EP 547. Oak Grove Hunting Club, Louisiana

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo Ducks Season Somewhere podcast for today. I am way, way down south in Louisiana at Oak Grove Hunting Club. Man, I would describe it as way south of Big Lake. That’s the only way I can describe where I’m at right now. But everywhere you look around the camp house is marsh. We just got done with a heck of a great shoot this morning. Joining me today are Mr. Fred Stewart, who is the club manager, and Mr. Mike. And I know I’m gonna butcher this last name. How do you say your last name, Mike?

Mike Bisigalope: Bisigalope.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I might practice that one, Mike. Who is also the general manager here. And they’re going to tell us a little bit about the club and a little bit about themselves. Guys, thank you all so much for your hospitality. I have so far had a great time. Tell me, I’ll start like this. Where did you all grow up? Because I know from meeting with you, you all have grown up in very different places. We’ll start with you, Mike. Where did you grow up?

Mike Bisigalope: I grew up right here on Little Cheniere, Creole, Louisiana. Born and raised about four miles east of here.

Ramsey Russell: Four miles east of here?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Did you grow up a duck hunter?

Mike Bisigalope: I hunted with my grandpa. My dad used to be a guide at Oak Grove back in the day.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, and my grandpa was the head guide at Savon Neuville, which is right over the Intercostal Canal right here. I used to hunt with him a lot. And I hunted with my dad over here when they didn’t have any guests. I grew up hunting. And when I was 17 years old, Mr. Hawkins hired me, and I’ve been here ever since.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: And how old are you now, if you don’t mind?

Mike Bisigalope: 69.

Ramsey Russell: And you’ve been at this camp since you were 17 years old?

Mike Bisigalope: Been here since I was 17 years old.

Ramsey Russell: My goodness. Great. And this camp, I think we decided this camp has been here since the 30s, 1930s or something, like almost 100 years. That’s a long time. What did you do, Mike, growing up? What did you do for fun as a kid? When it wasn’t duck season.

Mike Bisigalope: Well, we lived on a ranch. We had cattle. You stay busy when you’re showing cattle. We showed in 4H and played a little football, baseball, and guided. And when I got 17, I just started guiding, you know?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, never looked back.

Mike Bisigalope: Fished a lot. We fished a lot in the summertime.

Ramsey Russell: Well, this is a sportsman’s paradise.

Mike Bisigalope: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Hunting and fishing, I mean, it’s not even a hobby. It’s part of you all’s cultural fabric. Did you hunt here growing up, or did you hunt near here growing up?

Mike Bisigalope: Growing up, I hunted near here. My dad owns 500 acres of land, and we hunted on it with my uncles. We hunted all there. And my mom owns property. She owns 150 acres, a lot of ducks, good duck hunting on their property.

Ramsey Russell: And what are some of your fondest memories growing up duck hunting? Who were you hunting with, and what were you all killing, and how were you all hunting?

Mike Bisigalope: Back then, we used little mud boats, 9-horse, 10, 15-horse, whatever. And that’s how we would go. And then back in the, I want to say, the 1970s, we started buying some 350 Chevrolets and putting them in boats.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, I go around, wouldn’t it?

Mike Bisigalope: 454s. Put them in boats. And then we started using Gator-Tails. That’s what we’re using now, way cheaper and saves a lot of gas.

Ramsey Russell: And you about needed that to get around this part of the world. I know this morning we didn’t go far. We went 10 minutes from camp here to hunt. Myself and, I believe his name was Hayden?

Mike Bisigalope: Braden.

Ramsey Russell: Braden. And you know, you could see a little vegetation poking up out there in the duck hole. He said, “Man, don’t step off the boat. You’ll sink up to your eyeballs in the mud.”

“I want my ashes scattered in this marsh when I die. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah. This is the deepest marsh in this area in Cameron Parish. I don’t remember when it was, but back in the 1940s, it was dry. It had a drought, and it caught on fire and burned this whole marsh. And ever since then, it’s been a deep marsh.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, it burned for months and months.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of ducks did you all try to shoot back when you were growing up as a teenager? I guess that would have been the 1950s or 1960s.

Mike Bisigalope: 1960s. Well, back then, I mean, you had a lot of pintail, you had a lot of teal, you had a lot of mallards, in the wintertime. It was mostly teal, pintail, mallard, and gray ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Did you all have a preference for what you wanted to hunt?

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, look, the old people down here, they’d rather shoot and eat a blackjack than a mallard.

Ramsey Russell: You all ain’t got no shortage of blackjack to this day.

Mike Bisigalope: No, we don’t.

Ramsey Russell: Really, they wanted to shoot.

Mike Bisigalope: That’s what they ate down here. They love blackjacks, man. Ring neck ducks, they love eating them.

Ramsey Russell: We did not kill a mallard today, but Braden said that they had shots at mallards. Greg brought in a mallard today that I saw. I don’t know why, I was surprised to see a mallard duck down here.

Mike Bisigalope: We’re getting less and less. Back 15, 20 years ago, on a morning like this morning, you’d have four or five mallards in your limit. And just every year, you’re seeing less and less. It’s like they’re not coming down here anymore.

Ramsey Russell: Are any ducks picking up or any duck growing in abundance down here? I sure saw a lot of ring necks out there.

Mike Bisigalope: I tell you what’s growing fast down here, the tree ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Whistling ducks. Yeah.

Mike Bisigalope: Whistling ducks. We used to never have whistling ducks. Now we’re covered with them.

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember seeing whistling ducks when you were growing up as a teenager back in the 1960s?

Mike Bisigalope: No. This has been in the last 10, 12, 15 years. We’re really seeing these whistling ducks. I went out there in the summertime south of the camp, and I bet you all saw 40, 50 female whistling ducks with little ones. It’s a shallow marsh, and they raise good out here.

