Outside Looking In

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host, Ramsey Russell. Join me here to listen to those conversations. Folks welcome back to duck season somewhere. A continuation of a very special guest. Very, very special guest. Mr. Warren Coco of Go Devil Motors. More stories then the next 1000 podcasts would possibly hold. I know I got a lot of response last week about our intro. To catch it back up to speed, we’re going to pick right back up in Maurepas. The fable place where Duckman was filmed, where he raised his friends, where ducks were raining, where they hand grabbed limits of ducks from the air one day, during the 1999 ice freeze. How are you today Warren?

Warren Coco: I’m doing fine.

Ramsey Russell: Tell me some more stories about this fable Maurepas. There’s got to be more stories.

Warren Coco: Well, Maurepas is, we’ll call lake swamp, is all cypress-tupelo gum swamp, is not actually a blake like a lot of people are familiar with a low depression with cypress trees growing in. This is a swamp that was formed by the Mississippi River. Maurepas is on the north side of Mississippi River. You got the same swamp on the other side of the river down by, we call by Louis Amelia area west of home where it’s the same swamp, same vegetation, same everything, same timber, same people cut the timber out of and that’s a whole another story we’ll get into later, on cutting the timber out of the swamp. But I started hunting down there like 1981-1982, and really got, was really wide open about 1983. And it was probably finest duck hunting I’ve ever seen. I’ve hunted in Canada, I’ve hunted in Mexico, I’ve hunted all over Louisiana and nothing was as good as what I had down there. It was phenomenal and I saw it at its peak. I started hunting in 1983 with Tom Claiborne would call him the fat judge. He was the head judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1983, we started hunting together. He was 58 years old and he had hunted there as a kid. They deer hunted mostly and do much duck hunting. And he and one of his cousins Rackley Bay [**00:04:14] who had met before and they were hunting in what we call Kaiser Swamp. That was between I-10 and airline highway across some cars aluminum grandma’s lee. I was hunting there with a friend of mine was a member of that club and Ray was a member and they picked up some land at Blind River. And Ray contacted me. He says, yeah, we heard you look for a place to hunt. We got piece of property here. And I said, sure, I’d love to. And they came and met me and we had, I guess like a little meet you want to call it and told what property they were getting able to hunt on. And everything else sounds great. So he had a recreational camp on Blind River. So that first year we stayed there, but we had a long boat ride to get to where we were duck hunting. And we kept boats so they go double boat there, boat over with. Hunting property was on Blind River, not far from Lake Maurepas. And we made a few hunts over there and then I got some other places I was hunting with some friends. So we decided we need a houseboat and we had a place to put it. Well, my friend, Jimmy Nugent had a houseboat up Old River at Morganza. Well, that was a trip. He gave me the houseboat. He then gave it away somebody else and they gave it back. They couldn’t keep it. It was that old river oxbow lake off Mississippi Railways, probably 50-60 foot deep. It’s hard to anchor a boat 50-60 foot of water. It was bouncing off people’s docks and everything else. So when I went and looked at it, it was up on the bank where the river dropped out and got caught on the bank and said yeah, this will work. So we lined up a trip to move it. It took five days and five years off my life moving that houseboat. It was over about two month span, removed it out of old river, got into the Mississippi River, got caught in the fog, got turned around and tied off, spent the night there, we came out, got groceries, got cleaned up, went back, come on down the river through baton rouge, you’ll wind up and we were doing all this at flood stage rivers at 35 feet and we get it all the way down to Convent Louisiana below the Sunshine Bridge. And we so I was going to park it here, tied up, left it there and river came on up. We had tied up in some willow trees in it and then I said when the river drops back down below 35 feet will move the rest of the way. Well the river fell real fast and it follow too fast. I had to go down there and move it out from where it was. If I left it where it was, it had been on ground by the weekend we were moving, so we moved it out. Finally that weekend we got the water and took off again. When we up by Donald Seville by the Sunshine Bridge were about the halfway point. So we take off that morning, we get all the way down and finally make it to the industrial canal that’s right past Super down. And we pull up ready to come in and they wouldn’t let us in. And we had to go through a lock to get in the canal because you had a lock between the river and the canal that went to the lake. He had a big elevation difference in the water. What happened, they had barges come in what they call a red flag toe. And I’ve never heard of that. If you look at a bar and it’s got a little steel red flag on a post, that’s a red flag. It’s got fuel in it and they will not let a recreational boat in a lock with a red flag toe. So that’s why, for safety reasons they wouldn’t listen there. Well, by that time we cooking supper, we brought a bunch of fried legs were cooking supper. It gets dark, come on in. So when look at this, so we’re moving there, we’re not set to navigate in the dark. So we get in there and it had a tug ahead of us about blew us death. He pulls up to the front of the lock, leaves his props and gear to hold him in place, he got washed us out of there. So finally lock opens up, we come out, we can’t see nothing and it’s just solid bar just down both sides. And finally we found a little crack. We slip into between the ends of two barges. They were down in the, I’m going to call the crusty part of New Orleans. And they had guns going off, people screaming and hollering and everything said lord what we have got into. Then the thunderstorm comes through and it rock that boat. I mean, it got rough. And then I said, all right, let’s go. And I had about three or four of my friends with me, said we ain’t going in that light, we have to cross Lake Pontchartrain now, which was a big stretch open water. We ain’t going in that lake. I said, man, I got to get this boat moved. I got to get this thing over there, so we ain’t going. So they muting it on me. So we had another place to tie up, the same people we tied up at Convent that had a yard, Radcliffe materials at a yard by the Seabrook Bridge, right at the lake. So we pulled in and tied up and I watched the weather with thunderstorms in the afternoon. The night he’d calm off. I said, I got this figured out. We pulled up, we left, we passed on the Seabrook Bridge at midnight. Now, this is before we had GPS, this is in 1983. Come out in the lake and I took a compass, heading with compass and picked out a star. And now we got a 115 Mercury on one side and 115 Johnson on the other side, pushing in the 25 Johnson in the back steering and that’s how we’re driving this thing. The houseboat is 18 feet wide, 36 foot long with a walkway around it. Now we don’t always come down to Mississippi River. Now we’re going across this lake, but its calm night, no problem. Going across there and I lost my star, I picked up another. I got daylight. I could see the towels on Pass Manchac. I wouldn’t be about a half mile off. So we got in there, we got in Manchac, had a falling tide.

