After enjoying plates of steaming-hot boudin and digging through fresh batches of made-from-hand cane duck and Oiu Caille (spotted goose) calls, long-time friend Dale Bordelon and I move to his front shop to catch up. He walks the walk of bygone South Louisiana times, his entire approach to duck hunting–and life–is that of his ancestors. We talk about food, new calls, and a growing collection of old pump-action killing sticks, him sharing sure-fire strategies for tricking wary, late-season gray ducks and leaving the swamp happy regardless. We also talk about the very last made-by-hand cypress dugout ever made in Louisiana and why it symbolizes a passing of the torch.
Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, down in Avoyelles Parish with my old buddy Dale Bordelon, it’s been forever since I’ve seen him come down the gravel driveway and step up, it’s like coming home, like every other time I come down here to see my buddy Dale, it’s like coming to a family reunion. I mean, I’ve been here 2 hours, Dale and we’re just now getting around to business, recording the podcast. How the heck have you been?
Dale Bordelon: Doing good, man. I feel privileged you come this far to do a podcast, always glad for you to come over and glad to see you.
Ramsey Russell: I’m going to come more. I mean, I’m going to come more. It’s like I just got here and you had everything set up and started cooking some boudin and I don’t – I really hate to say I don’t remember the last time I had boudin, let alone good boudin and that was great boudin.
Dale Bordelon: Well, it’s pretty good stuff, now we get it right down in Marksville, they make some good – Louisiana is known for good boudin. They might have 200 places, but you only got a handful of real good ones.
Ramsey Russell: You said something about this part of a boudin tour or something, me and you still ain’t done our boudin tour, but you said something about that was the best of the best. And it was good Boudin, especially since I ain’t had it so long.
Dale Bordelon: I guarantee you we eat it pretty often.
Ramsey Russell: Come from a place in Marksville. I don’t think that boudin had liver in it.
Dale Bordelon: I don’t think it does. I know we’ve been to places that have it and it’s very good, I’m not knocking it, it’s just a little different, made a little different, very spicy, got a lot of meat, very good tasting boudin.
Ramsey Russell: See, boudin is mostly rice and meat and seasoning, stuffed sausage. It’s like a French sausage and what’s so crazy about coming to Louisiana, me and you may do this in July on our tour. What’s so crazy is you can stop at 50 different boudin places and they’re all good and they all boudin, they all taste like boudin. But every single one of them is standalone different from the next.
Dale Bordelon: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: It’s unbelievable.
Dale Bordelon: That’s right. They’re just like boiling crawfish, they’re all good, but the people got 10 different ways of doing it. But they all, just a few of them stand out. But the old people used to use the intestines of the hog, I know most of you all people know that, but you can’t use that no more. So it’s kind of like a fake good is what you can buy for that.
Ramsey Russell: That’s why you don’t need eat no more.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, right.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t know what it’s made out of, but it’s pretty chewy.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: I just now happened to know looking over your shoulder, it got me off, but you got a coot mounted in here, you ain’t got much taxiderm, but with all little taxiderm you got, you got a coot. That says a lot about you, Dale, a shoulder mounted coot.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, that’s kind of goes with, I had a customer come here one day and say, you know what your shop needs? You need a mounted poodle. I said, I don’t know about that, but it sure would go at what I’m about, Louisiana and all this old heritage stuff.
Ramsey Russell: Do you shoot coots?
Dale Bordelon: No.
Ramsey Russell: You don’t? What part of Louisiana? I mean, I know there are parts of Louisiana that that’s a big deal, like on the last day of season to go out and have a coot roundup.
Dale Bordelon: I don’t shoot my shot, let me put it that way. I don’t shoot them no more. I don’t like to shoot stuff in a ways, unless I’m hunting for old people, then I don’t mind. But years and years ago, 40, 45 years ago, we used to go in pirogue and shoot them. And I had some old cage French friends, they no longer with us. They really knew how to cook that and make it just as good as a teal. I know it sounds crazy, but we would hunt for these old people and go eat with them and it was a sport. We used to kill limit all the time and do that.
Ramsey Russell: It’s crazy how far a country like Azerbaijan is from Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, it’s about 8900 miles. But they hunt out of boats like you all do, they don’t call them pirogue, but that’s what they are, they’re real narrow and they’ll draft in real shallow water. There’s leek, there’s made out of just pine lumber or something, they have to caulk it with mud. And the boy, the guide, stands up in the back when he’s getting after cross shallow water.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But their favorite duck, what made me think of this thought, Dale, is they hunt a lot and even the hunt and hide pushing those boats of theirs off into the tules and getting real hidden and natural and all that good stuff. But their favorite bird to hunt is coot in rank order, coot, mallard, green winged teal, that’s what they’re after when they go to the marsh. But they want those coots, they took us on a coot hunt one time. They all got lights on the end of their guns for shining them at night.
Dale Bordelon: I want to ask you a question. So they hunt them coots more than the teals?
Ramsey Russell: They’re going to shoot anything that comes in.
Dale Bordelon: It’s because it’s easy.
Ramsey Russell: They target the coots. They want the coots. and like, you know how in a lot of parts of North America, when you coming up to the boat ramp or coming around a blind, coots just kind of sort of get out of your way?
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: If those coots so much as hear the faint knocking of a boat with a paddle, they look like they’ve been shot from a cannon flying for them lives just like a wild mallard around here, because they know.
Dale Bordelon: They know hell’s coming.
Ramsey Russell: And when they dropped us off at one evening about telling us about, they wanted to shoot blackbirds, I’m looking around, I don’t see no red wings or grackles or nothing, I go, just so we’re all on the same page, tell me what blackbird you’re talking about and we walked at the edge of the water and you pointed and pointed at coots. I go, really? Are you serious? It was like 45 minutes before dark and they took us out before dark and we had lights and waited it out because they’ll come swimming in, I shot mine flying by, but they’ll come swimming into them decoys at night and they get all excited about it and I just challenge them. I said, I just I’m an old duck hunter, I just don’t understand, you got all these and we went back to the hotel and the chef cooked them and it was fabulous.
Dale Bordelon: The old people, they used to eat everything on a coot. Some of the old people that was raised hard, the way we do them, we keep just the breast, not deep breasts with the bone in it, it gives flavor to the gravy and that big gives it.
Ramsey Russell: To have that bone in there.
Dale Bordelon: Got to have it in there, just cut it out, leave the meat on the bone, it’s a perfect sauce. It cooks good and it gives it a flavor.
Ramsey Russell: One of my old Louisiana buddies from down around New Orleans told me one time, his grandmother, he would go out at the end of the year and shoot coots. She wanted the gizzard, she wanted that bone in breast, but when he cooked duck using her recipe, he left the bone in, so you didn’t just fillet the breast, you breasted it kind of like a dove, so you had that bone in there and he said that, she said, therefore I believe it, that they really wanted that bone for the flavor like that. But also that meat, when it hits the heat, it wants to contract, it wants to draw up, like shrink up and when it does that, if you keep it stretched and let that heat penetrate it, it makes it more tender that he’ll penetrate that muscle fiber. I think it might be some truth to that. I’m no rocket surgeon, but I think it might be some truth to that.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. I don’t know, but I know it gives it a sweetness, that’s what all the old timers would say. So I’ll cook it like that and old Jean follow that old Cajun chef.
Ramsey Russell: I know, chef Jean Paul
Dale Bordelon: He claims you put a poodle and a bowl of milk overnight before you cook it and then the next day you make a good gravy. But it’s edible, it’s not bad eating at all. I didn’t ate plenty of it.
Ramsey Russell: Jean Paul says that I believe it, you were talking about, we ate – talking about that boudin and got off in the coot hole, it’s hard, it’s easy to do here in Louisiana, but have you eaten any crawfish this year? Do you have any idea what crawfish cost this year?
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, do I know? I live right amongst it. It’s a little too rich for my blood right now, too much money. But Ramsey, right here –
Ramsey Russell: Why was there a shortage or what’s going on that they’re so expensive?
Dale Bordelon: Well, this year in Louisiana, we had a spine that went for 2 months with no rain and it was 1060, 1080 days.
Ramsey Russell: Back in the fall, when mud bugs would be dug in.
Dale Bordelon: Well, just as the summer months.
Ramsey Russell: Okay, they’ve been dug in then.
Dale Bordelon: They claim, the barges claim there’s a lot of crawfish that died of the burrows because it dried so deep the ground, they ran out of moisture, so a lot of people not catching craw, they’re starting to catch now, they’re catching some, but it’s not as good as a normal year. It’s out of whack, so the crawfish price has been, now it’s coming down pretty good and I’m just joking to you. I’m not going to pay $15 a pound to eat boiled crawfish.
Ramsey Russell: When they opened up in Mississippi, it was $15 a pound limit, 3 pounds per person.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And of course, I was out of town, think the Lord have mercy, but now it’s $8 a pound. Usually about this time of year, after Easter, it’s only down in that $5 range, but it’s way more expensive.
Dale Bordelon: You can buy it right now. $25 for 5 pounds, boiled, 1 mile from here.
Ramsey Russell: Boiled.
Dale Bordelon: Already boiled.
Ramsey Russell: Are they wild caught or farmed?
Dale Bordelon: Oh, no, that’s wild crawfish.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Dale Bordelon: Process coming down and it’s getting back to normal. But we usually catch ours every year. My boy Cody, he goes into one of our duck holes, last year, he’d catch them all summer long every year, but this year we had drought –
Ramsey Russell: Talk about how you going catch them? I don’t how you say that, how are you all fishing for them?
Dale Bordelon: We got some little, those little pyramid traps.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Dale Bordelon: And we put some, get a sack of bait.