Ramsey Russell: They do. They’re a marsh bird. It’s a pride. They used to be called tree ducks, but they really are a marsh bird. Everywhere I see them in the world, these black-bellied whistling ducks, there are two subspecies, and they’re on at least three continents I can think of. The fulvous whistling duck is on four continents, and everywhere you see them, it’s going to be just like this habitat out here, it’s going to be marsh. And where I really see those fulvous, Mike, is where I think of it as almost like cooter rail habitat, where there’s so much vegetation in the water a rail could walk, and the fulvous can. But that’s what they like. They like that habitat, boy.

Mike Bisigalope: They do, they do. Same thing with the mottled duck they raise down here. And I’ve seen just as many female mottled ducks in the summertime with little ones as I did with the tree ducks.

Ramsey Russell: You know, one thing I noticed about your mottled ducks, according to the hunt log, this was morning 15. You all have been hunting, and already those ducks are deaf. It’s like you can call as loud as you want to, they don’t hear nothing. They’re going right to where they’re going. They always been that way.

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah. In fact, they watch us build our blinds. I want to tell you, two years in a row now, in my north blind 100 this morning, a female mottled had a nest on my dog stand.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Two years in a row. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Mike Bisigalope: And every March, I go there, and she has her eggs already.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Those mottled ducks. Have their populations been stable pretty much since then and now?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, they’re staying stable. We got plenty of mottled ducks. They just raise here, and they know the blinds and everything. They’re tough.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. They’re a marsh bird from down this part of the world. They love it, don’t they?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Mr. Fred, let’s talk about you a little bit. And I know, surprisingly, you’re not from this part of the world. Where were you born and raised?

Fred Stewart: Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ramsey Russell: Cleveland, Ohio. How in the world did you end up down here?

Fred Stewart: I was working down in Virginia, Virginia Beach area. And I worked with the last head waiter here, Floyd Guidry. We became friends, just sort of kept in touch, came down and visited him once or twice. It was during the season. He invited me to come over.

Ramsey Russell: And you take care mostly of the inside of the house, the staff, the creature comforts, and stuff like that. You take care of those client services. What was your childhood like? What was it like growing up in Cleveland, Ohio? I’ve driven through there a couple of times. It’s a big city, but it’s way different than down here.

Fred Stewart: Right. It’s quite different today from when I was coming up there. People were just coming in from Europe. A lot of Jewish people in the Jewish area, Hungarians, gypsies, and blacks were coming from the South, migrating for all the jobs up there. A lot of change started coming in. They were different people.

Ramsey Russell: You were kind of there when it all started changing a lot, weren’t you?

Fred Stewart: Right.

Ramsey Russell: And it really, really became that American melting pot.

Fred Stewart: Right.

Ramsey Russell: What did you do for fun as a kid in Cleveland? How did you entertain yourself?

Fred Stewart: Oh, we played all kinds of sports. Ran track. A lot of the boys liked basketball. I wasn’t too much into basketball, track, things like that.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Fred Stewart: In the snow time, the winter, sledding.

Ramsey Russell: What did you want to be when you grew up? I know from hearing stories that going from Cleveland as a young man, you’ve been around the country, if not the world. I’m trying to get to how you got into this line of work. But what did you want to be when you grew up, and what did your official title actually become?

Fred Stewart: Yeah, well, I really wanted to be in this type of business.

Ramsey Russell: Service industry?

Fred Stewart: Yeah. I’ve been around and seen certain guys, you know, they’re doing pretty well. In fact, there was a guy in Cleveland when I was growing up. He was the head waiter at one of the clubs. They had a full page in the newspaper every year about what the club did for him.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Fred Stewart: Yeah. They bought his whole wardrobe, a brand-new car, a big automobile.

Ramsey Russell: Was he a butler?

Fred Stewart: He was a head waiter at the club.

Ramsey Russell: A head waiter at the club?

Fred Stewart: Head waiters at the club run the clubs. All clubs, New York, Chicago, all of them. I’ve been in all of them.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Fred Stewart: Head waiters are the club managers. They run the clubs.

Ramsey Russell: When you say club, do you mean like a bar, or do you mean like a private men’s club?

Fred Stewart: Men clubs. They have them up there. Men-only clubs, golf clubs. All of these golf clubs with men and women. New York, all of them. Those are the head waiters that run those. They call them managing directors or whatever now. They changed the name a little bit.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. So that’s what you wanted to be. You saw some of the success and saw what these guys were doing, and you said, “I want to do that.”

Fred Stewart: Right.

Ramsey Russell: So what was your first job in that field? And what steps did you take to grow in this industry?

Fred Stewart: Yeah. My first job was in Chicago. Stouffer’s. Remember Stouffer’s?

Ramsey Russell: I do.

Fred Stewart: Yeah, Stouffer’s had very good training, but I learned from others who were really pros there in Chicago, above Stouffer’s. But Stouffer’s gave you a good insight into things. They trained well. I worked over there at the Top of the Rock as a bartender in Chicago. And then from there, I went over to the Whitehall, which was a very exclusive, rich club. I got a job over there. And from there, you learned a lot because they were doing all first-class European service.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Fred Stewart: So you had a lot of top people there.

“Life’s about people. Whether you’re a doctor, waiter, or duck guide—it’s all hospitality.”

Ramsey Russell: What’s it like being in that job industry? I tell people all the time, it doesn’t matter what you do in life or for a living, you could be a doctor, a waiter, sell duck calls, or be a duck guide, but it’s all about people.

Fred Stewart: That’s it. That’s the key right there.