Ramsey Russell: I’m thinking this might be some pretty slow going.

Warren Coco: It got slow and without falling tide because we’re in the river was making about 7-8 miles an hour, was making about 2, at just 2-3 miles now at this point. Then we got in the Maurepas, come all across Lake Maurepas and got into Blind River. We left at midnight that night at 12 noon, the next day we tied up at the destination, and we tied up down some trees, and we came back after that and built us a dock to tie to a boat shed to park the bigger boats on there. And then we built a bathroom in the kitchen upon the bank upon, we built foundation for that and that was like I can’t we slept in the houseboat, and stay there, and that was what we called Blind River camp. And then I got another lease near Mississippi by, that’s where we film Duckman Out, we built that camp. All that was brought in by airboat, we built that camp in the middle of the swamp. And then right after I’ve done that, about a year after that I got another lease, he’s got you want to build a camp. I said, Oh my God, man, I am worn out. So I built a third one. Had to haul that all in by airboat, got all that in there, built a third all three of them camps had hot and cold running water drilled a well at each one of them. And then a later point time I got a different houseboat. Put another location, I drilled a well there. So I actually had four different camp locations, was hunting out of three at the time. At one time, I was on top of the world as far as killing ducks. It was a done deal but we had good seasons and we had bad see. Most seasons are good and all of a sudden we get one with warm weather. I can remember one year we really hard to kill anything, couldn’t kill a duck. I mean, just nothing was there. But what many liked that, thank God, and then one year the water hostels got us covered us up, didn’t kill anything. And I’ve said this many, many times. I’ve hunted so many different places and seen so many things change. The only thing you can count on for sure in duck hunt is change, is never going to stay and something’s going to change, it will never stay the same. It’s going to get better or worse, it’s not going to be continual something.

Ramsey Russell: Nature’s dynamic.