Ramsey Russell: So when you pull the buoy, the walls kind of come up and put it in the center.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, it’s a wild trap.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: And we just go and walk in the field where we duck hunted. Usually where we duck hunt, we leave the water and let it go through January, February and about, well, about March, the end of February, the crawfish come out. This year, we didn’t get water till January and we tried once and there was no crawfish. So we’re going to go back this weekend and try, there may not be none, but I –
Ramsey Russell: I bet there is.
Dale Bordelon: I think there’ll be a few. It’s like everybody else, it’s a little later but we’re going to try to go catch some, get some to eat before it’s over with. Now they catch crawfish here till June, then it starts getting hard and they catch them at Atchafalaya Basin, which is the Mississippi River, Atchafalaya River that goes on through July, river crawfish and that plays out.
Ramsey Russell: I ate some crawfish at a bowl yesterday and there was some big ones in there. I mean, there were some big daddies. And I like them, I love crawfish, I like the big ones. But the truth matter is, it’s those, what I call them, medium sized and it’s funny because, like, in a normal year, when you’re buying crawfish, whatever have, it’s like they start off kind of small, then they get ginormous but, like, when they say, medium size, I usually go for, I might order 3 pounds, 4 pounds, a little bit of sausage and when they get bigger, I go 5 pounds, it don’t make no sense, because these are big old fish, but it does. I saw a video the other day, some crawfish coming up around natural was posted up, they had 4 different sized crawfish. And the real jumbos, one pound of jumbos equals 3oz of meat, whereas in medium size, it equals 3 and a half ounces of meat, so you’re really getting a lot more meat on the medium size than on the jumbos.
Dale Bordelon: You get more meat, but my personal self, I like to eat them big ones.
Ramsey Russell: I like the big ones, too.
Dale Bordelon: I think everybody else does, too.
Ramsey Russell: I like the big ones, too. I think everybody likes them, but they’re great A’s or whatever you call them.
Dale Bordelon: They’re just human nature.
Ramsey Russell: So you all start catching them yourself, if you all got fish out in that, if you all got crawfish out in that field, will you all go at them till when, till May, June?
Dale Bordelon: Well, yeah, we don’t have, probably the end of May.
Ramsey Russell: How do you cook them? I mean, you got a preferred seasoning?
Dale Bordelon: We got that zatarain.
Ramsey Russell: That’s what I like.
Dale Bordelon: It comes in that black, I think it’s a half gallon, well, they call it a gallon, but I don’t think it’s a full gallon, they got the clear kind, they got the black. The black can is less salty to us, to me.
Ramsey Russell: I bet probably why.
Dale Bordelon: We put a whole can and a first, my burner holds a sack, so we put a whole can, if you’re going to go about 2 sacks, it’d still be good.
Ramsey Russell: I like the liquid zatarains.
Dale Bordelon: We put that, too.
Ramsey Russell: Mixed with the regular zatarains.
Dale Bordelon: Right. We boil them about 2 minutes, when it comes to a good boil, cut them off and let them soak about 20.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t know what Chuck – Chuck been cooking crawfish as long as I’ve known him, which say 20 years and he’s a great crawfish cook. But yesterday, it was just spot on, it was, I’ve got a rule, when I eat crawfish, I never sit down, I stand up eating crawfish. When you go to crawfish feast, because you fill up too quick if you’re sitting down.
Dale Bordelon: It might have been spot on, because those your first ones for the year, too.
Ramsey Russell: No, I’ve been eating some. I ain’t been paying over $15 a pound, but once it got down to $8, I go get a few. But still, it’s out, but what ain’t costing crazy money, man. I went to grocery store the other day and I’m like, I go, ma’am, when she told me how much that was, I go, what?
Dale Bordelon: It don’t take much, I tell you.
Ramsey Russell: It ain’t like I went and bought some fancy meal, I just bought odds and ends.
Dale Bordelon: And it’s going up as we speak. It’s as we eat inside.
Ramsey Russell: It’s going up, man.
Dale Bordelon: Lumber. I already did the floor of my blind. I’m doing that now, the floor cost what my whole blind cost 8 years ago, can you believe that?
Ramsey Russell: No.
Dale Bordelon: Unbelievable.
Ramsey Russell: No, it really is, the world’s gone mad, $15 crawfish.
Dale Bordelon: And the people’s paying it.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, they got to, I just don’t understand.
Dale Bordelon: That’s how it goes.
Ramsey Russell: Tell me about these old guns, man. I just – I’m telling you, I pull up, I get out of truck, I ain’t seen you. Last time I seen you was at Steve Biggers in Texas. That’s kind of weird seeing you in Texas, we never talked about that, but it’s kind of weird hunting blue wings with old guns and old decoys and my old buddy Dale in Texas.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, Steve had –
Ramsey Russell: You looked like a stranger in a strange land.
Dale Bordelon: I guarantee you, but Steve used his gun the next day. Lynn Vaughn, he had an old model 12, he bought a model, we all had old guns. Well, you left the second day, but the second day, we all had model 12s and Benelli 7.
Ramsey Russell: When I hunted the first day, I shot Benelli 28 gauge, nobody told me about an old school program and you showed up, Lynn had his old gun and Steve had his old gun.
Dale Bordelon: I don’t think it was a plan deal, we just kind of went like that. But, yeah, I got to use most operas decoys in El Paso, Texas and we killed 25 that morning, that was a special hunt. Steve’s got a nice place there.
Ramsey Russell: He does. Think you’ll go back to Texas or were you too much like a fish out of water?
Dale Bordelon: Well, I don’t know. I have to see. I sure enjoyed it, but when we have something to hunt here and my boys can hunt and my grandson is hard to leave home.
Ramsey Russell: Hard to leave home, ain’t it?
Dale Bordelon: I just like to be with my bunch. You know how that goes.
Ramsey Russell: Tell me about these new guns because I know you’ve been shooting that old Winchester 97 hammer gun since forever, I got one now, I found it. Hey, things may be going up, but thanks to my buddy up in Michigan. Buddy, let me tell you what, I got a heck of a deal on my old 97 and have not shot it yet. But I got it when it’s ready, got 30 inch full choke, I’m ready for it. But then, that was terribly affordable.
Dale Bordelon: Oh, yep. I went to supper a while back and I had a friend of mine bought one at the gun show, he paid $250 for 1950 won 1897 and he’s an automatic hunter and he asked me, said man, he said, I bought that gun. He said, if you want it, just give me what I paid for it, I waited that night after the supper and got it.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Dale Bordelon: Oh, wait. That’s a good deal.
Ramsey Russell: You got more than one. You got a growing collection of them, don’t you?
Dale Bordelon: I got about 6, 8 of them. I don’t know exactly.
Ramsey Russell: And then what’s that Montgomery Ward gun you were showing me? That was, I’ve never seen a gun like it.
Dale Bordelon: That’s an old gun that John Brown and patented in the 1890s and he sold that patented to Stevens. Stevens made double by –
Ramsey Russell: It’s got a humpback, like a browning, but it’s a pump.
Dale Bordelon: Right. He patented that off that old brown. And I mean, still use that same design as day 5.
Ramsey Russell: You know what I noticed for a gun that old? It’s got a vent rib, but not a raised vent rib, it’s just got a raised rib running down the length of that barrel. That was real different.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. Ramsey, they made those guns from the, I don’t know exactly that say, around 1900, late 1800s, I guess the 1950s, I think this guns in the 1930s era, the age of it, it’s got a rib made on the barrel. It might be a little later than that, I didn’t look it up for sure. But it’s a solid old gun and I can’t wait. It’s got a 32 inch full, my got an old friend, he’s close to 90. He was raised, he’s an old duck hunter, sold ducks and all kind of stuff. I went, I stopped yesterday, go buy – I was going to buy some plate lunches and I stopped by to see if he wanted one and he gave me that old gun.
Ramsey Russell: He gave you that gun. Is he around today? We can go see him today if you want to, he might have another gun for me.
Dale Bordelon: He got another one but I don’t know if you’re going to get it.
Ramsey Russell: I like to have friends like it.
Dale Bordelon: He’s got one, his grandpa, this man’s close to 90s. His grandpa, when the Americans went to Germany, liberated Germany, it was behind the door of in the house. He took it apart, made a box and mailed it back to the state and that’s what my old friend still has now. That’s what he started hunting with.
Ramsey Russell: Man, what a heck of a story. I love guns with stores like it.
Dale Bordelon: And we looked it up. It has no markings on, it’s a 16 gauge double barrel. At bought a proof marks I was able to find out it was built in the 1880s. I can’t remember what the –
Ramsey Russell: But that Montgomery Ward gun has had some use because it’s shiny as a new nickel.
Dale Bordelon: I’m going to tell you something –
Ramsey Russell: The blue one done rubbed off of it.
Dale Bordelon: Most of these your people know, everybody knows, in the old days you could buy a gun at Sears Roadblock, you could buy a gun at Montgomery wards, you can buy a gun at TG&Y.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: That’s how you did. So this gun was made from a Montgomery Wards as Montgomery Wards written on it, so Stevens made guns for –
Ramsey Russell: For the department stores.
Dale Bordelon: So that’s kind of the – gun’s about a hundred years old. It’s kind of a – it’s a good story behind it.
Ramsey Russell: It is a good story.
Dale Bordelon: And I Plan to see what I could do with Mr. Richard had shot it since Tio’s chart came out which is in the 80s he quit using, he used to shoot lead in it and it just chambered for 2 and 3 quarter. So I’m going to run some boss to that baby Paul.
Ramsey Russell: You dang right. That’s the great thing about having that ammo available anymore is the fact that you can’t, I wonder if I just had this question, you talking about being 2 and 3 quarter inch, when you start talking about late 1800s, a lot of those chambers are 2 and a half inch.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. Let me tell you something. In 1893, the John Brown came out with it, it’s 1897, but that started in 1893. It’s the same as the 97. But the power to change in 1897, that’s when he changed the block in that 97, it’s the same gun. But you can’t shoot, you have to shoot a loop pressure powder into one prior to 1897.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.
