EP 529. For Seventy-One Years a Duck Hunter (Part 2)

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MoJo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where we’re continuing with our conversation with Mr. Worth Matthewson, 71 years and still going strong as a duck hunter. For those of you all who missed it, last Thursday, Episode 528 was Part One. We got into some stuff, we got into his interest in how he started back in the 1950s, his passion for duck hunting, his interest in classical guns and approaches, and the influence of traditional waterfowl hunting. We also talked about places like Scotland, Australia, and Russia, where he’s hunted ducks around the world. We’re back for Round Two, and we barely scratched the surface. But you all be sure to tune into Episode 528, and now, let’s get into this episode. Worth, I’m glad to have you back. I feel like we only scratched the surface on last week conversation. You 71 years, you’ve accrued some memories, haven’t you?

Worth Mathewson: I certainly have, Ramsey. They’ve been good memories. I’m very thankful. I can’t fathom having a better life than I’ve had.

Ramsey Russell: Have you hunted all 50 states in North America?

Worth Mathewson: No, I haven’t hunted all 50. I’ve hunted a lot of them. I never made a count of how many states I’ve hunted.

Ramsey Russell: What were some of your favorite quests in North America?

Worth Mathewson: Well, the quest that didn’t work out was trying to get a Himalayan snow partridge in Nevada.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Worth Mathewson: I have shot, let me think, I have shot 55 native and introduced game birds in Canada and U.S., and if my list is correct, that’s all of them except for that Himalayan snow partridge. I made four trips to Nevada to try to get one of those buggers and was unsuccessful. It was a major disappointment.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Can you still hunt band-tailed pigeons in the state of Oregon?

Worth Mathewson: Yeah, it’s a very reduced season and limit. It’s a one-week season with a two-bird limit. Consequently, the pigeons never recovered from, there are two things that happened to them in 1972, Ramsey. All the Pacific Coast band-tails winter in California, and there was a huge acorn drop in the Sacramento foothills. The whole Pacific population of band-tails, to a certain extent, wintered there, and the guys got into them big time. They shot 700,000 a year, and even today, they haven’t recovered. But there was something else that happened about the same time, the timber companies started spraying out long, broadleaf plants. What they did was kill the plants, the trees that provide the band-tail its diet, red elder, cascara, dogwood, all of those. So, the pigeon faced a big dent in its population and all the spraying that took place to kill the broadleafs.

Ramsey Russell: They say that band-tailed pigeons are the closest living relative to a passenger pigeon, and it sounds like they’re suffering the same fate, over-exploitation combined with notable habitat loss.

Worth Mathewson: Right. The pigeons are coming back. I’ve noticed in the past four or five years that I’m seeing more band-tails than I have in previous years. It was pretty interesting. I was out of the country for two years. I traveled from 1970 until 1972. I lived in New Zealand for a year, then I was over in Australia, working in Central America and Canada, and came back. Well, I had one canyon in particular in the Oregon Coast Range where I did most of my band-tail hunting because it had a big growth of cascara, which is a tree that has a big purple berry, like a blueberry, and the pigeons just love it. There were always hundreds of pigeons in that canyon. When I came back in 1973, not knowing of the overkill in 1972, there were hardly any pigeons in my canyon, and I could not figure out what on earth had happened to them. I didn’t find out until several years later about that big overkill they had down there that year.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir. Wow. Somebody told me the limit is presently, like, two birds a day.

Worth Mathewson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How would you hunt those birds? How would you hunt band-tailed pigeons?

Worth Mathewson: Well, there’s another bad side to pigeon shooting. A lot of them were shot at mineral springs in Oregon and Washington. The reason pigeons seek out mineral water during the nesting season is that, by that time, they’re on just about a solid berry diet. The berries are high in potassium, and the pigeons need sodium to counteract the potassium, and that’s what they get from the mineral waters. So, they’ve got to have that. A lot of those mineral springs here in Oregon were leased and run as clubs, and people really put a dent in the pigeon population at these mineral springs. The problem was they were basically shooting the mature breeders. A band-tail only nests once a year, most band-tails nest once a year with one egg. Very slow reproduction. Mature pairs of band-tails, say two or three years old, will sometimes nest twice a year, but they’re still only raising two squabs a year. And at the mineral springs, they were creaming the crop of mature breeders along with overshooting. So not knowing that, when I first started shooting pigeons in the ’50s, I went to several mineral springs, that’s where I did my pigeon shooting. But when I learned about the harm that was being done shooting them at those sites, I switched over. It was actually a more enjoyable form of shooting because I was hunting up in the Coast Range Mountains or, to a certain extent, the Cascade Mountains in their food plots where the elderberry or cascara was. I used decoys for pigeons with pretty good success. I carved out some band-tail decoys, and I had a big lofting pole that I used to put those decoys at the top of a short tree to decoy the pigeons into that tree. So, it was really enjoyable hunting.

Ramsey Russell: What time of year is the band-tail pigeon season in Oregon?

Worth Mathewson: September.

Ramsey Russell: September. Wow.

Worth Mathewson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’d have to make a special trip if a guy like me wanted to shoot just one or two of them.

Worth Mathewson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be darned. You were telling me one of your favorite birds, one of you species last episode was a big December canvasback. Have you got any good canvasback stories to share? What is it about that bird?

Worth Mathewson: Well, it’s just a regal bird. I mean, you know, everything about it. I’ve got some moderately good canvasback stories. One of the most disappointing was once up in Alberta. Marge and I found a little pothole that a bunch of canvasbacks were using. I had some mallard decoys, and I went to a hardware store around Vauxhall, Alberta, and bought some white and red paint, rust paint, and repainted my mallard decoys into canvasback decoys and put them out in this little pothole. Flocks of canvasbacks started coming in, and I could not hit a duck to save my life.

Ramsey Russell: Was Ms. Marge backing you up? Was she helping you?

Worth Mathewson: She was up at the upper end of the pothole she shots me? She got canvasbacks and I didn’t. I finally got one drake, but that was the time, and I’ll be honest with you, I thought just once I’d like to shoot a limit of eight drake cans.

Ramsey Russell: Me too.

Worth Mathewson: And that was my opportunity. If I ever had a chance to get eight drake cans, that day was it. I just couldn’t hit the duck.

Ramsey Russell: We talked previously about your real affinity for hand-carved decoys, side-by-side shotguns, and you actually ran, at some point in time, a waterfowl supply business, Sink Box Supply Company. Tell me about that company. Put me on a timeline. What was it about? The classical materials? What all did you sell, and why did you sell it?

Worth Mathewson: Well, I sold a variety of things, and I have to tell you, Ramsey, that Sink Box turned very quickly into Sunk Box. It wasn’t a major success, but I offered some hand-carved decoys by George Williams and Bill Kell and some of the decoy makers. I tried to find very useful articles that duck hunters could use, like a folding stool for the marsh. A guy made a really good gun strap that your gun fitted across your chest, and that type of thing. I just didn’t do very well with it. Then I started, I became a dealer for Dave Hegelbaumer’s art, and I did really pretty well with that. Then I started an importation company called Hard Hitting Duck Guns.

Ramsey Russell: Hard Hitting Duck Guns, wow.
Worth Mathewson: I was buying from Holt’s Auction over in London. I specialized in heavy 12-bores and 3-inch 12-bores and would import those and resell them in the United States. It was kind of comical. I usually saved on shipping and would have eight or ten at a time shipped over. I’d unpack them all and put them on the kitchen table. Marge would be looking over my shoulder and say, “You are planning to sell these, aren’t you?” Yeah, well, I kept them. I only marked them up about 300 bucks, so a couple of the other dealers gave me a hard time, saying I was underselling them too much. But I viewed it as sort of a hobby. I passed guns on to guys that didn’t have a lot of money but wanted, you know, a pretty classic gun. And I made a lot of friends.

Ramsey Russell: When on a timeline would this Hard Hitting Duck Guns and Sink Box Supply Company have been? When did this take place?
Worth Mathewson: In the early 1990s.