Warren Coco: Yeah. And the swamp everybody said, well how come you’re not still hunting there? I said, swamp changed. It’s gone. So we mean it’s all the vegetation changed. A lot of people don’t know the history of that place like I do, that was all timber, cypress timber. They came in, it was all old growth cypress in there, and there’s a lot of different timber companies came in and cut timber out of there. One of them was most noted and was Luchmore [**00:12:45], where most of my hunting was. And that came in and started cutting the mill in lucher. They started up by the turn of the century 1929. They were done, they didn’t clear cut, it was done, they were finished it out of there and then Luchmore turned into a trapping operation. Well the judge told me his daddy used to cut the right aways for the dummys. A dummy is a train that they ran through the swamp to hollow log south. They cut the right away. So all this will survey, you can look on google earth, you can see where the main lines ran. And every 1200 feet was a spur. Because the skitter that pull the logs back to the track, could only pull 600 ft. and they go halfway between the spur lines and take a tree and cut top out of it, put a pulley in it and run a cable back forth the whole logs out. He told me all about that, and I’ve got pictures of all of that now how all that transpired. But he told me back before the timber was cut. He said it was like rain forests. He said it was nothing but black water underneath. The only game ahead with squirrels, there’s no deer, there was no ducks is just a canopy. When no sunshine, when nothing under. He said the game came when the timber was cut. When they cut the timber, that’s when all the game came. And there’s a lot of other things we hit on, a lot of people talk about burns and it burns, you know a lot of stuff burnt caught fire and that’s what I used to try most every year. Before they dug drainage canals and the tide water comes in and out now. Well the swamp would were dry. And another thing I was told too, they set up set it on fire to burn all the treetops. You know they cut that timber, this had a big mess just like you’re cutting timber on high ground, you had the same thing there. They would light all that stuff on fire, and got areas a lot of people were hunting in the burn was a big open area where there’s no timber but I saw and I can’t remember what it was. It was before state got all the land in 2000. It was right before that at Kaiser, caught fire. Somebody was in there on a four wheeler, and it dried that year. Got extra drive and caught fire and it would burn. The fire would burn under the humus. The humus because say you got on top, you got everybody calling mud. It’s not mud is actually the cave vegetation from leaves and twigs and stuff all through the years. I’ve had that stuff pile up on the back of an airboat next to exhaust and catch fire. You pull that humus out, dried out light on fire. It’s like peat moss is what it is. Okay, well they caught fire and burnt, it had three people got killed on interstate. What happened, it would burn on the ground, and you get these foggy days, and make like a small and it was so thick, it was dangerous. And that would create burns open areas, and a lot of that was open, and it was very diverse. But basically what you had before I was hunting there, it was cypress, tupelo gum, they had some red maple and other scrubby little fuel of scrubby things, but it was water and duck wheat. And you had in the edges of the river banks and the by banks you had small weed, which a lot of locals would call pepper grass and it’s a swamp smart weed. And that was the two duck foods was smart weed and the duckweed. Duckweed was number one food. And because the neutrals aided, the deer aided, the ducks aided. I’ve seen the ducks would get so thick that clean it up and I’ll be gone and just be black water and that’s what you want to see because yeah, I meant you had a lot of ducks in the area, but that’s what it was when I started hunting there. But then right before I started hunting there, the flow tone came in, which we call Fu shit, which is, there’s a lot of names for it called beggar’s tick, Biden’s and what it is, as smooth as the center of a flower of a smooth Marmara goal, assume that seed must have 200 seeds and it’s got too little two problems stickers in it. And the old times in the market called Fu shit. That’s like a French name. And what it would do, it will get on a neutral, and it would stick him, and it goes in, and it will scratch it and make a sore, it would run into fur. And they’ll kill a dog. If you get enough on a dog, it will enter the skin and go into him. It’s like a one way deals got barbs on it goes in doesn’t come out well the ducks carried that in. And I shot a green head one time I picked him up, he had a big knot on the back of his head I said, what is this, I looked at it was one of them flowers and got in the feathers on the back of his head. Must had 200 seeds in it. And what happens when duck gets it on his body, he picks it up, he lands in your part of the woods, swamp, marsh, whatever he picks it off and falls in the water, nothing happens. Then, if the swamp dries that seed germinates, it grows, it sprouts, it’s like a cancer, and it grows and it makes it float. And that’s what was overcoming. That’s what we had at Kaiser when I started hunting down here and had a lot of floats with the Fu shit in it. And what you would see in the following year in October be solid yellow flowers and then that would spread and that was overtaking the swamp a lot of places. And then finally that would kind of phase out than other grasses. Once the float was established, the roots of that plant trap air and that’s what makes it float. And winter time it would kind of drop down and get a little water on top of it, but not enough to hold ducks, but it would just choke the duckweed out. There would be no duckweed, we hid the floats. And then once the Fu shit was the first thing that came and other grasses would come in and dominate the Fu shit out. But once the float was established, it was there, it didn’t go away. And that was encroaching the swamp, it was diminishing, it was shrinking the available huntable area. Maurepas swamp, there’s a couple 100,000 acres, the whole swamp. All laying around Maurepas, some around Ponchartrain south of Maurepas in which you had was all this big massive swamp with great duck habitat, and as the duck habitat shrank you have less available habitat for ducks. It was shrinking with the floats and then finally, when the Salvinia got us that was an end instantly, it was all done. That was that was in the story that was in 1998. 1998, I couldn’t buy a duck.
Ramsey Russell: Did the Biden’s have something to do with the Salvinia coming in or that was separate problem?
Warren Coco: No, both of a nonnative plants. They’re not supposed to be here. You know the Biden’s, they got a lot of that up north. I guess the ducks carried down here from up north. But the Salvinia came from wherever. I saw one of these shows in Africa where the crocodiles, where the river drives up the crocodiles, eating all the animals. That had one in a hole in a burrow. He had Salvinia on his head in Africa. But I think it came from South America and now we’ve got two types of Salvinia. You got common and giant. And once the Salvinia gotten swamp that finished us and now where the Salvinia we had water in Salvinia, and now I saw flow tone like where the duck blind was. I showed you pictures of what it looked like in 98 where we filmed the Duckmen and then I showed you pictures again. This may, it looks like carpet, like a yard.