Dale Bordelon: So 1893, I’m sorry, 1897 on, you can shoot, boss, whatever lead you want. Now the chamber, it is a different in size, but you still can shoot at 2 and 3 quarter and those old, even if it was made for 2 and a half, whatever, you can shoot a 2 or 3 quarter.
Ramsey Russell: Because I got that side by side hammer gun and family heirloom. And when we measured the chambers, it was 2 and a half inches and I went and got it bored. The bores were bad, so I got it bored out and I put some 20 gauge tubes in it so I could shoot protect that, protecting barrels.
Dale Bordelon: Right.
Ramsey Russell: But we went ahead and bored it out to 2 and 3 quarter inch too.
Dale Bordelon: But didn’t you have Damascus barrels on that old –
Ramsey Russell: The Damascus barrels.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And they were bad.
Dale Bordelon: Right. You got to shoot a low pressure shell.
The Concerns of Using Old Firearms with Modern Ammunition.
We got a real low pressure shell because then I was worried about not so much, because with the sleeves, I’m not so much worried about the barrels anymore, but I got worried about that old wood.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, we did. We got a real low pressure shell because then I was worried about not so much, because with the sleeves, I’m not so much worried about the barrels anymore, but I got worried about that old wood. So I just want man, back in the days when those guns were made, they weren’t shooting these golly whopper 3 inch. They weren’t, man, they were just shooting lead downrange. I mean you had to lead them. It’s hard to believe, but when people were shooting flying birds, this would be something I’d like to do one day, Dale and that you took me down this rabbit hole of old guns. Can you imagine shooting a duck with a flintlock where that stone, that hammer comes down and strikes a spark that lights the pan, that lights something else, that then lights the load that then fires up and then pushes it down? I mean, you’ve got to have a, I’m going to guess a 2 second from the time you pull the trigger. You got about a 2 second before it goes boom.
Dale Bordelon: You better make sure –
Ramsey Russell: You better keep swinging, you know you ain’t swinging then, don’t you?
Dale Bordelon: I think they shot a lot of ducks in the water.
Ramsey Russell: I bet they did.
Dale Bordelon: Going back to that 1818 call. When I went to the Museum, they had a gun with a 43 inch barrel, it’s called the Flintlock Fowler. It was a waterfowl gun. These from the 1700s, this one was converted to muzzleloaders but it was a flintlock with a 43 inch barrel. And I held it, talk about a nice gun.
Ramsey Russell: I know they shoot a lot of ducks on the water today and I’m not against it, because, I mean, you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do to own that duck on the water. But I saw some artwork one time, like some drawings and it was depicting a pigeon shoot in France, like box pigeons, where you yell, pull and the pigeon comes out, he’s released. And it’s highly competitive and highly monetized sport underground though it may be. But that drawing was during the flintlock era, so they were shooting sport pigeons like it with flintlocks and those must have been some badass shooters right there is all I can say. I’d like to try it just to see what’s what.
Dale Bordelon: Absolutely.
Ramsey Russell: Like, if you ever, do you remember back when they had the old, I mean, I had muzzleloaders back in the day when you poured a powder down a breech and put your lead in a little cloth and pushed it down and then put a nipple, put just a little firing. What am I trying to say? Put that little blank, little cap –
Ramsey Russell: Repercussion cap.
Dale Bordelon: Repercussion cap and still as quick as that was compared to a flintlock, it was like, snap, one miss it, boom. I mean, it was a little pause between that and high powered rod.
Dale Bordelon: Oh, yeah. But when you didn’t have nothing else, that’s all you knew.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Dale Bordelon: You had to make do what you had.
Ramsey Russell: You go duck hunt with a flintlock I bet.
Dale Bordelon: I never have. But it would be challenging.
Ramsey Russell: You would, wouldn’t you?
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, but I tell you what, I make sure I put them on the water before I shot it.
Ramsey Russell: Don’t, I guess that hunting in the rain would be kind of iffy.
Dale Bordelon: Oh, yeah. You had to pick your days, that’s for sure.
Ramsey Russell: And then you showed me, we started getting off in your call shop and looking at some of the things been working on and tell me about this 1818 call you got. It’s a total different call.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Than the classic Bayou Beast cane call for which you are famous.
Dale Bordelon: Well, I’m not looking, I wasn’t looking to come out with any kind of call, acrylic calls or CNC calls. That’s not what I’m about, I’m about the old cane calls and making everything behind. But there’s a fellow that called me a couple of years ago and he found, he sent me a picture of 2 old duck calls he found. This was at an old plantation house. The plantation was named Oakland Plantation. It was built in 1820 and they have papers and records. There’s a big wood lathe with a, now, those old lathes had pulleys and all back then, but they started off with a wooden peg pedal, in that lathe they had a tools which toolbox and there were 2 duck calls in there and they sent me that picture and environment to go up there, which I did. And I didn’t have no intentions of doing, making no calls, but I took all the measurements off of it. So as the amongst went by – You know how something eats at you? Just kept going, eating at me.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: I said, man. And look, like I said, I didn’t have the desire to make any calls, but it’s the history I want to bring out of this call. So I took my measurements and I got a machinist to duplicate that call and since it was found off that old lake, we figured the coal was built around 1880.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Dale Bordelon: Which is one of the oldest calls in Louisiana.
Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty cool.
Dale Bordelon: I can’t say it’s the oldest, but it’s one of the oldest.
Ramsey Russell: One of the oldest you come across.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And you’ve laid hands on some stuff like that.
Dale Bordelon: But it was built off a piece of equipment from 1818, that’s 206 years, I don’t know any duck call anywhere that’s built off of something that old. I don’t think there’s none, so this and me that likes all this old stuff, I said, I got to bring this back alive. I want people to know I bought it back and shared this culture and history and the story, it’s got a good story behind it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it does.
Dale Bordelon: So I got it duplicated and I should get a batch in next week, my first batch, I got mine. But what I’m going to do is I was, I was going to get some, like, hedge bulldog sound boards made for this call, just an average blowing call for the general public. But since I used all kind of sound boards making duck calls to me, you can’t beat red cedar at all.
Ramsey Russell: What do you think it is about that? Why that instead of some other wood?
Dale Bordelon: Okay, here’s what I can tell you and I want to be spot on. I use cypress sometimes, a certain part that cypress would makes a heck of a good call. I put a head sound board in that call when I got it, it’s loud, it sounds good, but it just noise coming out, it doesn’t have the nasal sound, the best I could explain. So I made my own sound boards out of cedar and man, it’s got good nasal sound. That red cedar is soft enough where when you blow, it absorbs your voice and so when it comes out to call, it gives it a good rattle, a good clank, a good vibration, a good nasal sound.
Ramsey Russell: That’s the best good vibration. You were telling me while we was eating boudin under the shade tree and I ain’t going to call you out on tell me what part of the tree, but you said it ain’t just any part of the tree either, you don’t figure out what part of the tree you want to cut.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, I can. I made over a thousand duck calls behind sound, I’m not bragging at all, but I don’t fooled with enough hands on sound boards to know what works and what don’t. And to me, red cedar, the heart of that red cedar with no dots, is the best. That’s the best duck call making –
Ramsey Russell: Clear heart.
Dale Bordelon: Clear heart. Easy to work. It’s got a good ducky stone.
Ramsey Russell: Do you cut down like the whole tree when you make that thing and then have just cedar for days or how do you do that?
The Art of Landing Ducks: A Testament to Skilled Craftsmanship.
It’s all local stuff, so he had a whole bunch that stuff cut up so I just use that and I make my own sound boards.
Dale Bordelon: Ramsey, I’ve been going around and collecting, I find some wood on the river banks, I used to do that myself. Some old fence posts, some good tight grain, that’s another thing, tight grain red cedar. I know this all sound sounds far fetched, but tight grain red cedar with no knots, I don’t want no knots in there. But I used to farm my wood in the river and I found some here and there, old stuff. Now when there’s a friend of mine, he cuts wood. His daddy pulled the log, Andrew Coco, he passed away last year. His daughter was a commercial fisherman. He pulled a log out of the Mississippi River and when I asked him if he had the red cedar, he told me about that said, man, I got to use that in honor of your daddy. I’m sentimental with that. So I got part of his dad of that duck calls kind of, so he’s keeping the Avoyelles Parish. It’s all local stuff, so he had a whole bunch that stuff cut up so I just use that and I make my own sound boards. Most of, my percent of my customers want that soft call, just about everyone. So instead of trying to put a hedge or walnut sound board, something that blows loud, I’m going to fix these calls just like them can calls, where you can really finish ducks, it’s going to have a volume to it, but it’s going to be a good finish and call where you can land ducks like we, that’s what we about. I do that all the time, me and my boys and there’s a few people on social media that I get kickbacks, but that’s how these old people donate and when you can put a duck on the water, I think you’re doing the job.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: Instead of shooting them at 50 yards, that’s kind of the way I look at it. We shoot a duck on the wing and we good shots and not scared to, but if I can, I love to work a bunch of ducks and put them on the water.
Ramsey Russell: Heck yeah.
Dale Bordelon: And you can do that with these little soft calls.
Ramsey Russell: That is one thing, like one of your cane calls is, what do you call that? You call it a soft hand.
Dale Bordelon: I call it soft, it’s a soft call.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a soft call, it is a very soft call. But me, especially me, number one, I tend to blow loud. My calls are even tuned where I can’t blow soft, but you broke out last time, we hunted big duck together up there, Mike and Lamar Boyd. We had that old school hunt with Ducks Unlimited and all, we all went up there and had a good time. You had that soft call and it was, it’s not like, quiet like a whisper, it’s quiet like a duck.