Ramsey Russell: Do you think the reason it became Sunk Box is just that hunter attitudes nationwide had changed? There’s more of an emotional or just a practicality shift to more conveniences of fiberglass and aluminum and plastic and things of that nature? It was an ethos change. Is that what you think was happening?
Worth Mathewson: I think so. You know, I used to have a booth at various sportsman shows like the big one in Portland, and, Ramsey, there were only a few people that were interested in some of the items I was trying to sell. There just wasn’t a big interest. I mean, you know, there were some guys that I was hitting the nail right on the head with, but overall, there weren’t a lot of people.

Ramsey Russell: You know, it’s why some of my buddies call me a dinosaur. I mean, I like waxed canvas. I like wool. It’s practical material. It’s quiet. It’s as waterproof as anything I’ve worn.
Worth Mathewson: Do you get Barbour stuff?
Ramsey Russell: No, sir. Actually, I use a lot of Tom Beckbee now, and I’ve still got some old, old Filson pieces I’ve had that are older than my kids. But I wear a product called Tom Beckbee. You know, we start talking about these old classical approaches and older tools and older guns. And I shoot a lot of Benelli semi-automatic shotguns. That’s my go-to shotgun. But I’ve still got an old Remington 1100 that belonged to my grandfather. I’ve still got an old Winchester Model 12 that someone gifted me, just like the one my dad grew up shooting. And I like to take those old guns out every Christmas morning by myself or with my two kids. I break out old Granddad. It’s just about a 1970s-era Remington 1100. I’m sure they made millions of them, but there’s something about that particular shotgun that I’ve shot since I was a young teenager that just connects me to something beyond the ducks. It connects me to the people that connected me to duck hunting. And that means something to me. I like old pickup trucks. I don’t get comfortable in a truck until it’s got a few dents and dings and scratches. And I don’t get comfortable with a dog, or I didn’t get comfortable with my wife even , I’ve been married 30 years , for a long time until it was proven. And I just like that stuff. I like that approach, you know. I don’t know why.

Worth Mathewson: Well, you know, I’m strictly a doubles man. But over the years, I’ve had two Model 12 heavy ducks that I liked.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Worth Mathewson: In fact, I took one of those up to Saskatchewan one year as my main goose gun.

Ramsey Russell: Back in the 1990s, even just since the 1990s, the outdoor product industry has so changed. What are your thoughts having been in the Sink Box Supply Company and Heavy Hitting Duck Guns, and having seen or witnessed maybe firsthand this transition of modern hunters to modern technologies and simplicities, a lot of times, made-overseas type stuff, how have you seen it change? What changes have you seen, and what are your heartfelt thoughts on maybe why people have transitioned?

Worth Mathewson: Well, you know, Ramsey, a lot of it is price. You know, some of those older-type items are fairly spendy, and there are simply some guys that don’t, you know, they have a family and just don’t have the bucks to invest in that type of stuff. You know, you talk about Filson. I love Filson. In fact, this hat I’m wearing is a Filson hat. My favorite pants of all pants were their tin pants. I had those tin pants for years. And of course, you might be aware that in those tin pants, with that coating they had on there, you couldn’t wash them. So they just got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier to the point, you know, you said you’d stand them up in a corner. And they used to drive my wife nuts because they were so dirty. But they were the most comfortable, useful pants I think I’ve ever worn. But you look at the prices of what Filson is asking for their material today.
Ramsey Russell: I know, but I’ve got a pair of old shelter cloth pants that have, I mean, they’ve experienced more dead stuff than the plague. They’re older than my children. They’re in my bag in the other room right now. They travel with me until it gets too cold. I pull them on, you know. It doesn’t matter if I’m deer hunting, rabbit hunting, duck hunting, or goose hunting. They’re great dry-field pants. And you know my strategy. I really didn’t rewax them for years. What I found out is, when my wife was grocery shopping or wasn’t in the house to stand over my shoulder and see me making a mess, I’d throw them in her hot dryer and make that wax come back out from inside and bubble to the surface, you know. So when they did get a little bloody or a little dirty, I could hose them off, brush it off, and go back at it. Finally, after 20 years of use and abuse, they’re a little frayed, a little worn. They’ve got a few cuts, nicks, and scratches in places. The last time I dried them, no wax came to the surface. I had depleted it. And a buddy of mine, Mr. Greg Mueller, told me about a place out east, up in the Northeast, that’ll refinish these products. I sent a lot of my old wax cotton to them. And I just love it. I love how quiet it is. I love how it feels. I love the fact that patina , just like those old guns you’re talking about, you know , it’s just like when I pick up that old Remington 1100 or that old hammer gun of my great-great-great-granddaddy’s or somebody’s old stuff. To me, the nicks and scratches and little dings, they just speak of experience. And it means something to me. You know, you can’t put a patina on something right out of the box. You gotta earn it. And I like earning it. It’s not the top of the mountain. I think, you know, we were talking in the last episode, and I think that numbers , if it’s the end-all, be-all , cheapens the experience. Because it’s really not about the top of the mountain. It’s about the climb. In life, in duck hunting, and in anything we do, it’s about that experience, being in that moment, being with the people you’re with, and experiencing what you’re experiencing. Taking what the duck gods give you, or don’t , and just loving it for what it is and what it isn’t.

Worth Mathewson: I got a funny story to tell you about Filson tin pants. There was a time he was actually a professional wood pigeon shooter in England. John Batley. And then he got hooked in with Holland and Holland, and he was sort of their public relations guy. Well, some guy in San Francisco had ordered a pair of Holland guns. At that time, a Holland gun was about $75,000, so he had a $150,000 order. So Holland dispatched John Batley to San Francisco to deliver, hand-deliver, the guns. Well, Batley and I got together, and we arranged for him to first fly into Boise, Idaho. I’d pick him up there and take him chukar hunting, quail hunting, and pheasant hunting in the desert of Oregon for three days. Then I’d take him back, and he would continue on his way to San Francisco. Well, I showed up there. I’d been over there in the desert for about a week, and I wore my Filson tin pants, which were just filthy. I probably had sagebrush sticking out of my beard. He came off the plane, and, Ramsey, he was in complete English shooting attire, you know, plus twos, socks, the brogues, the vest, the tie, etc., and one of those funny hats they wear. He took one look at me waiting for him, and I honest to God think he wanted to immediately pretend he didn’t know who I was.

Ramsey Russell: I’m glad to hear that because I have been invited to go to the UK for the first time. I’m going to join a group of men who are going to give me a showcase experience to include punt guns and snipe hunting. Excuse me, woodcock hunting.

Worth Mathewson: Are you going punting? Are you going to get out with the guy?

Ramsey Russell: That’s the deal. I’m going punting. Yep. That’s the whole thing. We’re going to moonlight pink-footed geese. Unfortunately, I’m going in December. I just couldn’t make January work. There’s too much real-life stuff going on, like conventions. But I’m going over in December, and we’re going to record podcasts, meet with biologists, meet with old-timers, and do a deep dive into UK culture. They’ve told me it’s probably going to be the first of several visits. Once we crack the surface on this stuff right here, they think it may be. But here’s the first question I had as it started getting serious. I said, now, wait a minute. I didn’t know what the proper word was,plus fours or plus twos. I said, I don’t have to wear a tie, do I? Because I don’t have a duck hunting tie. He busted out laughing. And I said, I don’t have to wear the knickers, do I? The little short pants. And he said, no, no, whatever you wear duck hunting. So, I’m going to show up just like I show up everywhere else, wearing my wax cotton pants and coat and layers, with my little vomit hoodie to stay safe and my bald head warm. And I’m bringing… come to find out, it’s not just traditional, it’s a matter of fact law. They can punt gun, they can shoot geese at night, they can bait ducks, they can do a lot of stuff that’s been prohibited since the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But they cannot shoot a gun capable of holding or made to hold more than three shells. Therefore, I’m having to take a Benelli 828U over-and-under, which I don’t mind shooting. I’ll say for the record that I do shoot a semi-automatic, and when I’m in countries where it’s allowed, I take the plug out. But hey, when in Rome, I’m going to be shooting an over-and-under.