Ramsey Russell: What happened? In those pictures you showed me, what happened to the tupelo trees because they were gone?

Warren Coco: Too much water. What’s happened, you know, now the environmentalists has a sea level rising. I’m not buying that what has happened that swamp in years past and the judge told me this, it will dry almost every year. Well for flood control that came in and I’m not sure when, probably in the 40s, 50s, maybe whenever and they dug reserve canal from Lake Maurepas where the reserve to drain the land that reserved, in the habitable land it reserved. That was a drain fart. And they dug the Grenville Canal. And that’s where the big major project is fixing to do the Hope Canal where they’re going to reintroduce the river ward into the Maurepas swamp. That’s where that’s going to come with. The Hope Canal was dug on the side of the Greenville Northern Railroad track where they pull a timber out of. And they dug it from airline highway all the way to buy a tent that ran into Dutch by, where it ran to Mississippi by then the Dutch by then at the lake Maurepas. And that was all done in drains, and what that has done that has that lets the tidewater come and go, and it holds the water level. It can’t dry up anymore because it stays wet all the time. And the water when I started hunting there and not long after I was hunting there, I’ve heard somebody say, Luchmore done a survey on the cypress because Luchmore is a timber company. And then it doesn’t change that investors on and off of the years they did a survey on the timber and they were getting zero growth on the cypress trees. And that’s caused by being wet all the time. There’s just the stress of the water on them all the time. And I went, but I hadn’t been there since, last time I went in there when I brought Robert Helm, waterfowl biologist. When the state acquired that state owns it all now. When the state acquired at Robert Helm called me, he said, would you take me back there where you’ll kill all them ducks? I said, yeah, I’ll be happy to us, will be my last trip in the airboat. So I went, brought him back there so I’m going to bring my photo album, show you what it used to look like. He was shocked. He couldn’t believe it. When we pulled up to the hole with a 4000 letting the hole, I said, see this right here. I saw 4,000 ducks like in this hole in 1989. This was all duck weed look at it now. He was shocked. I showed him a picture of what it looked like. I said, here’s a picture, what it looked like, he couldn’t believe it. And it’s just all changed. But what’s happened, I didn’t realize when I went back two years ago finally went back in there, water was up to the surface, and I went to the hole, and the blind still there, kind of dilapidated a little bit, but it’s still there pretty much intact. And looking at everything, I didn’t notice that all the gum trees were gone. I came back and I went back. I got the picture that blind blown up like about 3 ft. picture and I looked at the picture. Then I looked at the new pictures I took. I said gumtrees are gone. And what happens when you get too much water, the gum trees die in the cypress trees don’t grow. It’s just too much water, and we’ve had so much rainfall, and everything else is just more water.

Ramsey Russell: You know as a duck hunter from Mississippi, they’re just those years you’ve got a drought, and those cypress breaks dry up, and if you’re a duck hunter that cypress break pretty terrible season, you ain’t got no water. But that’s just nature’s way of managing itself because those soils have got oxidized. Those trees have got to have, they got to have dry spells. Either seasonal inundations, you know, high season low season or periodic droughts or they die.

Warren Coco: They got a break. You ever see, and somebody brought this to my attention on time, every time somebody builds a fishing light, they got cypress trees in it. They’ll take an old boy and put a levy up and flood it out, every tree dies in it. They lighting him pretty cypress trees, they want to fish around them and they all die. They can’t take the water. Everyone thinks cypress trees got to grow out of water. No, it don’t, it grows better on dry ground than it does. Prime example that you need to come down my driveway at my house. I got trees are planted there, you know, 8 that are probably 14 at the base right now.