Dale Bordelon: It don’t have a –
Ramsey Russell: Ducks ain’t just really loud.
Dale Bordelon: No, it doesn’t echo. You won’t hit a bad note, let me say. If you get up, you don’t know where the ducks are, you hit a bite. It’s soft enough where it’s forgiven and it was good for us. I was taught that by the old hunters years and years ago that haunted like that in my area, that was killing a lot of ducks, they taught me how to use that call and call like that and so that’s kind of what – But I designed it, this is all, nobody showed me how to make that call. I just took it over, I’ve been doing that 30 years on and off, so I kind of learned myself, self taught, how to do all that. There’s about 4 different things I do to that sound board to make it like I want, that I’m going to not share that secret.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t blame you. You’ll have to share it with somebody one day to pass it on. But right now, I wouldn’t share it.
Dale Bordelon: I don’t mind making calls from another day or Nicholas, you said what’s you deal with that side boy, so I’ll show you that later.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You got to earn that. We’re talking about your duck calls. It’s always a great topic, I’ve got a bunch of cane calls, I use them, I got me a new cane call that I’m going home with and definitely, you know where this call is going, Dale? When we get done with this, it’s going under the back seat of my truck in a leather bag I keep that I pack my travel calls with, my North American travel call and you gave me this speck call. You don’t call it a speck call, but it’s a speck call, you call it a Louisiana spotted goose call. And what is that French words right there?
Dale Bordelon: That’s Oie Caille.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard of Chien Caille.
Dale Bordelon: It’s spelled O I E.
Ramsey Russell: That’s French for goose.
Dale Bordelon: But it’s Oie, you pronounce it with a – That’s goose in French, Caille is spotted goose, like the Chien Caille duck call that’s a spotted dog. This is Oie Caille that’s French for spotted goose. Now, the old people –
Ramsey Russell: What inspired you besides being in Louisiana, to start making a speck call?
Dale Bordelon: I made a speck call year ago out of regular, molded polycarbohydrate calls. But I went hunting in Arkansas last year and we went, hunted, killed a lot of geese.
Ramsey Russell: Who’d you hunt with on the deck?
Dale Bordelon: On The Deck Outfitters.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right, Stacy.
Dale Bordelon: With Stacy.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: Very good outfitter. Stacy’s a very good guide man, he’s my agent for old sport, he can hustle, I’m going to tell you, we killed 33 geese that morning. We limited out. There were 7 people calling with speck calls and I can show you the video. I was videoing the live geese calling and there was nonstop and then I looked around me, there was one man, I’m not going to mention that, who he is that can blow a call, that sounded like those geese. So after the hunt, I said, let me look at that call. He said, you want a mess? I said, no, I don’t want to mess. I don’t want a copy from the – I just want to see what it looks like. So I came home and I hide that in my mind and another fella said, you make them duck calls. You never thought about making a goose call? Said, yeah, I have. And it been on about once a month, it hits me. But I came home and for 2 weeks, I tried different materials, but I wanted to keep it bamboo, that’s what I’m about.
Ramsey Russell: Did they historically, like, make speck calls out of cane?
Dale Bordelon: No.
Ramsey Russell: Okay. That’s what I’m wondering.
Dale Bordelon: No, I’m going to tell you –
Ramsey Russell: What would they have made the ancient, I mean, Southwest Louisiana, what were some of the oldest speck calls have been made from?
Dale Bordelon: Okay, let me finish this to it I might answer your question. So I came back and I mean, I didn’t go, I’m limited of my wood supply, but I have some, I tried red cedar, that’s not good, it’s too soft. But I wanted to keep it bamboo, because that’s what Bayou Beast Calls is about, old bamboo call and that’s not a duck, there’s not a goose call in the world that’s made out of cane, I’m going to tell you now. I have the first one, so they could put that in the book. So, I’m not bragging about it, but not to my knowledge, so I tried some different material and I tried some hedge and mine that came out just like I wanted and I played my recording of the geese and I was very happy with the sound. So now I’m selling a bunch of them, I have those for sale and I don’t have a long waiting list if somebody would want one. So the story behind it is called Louisiana spotted goose and the old days, they didn’t call South Louisiana, they called that a spotted goose, the old French people. And I’ve had old people tell me that and I have an article where it’s written. So somebody says I’m full of crap, I have it documented in the old article.
Ramsey Russell: Nobody says that about you, Dale.
Dale Bordelon: I mean, yeah, I know, but all this is about, I’m just trying to bring back the old name, the old history and keep it alive, just like this 1818 call. I’m trying to keep this old Louisiana stuff going. So I bring it back, the name old spotted goose as Oie Caille and just go on with it, but I’m selling a bunch, it’s going good.
Ramsey Russell: Well, you know what I always enjoyed? I love coming over here and watching you do stuff and I just got to ask, you wrap your duck in goose cane calls with that fish entwine you showed me a pretty interesting knot. I mean, it seemed like you just wrap it, but you don’t, there’s an art to making a certain knot to wherever once you get it wrapped like you wanted it, you stick this one into that and pull this one and snip them both and it stays like that forever. I mean, that in and of itself is almost a lost art, wrapping the barrel with string.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, that’s an old knot, an old straw from Louisiana.
Ramsey Russell: Was it invented like that for wrapping cane calls? Is that where that knot come from?
Dale Bordelon: No, not just for calls. That was old fishing knot.
Ramsey Russell: Old fishing knot.
Dale Bordelon: Most of the people that hunted Louisiana fish and they all knew their knots and the techniques and it’s just an old knot that the fishmen used and they incorporated that in them cane calls and it was, it would keep it from splitting for that reason, but most of also, I say probably half the reason was they would incorporate like, they keep it going to make a button loop.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, I see.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. And I got some right here, like, that old call was made like that. It was just a – it would look good and so I just try to keep what they had.
Ramsey Russell: Where did you learn to do something like that? It ain’t like you went to YouTube and learned that now.
Dale Bordelon: No, but I got an old friend, the one that gave me that old gun, he knows every knot there is to know and he taught me how to do.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Dale Bordelon: He was part of the old crew that the old people knew all them knots.
Ramsey Russell: How old is he?
Dale Bordelon: Oh, he’s pushing 90.
Ramsey Russell: He’d have been around.
Dale Bordelon: About 80, he might be 88, 89, I’m not, I don’t know exactly, but he’s very old fellow. But he can show you how to tie a hog in the woods by the front legs and how to tie him in the back legs and watch our rope to use, he done all that raising a hog, he knows all those knots and so I’m fixing to go, I went the other day, I want to bring, that man makes all his trotlines behind, he don’t buy nothing. So I’m going to bring Nicholas, that boy that made the pirogue, I want him to learn. Nicholas knows how to do a lot of stuff, he needs to learn that from this old man.
Ramsey Russell: We going to talk about Nicholas before we get done.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, but I want him to learn that to keep it going when that old man dies, all that’s gone. Nobody – it’s a lost art
Ramsey Russell: It is. And so many changes going on in the world, it ain’t all for the better. There’s a lot to be said about the old ways and old times.
Dale Bordelon: Yep. That’s exactly right.
Ramsey Russell: That’s very interesting. I want to ask you this, while I was talking about the call, I want to ask you this other thing, you went to a show recently and he posted up on social media and I kept up with you and I’m like I said, that man’s fishing, get busy. He’s fixing to have a busy weekend. He went and set up a little old booth next to Warren Coco. What show was that? Where was it at? How did that weekend go for you?
Dale Bordelon: That was a Louisiana sportsman in Baton Rouge to have that once a year.
Ramsey Russell: What time of year is that?
Dale Bordelon: That was, let’s see, March.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: Right there on March 1. 1st of March, I believe, so 3 day show.
Ramsey Russell: The Delta Waterfowl Expo, is going to be there late July and I believe it’s going to be off, just off the rails busy.
Dale Bordelon: I got a booth over there with Pat Gregory.
Ramsey Russell: Really? I hope you all ain’t far away.
Dale Bordelon: No, I think we’re going to be next to each other and I’m going to be carving decoys, the old Louisiana way with the hatch and draw knife and making cane calls. It’s just a show to public old ways. And I think –
Ramsey Russell: I need to get with Pat on that. We need to do a 3 way podcast, 2 of my favorite old time, old school people, that’s going to be a heck of a boost right there. Heck of a stop.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. And I’ve never met Pat, but we talked on the phone, we text each other and I’ve heard nothing but good stuff about him and I’m anxious too and of course, that’s 130 years in his family.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. You better believe it.
Dale Bordelon: He got a lot of history.
Ramsey Russell: Takes it real personal, same as you do. He likes the old ways.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. So it’s going to be special and so I got me a room booked already, ready to go. But we had that Louisiana sportsman show and also, I didn’t, I got a long list, so I didn’t, I can’t really sell too many calls because of my list, but also that cane call made his debut right there, that’s when I started selling it and I bought me a few duck calls, but I sold a bunch of cane. It was a good weekend. We had a good time.
Ramsey Russell: Come on. Brag a little bit, it’s a sad dog that don’t wag his own tail. Come on, now. It’s really, truly a sad beat dog that won’t wag his own tail a little bit as humble as you are, especially. But I heard you had a line out the door.
Dale Bordelon: There was a lot of people.
Ramsey Russell: I heard it looked like one of my black and white films, depression era, supe lined, there’s so many people lined up at you, both to come meet with you and talk to you and you gave some seminars.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: What did you talk about?
Dale Bordelon: They asked me to do a couple of seminars a day. I just tell them who I was, what I’m trying to do with these calls and the history behind it and gave a little duck call lesson. The way I hunt, it’s not, I’m not knocking or stepping, no bullets, feet. It’s not a competition call the way we do it, it’s a way my old people and my old died them duck hunting, how we hunt in Louisiana and you got to be very subtle, very soft, can’t be loud over here, because when they get to Louisiana, they got a PhD in survival, buddy.
