it but at the same time, the days of killing that many ducks are over.” – Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh: Yeah. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And Ducks Unlimited, and then the Waterfowl Festival is all about celebrating duck hunting and stuff. But duck hunters are the ones that support the sport more than anybody. So there needs to be a balance though. You need to do it but at the same time the days of killing that many ducks are over, I mean, it’s more to preserve and protect for future generations.
Ramsey Russell: Great way to end, Joe. Tell everybody what is your Instagram account name?
Joe Walsh: Yeah, it’s called “Outlaw Gunner Fan” is my Instagram. And then I, I’ve got stories and information on there from Dad’s book. There’s a link to my website, outlawgunner.com. And I’ll put in every month or so, I’ll pull a story out of the book or out of his new book and put some pictures on that as well. And then I got copies of the book there. If you want, I’ll sign it. It’s my dad’s book but I’ll sign the new version that I did. If you have questions you want to look at information, feel free to message me on Instagram or get through me through the website as well.
Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Joe.
Joe Walsh: All right, Ramsey, thank you. Really appreciate it. I really enjoyed the chat.
Ramsey Russell: And, folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Duck Season Somewhere. Go get you a copy of Outlaw Gunner. You’ll be glad you did. See you next time.