Ramsey Russell: Life is about people. And whether you’re working at a club like this or a duck lodge, it’s a hospitality industry.

Fred Stewart: Right.

Ramsey Russell: Again, it’s really all about people. What are some things you learned as a young man that helped you succeed in this industry?

Fred Stewart: The main thing is these people come out to have a good time. You just make sure everything is taken care of for them. The owners have their guests here. They want their guests taken care of. That’s the main key right there. My clients and my guest taken care of.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Fred Stewart: So learn how to do what they want and carry that out. That’s the whole key right there.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Fred Stewart: Their clients are happy.

Ramsey Russell: As long as they’re happy. Yeah, if the clients are happy, they’re happy. How do you make people happy? Well, there’s got to be some pointers to how you, I mean, are you just taking note of everybody when they ain’t paying attention? And you say, okay, that guy likes this, he’s drinking Diet Coke or he’s drinking Coke. But I mean, are you doing calculations to figure out people’s mannerisms and how to approach them?

Fred Stewart: Yeah, because when I’m working, it’s like I block everything else out. My attention is right there. For instance, a guy was just walking across. You know, they come in a new group, and they were drinking, and the guy, he’s approaching me, the bar. I don’t know, I just watched him. And so I put a cup up there. He said, “How the hell you know I wanted a spit cup” Stuff like that, you know, things you watch.

Ramsey Russell: You gotta be aware of everything.

Fred Stewart: Right. Yeah, aware of everything. It’s like walking outside this building around here. I’m here alone all year. You just have to be observant when you walk out the door. Snakes out here. Sometimes there are alligators at the bottom of the steps, bobcats around here, all kinds of stuff.

Ramsey Russell: You watch where you step.

Fred Stewart: When I come out, I observe everything, my surroundings.

Ramsey Russell: I was gonna ask you, how different is this part of South Louisiana, Creole Louisiana, from Ohio or from California, from some of these places you’ve been? I mean, you don’t have to really watch for snakes and alligators in some of these other places, do you?

Fred Stewart: No. Here you do.

Ramsey Russell: You learn to step. Don’t tell my wife that, or she’ll be looking at her feet the whole time. She won’t look at nothing else.

Fred Stewart: I worked as a butler over in Maryland on the Eastern Shore for a rich family who’s an investor, some out of New York. And the house lady there, she calls me. I stayed in the house right next to their big estate. She says, “Fred, can you come over? There’s a snake over here.” When I got over there, she’s in the doorway, right. And she said, “There he is, get him.” The guys around here, they go and get him. I said, “Well, I’m not from around here.” But I said, “You know what?” She had a tennis court right on the water, you know. And I watched all these tennis things that she had all around her garage there. So I said, “You know what, a snake and a rat or a mouse, they like everything where they can hide. They’re always looking for a place where they can hide.”

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Fred Stewart: So I said, “Well, the first thing to do, I took all that stuff and moved it into the center of the garage over there, right. And I took a tennis ball, and I threw it over. He did like that.” She said, “Oh, look at him.” So then after that, the snake starts coming out. She says, “Get him. Cut his head off.” I said, “I’m not gonna bother him.” I said, “I’m on your property all day out here. I bike ride, I play tennis, I jog out there.” I said, “I see them all day.” I said, “But the main thing is what I really see them doing is climbing up trees.”

Ramsey Russell: Uh-huh.

Fred Stewart: See, they go up to those birds’ nests.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Fred Stewart: So I watched her the next morning from my place. She comes up to ride her bike, and she’s looking all up.

Ramsey Russell: Uh-huh. She looks up in them trees.

Fred Stewart: Yeah, that’s where they’re going. I see them all day. They don’t bother you. They go right by.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Fred Stewart: Out here, it’s the same way. They’re trying to get away from you.

Ramsey Russell: You know, this morning, it reminds me, Mike, this morning, and I’ve hunted down in South Louisiana before, so I know that in pitch-black dark, you just don’t go step off the boat into a blind. You might have some visitors waiting on you. Have you all had some unwelcome company in some of these blinds down here?

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah. One morning, this must have been five, six, seven years ago, I checked the blind out. I didn’t see it, and I told my hunter, “It’s good. Get in the blind.” So I dropped him off. I go hide the boat, and I come back in the pirogue, and I get over there by the blind. I started looking. He’s on top of the blind. I said, “What in the world is he doing?” What it is, we got a double floor. We got a wooden floor in the bottom of the blind.

Ramsey Russell: A subfloor.

Mike Bisigalope: There were some little nutria underneath the wood. And I guess when he stepped on the wood, they came out of each end and out of them holes. And look, he was on top of the blind. He said, “Man, you got to get over here.” He said, “They got some big rats down there.” So I got in the blind. They wasn’t very big. I caught him by the tail and just threw him in the water, you know?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah. He was ready to leave the blind.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve dealt with that kind of stuff. You ever had any alligators or snakes? Like this morning, Braden jumped off in there, and he had a scoop in one hand and a light in the other. But it rained a lot last night. I’m glad I slept through it, but it rained a lot, and there was a lot of water to bail out. And no, it’s cold, but it ain’t wintertime down here. Ain’t like wintertime in Cleveland, Ohio. And I said, “You ain’t got no snakes down in there.” And boy, he started getting real deliberate with that light and that scoop, looking around for those snakes. Because I just expect there’ll be some snakes and, at times, alligators off in those blinds.

Mike Bisigalope: Well, let me tell you, this must have happened four or five times already. Different guys over here, including myself. You get out there in the fall, and you go to bailing them blinds out. The blinds are full of water because we don’t have nothing on top of them during the summertime. And somehow those alligators get on them dog stands, the five, six footers, and then they fall in the blind. One day I was bailing my blind out. I was down to about a foot of water. After a while, I felt something hit me in the legs. I looked down there, about a six-foot alligator. I came out of there. I kept fooling with him, kept fooling with him till I figured where his tail was at. And I caught him by the tail, and I picked him up, and he was swinging, trying to keep biting me, you know, and I threw him over. But that happens every fall when we bail out the blinds. Somebody’s got an alligator.