The Subtle Art of Non-Calling: When Silence Speaks Volumes.
They’re listening for them ducks getting settled in the timber and that was one of his old, from way back when techniques of calling a duck was not even with a call.
Ramsey Russell: Sitting right here in your shop recorded Johnny Burrell, remember that time way back when him and hunter come over? And a couple of years ago, I hunted with them up in Arkansas and Johnny, he didn’t, he went out, he went through the most of season as a hunter. I don’t remember him shooting, but he would, when the duck would start working, he would start slapping his leg. I go, what are you doing? He goes, that’s a duck’s wing flapping. He wouldn’t even call to him, he said, these birds are so educated, but they can hear that duck. They’re listening for them ducks getting settled in the timber and that was one of his old, from way back when techniques of calling a duck was not even with a call. It was just by slapping the side of his leg to sound like a duck wing flapping. He believes, he told me he believes that with a lot of hunting pressure, a lot of times those ducks will get quiet, not vocal and will make other cues like that to talk to their buddies or flying to know where they are. I mean, that’s some deep thinking right there.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. Johnny Burrell just seen it all now.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, he has.
Dale Bordelon: But what he’s saying there, I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of truth to it.
Ramsey Russell: I believe so.
Dale Bordelon: He’s an old master, I tell you.
Ramsey Russell: I believe so, too. I believe he is. You got a great big old piece of cypress out here in front of your shop like the bottom of a cypress bowl, a log and he told me that, he said, I want to show you that, he pointed to it and he said, that come off the last dugout canoe hand carved in the state of Louisiana and I kept up with this project, Dale. I thought it was amazing that you did this for this young man, but tell me about, I mean, tell me about this project. Tell me about the most recent dugout you’ve been involved with.
Dale Bordelon: Well, this young man.
Ramsey Russell: How young?
Dale Bordelon: 17 years old, he’s 18 now. He called me to come and I’ve had several people do that over the years and never heard from them again. He called me, said he wanted to make a dugout, can he come look? I said, yeah, he came over here. I showed them mine and I started explaining to him how you build it and how to do it. So he went home and about 2 weeks later, he called me. He said, I have, my grandpa’s got some property, you think you could come help me, show me how big a tree I need? I said, man, I love to do that because when I’m in the woods, with cypress trees, that’s right down my alley. So I went, I bought my stepladder, my ladder, 6 foot ladder and my tape, everything and we went over there and his grandpa show us around and he has a lot of cypress, it’s a swamp. But he didn’t have one quite big enough.
Ramsey Russell: What’s big enough? What are you looking for?
Dale Bordelon: Now, you got to get about 10 foot in the air, off the ground or over the bale of that tree.
Ramsey Russell: 10 foot over the bale.
Dale Bordelon: It depends if it has a big bale or not and it’s got to be 30, no less than 28 inches, it needs to be 30 inches.
Ramsey Russell: Circumference.
Dale Bordelon: Right.
Ramsey Russell: Or diameter?
Dale Bordelon: No, straight across.
Ramsey Russell: Straight across. Okay.
Dale Bordelon: At that height.
Ramsey Russell: 30 inch diameter at 10 foot above the bale.
Dale Bordelon: Because when you cut, if you cut above that bale, that 30 inch has got to be in the middle of that boat It’s got to be 7ft from where you cut it or 8ft.
Ramsey Russell: I see.
Dale Bordelon: So you got to go up higher.
Ramsey Russell: How long is this boat going to be?
Dale Bordelon: This boat’s 14 foot.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Dale Bordelon: So we didn’t find none big enough, close. Then about 2 weeks later, he called me, said, I think I found one, he sent me a picture. I said dang, it might be big enough. So I went, it was in the swamp with our hit boots on, put the lot up and it was big enough. It was about 29 inches around there, I said, that’s big enough to make a boat. It was a big tree, so anyway, he was –
Ramsey Russell: You was fired up to chainsaw.
Dale Bordelon: No, I’m telling you now, this boy, 17 years old. And so we left it as that at, so and all this drought, he sent me a picture of that tree and there was no water in that slough. I said, Nicholas, I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I’m an old fellow, there’s no water in that slough, you need to cut that tree now, we can get in there and get it out. So he said, Mr. Dale, I hate to tell you this, you might think I’m crazy. He had his great grandpa’s lumber felling axe from the lumber days, he said –
Ramsey Russell: Was a great granddad lumberjack.
Dale Bordelon: Yep, he was a logger. He didn’t have a handle, Nicholas made a handle to put on that axe.
Ramsey Russell: Made a handle.
Dale Bordelon: And you talk about, like, fracture made, I said, God dang, that boy knows how to do stuff. So he said, you might think I’m crazy, but I want to cut this tree down with my daddy’s old axe. And I told him, well, if you think you crazy, I’m crazy, too, because I want to be part of it. He bought him a passport, too. That’s a old cut –
Ramsey Russell: Old cross cut saw.
Dale Bordelon: For $25 and he didn’t have a handle on one end, he made a handle. And I knew how to sharpen those old saws, so we put it in his shop.
Ramsey Russell: Where do you learn to sharpen? I know you, old Dale.
Dale Bordelon: From the old people. You got to bend those teeth. You got the teeth, you got a rake in that saw. The most saw is different. They’re made different from, there’s several different kind of teeth. I mean, they got 3 teeth, they got 2. But you got a rake in there and those teeth got to be offset and that rakes got to run and that rake to pull the sawdust out. The teeth cut, if you’re going to hammer to me that rakes pulling that sawdust out. But I had to, I said all that, now they got a 2 that does that, but I don’t have none. So we said all the teeth we sharpen one tooth at a time and that baby cut –
Ramsey Russell: How long did that take?
Dale Bordelon: It don’t take long, about an hour. We sharpened it up, one day, one afternoon did he put a handle on it and we picked it there we went and we cut it down.
Ramsey Russell: Would it with a cross cut, how long that take? One day?
Dale Bordelon: He notched it like the day before.
Ramsey Russell: With his axe?
Dale Bordelon: By himself. And I went the next day I was doing something. So he said, how about, I said, yeah, go ahead and notch it about halfway. We didn’t already went and picked the way we wanted to fall and the old logging days, the way you want to make a tree fall, you notch it and then you cut it from the back, saw the tube then you wedge it, you make it fall the way you want.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: So that’s what we’ve done, we had 3 wedges. So we’d cut, we’d hit on the wedge and we made it fall exactly what we wanted. And then his grandpa went and pulled it out for us to his house.
Ramsey Russell: Ain’t that something?
Dale Bordelon: But he built that whole boat with handmade tools, not a chainsaw.
Ramsey Russell: So he went and made the tools like you showed him what you made yours with.
Dale Bordelon: I loaned him my tools, he made some tools, I had made some tools when I built my boats years ago. And he just went from there and he built one hell of a boat.
Ramsey Russell: How long did it take him to do that?
Dale Bordelon: It didn’t take long, of course, he was 18 years old, he’s fit like a bull, you can do it all. He got age on his side. He never figured the hours, we guessing about 150 hours, because he did everything behind. And then when we got to the middle, the nose of the boat, there was a bad spot in the log, that was about 3 or 4 inches. I forget how big it was rotten. So we took a piece out of the boat we cut out and he made a plug.
Ramsey Russell: Just a fit.
Dale Bordelon: He made a plug and you talk about, man that fella, he’s gifted.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m thinking, when I time that tree up, big old cypress hit the ground. Now you got a saw again to get the length you want, the log you want, right?
Dale Bordelon: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: And then what you hook it up to a team of horses or 4 wheeler or how’d you get that thing out?
Dale Bordelon: I wish we had some horses, that’s what, there didn’t really have been. No, we hooked it onto doza and it was just behind his house. But that has some crops between the house and the slough so we had to wait till the farmer got his crop out. But at the same time, the slough dried up, so everything was perfect. Now, we cut it down. We went about 18ft, if you make a 14 foot boat, you got to have at least 18ft to play with.
Ramsey Russell: So now you got this big brown cylinder log laying in the backyard. Do you cut it in half?
Dale Bordelon: No, we put –
Ramsey Russell: Lengthwise, I mean, how do you start putting shape and height and stuff to it?
Dale Bordelon: It might be hard to explain, but he wanted this boat to be a working pirogue, hard deer and stuff. So we made it 14 inches, we blocked out 14 inches. Now, what you do, you get a piece of plywood, the width of it, the end of the log, 14 inches high on both sides and you got to run some strings, 4 strings. You got to do a lot of measuring. You got to measure, find the widest part of the log and get it straight and block it and then put those boards on the end because you got to make sure you end up with enough bottom on it and it’s a lot to it, little stuff that somebody needs to show you all, it’s hard to explain.
Ramsey Russell: Now that it’s all done. Have you gone on a boat ride with him?
Dale Bordelon: Oh, yeah, we crested it. I think it was in February. We took it over and crested it, took pictures and I bought my dugout and I had my friend, other friend, Keith Dupree, he got a dug out. We paddled all over the bay in them boats, man. And I paddled his boat, I loaned him one of my boat paddles and he just made him a nice boat paddle and I think that paddles good. Something I got explained to you, whenever you make a plank pirogue and a pirogue is a boat that’s pointed on both ends, a Joe boat is a boat that’s pointed on the front end and squared in the back.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: A Jon boat is squared on both ends, that’s what you called that. A pirogue is point, so when you make a plank pirogue, you’re starting off from nothing, then when you get to the middle, you’re going to have 22, 23 inches because you try to use half of a sheet of plywood. That’s what how they make them here. But then you’re going back to nothing.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Dale Bordelon: So you only got 22 inches in the middle. These dugouts and I learned this by Willie Bardo, an old pirogue maker. You come in from the point and you get about 3ft, you got 22 inches and you keep that 22 inches, about 8, 9 foot of the boat, then you come it back to a point. So that boat’s going to paddle good, it’s not going to paddle one side, something like a pirogue, track straight is what I’m telling you, so he put that on his boat, I put that on all my boats. But you got to make sure you bring all that in before you cut that log. You got to compensate for all that, it’s a lot of plans –
Ramsey Russell: Man, somebody like me that can’t draw a straight line, I’d be screwed, Dale.