Worth Mathewson: Well, I hope you have a good experience with the punt gunning. Because if you were to ask me what my single most memorable hunt was, it was a punt gun hunt in Northern Ireland. I went to England twice to try to punt. The first time I went over, the water was impossible to get the punt out. The second year we went over, we got the punt and the gun in the water, but there were just no ducks to make it. They call it a “pull” because you pull a lanyard to fire the gun. There weren’t enough ducks anywhere to make a pull. That particular gun was about an 8-ounce gun, and it shot 8 ounces of shot, sort of a medium-sized punt gun. The guy in Northern Ireland probably had, or maybe still has, the biggest gun in use over there. It was a double barrel, and it shot 16 ounces out of both barrels.

Ramsey Russell: Oh.

Worth Mathewson: So, when you touch it off, you’re shooting 32 ounces. And that was the most memorable hunt that I ever had. I think it was, 13 widgeon teal with my shot, which incidentally is considered a pretty good shot because in the times of England, I met and had beers and dinner with several punters. Some of those guys will go a whole season without making a shot. Most of them, their biggest shot would be 25 to maybe 30 ducks. The average, what they considered a good shot, was 12 to 15. And there is so much more to punting than the average guy would think. Realistically, you would call punting shooting ducks with a cannon, and that’s exactly what it is. But the work that goes into getting up on those ducks and making a successful shot. All these guys punters shoot far more ducks each year with their shoulder guns than they do with their big punt guns.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. We’ve had that discussion. Classical punting laying in the boat and crawling through the marsh and getting into position. We don’t know if we’re going to do that or borrow from maybe a Mississippi idea I’ve got and just lay in wait for them. But I’ve told them, I said, you know, we’ve only got a finite amount of time. We’ve got a lot of country to cover. I do, at least, want to just pull the string and watch a pound and a half of shot flow over the water. I’d like to just do that. But I would love to pull the trigger on a flock of ducks. I just really would like to experience that.

Worth Mathewson: If it’s a pound and a half, that’s a big, big gun.
Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s what I’ve been told. Ask me in a couple of months, and I’ll tell you exactly how it went down. You know, that’s just my understanding. And I was just shocked to learn that it still exists anywhere on earth or that it’s such a respected practice. You know, I mean, it’s like generational, this thing has become. And it is. I think it’s more, whereas back in the heyday, late 1800s, early 1900s, in America, it was about making money and feeding the markets. I think it’s more about preserving a tradition as it’s expressed now over in the UK. Shooting a punt gun.
Worth Mathewson: Well, It’s a real sporting adventure, and sport has a lot to do with punting. But I would guess, I’m not in touch with all those guys like I was, say, 20 years ago, but I would guess, Ramsey, that today, if there are 15 punts and guns that are active, that would be about it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’ve heard about three dozen, maybe four dozen. They meet once a year. They lay low and stay quiet.
Worth Mathewson: And there’s places that it’s getting harder for them. See, the shore shooters don’t like the punt gunners at all. So there’s a lot of animosity between shore shooters and punt gunners. And then also there’s a reduced number of places that they can fire that big gun at due to human habitation around. And most of that punt gunning takes place out on the ocean or in the big estuary.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s right. What about sink box hunting? Have you ever sink box hunted?
Worth Mathewson: Well, you know, Ramsey that brings up another very interesting thing. Yeah, I did sink box, true sink box, hunting. Let me clarify this. A sink box, a battery, is a floating device that can be moved from place to place. That’s what was outlawed in 1935, along with baiting and live decoys. You couldn’t use batteries anymore. And all those old uses of that craft, those were batteries. Now a sink box is actually legal. In other words, Ramsey, you could build yourself a sink box. Let’s say you’re in a coastal situation, and you waited till a low tide or something like that, and you fixed the sink box to the bottom of the bay. And the only place that a true sink box is available today is in North Carolina. There’s three or four of those. And there was a guide by the name of Russell Williams, I think his name, who had two at Hatteras. And they call them curtain blinds there.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Worth Mathewson: The reason why, as the tide comes up, they’ve got these curtains they can run up to keep the water from running into the blind. And high tide fills them up completely, and they have to be bailed out after the high tide to shoot from. That’s a true sink box. What all the old ones, like in the Chesapeake and all over, those were batteries. And they could tow them out behind a boat and anchor them out and put that tremendous raft of decoys around it and shoot it. And then when they were through, tow it back into the harbor. So that’s, the batteries are illegal, but sink boxes aren’t.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ve actually had the opportunity to shoot from a battery, as you call it, the sink box, classical sink box in very deep water in Nova Scotia, where it’s still legal. Yep. And it’s, you know, we dragged it out, and we anchored it down. And he looked at me, guessed my weight, and threw some big old steel balls into the bottom of it as ballast. And I climbed off in it, and he drove off 100 yards. And I shot scoters and long-tail ducks that, you know, you look right at the water. You’re looking eyeball level over the chop. You look right over the chop for those birds to come through. We were kind of in a pinch point where they’re coming off big water into a bay, and they all had to kind of pass through us. And a lot of them would swing over the decoys, and, you know, it was an experience. Check the box. I did it. It’s not something I would choose to do every day. It was pretty miserable, pretty immobile. You can’t hunt a dog. I just didn’t. But it was a life experience. You know, again, going back to those experiences, I like to do different things. You know, you hunt around the world in all these far-flung places like Russia and Argentina and Azerbaijan, and you just go on and on. And the further you get from North America, the more dissimilar it sometimes gets to where I can say I’ve shot ducks by sink box and ducks at night and ducks by light and ducks from boats and parachutes and baited and non-baited and electronic calls. And I hunted them over live duck decoys. I’ve hunted them over live geese. And it’s just right about the time you think you’ve seen and done it all, somebody somewhere shoots ducks a different way. And when in Rome, you know. But it really and truly and I’m asking as much to say, and I guess I’m going to ask you this question. You know, I feel like that we United States duck hunters kind of define duck hunting. Yeah, I feel like we are the definitive voice of duck hunting methods in terms of our decoys and our techniques and our approach to duck hunting. And sometimes you get to other countries, and you see something similar but not exactly the same because it’s not American. I just feel like we Americans have elevated duck hunting. Whether we’re using wooden decoys or the latest, greatest something, you know, decoys, whether we’re using classical guns or semi-automatic guns, our duck calls, our boats, our equipment has all been elevated to state-of-the-art art form as compared to other parts of the world. Have you seen a similar trend or something similar?
Worth Mathewson: Yeah, pretty much so. Pretty much so.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Worth Mathewson: You know, speaking of batteries, Marge and I, where we did our battery shooting at Wishart Point in New Brunswick. And that was for black ducks and Canada geese. And that was a good thing. We put one battery in front and one in the back, and we took turns. Sometimes Marge was doing the shooting in the front battery, and I was doing the photography. We switched back and forth. We did a photo essay for Gray’s Sporting Journal on that New Brunswick, and that’s where I shot one of my black ducks. But it was just like you say, those Canada geese coming toward the decoys with their wingtips almost hitting the water.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Worth Mathewson: You just watch them. See, it was really something special. We didn’t shoot a lot of birds, but it was fun.
Ramsey Russell: We talk about a lot of these old-school hunting techniques, and you’ve been going at it since 1953, 71 years and going as duck hunter in the United States of America, worldwide. What old-school hunting techniques do you think are underutilized, underappreciated, yet still as effective today as they ever were?
Worth Mathewson: Well, I don’t know whether they’re more effective or not. You know, I basically hunt ducks like I always have. I’ve never used a tremendous amount of decoys. And calling is an important factor in working the birds and knowing when to call and when not to call, you know, those two. And having a good knowledge of the birds’ habits certainly plays into the success ratio.

Ramsey Russell: “An amazing duck hunter, great guy. He loves those canvasbacks too, Worth, I’m going to tell you, that man loves a canvasback duck and a redhead.”