Ramsey Russell: Somebody’s got one, I guarantee you.

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But that’s a part of living down here, isn’t it?

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I guess there’s always been, I mean, there were probably as many alligators when you were growing up as there are now.

Mike Bisigalope: Always were. You know, I catch 120 a year.

Fred Stewart: Wow.

Mike Bisigalope: And I fished the same areas just about 150 yards apart, something like that. And we ain’t making no dent in them. When you remove one, there are far more waiting.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Oh yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard the market for their hide is falling off big time.

Mike Bisigalope: It fell off big time. But we’re getting good money for the meat.

Ramsey Russell: Really, True. We ate some alligator here last night.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, the meat’s high in demand right now, and they bring good prices.

Ramsey Russell: You know, I was telling Greg last night, we were eating something that was good. Now, it looked like a chicken liver on the plate. That’s why I got so many of them. But it was good. And when somebody said it was alligator, I said it ain’t alligator tail, I don’t think.

Mike Bisigalope: It’s alligator tail.

Ramsey Russell: Was it?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It had a different texture than what I’m used to. But I’ve heard there’s two different kinds of textures on an alligator tail.

“I eat alligator tenderloin. It’s the best part—on each side of the bone.”

Mike Bisigalope: I like the tenderloin on that tail. They go on each side of the bone, the center of the bone. They got a tenderloin on each side. If I’m going to eat alligator, that’s what I eat that tenderloin.

Ramsey Russell: What about the jaws or the cheeks? I’ve heard that’s real good on alligator.

Mike Bisigalope: I’ve eaten the jaws, but I eat it on a four or five-footer. I won’t eat it on a ten-footer.

Ramsey Russell: A big one. It must be pretty chewy.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. How do you catch those alligators?

Mike Bisigalope: We catch them with a 12-aught hook. We’ll drive a post in the ground with a 25-foot line and hang the bait about a foot and a half off the water. They’ll come up, catch it, and swallow the hook.

Ramsey Russell: What’s the biggest alligator you caught?

Mike Bisigalope: 13’6″

Ramsey Russell: How much did that son of a gun weigh?

Mike Bisigalope: This was back in 1982, I want to say. And look, we didn’t catch him bottom-out. We didn’t have him hooked in the stomach. We had him hooked by the back leg. How that happened, I don’t know. I bet you it took us an hour and a half to kill him. Every time we tried to pick him up, his head was down at the bottom of the pond. I had him by his tail, this big around. My daddy was trying to shoot him if he’d pick his head up. And we fought, we fought. Finally, he picked that head up, and we got him.

Ramsey Russell: Last time I alligator hunted with some friends somewhere right around here, somewhere around Big Lake. In fact, we were just on the east bank of Big Lake up there, Lake Calcasieu, and we went somewhere about an hour away. It could have been around here. We fished a property that hadn’t been alligator-fished for 40 years, I think the boy told me. He didn’t really know what to do, but he talked to some old guys like himself. He told them what to do, and he went out and laid 15 hooks. There was an alligator on 14 of them, and they were all five, six-footers except for one. My buddy Jimmy, oh no, Duck Jimmy, was raking all the weeds and stuff away when I was pulling that thing up. It was about a 10 or 11-footer. We shot him and put him in the boat on his back. His little boy kept kicking him, and every time he kicked him, the alligator moved a little bit, you know, because sometimes these turtles and snakes and alligators, they don’t really die, until they get cold. They’re dead, but they don’t die.

Mike Bisigalope: Right. They’ll move for an hour after you kill them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, there’s some kind of reflex or something, you know, until till nightfall or whatever. And I was telling him, quit kicking that alligator. You know, I mean, I’m sitting in the front of this boat. And when we got back to the boathouse, we got out to go get a cold, cold, cold because it was hot. And we come back, that alligator wasn’t just wiggling. Because now when I got back, he wasn’t on his back no more. That 10-footer was on his belly, growling at me. Now, what do you do?

Mike Bisigalope: Shoot him?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you got to. But then we got worried about, well, if we shoot him, was the bullet gonna go through his head and then through the boat. Somebody told me a story. The reason why you all don’t shoot over-and-unders and side-by-sides at this camp no more. What happened there? Why don’t you shoot them?

Mike Bisigalope: A couple of hunters came with some, and when they put the shells in the gun, and when they went to close it, they still had the barrel pointing toward the bottom of the blind.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Mike Bisigalope: And it went off. The stockholder just got it out.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, I think, you know, I love shooting over-and-unders and side-by-sides, but they’re, they’re cumbersome. They’re awkward to kind of break open in a pit blind, like that.

Mike Bisigalope: Right.

Ramsey Russell: You know, but the funny story I heard when somebody was telling that story last night is, like, he shot a hole in one side of the fiberglass blind. Water was coming in. So he said, “How do you fix that?”

Mike Bisigalope: He said, “You shoot a hole on the other side and circle it.”

“You shoot a hole on the other side and circle it. That’s Cajun sense.”

Ramsey Russell: There you go. I think that’s good old Cajun sense right there, ain’t it?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Fred, you don’t go alligator hunting with him, do you?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, he does.

Fred Stewart: I used to go with Mike quite a bit.

Ramsey Russell: Are you building your résumé for next time you get called in by a housekeeper?