Dale Bordelon: You got to have it in your heart to do that, you got to want to do that, you just can’t do it for the fun, I think. But anyway, it came out good. So he made a good heck of a paddling boat.
Ramsey Russell: They have found some old dugouts that the natives made back in the day. They would burn out the center of it.
Dale Bordelon: Well, the Indians did that. Yeah, the Indians did that everywhere and here then when the French came in, the 1700s, they had a little, some European tools. They just shortened that boat up and dug them out, that’s where those dugouts come from.
Ramsey Russell: And I’m going to get this Nicholas on here. But tell me that story you were telling me about how quick he can light a fire by rubbing 2 sticks together.
Dale Bordelon: Well, this is to make the coal to the fire.
Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s how you make a fire. You get the friction, then you get the coal and you put the coal in the tender, blow it lights up. But I mean, you said the world records like 7 seconds.
Dale Bordelon: I believe it’s 7 and a half seconds and he done it on a video in 5. Now, that’s not a record, that’s his, he don’t have it documented, but he’s good at that, man. I watched him do it right here, he got the stick and all that to do it.
Ramsey Russell: That must be very, for a guy like yourself, Dale, that must be very self fulfilling and just absolutely feel good to pass that torch on. I mean it’s one thing to make these beautiful calls and carry on that tradition by putting it in the hands of a lot of duck hunters, but it’s something else entirely different, in the year 2024, it advanced and as much as this world has changed since them old days, that there’s an 18 year old young man that is following your lead and is out there paddling around in his swamp, hunting his wildlife with that boat that he made that his great grandkids would be able to use if they want to. That’s amazing. That’s what gets me about that story is passing that tradition on.
Dale Bordelon: Well, I’m going to tell you the way I feel about it. You’re right. The man that showed me how to do it is 80 years old, he’s in good shape. There’s another man Louisiana doing it, he’s about 79 and he’s not in good shape. I’m the other man that’s 62 years old, Nicholas is 18, I was very proud to pass that down because he’s got a long way to take it.
Ramsey Russell: Well, in a long time from now, he’s going to be the 80 year old man, that people are reaching out to keep this tradition alive, it’s got to start with somebody passing that torch.
Dale Bordelon: That’s why when it comes to doing this, there’s no secrets. He asked me the other day, I’ve never bought a boat paddles in my life and I’m not bragging about it, but I’ve never, I’ve been making paddles for about 45 years.
Ramsey Russell: You have?
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. He asked me, can you show me how to make a boat paddle? I’ve never had a man to ask me that in 40 years.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve got a couple of your boat paddle.
Dale Bordelon: And I said, I’ll be glad to show you, I show him everything now, there’s different paddles for different situations. So he built one off of my pattern, I have a boat paddle, it’s called, it looks like a beaver tail, but it com – Listen to this. One day, I was going to work. You know them old spoonbill catfish with the big beaks? Somebody dumped some or saw the root, the big old bills and the first I thought I had was, might be a hell of a pile of design. So I threw one in the back of the boat and I can’t – This was years ago now, so I came, when I came home, I traced it out, but you got to have so many square inches for bale. I traced exactly that size, but to about 100 square inches and it made a hell of a boat paddle pattern.
Ramsey Russell: Really? Pull your mic up just a little bit. There you go.
Dale Bordelon: And somebody said, man, that’s a nice beaver tail paddle, I said, there ain’t no beaver tail, bud, that’s a spoonbill paddle.
Ramsey Russell: That’s good stuff, Dale. That’s really good stuff.
Dale Bordelon: So I taught him how to do that. But then I showed him how, there’s some other paddles that, now, I’m going to tell you something, when a man’s paddling got pirogue, you got to have a bell. The bell’s a big part of the paddle, you got to have between 7 and a 100 inches to make it paddle.
Ramsey Russell: But these paddles over here in this collection are mostly pretty narrow to what I think about a boat paddle, these are narrow.
Dale Bordelon: No, that’s a pirogue paddle.
Ramsey Russell: That’s totally different, isn’t it?
Dale Bordelon: That’s the best paddle they ever use. But you got to build it according to your height, your height is in between your tit and your shoulder, for every person. That’s a perfect for pirogue. But you got to keep it not at the hard anxious bell surface. If you go over hard, anxious, you’re working yourself and if you go under knotting, you still working yourself because you try to thread too much water. That’s a good zone right there.
Ramsey Russell: That’s all very interesting stuff, Dale. How did your duck season go this year?
Dale Bordelon: It was good.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, you talked to anybody else? It was terrible season. It was a tough season, everybody had at least a patch of tough season.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, there was a lot of people that, Louisiana, but had about half the water it normally had, this year when it started, probably the whole season, about half the water, people I talked to, we had water, not much. All our blinds was on dry ground, so we had usually go with a boat, get out, I mean, paddle the pirogue, get out right there. We had to go with a boat and I had to ride away every day, it was muddy, a boggy bottom and walked to get to the blind. That old blind was a hog pen, every day we hunted with all that clay, mud and all. It was hard hunting and you had to pull the pirogue on the ground to hard it.
Ramsey Russell: A lot of work.
Dale Bordelon: Lot of work. But we killed duck the whole year, it was good.
Ramsey Russell: Most of gadwalls or –
Dale Bordelon: Oh, that’s all. Yeah, this year we kill a few more green wings. But all season now is mostly great ducks and wigeons.
Ramsey Russell: There’s been a lot of research, I mean you hear folks say gadwalls are the new mallards of the deep south, especially this far south and there’s a lot of science backing that up now because whereas a lot of the continental mallards are short stopping bonafide, based on 60 years of harvest data and it’s about mid continent, about up there in the great confluence above St. Louis is where a lot of the mallards are. There’s still some coming south, but just bits and pieces, but the same research is showing that because gadwalls don’t feed on harvested cornfields, don’t feed on corn at all, they’re coming – They’re not hanging back north and migrating later, they’re coming earlier, going further south and I believe it’s looking for that break, like, what you got, that’s their habitat and I believe they’re coming down looking for emergent marsh type habitat, this guy we were talking about this eating lunch southern naiad and all this different good stuff.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah. Oh, it’s bocoos, man. Me and my boys had that, I’ve been hunting down for most of my life. In the 80s, there was nothing but mallards. I did roost in there by the thousands and that went on to the 70s, 60s, but all that played out, but that’s a been my interpretation. These great ducks and wigeons, they 95% vegetation eaters, they’re not going to stop in the bean fields and so they’ve come it all down to the flyways.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Dale Bordelon: And it’s proof. That’s what we’re killing, 80% of our ducks is great ducks and we’re killing a whole lot more wigeons than normal the last few years and yeah, before last, we killed 800 ducks, we had 10 mallards. Last year we killed about 40, 50 mallards, but it had that big freeze, it pushed.
Ramsey Russell: You all ain’t planting nothing off of that –
Dale Bordelon: No, we don’t feed nothing, we didn’t try that, don’t help us kill no more. That lake we got with that button woods, they come in there, you can see them broke already, when you look up, they’re halfway broke. We just take them old cane soft calls and barely call them and just coast them in. So it’s the terrain they coming for and they got that naiads you’re talking about. It’s full of that in there. It’s not ours –
Ramsey Russell: Probably coontail marsh and everything else off of that stuff.
Dale Bordelon: Everything they eat, right.
Ramsey Russell: And you know what else you got when you get a lot of that submerged aquatic, you got a lot of invertebrates and gadwalls really are kind of a vegetarian. Early season, but the later you go, the more they transition into invertebrates and somebody was telling me recently that 90% of their diet, late season, becomes invertebrates and I mean, that’s, if you’re hunting in gadwall country, that’s important.
Dale Bordelon: Absolutely. But we got some wood, everything we got is button woods, duckweed, it’s a swamp, its nasties, you’d call it that, nasty stuff. That’s what they want.
Ramsey Russell: That is.
Dale Bordelon: You got some little, we got some open water, but we got some little pockets and all, man, to eat that up.
Ramsey Russell: You were telling me. We fell off into a fit of a conversation a little while ago and you kind of asked a question rhetorically, how many ducks do you want to kill? Are you killing enough ducks, Dale? That’s kind of a rhetorical question, but are you killing enough duck?
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You ain’t going out limited every day, are you?
Dale Bordelon: Well, we do pretty good now. But I’m going to tell you something, I ain’t going to say – No, not every day, no, but we have a successful season. I don’t want to hurt nobody.
Ramsey Russell: What is successful?
Dale Bordelon: When you could go hunt with your kids and grandkids, that is successful, but 3 or 4 ducks.
Ramsey Russell: But you ain’t out there to watch the sunrise. You’re out there to shoot ducks, you want to hear that old 97 go boom.
Dale Bordelon: Now, I’m going to tell you something. If there’s 3 of us in a blind, I want to kill 18 ducks. But if we killed 5, I’m happy as dog crap, man. But you, look, I’m not singling out anybody. I’m like that, too. It’s human nature, you want more, it’s not enough. And I see on Facebook, social media, everybody’s killing ducks. The majority of the people, I think everybody’s doing good. You don’t have to kill limit every time you go 5 or 6 ducks. I think that’s good. It’s fun to kill in limit. But I think everybody, no, we’re not killing the ducks we was, nobody is, compared to years.