Ramsey Russell: I feel, I’ve always felt like duck hunting is a very fundamental sport. Good hide, being where the ducks are, decoys, calling at the right time, don’t miss when it comes down to the trigger pull. But you know, man, I’ve got bags full of the latest greatest state-of-the-art decoys. I’ve got those old clunker corks I carved myself. And I’ve hunted countries that, I mean, I’ll never forget seeing a spread at daylight. I thought I was in Azerbaijan Looking over a quarter mile away, it appeared to be a raft of ducks. As it got lighter, they were just kind of stationary. They hadn’t moved. It was a big, big flock. I looked at it through binoculars, and I could tell, well, I don’t think they’re ducks. So I finally walked over, and as I walked, I kind of walked into the spread. It was a natural hide, just shin-deep in shotgun shells. A couple of local hunters had been very effective and had shot a lot of ducks. They’d sure shot a lot. Knowing those hunters, they probably shot a bunch of ducks with those shells. I walked out to look at those decoys, and it was just random and sundry different pop bottles, plastic bottles that they had covered with different blues, grays, blacks, and browns, whatever wool socks they got hold of. They had shot the F-bomb out of those ducks. And, you know, it didn’t have to be $55 apiece or more for hand-carved, amazing replicas of ducks. They had done it with just the extreme basics. The wind was right, the hide was right, the spread was right, they were in the right location, and they shot a lot of ducks. So, as I’m saying, I think there are a lot of ways and approaches that the old-timers hunted ducks that are as effective now as they ever were. I think a lot of this other stuff we’re using, the expensive decoys and the $300 duck calls or whatever, that’s just for us. It’s not necessary to kill a duck. Here’s where I’m getting at with this, I was hunting with a young man one time, a good friend of mine, Tony Smith, in Utah. An amazing duck hunter, great guy. He loves those canvasbacks too, worth, I’m going to tell you, that man loves a canvasback duck and a redhead. I was hunting with his son and one of his son’s friends. His son was in high school at the time, and man, they got this amazing public resource in Utah public hunting. You can go as far back into it as you want. I mean, there are guys that walk, guys that paddle, guys that have little boats, guys that have bigger boats, guys that got small airboats, and guys that got big airboats. It’s just whatever your limitation is. It’s hard to believe that with 25 or 30 trucks at the boat ramp that you can get so far back that over that flat ground between mountain ranges, you can’t hear a shotgun go off near you. It’s just so vast. I asked the young man, who had hunted a lot of big mule deer and mountain lions, I mean, his folks were game animal hunters and I asked, why he didn’t duck hunt. I mean, you love it so much, and you’ve got this all in your backyard. He said, “Well, I can’t afford it.” So I asked, “What do you mean you can’t afford it?” He started naming off $2,000 shotguns, $500-a-dozen decoys, and all this name-brand blah, blah, blah. When he got done, I said, “Hell, I can’t afford to duck hunt either.” My gosh, it’s almost like the brand marketing his almost created some kind of artificial barrier to getting young people involved. But really, they just need a sack of decoys, go get hidden, be where the ducks want to be, and not miss when the ducks come in. It’s really that simple.

One of my most long-term friends, my best friend for 30 years, called more sparingly than any duck hunter I’ve ever known, and he killed as many ducks as anybody. He just didn’t call unless he felt like it was a last resort, and he didn’t need to. He got where he needed to be, put his decoys out, was patient enough to wait, called a little if he had to, but he killed ducks. It was just very fundamental.

Worth Mathewson: I’ll interject on the subject of calls. There never has been, and there never will be, a better duck call made than the Hydell’s double reed.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. I do like a Haydel’s. Yep.

Worth Mathewson: Heydel’s. Okay.

Ramsey Russell: Did you know or hunt with Mr. Eli?

Worth Mathewson: Never did. Never did. I had a good time. I had a friend, Terry Shaughnessy, who owned Hackberry Rod and Gun in Hackberry, Louisiana. I used to go down there quite a bit while Terry was there. We had some good times. He was a crazy guy.

Ramsey Russell: We talked previously about your friendship with David Hagerbomb, the renowned artist. What is it about his artwork, do you think, that so appeals to people even today?

Worth Mathewson: Well, I think a lot of Dave’s art, not all of it, but certainly some of it. In fact, I’ve got, you can’t see it close up, but I’ve got a banded pigeon painting up on the wall behind me. Some of Dave’s art, his better art, strikes me, or always has struck me, that he was painting from memory of something he saw. It wasn’t just a day where he thought, “Well, today I think I’ll do ruffed grouse.” Some painters do that. I think a lot of Dave’s better artwork came from a vivid memory he had of the birds. Dave’s art varied a lot. It could be superb, great, or not so much. He really fluctuated, especially as he got older. Some of his artwork was just not as good as what he once did.

Ramsey Russell: How did you all become friends?

Worth Mathewson: Good story. Marge and I took our son and some other kids over to the Siletz River for camping and summer steelhead. That was on a Saturday, and it rained like it had never rained in coastal Oregon before.

Ramsey Russell: We all got wet.

Worth Mathewson: We all got wet and muddy and stuff like that. Well, at that time, Dave’s daughter and son-in-law, Bob Reed, I can’t remember her name was, had an art gallery that David financed. They were having an open house. Chet Renneson was there, along with some other noted artists. I really wanted to go to it, but we were just as muddy and bedraggled as people could be. We got to the gallery, it was out in the country, and I knew Bob Reed but had never met Dave. Everybody there was dressed like they were at a wine-and-cheese social on a Sunday afternoon. Marge and I came walking in, looking bedraggled. Bob Reed took one look at me and looked like he wanted to throw me out. Dave was sitting in the middle of the room. Marge and I walked in, and he got a big grin on his face. He walked over, stuck out that bear paw of a hand, and said, “My name’s Dave Hagerbomb. It looks like you two have been having some fun.”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Worth Mathewson: I thought, “Man, you’re my type of guy.” Our friendship started right there.

Ramsey Russell: You talked earlier about how he was a big public-land hunter, but that because he was a popular artist, very, very well-renowned even to this day, he did get a lot of invites to various clubs, and he sometimes accepted them. Why do you think he spent so much time on public land? What was his affinity for public versus just going to the club?

Worth Mathewson: He felt that was the right way to hunt ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Worth Mathewson: And not under a controlled situation like most of the clubs, especially the ones that plant for the ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Hmm. We touched on, we were just recently talking about punt gunning and hunting from a battery. Over in parts of Europe, they shoot by light or at night. And then we were talking about the American duck hunters’ mindset. As well-traveled as you’ve been, hunting in parts of the UK and worldwide, what practices have you seen elsewhere that would be, I don’t know, thought of as weird or something over here in America? And likewise, what ways do we Americans hunt that might be odd or different in other parts of the world and would really stand out as different?

Worth Mathewson: Well, the thing that actually kind of bothers me is, say in Scotland, for example, how much they bait the ducks. The one guide we use for pigeon shooting for all these years is a major guide for geese and ducks. That’s where he does most of his business. Ramsay, I can’t remember how many tons of barley he buys in a year’s time to bait these places up. And they do it down in New Zealand. I don’t think they can bait in Australia.

Ramsey Russell: No.

Worth Mathewson: I don’t think so. But they do in New Zealand, and I always found that pretty distasteful. Shooting at night, I think, is kind of comical. The only time I tried it, Dave Hagelbaum went over to Scotland with us once, and we got down on the marsh where the teal were supposed to come in. These little flips came by, and we would shoot. I’d see Dave on the other side of the pond, a big flash go up. “Did you get one?” “Hell no.” I don’t know how many times we shot, we never got a duck.

Ramsey Russell: My eyesight, I don’t know if it’s a function of age or just genetics, or maybe the fact it’s conditioned from shooting during light. But, you know, a lot of parts of the world don’t abide by shooting hours. And I oftentimes can’t see the ducks. Even if I can see them, I can’t see them to run the math and do the lead or anything like that. But I remember one time hunting in Azerbaijan. We got there way early, and man, there were ducks all over. I could hear they were low enough. I could hear the gadwall, you know, above me. And I could every now and again see forms or hear their wings above me. My guide was telling me to shoot, and I just shook my head. “I can’t see them.” He kept saying, “Shoot, shoot,” or whatever the Azeri word for that is. Finally, I just handed him a shotgun and sat down. “If you’re so good, you shoot.”

Worth Mathewson: And he did.

Ramsey Russell: That son of a gun, I was sitting in a chair and he was watching, looking up, had the gun kind of half-mounted, and was pivoting 360 degrees. At some point in time, after about three or four rotations, he goes, “Bam, bam, bam.” And I could hear, “Splash, splash, splash.” Wow. He proved it could be done, but I still had to wait. I couldn’t see them well enough, you know.