Fred Stewart: That’s it.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve been all over the United States in the wading business like that. What was your first impression? Because you said you moved down here in 2014. What was your first impression of the food in South Louisiana as it compares to the East Coast and West Coast you’ve been working on?

Fred Stewart: Yeah, well, the food is great down here. But you know what? Wherever you go, they specialize in something, but here, it’s more, you know, especially shrimp and seafood.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Fred Stewart: It’s a big thing. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What is you all’s house specialty here?

Fred Stewart: House specialty is the, well, duck. [It’s the duck hunting **:00:33:10]

Ramsey Russell: I’m sure. Yeah

Fred Stewart: So, the duck is good. The duck gumbo.

Ramsey Russell: The duck gumbo last night, first course was amazing.

Fred Stewart: Right. The Creole filet gumbo without the roux.

Ramsey Russell: Boy that was something else. No roux, that’s what, that was a Creole gumbo. That’s what was different about it.

Mike Bisigalope: With filet.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I saw that. I tell you what, those shrimp you all served last night were right on time. How were them shrimp cooked?

Fred Stewart: Those shrimp were partially grilled there, and it’s marinated first, and seasoned and marinated then partially grilled. They finished them off, I think, there in the thick skillet there.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Oh, they were fine. And I’m a shrimp, I’m a shellfish guy now.

Fred Stewart: Right.

Ramsey Russell: But I love eating down in this part of the world. I always love eating in this part of the world.

Fred Stewart: Crawfish. They have a lot of down here. More eaten here than anywhere. When I was in Virginia, you know what the big thing was? Those blue crabs.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Fred Stewart: All around there in Maryland, they line up for that.

Ramsey Russell: They sure do.

Fred Stewart: Here, they line up for those crawfish.

Ramsey Russell: Do a lot of you all catch crawfish on this property?

Fred Stewart: Oh yeah. Not on this property.

Ramsey Russell: Not on this property. But down here, across the street?

Fred Stewart: Yeah, all over down here. Right across the road here.

Ramsey Russell: When did crawfishing, is that something like back in the 1960s the locals did? Would they go out just in the backyard and catch crawfish to eat? Or is that like a recent phenomenon?

Mike Bisigalope: Crawfish grow well in the marshes down here, and when we get a lot of rain and the water level comes up, they’re just everywhere. And people are fishing crawfish in their backyard just with nets. That’s how plentiful they are.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you know what? I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, and I can remember seeing people drag the ditches with baskets. You know, they had long metal handles with like a bicycle basket. And they just throw it across and drag it. And I wanted one just to catch crawfish. I didn’t eat a crawfish till I was a grown man, you know, living elsewhere. Now crawfish is a huge industry, but I wondered, when did it really kick off? Did the locals really eat that back in the day? Was that like something you all did every spring?

Mike Bisigalope: I’d say it really kicked off like in the early 1970s, something like that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s when it took off.

Mike Bisigalope: It’s a big thing now.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, it’s a big thing. It’s a huge thing.

Mike Bisigalope: In the spring, I think it was selling like $5 a pound.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Mike Bisigalope: At this past March. They were high.

Ramsey Russell: In your lifetime, you must have dealt with a bunch of hurricanes down here.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, I did. I was two years old when Hurricane Audrey hit.

Ramsey Russell: Audrey?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, in 1957. We stayed in the attic for Audrey, and then after it was all over with, they came and rescued us.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Did you all have to cut a hole through the roof to get out?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Like, you were two years old. Wouldn’t your daddy just move up to the attic with a hatchet?

Mike Bisigalope: He cut a hole in the ceiling. And then we stayed up there in the rafters. That’s where we spent Audrey.

Ramsey Russell: But see, what I’ve always, I know folks down here that grow up in that environment are used to it. Guys like me? I’m heading north. Next time a hurricane like Katrina makes landfall on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and heads toward Jackson, Mississippi, two hours away, I made a note to myself, Next time a Category 5 heads towards me, I’m going to Memphis, you know, because it was crazy to see. But folks down here don’t just run from it.

Mike Bisigalope: They wait. They’ll move a few things out if they, you know, they watch the weatherman. But right before it hits, everybody’s going out of here. They don’t stay no more. We lost a lot of people for Hurricane Audrey.

Ramsey Russell: You lost a lot of people, I mean, that’s what gives me is like, it’s one thing, okay, the water’s going to get high and I’m going to be on top of roof, but how do I even know my house is going to be here with me in it. When that storm blows.

Mike Bisigalope: Another thing you have to worry about. If the wind’s blowing real hard, but these high line poles fall across the highway and you blocked in, you’re in trouble.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Mike Bisigalope: That’s why everybody pretty much leaves early.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you were saying we’re in this beautiful camphouse, but this whole community is still being powered by a million-dollar-a-month generator since what Hurricane?

Fred Stewart: Laura.

Mike Bisigalope: Laura. Four years ago.

Ramsey Russell: Four years ago?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it still ain’t got power at this spot?

Mike Bisigalope: Still don’t have it.

Ramsey Russell: Is it cheaper just to run it a million dollars a month on a generator than to install the infrastructure?

Mike Bisigalope: Well, they’re trying to get it connected back from the north coming south, and I don’t know if it’d be. I don’t think it’s cheaper running on the generators.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. I can’t imagine that it would be. What were some of the other hurricanes that you remember?

Mike Bisigalope: I remember Rita real well.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Rita hit just a few months. I think that year was 2005. It was a double whammy. Katrina hit earlier that year, and then Rita hit.

Mike Bisigalope: We found pieces of Old Grove, which is five miles south of here. We found life jackets from Old Grove south of Lake Charles.

Ramsey Russell: My goodness.

Mike Bisigalope: And other stuff.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So you say Oak Grove. We’re at Oak Grove Hunting Camp, but this hunting club was built originally in 1932 about five miles south.