Ramsey Russell: We don’t live in the world we lived in.
Dale Bordelon: No, that’s right. I guess you could say what I’m doing now, I’m very fortunate. I’m hunting with my kids, my grandkids, we’re killing ducks, I’m happy. And I think everybody else is like that, too. I mean, some people’s not killing too many ducks, but I think in general, everybody’s doing pretty good.
Challenging Assumptions: The Reality of Hunter Contentment.
I mean and anybody that goes on to the social media platforms or listen to some of these podcasts out here, from California to Maryland, from North Dakota clear down to Louisiana that’s the smoking gun that there ain’t no duck.
Ramsey Russell: Somebody shared some information with me recently. It was based on hunter satisfaction surveys and he started off sharing this information with me by asking me, how happy do you think most duck hunters are with duck hunting? I said, the world is ending. I mean and anybody that goes on to the social media platforms or listen to some of these podcasts out here, from California to Maryland, from North Dakota clear down to Louisiana that’s the smoking gun that there ain’t no duck. We ain’t killing no ducks, hunters are very unhappy. And he said, well, what if I told you that most duck hunters surveyed and it was a whole lot bigger than me calling 20 people I know, a big old formal survey. He said, most duck hunters are happy with their season and they’re happy with the current bag limits and they’re happy with the current system and he started reading off the data, I’m like, I just can’t believe that. He said, the numbers don’t lie and so you just bring up the point just like this guy did and roundabout, different way that you going out and heck, yeah, you going to shoot 18 ducks and if I’m one of them 3, I want to shoot 18 ducks, too. I mean, that’s what we are. But at the same time, I look back and I got that new hunt proof app now, Dale. And I got, I’m telling, man, I can’t believe I’m addicted to it because I when I get done with a hunt, I break out my species, I count my char dog retrieves who I hunted with, I make my notes and just, I keep it up and it has brought such saliency to my season. For example, somebody called the other day and I was Fish & Wildlife Service wanting me to, over the phone, very polite lady, complete my harvest survey for Washington state. I pulled it up, I looked at it. But when you look at it, it ain’t all bad, you see the good days.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But then you look back and you go, well, dang that day I had so much fun hunting with Dale and whoever. We only shot 3 ducks, I mean, you see what I’m saying? But heck, I’m happy because I’m still getting to go do it.
Dale Bordelon: Absolutely, the man that very unhappy because he’s not killing much, he needs to find another sport.
Ramsey Russell: I wonder that sometimes, Dale.
Dale Bordelon: Because a true duck hunter looks at the sunrise, talks with his friends, shares a bottle of coffee, go eat lunch after as the whole 9 yards, not just a killing.
Ramsey Russell: But how many ducks do we really need?
Dale Bordelon: I give all mine away, Ramsey. But I give it to a good cause, I have a bunch of old people and I bring them ducks and I still got ducks. I got all I want and you’re right. How many? But that’s human nature, they want more. That’s bill tennis, yeah, they never enough. They want more.
Ramsey Russell: We all want more.
Dale Bordelon: If you catch 80 frogs, you want 100. Figure speech and I’m included, I try to set myself back, my 2 boys is like that right now. And I’ve got them, they like to kill, but on a – If it’s a bad day, we got 4 or 5. They happy because they see me, I’ve teach them that you don’t have to kill everything you see.
Ramsey Russell: A picture this year that really spoke to this subject, people going to get tired of me talking about my old buddy, Mr. Ian. But just there towards the end, I went back through some old photo albums, started digging through some pictures and I found the first hunt, the picture of the first hunt. Man, 30 freaking years of laughter and stories come off that first hilarious hunt. And one duck in particular, I’ll never forget. But I went and found it and I could not, no more have told you how many ducks we killed. There were 3 of us in a boat and hunting was good in that particular spot, in that particular weather. I mean, if it had been 12 mallards, that wouldn’t have surprised me, I mean, it was 3 of us. But I had taken a picture of him and the other boy that was with us and they were holding up 5 mallards and that one hunt is very memorable, stories of a lifetime, a best friendship for 30 years forged off that one hunt and it was just 5 ducks, nowhere near a limit, not even half a limit.
Dale Bordelon: But you look back at the picture and it’s just the memories.
Ramsey Russell: But that’s what I’m saying. I mean, just without the picture and just the memories, it was an amazing day and an amazing ride with a great friend and it all started with 5 ducks. Just another average day, we go through the motions and we don’t even leave with half a limit. But it don’t matter, it really don’t matter. I guess maybe had it had mattered, maybe all the other stuff that came between now and then wouldn’t have happened.
Dale Bordelon: That’s right. One of my biggest haunts last year I shot 2 mallards with a 1897 made in 1898. I think that was the best hunt I had.
Ramsey Russell: That brings it back around though, Dale.
Dale Bordelon: And they landed on my wooden decoys, my surface decoys.
Ramsey Russell: In this day and age where hunting is tougher and Internet, hunter satisfaction seems to be at an all time low. Here’s my buddy Dale going out with a dugout that he made with his own 2 hands, with tools that he made with his own hands and hunting in a family property that is probably one of the most rare habitats in the modern south, which is to say it’s exactly like this world existed 150, 200 years ago. Passing on that torch to 17, 18 year old kids, passing on these traditions to folks that are clambering a mile long into your boot to get to get this old handmade cane call and taking it to another level for just enjoying the ritual and the experience for what it is beyond a bunch of damn dead ducks. I mean, to me everything, your whole approach to this duck hunting thing is right on time. And it’s like, boy, if we all had that approach, I wonder how happy the Internet would be. You’re sitting here, we’re sitting in your shop behind you, you got old pirogue with, loaded up with a lot of your decoys and I’ve hunted over these decoys before. You made them with your own 2 hands and old tools, no power tools, no nothing, you painted them with your own 2 hands. But you were telling me a little while ago about a secret strategy you have, especially late season, tell me about that late season strategy, I think it’s hilarious.
Dale Bordelon: I have a big blind. And another thing, I used to use willow and I’m not singling out, nobody hardly brushed their blinds. But I went to oak now the last 10 years. Now I’m going to button woods on it. We going because we’re hunting in the button woods. We do good till Christmas time, January 1st, then ducks start getting blind charred. So what we do is I’ll use my little wooden decoys, we take about 10 decoys and we get about 100 yards, 200 yards further down or further up from the blind and we let that big blind, they’re going to come down the ducks because of the decoys, but you won’t kill nothing in those big blinds.
Ramsey Russell: How far they get before they start getting soft on that big spread?
Dale Bordelon: About a 100 yards, about 80 yards.
Ramsey Russell: Then they start to fade.
Dale Bordelon: About 80 yards. The last day of the season last year. And I’m going to show you a video before you leave. Well, I had 11 decoys, I got about 100 yards, 80 yards down from a big blind, flock decoys, those new whatever you want.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: I put them surface decoys, about 80, 100 yards down, I killed, not a duck went into decoys. They came down for the big spread.
Ramsey Russell: You put out a big fully flocked spray in front of the blind.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Then about 100 yards away, you put out this little tote box right here.
Dale Bordelon: That’s what I used the last day.
Ramsey Russell: With those mixed match decoys of all different species and you put them out and then go, just went and hit by a cypress tree sign.
Dale Bordelon: In the buttonwoods with my waders. We do it at – my boy, he did, he killed his name at the same day, further down from me. Those ducks come down –
Ramsey Russell: Does he hunt over some more of these decoys?
Dale Bordelon: Who, him?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: No, he’s got his regular. He also hunt with that with me. But he had his regular decoys be put out about 8 or 10. But those ducks come to that big spread when they got about 80 yards, they just turn and come straight to that little spread and I kill my limit.
Ramsey Russell: Just float right in.
Dale Bordelon: Kill them like that every day. So we use that big blind for decoy. But if you get in that big blind, you can’t go kill nothing, you got to get further down.
Ramsey Russell: Big blind and the big spread.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, you can’t do that. They’ll go to the big blind but they get – So it’s some little tricks we do, that we learn and so this young brush on my big floating blind, it’s going to be one big button wood mat, we’re going to stick it and that’s what we’re working on now. I’m always trying to find a way to fool these ducks and we’ve been very successful. And that’s the fun, one of the fun parts is figuring it out. Like, you stand in the blind, especially with your kids, our deer hits, how about we go ahead and try this? We always, when the ducks, when we don’t kill ducks, we don’t say, well, let’s go deer hunting, the ducks, there ain’t no more ducks, I don’t deer hunt. I learned to pursue those ducks every day to the end and I try to figure it out. So this is another way of doing it.
Ramsey Russell: We have some blinds built into button bush at home. And I’ll give you, I’m going to tell you how we brush him blinds up to fit into that button bush. We don’t use much button bush, but you step back from it, you can’t tell it don’t take as much work as it sounds like if you got 2 or 3 folks going at it, just a hot summer day.
Dale Bordelon: You got some oak limbs on it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you right now, what we do is we go cut oak and it don’t matter if it’ll – because if you cut that red oak before frost, it’ll hold a lot of them leaves, not all of them but where it happens is the next year when we go to brush it, we’re just putting some new stuff on top of one or 2 years of old stuff, but what we do is we go on a limb cutting expedition, son. If you can reach it and it’s full and it’s about as big as your thumb or smaller, we’re a limb cutting fool. So we fill up trailers full of it and then we sit around a shade tree and we just get hampered, bundled bunches of it. So I wanted about 3 to 5 foot long and we just bundle it up and get some, I get, I like wire, you can use zip ties, I like wire, with that wire you can make a loop and cinch it, boy. Run through there and cinch it tight and clip it off and it’ll pull that bunch tight and then what we do is go and just lay them bunches on top of each other. Just lay them in there like shingles, just stack them in there. And when the leaves fall on, the weather hits it just, in a button bush clump, it just disappears completely.