Worth Mathewson: Well, I got a good story behind that. We were in Iceland hunting geese, and the guide, I mean, it was no-fooling cold. The guide talked to Marge and me after an early dinner and said, “I know a river where the geese will probably be flighting up this evening. Would you like to go out?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” So we got out there, and aside from the temperature, there was a god-awful cool wind blowing. Marge got out of the car and jumped right back in, said, “No.” So the guide and I walked down to a gravel bar in this river and stood there. You could hear the geese coming from the calling. I could hear the geese right over me. Looking up, I couldn’t see anything. The guide started shooting, and he got one or two. I’d just about given up and was going to go back to the car when, like a light switch, the northern lights came up.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Worth Mathewson: Flashing across the sky. I saw a flock of geese come right back, lit by the northern lights. Had a perfect shot and made a double on them.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. What a great story. Man, what a great story. Of all the hunting you’ve done, let’s just talk about the hunt level or species level. What was the most challenging hunt?

Worth Mathewson: Oh, that snow partridge in Nevada.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, yeah.

Worth Mathewson: A guy that gets one of those really earns it. I’ll tell you the honest truth, Ramsey, when you’re going after those snow partridge, they’ve got both bighorn sheep and mountain goats in the Rubies. You leave the sheep and the goats behind as you climb up to those stupid birds.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I don’t think I’m ever going to do that hunt.

Worth Mathewson: Wildest birds I’ve ever tried to hunt.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Wow. Throughout your career, 71 years duck hunting, what styles and methods of hunting did you most enjoy?

Worth Mathewson: Well, I guess if I had to pick one, it was hunting the tides on the Oregon coast with my Barnegat. There used to be a setup on the incoming tides, and we were dealing primarily with widgeon. I’d set up, come in on a low tide, and set the decoys. As the tide came in, the big raft of widgeon would be way down the bay. The tide would start coming, and about the time the decoys started floating, here would come the widgeon. It was just wonderful to watch, just massive widgeon coming for you. That was, I think, my favorite. I had a guy from North Carolina out one time, and we were out during the week. We were the only people on the bay. He looked at me, he shot his limit in nothing flat, and said, “If this was in North Carolina on a weekday, there’d be 100 guys out here. And on a weekend,” he said, “there’d be 200 guys out here.” He just could not possibly believe we had it all to ourselves.

Ramsey Russell: That’s crazy.

Worth Mathewson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: When I think about methods, hunting around the world, shooting at night by light, we’ve talked about all this different stuff. But pass shooting, have you ever been a pass shooter?

Worth Mathewson: Yeah, I like pass shooting.

Ramsey Russell: I do, too.

Worth Mathewson: I enjoy it.

Ramsey Russell: You know, it’s totally different than how I perceive, how I define duck hunting. And I’ve told the story several times about hunting. The first time I ever went truly duck hunting, I was in my 20s, went out with a fraternity brother, and we were boy shot some mountains coming through the trees. And the older gentleman told me, “Don’t shoot till I call the shot.” And I did it again. Boy, he got stern, but not ugly. And he explained to me they wanted to own those ducks. They said, “Shooting is not what this is about. We’re all gonna shoot. We’re gonna go home with ducks. It’s about lightin’ those ducks. We want to call that wild duck, and we want him on the water. We want to own him.” And I think, really and truly, all these years later, I go to some of these countries, Argentina, Mexico, wherever. And they’ve got such an abundance of ducks that you can make mistakes and shoot too high or too left, hunt with the wind in your face. And I try to explain to them all, you know, beyond that, it’s about the presentation. I want the ducks to present themselves. That’s just how a lot of us Americans define duck and goose hunting and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But pass shooting, I just remember, I’ve done it in Europe, I’ve done it elsewhere. I’ve done it lots of places. And I enjoy it when it’s right. You know, I’ve done it. And I used to have an old friend, Mr. Dan Spencer, and I hunted with him. The part of Canada he’s hunted, I realized I had hunted with him on some of my hunts before, and he is, to this day, one of the absolute best wing shots I’ve ever hunted with. And it wasn’t until I went to Canada to hunt with him and realized that he had decoys. He didn’t use them. We went and got on the crest of a hill, and the geese came over in the cranes, and we shot them. And when the wind was blowing hard, they were 20, 30 yards high, and they were just sitting right there where you want them. And on the days it didn’t, and they were taller, and I’d see geese fly over that I wouldn’t even raise my gun at, and he would just stroke them. He had been doing that for 25 or 30 years, a pass shooter. But last year, I was hunting in Mexico. There’s one particular spot we hunt. We pass shoot bluebills. It’s amazing. It’s fun. And I was there with some gentlemen from the Dakotas that, to this day, hunt passes, what they call passes, very historic, and they could tell you stories of passes, very famous passes in the Dakotas that they grew up hunting that are now, because of some climatic event, 20 feet underwater. They no longer do that, but they enjoyed it. They enjoyed it so much. And yet I posted some pictures, and some modern-day duck hunters criticized it. “That’s not duck hunting. That’s not duck hunting at all. That’s just shooting.” I said, “Well, it’s pass shooting, and it’s a pretty respected sport in a lot of places, in Europe especially.” I mean, we go to Africa. It’s a very European vibe. Their approach, owing to their cultural history, is very European. And a lot of the times, we set up on passes to shoot these ducks and geese, or I can remember one time with my outfitter, we were scouting, and there were some Egyptian geese way over here on a roost, and there were some spur wings way over there on a roost. And we were looking at a wetland they were going to. They would go off and feed respectively, then come back and loaf in this spot. And man, we just kept on and kept on looking and watching and looking and watching. I said, “What are we trying to figure out here?” He goes, “Well, I just can’t figure out if I want to set up when the Egyptians are coming back or the spur wings are coming back.” I said, “Well, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we back off, put out decoys, and shoot them both coming to decoys?” “I don’t know if it’ll work.” I said, “Let’s try it.” Oh, it worked. It worked great. We shot more spur wings than Egyptians he’d ever shot in a single hunt because their cultural background is pass shooting. And it’s just, there’s a lot of different ways to shoot ducks around the world. What have been some of, or can you remember, having grown up the way you grew up hunting, what were some of the different ways you hunted for a first time that you said, oh, this is.” You ended up adding it to your bag of tricks back home?

Worth Mathewson: Well, I’ll remark on that Pass shooting. There used to be a place on Neetards Bay on the Oregon coast that the black brant used to winter there. And there was one place, if you walked down the beach and then crossed over the sand dunes to get down to Neetards Bay. There was a low sort of scoop out of the sand dunes. It’s called Johnson’s Gap. It’s because there was a farmer way back when that had a little farm out on that sand spit. And it used to be a good place to put the decoys out and hunt brant. Well, they closed brant season for three years to see if they could get more brant to winter in Oregon. And while we were brant hunting before that closure, right at daybreak, tremendous flights of white-wing and surf scoters would leave the Pacific, come through Johnson’s Gap, and come zooming down into the bay. And of course, we didn’t shoot at them when we were brant hunting, afraid to put the brant off. But I remembered that when the brant season was closed, and I told Marge, I said, “Well, let’s walk down the beach and get it at the shore’s edge and catch those scoters as they were coming.” So that was some of the best pass shooting that I’ve had. Because you could see those scoters crest the dunes and then just go into this dive, you know, coming down, and they were flying about a million miles an hour. You had to take them when they came out in front because they were just past you and gone. But it was tremendous.

Ramsey Russell: Did you grow up shooting a side-by-side? Is that where your love for two shooters came from?

Worth Mathewson: Dad borrowed a double-barrel .410 for me, and in 1953, I got that Stevens Fox Model B double-barrel .20.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve got one in the safe that was my grandmother’s. Yep.

Worth Mathewson: Yep. But not entirely side-by-sides. When I was a senior in high school, so I’d been 18 then, I bought a Browning Superposed over-and-under. And I shot that for years and ended up trading it for a double down in New Zealand once when I was down there. Traded the Browning for a Charles Boswell pigeon gun. That really started. And then that was about the time that Mack McIntosh, Michael McIntosh started writing all the. That guy more than anybody else, kicked off the tremendous fad of side-by-sides.