Mike Bisigalope: South of here, along 82.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Golly. You know, what were some of the other hurricane dealings? What I’m getting at, we were all talking before we got here. You know what always impressed me about this part of the world, The Cajun Navy. Man, I mean, you wouldn’t believe how far around the United States and the world. Everybody’s real familiar with Louisiana culture, food, alligators, crawfish, and all these chefs you all got down here. But, man, I get asked about that all the time, about the hurricanes, the snakes, the alligators. But the hurricanes. And how long before FEMA shows up with their $750 for everything you lost? Here come your neighbors in duck boats, and they are here to help. Here comes the cavalry in the form of just a bunch of local folks, man. That’s a different cut of people right there.

Mike Bisigalope: Right. Everybody helps everybody. Everybody has a boat down here. And what we’ll do, we’ll move our boats further north across the INT canal, and then after it passes, we’ll launch at Gibbstown Bridge and ride through the marsh. We’ll go all over and check everything out.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you all didn’t really get hit hard at all by Katrina. It was really that double whammy that came up in here.

Mike Bisigalope: Rita got us.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And that was the one that took out the original clubhouse.

Mike Bisigalope: Right. Rita took out the original clubhouse. Rita took my three-bedroom, two-bath house, picked it up, floated it in the marsh a mile away, and when the water receded, all our clothes were still in the closet. Nothing wrong with them, just still hanging there.

Ramsey Russell: How’d you find it, you drove down the road one day and saw it? “There’s my house three miles away.”

Mike Bisigalope: I drove up in my boat, my Gator Tail.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Mike Bisigalope: From the north, drove up, I tied the boat. Oh, and let me tell you, there were some alligators on the floor of that sucker. And yeah, got our clothes out of the closets and everything was still good.

Ramsey Russell: My goodness. Great. Did you move it back to the original location?

Mike Bisigalope: No, we had to burn it. We couldn’t get to it.

Ramsey Russell: Oh my gosh. But you got all your valuable stuff.

Mike Bisigalope: I got all my valuable stuff out of it.

Ramsey Russell: That’s the thing. I knew a guy that was down on the Gulf Coast, Mississippi, when Hurricane Katrina hit. He was a big hunter and had collected a lot of species, upland birds, game. Just a lot of experiences and stuff. And I said something to him one time, all this hunting he had done, he must have had a heck of a collection. He said, “Well, I don’t do any taxidermy anymore. I don’t collect stuff like that anymore. I used to. I was off to a good start. But then Katrina hit. Just think about it. You’ve got to go through your whole house first, your family and your family pets. Now, what else is going to fit in a Suburban and a pickup truck. Because once you leave, that’s it. Everything else is gone.” He said, “I came back, and everything was gone. But what we loaded up, I realized at that moment what was most important in my life, and it wasn’t that other stuff that got lost.” I’m like, wow. A lot of folks lose everything in these events.

Mike Bisigalope: Oh yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s heartbreaking. We were talking about being down here hunting at Oak Grove Hunting Club. What are some of the interesting stories, historical stories you all have heard along the way of past events and past people? Like, Greg Mueller was telling me that General Eisenhower, who later became president, was at the original camp house at Oak Grove when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. That’s bad. That’s going deep down in history there now. He was at this club when that historical event went down. Who are some of the other figureheads that have hunted here, and the personalities and people, or some of the interesting stories you all have heard along the way?

Mike Bisigalope: Well, the only ones I know of are the governors of Louisiana.

Ramsey Russell: All of them.

Mike Bisigalope: I hunted with four different governors. I guide four different governors.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You got to figure the governor of Louisiana must be a duck hunter. Are they pretty good duck hunters?

Mike Bisigalope: So, yeah, they’re pretty good.

Fred Stewart: And all of the senators.

Ramsey Russell: All the senators?

Mike Bisigalope: All the senators come over here.

Ramsey Russell: On your side, Fred, is dealing with senators and governors different than dealing with just regular people?

Fred Stewart: Well, a little, but as far as I’m concerned, I treat everybody the same.

Ramsey Russell: Treat everybody the same. It’s all the same, isn’t it?

Fred Stewart: Right.

Ramsey Russell: Have you had any hurricane events, Fred?

Fred Stewart: This last one, I was here. Well, I left right before the hurricane and went up to Texas to one of the owners, stayed with them a couple of weeks. But when I returned here, God, I hadn’t been in a place where a hurricane had happened before.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Fred Stewart: It was some devastation here. I mean, it was something to see.

Ramsey Russell: Really, Like what?

Fred Stewart: Well, coming through Lake Charles, all the power lines were down. Everything was down. Then when you turned in here, debris was like 20 feet tall all the way down.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

“Cars and trucks way up on top of things… homes 10 miles off track.”

Fred Stewart: Cars and trucks way up on top of things. Homes way out, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 miles from over there, all out here. It was something to see.

Mike Bisigalope: We had a 65-foot crew boat sitting in the middle of the road, right there on top of the highway.

Ramsey Russell: Reckon how far it came from?

Fred Stewart: It came from over Grand Chenier.

Mike Bisigalope: Grand Chenier, about six miles.

Fred Stewart: Just a little bit more, and it would have come right inside this camp.

Mike Bisigalope: It would have hit the camp.

Fred Stewart: Blew everything out in there.

Ramsey Russell: My goodness gracious. Let’s talk a little bit about the duck hunting. In your lifetime, Mike, how has the duck hunting changed? We talked a little bit about species. There are fewer mallards. There are as many ring necks as ever. How has all these hurricanes and the all industry, or whatever else is going on down here, how has it changed the duck hunting and the duck habitat? I hear a lot of folks in Louisiana say, “Well, the hunting ain’t no good no more.” But they’re still one of the top five duck-killing states in America.