Ramsey Russell: A while ago you were, I hate to break off the subject of Maurepas, but just for a minute, I thought that’s pretty interesting. The Fat Judge was telling you stories about his folks or the old timers back in the day, doing all that trapping. I thought that was pretty interesting when we were talking about it before dinner. Some of the money to be made off these guys trapping Muskrats down here that was incredible.

Warren Coco: Well, in the swamp, there was no neutrals back then. They started when Luchmore got done cutting the cypress, in 29 they shut the mill down. And the judge’s daddy ran, there’s an old boat called Al Jeanette when I first saw it is upon the bank on Blind River. Then I don’t know who owned it at the time, whatever. But that the group of guys got together and they got the historical society’s got a museum down in Grimsley and it’s all about saint James Parish, in this museum and it got a dummy. Little train sitting there. They got a big old cypress lawn that came out of the swamp. And had a bunch of pictures in there that you can go look at 8 x 10 black and whites of log in the swamp cutting the timber, hauling the logs out and all that. But the olive Jeanette, it was a boat that they used. The judges, David Ryan [**00:26:03] to pick up far on Blind River, they had trapping camps on Blind River. Now there was no neutrals then. The trapping at the time I was there, that’s about all they caught was neutrals in by a trap. But back then it was making coon and that’s what they caught. That was a two animals that they were trapped, and all that was done on foot. You know, they’re all walking, they had trapping lines through the swamp, and I’ve seen but they didn’t bring them traps in. They carried him out there and left them there and what they do, they put a nail in a tree at the end of the season, they’d hang that trap on that nail and it will stay there. But Manx generally you got to bait or coons that would bait or put them on a log, make runs on the log and had however sets that would make to catch those animals. But Luchmore turned into a trapping operation at that time. And they were they were running.

Ramsey Russell: Back in the 1930?

Warren Coco: In 1930 on, until whenever they quit. But that old boat and anybody can google this, you go on internet, google Olive Jeanette, there’s a picture of that boat, you’ll get to see it, and it’s old luggage style cypress hole, and it’s sitting on a trailer in a little town square in Luch [**00:27:20] of Louisiana. But google it in his pictures of it on the internet of that boat and I was used to haul fur out from Luchmore tribal camps.

Ramsey Russell: All those years you hunted there, Maurepas, much about the time your sons were growing up and they grew up hunting there too. Can you talk about your sons and some of their hunting experiences there because they grew up?

Warren Coco: My oldest son Lance, who is now, I think 35, started shooting six years old and that was in 1989. The great year we had. We shot, we had four ducks. And he’s shooting a 410, shooting them on the water. His first hunt, he killed the green head in the hand. And I thought I enjoyed duck hunting. I never had a clue what it was about until I got to bring him. And it just changed everything bringing him, you know, taking him hunting, and the best part of second day was even better, because we got out there to hunt, and I remember exactly what he had shot if he had shot something already. But I had three pin tails are called circle in the circle. I was way more exciting than he was because I killed about one pin tail every three years. And they circle and they dip down in the hole in the drake lifting the two hands left and he shot and killed that pin tail. Yeah, it was a young wasn’t a good looking pin tail but you can bet your ass on my name is on the walls. I was surprised for him to kill that on the second hunt. Shot a pin tail in the woods. But he killed his limit almost every hunt because we had, it’s a three duck limit at that time and we had plenty of ducks. And they come in and everything he shot, and come in and lie to me and shoot them on the water. And he shot 410 for two years then he graduated up to a 20 gauge, and then he was rolling at that point. But he hunted, I first brought him I wanted pictures I showed you had those eagles in it. I first brought him when he was two years old. He came, my friend Alex had his son, and then Rakley Bay had his son. Rakley Bay junior and we brought them all so we’re going to take kids on well as big BS deal where bob in the woods, we’re running out of pipeline, we’re all in the boat and look up, and I hadn’t been hunting there that long, 34 years and the Strabo had been hunting there 15 years. He’s been there a lot longer than I have. We’re running a boat down the Palwas. Now look up big old bird flying, he lands on a tree and I stopped the boat looking at eagle. Bald eagle there ain’t no bald eagle. I said, look at it, pulled up that sure enough. Right big old white headed eagle that was the first one I saw that had to be 87, maybe 80. I can’t remember what it was somewhere back in and that picture I showed you, I got 6 of them flying overhead and that was about 99 I think, about 96-97, six of them. And we had, all the time we’d see eagles, you know, it will all pile over, you know, they just really came back strong and what I understand the DDT, when everybody’s using DDT is a rodent.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what I’ve always heard.