Ramsey Russell: He did

Worth Mathewson: Yeah. He was sort of the founder of that. And so I got real interested and went through all the American doubles, Parker, Fox, Ithaca, L.C. Smith. And then my wife always said it was a fatal day that I got interested in English doubles and went from there. But of all the English guns I’ve owned, I’ve had three Purdeys in my lifetime. My favorite maker is Charles Boswell and his pigeon guns. Guns he made from about 1895 to 1914. And that’s my favorite.

Ramsey Russell: For those of us that shoot off-the-rack guns, what is it about those you like the most?

Worth Mathewson: What was the question?

Ramsey Russell: For the guys like me that have always shot guns just mass-manufactured off the rack, what is it about those type guns that you most appreciate that guys like me should want to do? You see what I’m saying? What is it about those guns?

Worth Mathewson: I get a lot of enjoyment out of having, you know, a somewhat custom-made gun, handmade gun with the wood and the engraving. And I get a lot of pleasure during the course of the hunt just looking at it. It’s the same thing that I, if I’ve got hand-carved decoys out on the spread, I enjoy looking at them. I get pleasure out of looking at them. I get pleasure out of looking at the gun. And I’m a collector by nature, so, you know, the collector’s mentality plays a part in going into shooting the older guns, you know? One of the things, I collected Confederate postage stamps. I’ve got an enormous collection of the Confederate postage stamps, which has a tremendous amount of history in it.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir.
Worth Mathewson: And I got my start on Confederate stamps. My grandmother on my mother’s side in North Carolina had a lot of the old family correspondence during the war, and she gave me all the envelopes that had the Confederate stamps on them. So I started collecting from that standpoint.
Ramsey Russell: Golly. What are some of the biggest changes 71 years of duck hunting and going? What are some of the biggest changes you have seen in waterfowl hunting over the last 71 years?
Worth Mathewson: Well, recently and I couldn’t put a number on it, but recently what I’ve seen, and each to their own, but it’s just not for me: the big party shooting, especially on geese. Five, six, seven guys at a time. I almost refuse to shoot with any number other than two other hunters. Three hunters are about all the guns that I’m happy with, and I just don’t fully understand how, and the videos are full of it today, of a flock of birds coming in and there is just a barrage that goes up to meet them. Birds are falling left and right, left and right. Each to their own. Those guys, I think, are good guys. They certainly enjoy their sport, but it’s just something that I’m not interested in. For example, who’s the guy that made silver sock decoys? Jim Jones. Jim Jones used to come up to Lucky Lake, Saskatchewan, where we had the house, and he invited me to come out with him and his group on several occasions. And I always declined because he shot with five or six guys at a time. And to me, that was just too many guns, too much of a barrage, putting the geese at somewhat of a disadvantage.

Worth Matthewson: “I just can’t imagine that. I just can’t imagine 70 people at times hiding around this duck hole.”

Worth Matthewson: “You can’t call the game warden and tell him to leave—he’ll tell us all to leave. We’ve just got to get along with what we’ve got.”

Ramsey Russell: You know, the older I get, the more I like hunting with just one or two friends, kids, me, and my dog. You know, there are some spots down in Argentina I hunt where you hunt by yourself. Oftentimes on Christmas morning, once or twice a year, I’m lucky enough to steal away just me and my dog, Char Dog, and go off and just hunt. You know, it’s dawn, it’s just you and the ducks. I find it so, the solitude and the seriousness, you know what I’m saying? I shoot better, I focus better, I’m lost in my thoughts, I feel better. I really treasure the times I get to hunt with just one or two people or myself. I love hunting with my dog. She’s a great listener, you know, and she is absolutely an eager partner. She’s always willing to go, she never sleeps in. But, you know, oftentimes in the line of work I do, I hunt with some of those big parties, and it’s a little daunting at times when the firecracker string goes off, you know, 10 guns laying in the duck blind, it’s 30 shots a volley. By the time you throw up, the duck you were aiming at, or the next one, or the next one, the next one, are already cartwheeling down. It’s a little chaotic at times like that. You know, I’ve become aware of this, especially with regard to public land hunting. And I’m gonna pick on the state of Arkansas just because that’s where I heard the story. Some of those public land duck holes, let’s just say you and I are gonna go at it old-school, and we get out there at 5 o’clock in the morning, we go to our favourite duck hole, and here come more lights coming in, and more lights coming in, and more lights coming in. Before we know it, there’s 30 or 40, or I’ve heard 70 people at times, hiding around this duck hole. And we can’t call the game warden and tell him to leave, he’ll tell us all to leave. We’ve just got to, by God, get along with what we’ve got. And I just can’t even imagine. I just can’t imagine that.

Worth Mathewson: That’s not for me.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the other changes, now we’re talking about, you know, because when I hear about stories like that in Arkansas, where there’s more people, it’s like, on the one hand, I had this conversation with Rusty Creasy last night. He was formerly the manager of Coca-Cola Woods down in Arkansas forever. His family has been a part of that since 1958. But we fell into this conversation that, you know, supposedly, if you look at Fish and Wildlife Service data, there are fewer hunters than there’s maybe ever been duck hunters, I think. I think the last official count was about 900,000 duck hunters in the United States of America, 1.1 million duck hunters if you include Canada. I’m assuming that back in 71 years of your career, there’s been a time in your lifetime when there were a lot more duck hunters on the horizon. But why is it, if there are so few duck hunters, there is such crowding on public land in a lot of different places? And I believe the only way I can reconcile the math is that there are way fewer duck hunters, but there’s a disproportionately greater amount of a lot less habitat. So, fewer hunters are becoming more highly distilled concentrated on a vastly shrinking landscape. What changes have you seen in terms of habitat and in terms of duck abundance or species abundance in 71 years?

Worth Mathewson: So, you see, I’ve spent just about all my life duck hunting in Oregon, and things haven’t changed. Especially on the coast, they haven’t changed at all. Habitat is exactly what it was 01:18:54 years ago here in the Willamette and eastern Oregon. Things haven’t changed very much here in the Willamette Valley. Of course, urbanization is continuing, and farming practices have changed. That’s what attracted. We winter here in the valley almost 300,000 Canada geese. We took geese away from California that used to winter there, and now they winter here in the Willamette Valley. But that was because of the grass crop, fescue and rye grass. But as far as the ducks go, the farmers here in the valley, a lot of them used to plant a variety of wheat that, yeah, they harvested it in late August, early September, but they left the stubble in the field all winter. And now, with the variety of wheat they’re raising, just as soon as the combines are through with that field, then it’s plowed up.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Worth Mathewson: Doesn’t have that. And I think that’s made a big. And, you know, in Oregon, there’s some problems with a lot of the ducks are wintering on Padilla Bay up in Washington that probably used to come down to us. And there’s a couple of refuges in the Willamette Valley that hold a lot of ducks. And then I think overall, they’re just not as many ducks as there used to be.

Ramsey Russell: You know, I’m glad to hear somewhere like Oregon where you’re talking about hunting that hadn’t changed. But I can’t say the same. I’ve seen changes in the Deep South the past 10 years, past 20 years, past 30 years. When I hear, when I talk to my uncle and remember stories of my granddaddy, how things have changed since the 1970s, 1960s, 1950s. You know, I’m in Canada, I’ve been touring Canada for a little bit. I mean, it’s changing. Loss of wetlands, loss of nesting habitat, the conversion to agriculture, the conversion to civilization. And it’s a continuum from here where the ducks originate clear down to the Gulf Coast. It’s just constant landscape change, different farming practices, different everything, and it’s affecting. So it was interesting to me that when we talked about some of the biggest changes you’ve seen, your answer was not habitat, but it was about hunter behaviour. Because I believe that as times have changed, hunter ethos, hunter habits have also changed. Not just because, but in response to these other changes. The waterfowl distribution, the abundance, you know, the amount of access, the amount of habitat. It’s just one begets the other. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? You know, but one shapes the other.

Worth Mathewson: What state are you from?

Ramsey Russell: I live in the state of Mississippi, born and raised.

Worth Mathewson: Oh, in Mississippi. Okay.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. But my hat hangs a lot of different places over the part of a year I’m maybe home. In the past five years, I’ve been as many as 75 to 100 days in the course of a year.