Mike Bisigalope: Well, I think what’s happening with the duck hunting, you know, in the 1970s, 1980s, even the 1990s, we got cold fronts in October. It used to get down in the 1940s, which would push the doves down. I remember still working before hunting season started, and you’d wake up one morning, and there were ducks all over the marsh because of the cold front. If you look back now, we don’t get a good cold front until December.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Mike Bisigalope: And to me, it’s taking longer for them to get down here. But back then, back in the 1970s and 1980s, Key Trahan and I drove this. We shared a boat full-grown. That was 40 ducks on the deck of that boat every morning, every morning.

Ramsey Russell: And now it’s a little more hit or miss.

Mike Bisigalope: Now it’s a little hit and miss. I think the drought had a lot to do with it for this year. You know, it killed all the aquatics under the water.

Ramsey Russell: Yes.

Mike Bisigalope: And we got a little food, but I think it’s going to get back right.

Ramsey Russell: It was a bad drought last year, wasn’t it?

Mike Bisigalope: Bad drought. For this marsh to be dry, it was bad.

Ramsey Russell: The deepest marsh in this region dried up.

Mike Bisigalope: And it was dry.

Ramsey Russell: Was there any benefit at all to it? I know you lost your aquatics, but somebody told me maybe there’s a lot of wild rice that came in.

Mike Bisigalope: There is some wild rice on the edge of the marsh that grew this year. It’s here they got wild rice here and there, it’s just scattered. Not a lot like I like to see, but there’s some.

Ramsey Russell: Is there anything you can do to manage it, or are you just at God’s mercy?

Mike Bisigalope: This marsh here is so deep, you’d have to put an impoundment and drain it, pump the water out and drain the marsh. And then your wild millet will grow. But we got high spots in this marsh where if the water level gets low in the summertime, your wild rice comes up. I’ve seen five or six years ago it was solid wild rice out here because the water stayed low all summer. But your water’s level has got to drain where the wild rice will come up.

Ramsey Russell: And when you talk about aquatics, what are you talking about mostly?

Mike Bisigalope: Widgeon grass, foxtails, stuff like that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, and that’s what those birds key in on in this marsh.

Mike Bisigalope: They love widgeon grass.

Ramsey Russell: You know, somebody told me it was so dry in southwest Louisiana last year that some of the wells were pumping saline, pumping saltwater.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, that’s true. They were pumping saltwater.

Ramsey Russell: That’s getting rough right there now.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, it was bad. I drove my truck from this road right here, Plum, probably what, a mile and a half to the next highway over there in my truck, cut across the marsh and drove it through the mud boat ditches and came out on the other road over there. That’s how dry it was.

Ramsey Russell: My goodness, that’s gracious.

Mike Bisigalope: It was bad.

Ramsey Russell: What about habitat loss? Like a lot of folks hear about Louisiana losing a lot of marsh habitat. I believe today at breakfast, which was, man, was that an amazing breakfast. I got to take a side note to tell everybody about the breakfast we had, because it was fried egg and some real grits and a piece of toast topped with bacon-wrapped quail. I do like my bacon and sausage, but that bacon-wrapped quail was pretty good, before I could really finish my quail, here came the bacon and the sausage and the gravy. Somewhere at breakfast today somebody was telling me one of these refuges down here, he had heard that one of the wildlife refuges has lost 50,000 acres or something of marsh habitat. Just one refuge. Have you seen a change in the amount of marsh habitat you all got because of some of the stuff going on down here?

Mike Bisigalope: I’ll tell you what I’ve seen. Yeah, we have so much debris in this marsh now, and I think it messed up some of the habitat. But you know, really, your mottled ducks and your tree ducks are the only ducks we have here in the summertime. A few teal stay out here and nest.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: I’ve seen some female teal with little ones.

Ramsey Russell: Blue wings.

Mike Bisigalope: Blue wings.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what I’d guess. I’ve heard those reports in Texas too. Some of the blue wings are hanging back and starting to nest down here.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Would it surprise you to learn? Because now I’m following up on you, talking about the warmer winters. And I hate the word global warming because that’s a political statement. But let’s face it, it’s warmer winters. All the way up to Canada, It’s warmer. And I’ve got a friend right across the Texas line over here, Mr. Gene Campbell, who is an amazing duck hunter and habitat manager. But he’s also just real attuned to nature as a bird watcher and stuff. And he told me that the first time he remembers seeing those whistling ducks, the black-bellies and the fulvous, was back in the early 1980s. And he said, you know, their population is just booming. He said there are more now than there were back then. And so we got to talking about it on this podcast here and I later got reports that there are sightings of these black-bellied whistling ducks now in Delaware and Ohio. There’s a breeding pair up in Ontario, Canada. Their range is beginning to expand, and I think that may be a function of these warmer winters.

Mike Bisigalope: I’ll tell you what, I’ve heard a lot of people complain. They have ponds in their yards, and they’re just covered with them. I thought about four, five, one hundred, a thousand. They’re just taking over everything.

Ramsey Russell: Will they stay here? Like we got a front hitting tonight. Today was in the 1960s out in the blind. Tomorrow’s going to be in the high 1930s. Will that be the front that pushes them completely away, or will some of them just hang back?

Mike Bisigalope: They hang back. We’ll kill them till the last day of the season.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Even the fulvous. [**:00:56:23].

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Mike Bisigalope: We’ve killed them all through the season. They don’t really leave. I don’t think they did.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Mike Bisigalope: May be, oh, I’m sure some of them do.

Ramsey Russell: I know they do. They go down to parts of Mexico, all the way down to southern Mexico and parts of Guatemala and things like that. They got to. But I’m surprised to learn that some of them will overwinter here or just live year-round here.