Warren Coco: And that fin the eggshells and made the eggshells week and that’s why the eggs weren’t surviving, and when they banned DDT, it took a certain number of years for to kind of go wash itself out and that’s why the eagles have come out. Now there’s eagles, you know, see them all the time. We got eagles everywhere now. That was his first hunt was then. I packed diaper bag with me when I brought him the first time but he started hunting, and I can remember one season, 30 day season. We have 30 day season and I’d hunt 29. The only day I’d miss is Christmas. They’ll be home for Christmas, my wife and kids. But I can remember one season Lance haunted 24 days out of the 30 day season and didn’t miss school because there was weekend’s thanksgiving week, Christmas week. You know, it was when you got about 30 days you ain’t got along in the hunt. So all the holidays in the way wildlife and fisheries has always set our seasons to the advantage of the hunter. Robert Helm, I go to commission meetings when they were setting the seasons, he said, so we think about what we got proposed, I said, Robert, I said, y’all have always looked after everybody’s best interest on the season to get the most opportunities. I said, I’ve never had a problem with that. I’m here to make sure one of these crazy people don’t come in here trying to talk to the commission members into changing something that they want. I said, that’s why I’m here. I said, I’ve always been in favor of which y’all requested. But he hunted like say 24 days and yeah, I guess, I would say I ruined him because he’s still hunting a day and then his son, he started bringing Blaze at two years old and now Blaze is hunting he’s been shooting for several years now and he’s a crack shot. He does real well. Now he’s 11 years old and fishing, hunting and just loves it, absolutely loves it.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Warren Coco: That’s it. That’s like I said, I thought I enjoyed hunt until I brought him and then everything changed at that point for me. My life and my, and what I felt towards hunt was hunting with them kids.

Ramsey Russell: Well around, if I got my time around right, around 1989, the Fu shit and the Salvinia moved in too?
Warren Coco: No, it was 99, about 98 is when the Salvinia got us. Salvation took us out 98. 98 has zero Ducks.

Ramsey Russell: So you were kind of on, your words, not mine, you were you kind pof on the outside looking in again.

Warren Coco: I’ve always been on the inside looking out. At that point in time I was on the outside looking in. I said something’s fixing the change. I don’t know what, but this can’t last forever. And then that’s when property at Hackberry came up for sale and I’m going to quote it emerge with BP. And now everything come up for sale. And the place I had hunted at Hackberry, we hunted there for four years. I’m going to be back into this a little bit. We hunted there for four years, lost that duck lease, file over that duck lease in court and we’re down there fighting over duck lease. We left there with our tail between the legs, and my buddy Jimmy Nugent, who paid for the attorney that represented, we didn’t have the lease. Friend of ours James Laura had the lease. Long story short, we left and my friend Jimmy Nugent always said, I said, that’s all right, we’re going to hunt back over here one day. You watch it, I’m telling you. But when I started hunting there, it was unbelievable. I killed 10 Ducks every hunt. And I told the guy I changed Larry who was hunting with, I said, man, this place something believable. So I’ve never seen anything like this. Oh, this ain’t nothing place. You got black better than this, so I said, how could it possibly be better than this? Oh, we just shoot pin tails over there. I said, oh man, I ain’t believing that. I said, kid, he said, you come back next week, I was leaving to go home, so you come back next week, so I’ll take you there next week. So I went home and worked, I had orders to fill built engines and came back about a week later, got there and meet him and his wife went over there, and this was a 30 mile boat ride down in the coastal staying old trial’s camps ahead over there. We left there, I remember I had 20 mercury, put that on the boat, run down the ditch, then we had to walk the last 350 yards, get to the blind, put the boat up, got the blind. And we shot 30 pin tails. I think that was.

Ramsey Russell: That’s back when they were ten point.