Worth Mathewson: Wow.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it just. It keeps me on the road. You know, I feel like, you know, when I, especially when I talk to someone like yourself that has seen so much, I just. I want to see it all. I want to experience it all, you know, before it’s gone, before it’s changed. Here’s a question I’ve got for you. If you could change one federal law regarding migratory game birds, if you could add or subtract one, for that matter, what would it be?

Worth Mathewson: Well, I would. On the Pacific Flyway, I would lower the limit on ducks. I don’t think we need to kill seven ducks. Five is plenty of ducks. From a real personal standpoint, I’d like to see the ban on eight-bore guns lifted.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Worth Mathewson: Yeah, I’d like to be able to use an eight-bore if I wanted to.

Ramsey Russell: Why do you want to shoot an eight-bore?

Worth Mathewson: Because they’re fun.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Ramsey Russell: “Lou Smith said, ‘I can make a gun like that if somebody will make the shell.’ And John Orland agreed to make the shell. So that’s when the 3½-inch 10 came to be.”

Worth Mathewson: There’s a lot of history, you know, a lot of my interest ties into history. And there’s a lot of history in those old eight-bore guns. And a little bit of romance, if you want to call it that. And there’s no reason on earth to ban an eight-bore because some of the 10-bore loads now surpass what eights shot. And that 3 1/2-inch 12 is getting pretty close. You want to. I’ll try to shorten this story. They outlawed the eight in 1918 because, in theory, market hunters used them. Well, not very many market shooters used an eight-bore. Some of them did, but not many. And during the 1920s, the gun editor for Outdoor Life was Charles Haskins. And he wanted a gun that shot two ounces of shot for geese. In those days, most of the 12-gauge shot an ounce, and the 10-gauge only shot an ounce and a quarter. But the eight shot two ounces. So he wanted a two-ounce gun, two ounces of shotgun. And he was pretty high up, and he tried to talk with. At that time, it was a, what Bureau of I can’t remember Bureau. I can’t remember what it was before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And so he wasn’t able to make any headway on lifting the ban on eights. So he was good buddies with Lou Smith, who owned Ithaca, and John Orland, who owned Western Cartridge Company. And they were hunting somewhere one day, and he was talking about wanting a gun that had the capabilities of two ounces. And Lou Smith said, well, I can make a gun like that if somebody will make the shell. And John Orland agreed to make the shell. So that’s when the 3 1/2-inch 10 came to be.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Worth Mathewson: Prior to that, the 10 was a 2 and 7/8-inch shell. But that 3 1/2 shot two ounces of shot. So it was just a clever way of getting them around the ban on. On an eight-bore. So most eight-bores, like the ones I had, shot just two ounces of shot. The ones I had were beautiful old guns. A lot of history behind them, a lot of enjoyment of just having them, shooting them.

Ramsey Russell: You know, 71 years of duck hunting, you’ve shot a lot of lead in your life. Do you miss shooting lead shot?

Worth Mathewson: No.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t miss it?

Worth Mathewson: No. I wouldn’t go back to lead if it was made legal again. I’m perfectly happy with steel loads.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they’ve come a long way. Modern loads have come a long, long way.

Worth Mathewson: Oh, unbelievable long ways. Now, I wouldn’t have said that during the first couple of years of steel shot. There were some miserable, miserable shells.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy, was it bad.

Worth Mathewson: But, boy, they have gotten to the point now that they’re, you know, over in England, they’re. They’re in Scotland, they’re switching over to steel for more and more. And they have some pretty good steel loads over there now.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they do. But I’m curious why. I mean, for most of your duck hunting career, you shot lead. Why would you not go back?

Worth Mathewson: Well, because at that time, lead was the only thing that was available, and I knew that ducks and geese were dying, as were some other birds, from ingesting lead. That didn’t leave me with a real comfortable feeling. But once there became an option to switch away from something that’s poisonous and is causing some harm, after I did the shooting, I was all on board. Welcome steel shot.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it’s interesting to me. I still shoot lead in places where you can’t get steel. And it’s become an international conversation. Even those countries that are still shooting lead, it’s become a conversation about the toxicity. In fact, we had a gentleman on here recently who was instrumental during his career as a biologist in the lead ban and the conversion to non-toxic shot. And, you know, three pellets ingested will kill a duck or can. And, you know, boy, I do figure an ounce and a sixteenth of number four pellets coming out of that 28 gauge, that’s about 130, 135 pellets. Well, maybe I go shoot two boxes of them. I can’t even do the math now, 50 times 50 times 130 lying out there in the soil. It took three of them to hit the duck and kill him. Now there’s 127 more times 50. Let’s say if I shot two boxes lying out there on the bottom of the mud, and all any two or three of them can kill another duck. I mean, all of a sudden, we’re talking about, I come out with six ducks on the strap, I could be killing 50 or 100 of them more. They get off into that wetland and eat that stuff. But I find it interesting. I just find it interesting. They’ve got a lot of, for example, I shoot a lot of ball shot shells, copper-plated bismuth. It behaves and performs a lot like lead, but it’s not toxic. But it’s been, I’ve got a 27-year-old son, and it was 10 years before he was born that we made the swap to non-toxic shot. Now I meet a lot of duck hunters in their 30s and 40s that have never shot lead. They don’t know any different. You know, I’ve even seen people that go to a lead country and bring their own steel shot because they like the way it shoots now as compared to some of this other stuff. I’m just curious about your thoughts.

Worth Mathewson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You’d bring back an eight-bore shotgun. That’s interesting.

Worth Mathewson: Wow. You know, one of the arguments, and a valid argument about legalizing eights is that guys with three-and-a-half-inch tens take shots at heights that commercial airlines fly at, and they would even do worse if they had an eight. You know, it would increase the sky-busting. I look at it from the standpoint where an eight patterns very well. Let’s say the three-and-a-half-inch ten on geese is a 55 to 60-yard shooter with steel shot. Your eight is going to give you maybe five or more yards. You could probably, and I’m talking about killing stone-dead, not just breaking a wing or having them sail down.

Ramsey Russell: Sure. We talked about a lot of the hunters today, waterfowl hunters today, versus during your 71-year career as a duck hunter. What do you see in today’s generation that makes you proud or that makes you just shake your head? And I’m always reminded, I’m not judging anybody about anything worth it, I’m just saying, you know, times change. And I can remember my granddaddy shaking his head when I came in with long hair at the dinner table because I was a different generation. But is there anything you see today in the modern waterfowl hunter that makes you proud? And is there anything that makes you shake your head?

Worth Mathewson: Well, I think some of the younger waterfowl hunters pay much more attention to their sport and, to a certain degree, are more knowledgeable about the birds they’re hunting than maybe shooters of the past. I’m a little bit dismayed by some of the younger hunters displaying sort of a competition, what’s the term? Smack them and,

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smack them and stack them.

Worth Mathewson: Yeah, that’s it. Smack them and stack them. Sort of an attitude toward the days that they go out, and they place seemingly to me, and old-time hunters did it too. You can look at the historical photographs of lines of ducks on the side of a barn, you know, strings of ducks. It happened in the older days. But it seems like to me that with the younger hunters, there’s more of an emphasis on killing as many birds as they can.

Ramsey Russell: Do you think that may be kind of the crafting of an online persona or ego?

Worth Mathewson: I think so.

Ramsey Russell: More so now than in the past?

Worth Mathewson: Oh, I think so, Ramsey.

Ramsey Russell: A form of identity, maybe?

Worth Mathewson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You know, back in the old days, maybe it was who had the fastest hot rod in high school versus now, who kills the most ducks?

Worth Mathewson: Yeah. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of that.

Ramsey Russell: What issues facing duck hunting today would you most like to change or influence? And what issues today do you think we waterfowlers of all ages should be concerned about or be doing for the future of duck hunting?

Worth Mathewson: Well, of course, it’s habitat and preserving habitat, but it’s actually finding places for new duck hunters to hunt ducks. Even in Oregon, it’s getting harder. The Willamette River runs right through the middle of the Willamette Valley. Any point on the Willamette from Eugene down south to where it flows into the Columbia up in Portland, 50 years ago, 40 years ago, there were numerous places along the Willamette River where a guy could go and hunt ducks. The ducks just don’t use that river much anymore. Coastal hunting is, when you do it right, it gets to be a pretty expensive thing. It’s something that you pretty much need a boat for and all of that. And so they’re just not here in western Oregon, unless a person joins a club, there’s just not a lot of availability. When we had the farm, we had 20 acres down below that flooded every winter, and the duck hunting down there was better than fantastic. But I can count on any given season, during the season, at least three or four young hunters would come knock on the door and ask me, could they please hunt ducks down there? And it actually gave me a bad feeling to say, “Well, no, I’m sorry. My wife and I hunt here.” But those guys were struggling to find a place to duck hunt, and it just seems to be an ongoing problem.