Dale Bordelon: That’s kind of how we do now. But we’re going to add a little bit more button wood than normal woods.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: Try to make it, lighten it up a little bit like that.
Ramsey Russell: If you can figure out a way to – This is what works to me to give it that 3 dimensional zone is if you can get some of that button willow and cut some of them limbs, they’re going to lose all the clump, all the buttons and all the leaves. But if you can stick them like straight up, straight out, give it that fuzzy effect, it’ll really get in good.
Dale Bordelon: Well, my little boys got a one man blind coating and you don’t have nothing but the woods. It’s a suicide blind now because you’re sitting in there, that’s all you could do, you talk about a hard hole, bud. When you look at it from the lake, you can’t even see it. I showed people that, but now I’m hoping I’m doing my big blind now. It’s going to be hard to get away with it. It won’t be as concealed as his, but I think it’s going to be good.
Ramsey Russell: I think it’ll be fine, one time I hunted with you and a big blind on your lake.
Dale Bordelon: That’s the same blind.
Ramsey Russell: And you had those portholes kind of brushed into where when I’m just sitting 2 foot back from it, there ain’t no way know how a duck can see me in there. And then when I take 2 steps forward, I’m free and clear out the porthole to swing and shoot and that’s how we started brushing in our blind. Now we don’t have holes or nothing like that in front. It’s just square, but we box it off with those bundles and it’ll get pretty gnarly. You got to go in there with a pair of clippers and clip you out some of that stuff that’ll snag you and grab you and everything else. But once you get to that point, you just step just a foot back and you can see the ducks, you can call them. They can’t see you, until it’s go time and then it’s too late.
Dale Bordelon: Well, that’s what we’re trying to do, try to get it at. So we just, I had to put a floor on it. So that’s what we just finished. We’re going to go back now and we just got to brush it up. And I’m going to put a few of the old dead brush right now while I got it at the camp before I pull it or it won’t be as much. When you got that old blind brush, like you said, you just got to add not much.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. And that’s the fun part, we still just add as much as we can.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And just the deeper and better it gets because eventually, after 2 years, my oak limbs are just rot down to nothing. But that’s good as long as it don’t fall off, it looks okay. Dale, it ain’t going to be so long since I see you again. I’m going to see you about the 20th of July I tell, we had to plan your day. We’re going to meet and we’re going to make us a spin. It’s been a while since we did, years ago, when things got crazy, we would do that, come down here, we’d make a 2 or 3 day spin. But during hunting season, we spin and hunt and then go meet with folks and this time we’re going to come in July. What else we got to do but ride around? You guys are cabin plan somewhere on north and Lake Pontchartrain, we going to do a deep dive around New Orleans and I ain’t going to tip my hand on some of the conversations we going to have just yet, but it’s going to be some good stuff.
Dale Bordelon: Oh, you got some good old Louisiana traditions lined up.
Ramsey Russell: Oldest camp in North America or in the United States. We got hopefully going to get to meet those guys. We’re going to talk, jump off into, hopefully meet with some folks about food and I expect between here and there, there’s a lot of boudin places to stop and eat at.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, we might stop and guess a rib bob, spark it up a little bit.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve enjoyed seeing you, Dale, as always and tell everybody how they, I mean, surely everybody listening knows who Mr. Dale Bordelon of Bayou Beast Calls. But tell everybody how they get in touch with because you really, you do such a great job. I know that 80 is the new 65. And for an old guy, you really do a good job on Facebook, man. You put out a lot of good videos, a lot of good content.
Dale Bordelon: I ain’t that old.
Ramsey Russell: You ain’t that old?
Dale Bordelon: I ain’t that old, man. What you talking about? No, they could, I got my Facebook page, Dale P Bordelon or Bayou Beast Calls you can get, look me up on that. I’m always posting stuff.
Ramsey Russell: Well, now that you got a little help back in the shop, you ain’t that backed up, are you? On your call making?
Dale Bordelon: Well, I’m going to tell you like this. I was backed up about 2 years, then it got to 3 years making them cane calls. Now, I got that young man, Nicholas. He’s a woodworker out this world, he’s helping me make the calls and my son’s, he mails everything for me. So mostly what I do now is make sound boards, so I speeded up progress and my 1818 call is going to be out soon. I think I can get them out pretty quick. It’s just a matter of putting sound boards in them and my goose calls, same thing, so I’m catching up. Well, I see, I’m catching up on cane calls, the duck calls. I have a long list because I got so far behind trying to do it myself and there’s a lot of people waiting that’s been on the list a couple of years. I want you all to know I’m speeding it up and I’m going to catch up with you all.
Ramsey Russell: And the young man, Nicholas, he’s doing, he’s off, he’s cutting and fitting and getting right, the barrel and the insert or the 2 cane parts and you’re doing magic. You’re doing that cedar piece by hand. That’s what you, I said, why don’t you get him to do it? And you’re like, it took me 50 years to figure it out, I’m still learning. I ain’t ready to turn nobody loose on this yet.
Dale Bordelon: I just getting, it don’t pipe, but I’m going to show somebody one day. But that’s a lot of experience. But I’m still learning, several little steps on them sound boards. But I had to get, I got him to make the calls because he’s a hell of a woodworker, man, he’s gifted with his hands. And my son was helping me, but he’s got a job, so he helps me on part time. But I got him to do all my mailing stuff.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Dale Bordelon: So I don’t do nothing but make sound boards. So I’m trying to say is I speed it up. People is going to say, oh, he’s making 18 another call, I’ll never get my – But I’m making progress. I got it speeded up, it’s coming your way.
Ramsey Russell: Good things worth waiting for, I guess.
Dale Bordelon: But we work 7 days a week. I’m going to tell you.
Ramsey Russell: But you ain’t backed up on the speck call.
Dale Bordelon: No, you can get one tomorrow.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a good sound speck call. Dale, I really, it’s a really good sounding call and I like mine. I like it and I’m going to use now I’m not a fancy caller like a lot of speck callers are. I got my little lulu, I lulu them what I call it.
Dale Bordelon: When I built, when I got my speck called find, I mean, like I thought I wanted it, I sent it to a good friend of mine to lodge in South Louisiana and they good with it. He sent it back to me, said I didn’t have to do nothing, it was perfect. So it passed the test, I can say, I didn’t know and I let Warren Coco’s boy Lance, he, man, he can run a call he got, I told Warren at that short, I didn’t know that call could do that. All I do is – that’s all I do. But some of them old like Lance and a couple old boys, they got the goose out of it.
Ramsey Russell: But one of these days I’d like to commit myself with a speck caller to really, these boys that can really go down and dirty with. It’s pretty impressive.
Dale Bordelon: They got some bars. Yeah, they got them young – Some guys, man, they can do some magic with those calls. But I was not raised blowing a speck call. I was a duck hunter my whole life. We never had specks. I just learned that the way I call and I’m not, I don’t consider myself a professional, but I can’t kill geese though, I’ve called them in. But Mr. Murvis Wartzman, he made the Oie Caille, I’m sorry, the spotted dog and Chein Caille, he told me –
Ramsey Russell: That’s what Chein Caille means, a spotted dog.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Okay. I always wondered what that word, what that meant. I thought it was man’s name.
Dale Bordelon: Ah, it’s by spotted dog in French. Mr. Murvis Wartzman he was, that’s an old call he had. And he always told us at his house, if a goose is double clucking, you double cluck. If he’s single clucking, that’s how he called, you single cluck, but he didn’t call like that always. But I’m going to tell you something, I want to, you ask me why these goose calls originated the speck calls earlier. I’ve talked to Mr. Art that makes calls to.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right, folks, we’ve had Art on here.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, we talked the other day and he told me in the 60s there was no speck calls. They would take, people would come to their shop with those oaks, predator calls and have them, put a read or fix it to where they could. And they did that for the public, then his boss told him let’s quit doing that, then they come out with one, a call. So the way Mr. Art told me, that kind of all started in the 60s in Louisiana and that’s the knowledge.
Ramsey Russell: And the rest is history. I mean, I’m not, there some, I’m sure there’s some good speck calls out there, but you start talking chien cairn and several others, name brand, world champion speck calls, they all come out of Southwest Louisiana, that is speck country.
Dale Bordelon: They got 3 big major names that right now. So there’s no doubt when he told me that I’m looking at Mr. Murvis, that he passed away now he’s 80 something years old, passed away last year, but we used to, I used to hunt and gate down with my friend goose hunting. We had a lease or they had a lease, I’d go as a guest, I would go see Murvis a lot. He had that old predator call, that’s that old call he had. That’s what they made that Chein Caille with. So there’s no doubt when Art told me that that’s the idea Murvis got was when they used to hunt with them in the 60s. I’m just putting that through my mind, because they, that’s the same call Murvis would use. So I’m sure everybody in South Louisiana, that’s the call they would use at the time. And yeah, like you say, the rest is history.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well history is a good topic. Dale, I always count on you for some good stories and I love what you do. I appreciate you as a friend. We always have a good time. We get together. We always eat good. And I feel better when I’m leaving. I just feel better having been around is what I’m trying to say. So thank you very much for this afternoon.
Dale Bordelon: Well, I sure enjoyed you coming over, enjoyed the afternoon, it’s a shame we can’t do it more often. But thanks, I really appreciate you having me on and thank you so much.
Ramsey Russell: I just had this thought about this July meeting with you. Think I ought to bring char dog, you’re going to better keep your calls away from her if I do. Remember time we had her in a room, we came back and she chewed up some of the calls.
Dale Bordelon: Yeah, but that made it a good talk piece.
Ramsey Russell: Oh boy. I appreciate you all listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere, I appreciate you all in general, thank you all very much. We’ll see you next time.
[End of Audio]
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