Warren Coco: This is in 1977. Me, him and his wife shot 30 pin tails. I said, man, I ain’t never seen nothing like this and we didn’t kill a couple of geese. I never forget the first time my dog went picked up, and we spoke about that went off there, and grabbed him by the wing, scooped him up. Thought he had a duck, he started growling, spit it out and I said come on, pick him up, get him up, fetch him up. He grabbed it by the wing and drug it back, it was growling when he drug it back. He never picked up a goose. So anyway, I hunted old as I guess a couple of times and one of the most unbelievable hunts we’ve made. I went over there, we planned a trip. I went with John Lowry, Philip Lowry and then Ricky White. His grandfather was, he leased the land from Alan McColan subleased. So I went over there hunting what we call Frank’s mind. We hunted that first day and we shot 40 pin tailed ducks at the same blind. We came in, John and Ricky White left, Philip and I stayed we got up next, morning it was cold and raining, set up. Man, let’s go, finally got there and it was measurable, and pin tails wasn’t flying that good. I said look, let’s shoot green wings but we’re only going to shoot drakes. So we shot 10 green winged drakes and 10 pin tail drakes. We come in, we’re packing up, now, cold front comes through cleared up, sky cleared up. Well it was nice Philip had to go home to go to work. So we’re packing up, now I’m going to go back hunt at the other place I was hunting in Hackberry and we’re black by now at this location. So then look up here come James who had the lease where I was hunting over there, Philip’s brother and another friend of his was Barbara Carroll, they pulled up. I told Philip, I said, you go home, I’m staying with him. He said, I’m going to call in sick. He got the boat, ran up in the hall field to find a telephone and tell him I can’t come work tomorrow, I’m sick. So he come back down there full of us. The third day shot 40 drake pin tails, Philip went home. Three of us at last day shot 30 drake pin tails.

Ramsey Russell: So many ducks y’all were passing teal and.

Warren Coco: You can’t believe how many gadwalls and teal we’re passing up to shoot all drake pin tails.

Ramsey Russell: Now instead of hunting up in the woods, you’re all out there in the marsh.

Warren Coco: Yeah, we were wide open in the marsh. And this was before Maurepas when all this happened, and hunting there was just phenomenal. And then I hunted there as I guess several times and then we moved on, we lost the other track at Hackberry, then we moved on to the other side of calculate we’ve got another lease. And then at that point in my life, I said, I’m never going to get caught one duck lease ever again. And that’s when I got in the lease below Morgan City. Then I found out about Maurepas. Then that’s when I started looking for places to hunt in Maurepas. And then we hunted there for four years in Hackberry and it was phenomenal. I had a blind in the northeast poll, we were hunting on an 8,000 acre empowerment. I had a blind, there would kill 30 ducks five days out of seven. I mean it was unbelievable, and shot a little bit of everything, shot a few mallards there and there’s not a lot of mallards at times would shoot some, but a lot of pin tails, a lot of mostly gadwalls and teal, which is what Southwest Louisiana is known for. And it was really good while we had it. But we cried when we lost that lease. And that’s where I met my friend Jimmy Nugent. We’ve been involved in hunting ever since. We’re very, very close. In fact, he Lance’s godfather. And then we own this place together that we bought this. He’s the one that got me into this when we bought this. And he got me involved in this and all. But the hunting there was absolutely phenomenal. But then time progressed, hunted in the swamp, and then the swamp played out. And then that’s when I had nothing I said, that’s what I said. I’m on the outside looking in. So some fixing change I don’t know what. And then John Lowry who hunted with that trip, we killed all the pin tales. He was working for me at the time, and then Amoco BP did emerge with Amoco, and they had to sail, with the first sale the federal government to sell off assets, not become such a monopoly. They did the same thing Conoco Phillips, and other oil companies when they emerged like that. And what they had over there is what they call it Fi lions, and that was all lands they bought for investments to drill for oil on. And that’s what they had for us for the minerals. And they had wells all over in different places. And the place they were hunting, the lease was 2900 acres. And the fact john’s father had the lease, and then he had a stroke and was in a wheelchair where they put the lease in his mother’s name, and the whole family, in-laws, cousins, brothers and several people were hunting that piece of property.

Ramsey Russell: Just hang on a second because I want to put everybody on the map. We’re down in southwest Louisiana around Lake Calcasieu.
Warren Coco: We’re west of Calcasieu Lake, east of Salvinia Lake. The property I’m talking about is 12 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, 12 miles east of put off the Texas.

Ramsey Russell: And there’s millions of acres down in that part of world owned by very, very few people because of that oil interest.

Warren Coco: That’s correct. Most of the land is owned by Amoco. And then as of Luchmore owned a lot of the property over there at one time. And then the federal refuge owns, I bought a Sabine National Wildlife Refuge for 2.5 miles. So many refuge like 130,000 acres. And then below that was a makeup property, and a guy named Bill Dory owns about 16,000 acres down there. And there’s some other landowners down there. And then east of us, other side couch you like most, that’s all Miami cooperation is not. And in north of us is a great state. There’s not that many land though. You got some small landowners, but most of it was large land.

Ramsey Russell: Lots of property.