Ramsey Russell: Yep, absolutely. After 71 years, do you have a bucket list hunt that you really want to do?

Worth Mathewson: Yeah, I want a helicopter to fly me up on top of the Ruby Mountains.

Ramsey Russell: Go get that bird.

Worth Mathewson: When I said that 55 species, that doesn’t include waterfowl. There are five species of waterfowl I haven’t got.

Ramsey Russell: What are those?

Worth Matthewson: “I need the Mexican duck, the tule goose, the two tree ducks, and the king eider.”

Worth Mathewson: I need the Mexican duck, the tule goose, the two tree ducks, and the king eider.

“Ramsey Russell: “I need that tule goose myself. After this year, if I accomplish what I’m out to do this year, that’s going to become a top priority.”

Ramsey Russell: I need that too. I need that tule goose myself. After this year, if I accomplish what I’m out to do this year, that’s going to become a top priority.

Worth Mathewson: Yeah, I had a chance at the Mexican duck a couple of years ago when we were shooting doves down in Arizona. We were looking through binoculars, and there were two Mexican ducks in with a big flock of mallards. The guide and I tried to sneak up on them, but we were unsuccessful. But you know, Ramsey, when the whole bunch jumped, I’m not sure whether I could have picked those Mexican ducks out of all those hen mallards. I guess I could go and try for the two tree ducks. I guess now you have to add the emperor goose to that because I guess they are giving some permits out on the emperor goose.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve not killed an emperor goose, but I, boy, I tell you what, let me change the law, and that’d be one of them. You know, they’re letting non-resident Alaskans get drawn, and there are over 2,700 applicants for 25 spots. And yet the allotment for the residents is only being half-filled. It just doesn’t make, it doesn’t make sense to me. And even last year, I think it was last year that a couple of residents applied for the wrong thing and they got drawn from the pool of 25 non-residents.

Worth Mathewson: Oh, really.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So, I mean, emperor goose. I keep applying, but I’m not that guy. I won’t get drawn. You know what I’m saying? I won’t get drawn for it.

Worth Mathewson: Have you ever been out to Coal Bay?

Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir, I’ve been to Col Bay. I’ve been throughout Alaska. I’ve shot the king eider, I’ve shot the Brandt. I’m down to in North America, I’m down to subspecies. I want the tule goose, subspecies of spec. I’d like the trumpeter swan.

Worth Mathewson: Can you shoot a trumpeter anywhere?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you can. There are places you can get drawn to shoot. I would like to shoot. I need a dusky Canada goose, gonna have to go to Alaska, get back to Alaska for it. I need the Vancouver subspecies. Not really sure. I’m guessing somewhere around Vancouver Island. This year I hope to shoot the Atlantic subspecies of Canada over in New Brunswick and P.E.I., and now that’s gonna be it. And the only other goose, legal goose to hunt worldwide that I need besides the emperor is going to be the pink-footed goose of Iceland. It’s a pretty common bird in Europe. So I hope if I don’t get them in the UK, I hope to get them in Scotland next year.

Worth Mathewson: Oh, you’ll get ’em. You’ll get ’em.

Ramsey Russell: I went all the way down to Tasmania. I actually went to Australia twice last year. Once up in the Northern Territory to shoot the magpie goose and a couple of whistlers, and then back down in January to Tasmania just to shoot the Cape Barren goose.

Worth Mathewson: Did you get one?

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, yeah, we shot plenty.

Worth Mathewson: Did you, by any chance, was your guide Rock Jaw?

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. Rock Jaw is the only guy down there. Yeah, that’s the only guy down there.

Worth Mathewson: He’s quite a character. When I was with him, we weren’t sure whether his trucks red generator light was on, flashing back and forth. We thought we were gonna be left out in the middle of nowhere.

Ramsey Russell: He’s still a character, and he’s still got the hold on the Cape Barren goose for those willing to go that far. You just got to get him to answer his phone and do some work. But luckily, I fell in with a bunch of real nice guys from Australia that had had those dates since forever and invited an old Yank like me to tag along, and we had just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time. I guess the only last question I got for you is, I got two more questions. One, with all of your writing and your history and all that you’ve done, how does Worth Mathewson want to be remembered in the duck hunting world?

Worth Mathewson: A person that basically loved hunting and tried to do it in a respectful way.

Ramsey Russell: Do you feel like, you know, we talk a lot of times about bag limits or different approaches to hunting techniques, how maybe some of the younger generation hunts versus how we hunt or what we like to do versus how they like to approach it. Do you feel like during your career a lot of that came just with age? You know, they talk about the stages and phases of duck hunters or hunters in general. Do you believe that you’ve evolved since that young man that shot that black duck in Virginia? How have you evolved?

Worth Mathewson: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I would not be telling the truth if I didn’t say when I was younger, I was anxious to get a lot of birds. But I don’t think I carried that into advanced age. I think the more I learned about birds in general and the more knowledge I had about the different species and the problems those different species face, which individual species can face different problems, the more that I knew about the birds, the less I wanted to kill a lot of them. Does that make sense?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, yeah, it does. I mean, we all just kind of, I think it’s that stage and phase that it goes. I was the same way. And I’m not saying right now, and I’m gonna tell you right now, if I’m sitting on four ducks in the state of Mississippi and there’s still morning to hunt, the duck’s still flying, I’m gonna stick around, kill my next two. You know, I do that up here in Canada, where Alberta has a 50 snow goose limit. I sometimes get a little tired of shooting before I get around that 50. You know what I’m saying? I’m not that mad at them anymore. And I don’t let the numbers define who I’m hunting with, how I’m hunting, or my personality or my ego as much as I just like the experience itself. But, you know, I can take or leave the numbers most days. But when I was younger, I wasn’t that guy. You know, it came with age, and I don’t know why it came with age, but it did come with age. You know, we’re talking a lot about some of the changes and some of the changes you’ve seen, changes in habitat, changes in hunting as a consequence of that rolling with the time, ages, phases, stages, however we want to sum it up. But we should all be concerned about habitat. And as duck hunters, we take from the resource, but we know as we age that we should also give back to the resource. What would you suggest to younger duck hunters, people that haven’t duck hunted 71 years, but what are some ways we can give back to that resource meaningfully?

Worth Mathewson: Well, of course, volunteer. I think there are chapters of both Ducks Unlimited and Delta in most areas that have programs that use volunteer labour, you know, or the simple thing of building some wood duck boxes and putting them out and supporting the organizations for their fundraisers, their dinners. I think that’s all important. What I did, Ramsey, when we moved into this retirement centre and I had a bunch of stuff, I had a lot of guns. I had 650 books. I had a lot of artwork, had a lot of decoys. And I gave about all of that to Delta, and they sold it and raised $70,000, and they’re buying wetlands in Manitoba with that money.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. Wow.

Worth Mathewson: And I got a good feeling from the standpoint that waterfowl have given me many of the most wonderful days of my life. And that gave me an opportunity to sort of pay back the waterfowl. My favourite eight-bore gun was one of them that Delta sold.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Worth Mathewson: I didn’t keep that one.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Wow. Mr. Worth, I have greatly enjoyed you sharing 71 years of waterfowl hunting experience with us. This has been a great conversation. I got a feeling I may reach out and get you back on one day.

Worth Mathewson: Well, good.

Ramsey Russell: But thank you very much.

Worth Mathewson: Enjoyed talking with you. And I’ve heard some flattering things said to you by people that I respect, like Brad Borner and John Devlin, and so, so I think you’re doing a good, good job.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you. Thank you. It was an honour to have you on. Folks, you all have been listening to my friend Worth Mathewson from Oregon. 71 years of duck hunting and going. He ain’t stopped yet. Thank you all for this episode of MoJo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. See you next time.