Warren Coco: Yeah. Amoco that deal themselves was a chance of a million lifetimes that just doesn’t ever happen. And anyway, they had the lease on it. Well, now they start selling the land holders. They sold everything in White Lake Forest, which is over by where the Amoco Club was. They sold all the land around Amoco Club, which was the first sale, high bidder, got the second sale high bidder by the Mormon tall. I got to Hackberry, well we’re going to get leasehold the first option and I didn’t know all this and John comes from Tennessee, look, we think about buying a property duck lease. I said, that’d be a great deal if you can buy that, with 10 of us will buy the southern half, you know, we’re going to bid $250 a acre. So why don’t you get it for that. I said, well, who’s buying Northern half? He says we’re not buying. I said, well let’s go look at it, I said I might buy. So we went over there that weekend. So we’re having a meeting all families getting together, getting together, trying to put this deal together to buy. So we came over, and I hadn’t set foot on the property over 20 years. We came out, drove out, got the boat, drove out there, looked there ain’t changed in 20 years. There’s a very stable marsh. It’s got a hard clay bottom in it. It’s not washing away like the stuff and terra bone, [**00:44:02] all that. So they had a meeting at the house, they’re trying to put a deal together and the cousins and in laws and all. It ain’t worth that. That’s too much money and they’re moaning and groaning and the whole deal was falling apart. And who had Frank’s blind, he told Velma, who had the lease, you get all your people together and I’ll get the rest. We’re driving home and I told Johnson looked like y’all deals falling apart. So, well he said if we don’t buy southern half you need to buy. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do about you, your brother and your nephew, y’all each by the 10% you’re going to buy and I’ll buy the 70%. Nobody going to beat us out of it. He says that work. I said, hold on a minute, you got to run this by your mama because she’s got to approve this because pranking them out, I’m not buying it with them. So there ain’t no problem. He said let me call her, and call her, yeah, do it. So All right. So I called the real tools handling the deal who I admit, I used to work for Miami Corporation, Billy Delaney.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, you probably met a lot of people. You own Go-Devil motors.

Warren Coco: You can’t count them all. All the people I’ve met in my lifetime with his business, all the customers I have. So I called him and I was like I’m coming up to make an offer on the property. All right. You know, I’m talking I’m coming with Albert. So called her, said meet me over real to office and we met at the office so we get there. So this amount of profit and past sales will probably so for $265 an acre. I said we’ve been 300. He said he backed up, man. That’s kind of high. I said, well, that’s what I’m bidding. He said, why don’t you bid $290, I said, I’m bidding $300. Because I don’t want to lose nothing because that already one of my customers had a piece of some of the same property they cut out the best half and didn’t offered to him, though I had some deals on the table going on. So he says, you got to have 10% down for on the punch agreement. I reached in my pocket pulled out of $48,000 cashier’s cheque. He like passed out when I did that. He says, all right, so this is pending at the turn of Amoco accepts this I said I understand. All right. So about two days go by, I get a call in Attorney. He says, well, this is John Stud I’m with Amoco, I said, yeah I know who you are, he said, what’s your relationship to Fill Malagasy since she signed this as a witness. I said, this is me and two of her sons and a grandson buying this. I said, they can’t afford to buy, they don’t have the money. I said, I’m related to him about marriage, been friends forever and start buying it with him. Oh, that’s great. That’s who we want to see that people had this land for all these years get the key. There’s no way they keep it. It’s all right. He said, I got somebody else wanted this track real bad. So I’m going to try to push them off on one of these other tracks. Okay. So I called a couple of days. He called me back congratulations we accepted your offer. He says, man, I had somebody want this place real bad. I said, if you don’t mind, who was that? He said Reilly in England, I about busted out laughing. He said, what’s so funny? I said, you got time for a good story? He says, yeah, he says the 8000 acres of Reilly’s buying, we used to hunt that through a lawsuit. Oh, we lost that lease and fought for in court. Riley Newman was representing the other side in court and wound up with all of it. I said, that’s the story on that. He laughed. He says, I can’t believe that just, that’s the way everything happened. But we wound up buying it. I never get when we bought it. John made a statement. We’re the first ones to make off and the first one to closed. I moved so fast they didn’t know what happened. It was done and over. Nobody ever thought that would ever happen to feel about that piece of property. It’s just a miracle.

Ramsey Russell: What year was this?

Warren Coco: 1999. And John, I’ll never forget this after we closed, John said, they all put the crown towers up, it’s ours now, it’s done. It was a great deal for us. And it’s just been the hunting, we started out.

Ramsey Russell: Hang on. Folks, one of the million lifetime opportunity comes along. The man moves like greased lightning and buys it come back next week to hear more about it. Thank you all for listening. You’ve been listening to Warren Coco of GoDevil Motors.