Mike Bisigalope: They live year-round here.

Ramsey Russell: This morning, I kept hearing them call squealers. And back home, squealers are wood ducks.

Mike Bisigalope: We call them squealers.

Ramsey Russell: You call them squealers. And I knew they were dark, yet they were just black shadows. I mean, they came from the south. And we quacked to them with a mallard call, and they hooked tight. They’re sitting there whistling at us the whole time. My hearing’s bad, but I could hear them. They hooked up, came right into the decoy. But I was shocked when Char went out there and grabbed one, and I saw his belly. I just assumed they were black bellies. I was not expecting to shoot a fulvous whistling duck. Can you believe that? Of all the species in the world I’ve shot, I’ve shot a lot of fulvous down in South America. I’m probably gonna go to Hades for the number I’ve shot down there. I’ve shot some in Africa. Shot a pair in Mexico last year. But I’ve never shot a fulvous whistler in the United States of America. There are people out there that collect the species, and that’s almost always the last one. And they’ve got it, because this part of the world is not a lot of access for just anybody to come. You got to be invited into this part of the world. So lot of people go to Florida and try to get them down there, but that’s it. Their range is Gulf coastal, and that’s it. And just seasonally speaking, mostly. I patted Braden on the back and said, “We can go. I’ve shot a nice surprise bird. I’m ready to roll. You don’t matter if I shoot another duck today.”

Mike Bisigalope: I shot one the day before yesterday, the governor and I, and it was banded.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Had a band on it. Yeah.

“I told Braden, ‘I bet his band got caught up.’ Never found that bird.”

Ramsey Russell: Well, he said they band a lot of these. We sailed one, and Char gave it the devil. In fact, she got up on that far side of that pond, and all we could see in the dark was the splashes and her running. I couldn’t see her or the duck, but I could see splashes. And all of a sudden, she started coming back. I said, “There you go, girl. You done caught the other one.” And about that time, about 10 feet in front of her, I saw that duck start flapping. I said, “Oh, she’s still giving hot chase.” He dove under. We never found that bird. I told Braden, “I bet his band got caught up on something down in the water. That’s what happened. I guarantee you that duck’s band because I didn’t get him.” I heard they do band quite a few birds. What other species do you all see a lot of bands on down here?

Mike Bisigalope: Blue-winged teal. I helped them band.

Ramsey Russell: Paul Link.

Mike Bisigalope: Paul Link. I helped Paul a lot. We band speckle bellies.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Mike Bisigalope: We’ll band mallards, pintails. At Rockefeller, we banded a pintail, I don’t remember when, three years ago, I want to say. And Paul will tell you they tracked him all the way to Russia.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Mike Bisigalope: Stayed in Russia like three weeks and flew back into the States.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Mike Bisigalope: We banded a speckle belly at the Cameron Prairie right here. Flew to Arkansas the next morning, came back down here that afternoon, and flew back to Arkansas the next morning.

Ramsey Russell: He couldn’t make up his mind.

Mike Bisigalope: Couldn’t make up his mind.

Ramsey Russell: He was probably just trying to avoid getting shot.

Mike Bisigalope: And Paul will tell you that. And then we banded a little blue-wing a year before last. She went to North Dakota. She stayed there the whole summer. When they started tracking her, following her coming back, she stopped in the central United States in a lake. Stayed there 30 minutes, got up at midnight, and a little 14-year-old boy killed her in Silsbee, Texas, the next morning.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, isn’t that crazy?

Mike Bisigalope: I’m telling you. First duck he ever killed was a band. She had a radar deal.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I love seeing that kind of stuff. That’s what the amazing technology, how and why these ducks move like they do is just crazy.

Mike Bisigalope: I just can’t understand what that pintail went to do in Russia.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s a good question. I don’t know. Now, I have shot pintail as far away as Pakistan. You know, it’s like you’ve got the Northern Hemisphere, and I’ve seen shovelers and gadwalls and pintails and mallards in every country in the Northern Hemisphere I’ve hunted. They don’t see those boundaries. I bet that duck had a bearing for Alaska is what it was.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it was a drake. I bet he followed a girl over there, what he did. She would go over that part of world. I have heard stories. There was a pintail hen shot in the state of Mississippi 15, 20 years ago that had been banded in Japan. What we think it did is it probably went to nest up in Alaska and then just came down a different flyway that year. I mean, that’s crazy.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Well, it’s a big old world, isn’t it?

Mike Bisigalope: It is.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think happened this morning? I was looking at the logbook last night. Man, it was banging. This morning was good, it was duck hunting. Some blinds did better than others, but it was a little bit slower than what you all had expected it to be. What do you think happened to those ducks?

Mike Bisigalope: Every time we get a thunderstorm, these ducks get up, and the rice fields are like two and a half, three miles north of here across the Intracoastal. Well, they get up and they go to the rice field, and when it clears up, they’ll start making their way back. It happens every time like that.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t you wonder how a duck knows?

Mike Bisigalope: They know.

Ramsey Russell: He knows there’s new water, there’s shallow water. For the time being this morning, there’s gonna be a piece of that field underwater that hadn’t been, and I’m gonna be able to access some new food. How does he know that?

Mike Bisigalope: I don’t know what they know.

Ramsey Russell: They know.

Mike Bisigalope: I was talking to a buddy of mine. He’s a stockholder. He hunted like I seen this morning. And yesterday there, it was slow. He said this morning, five guys, hunters in the blind, and they all killed their limit in one blind. He said, “The ducks left you all.” He called me. I said, “Yeah, they left us last night in that thunderstorm.” He said, “Well, they were in the rice fields this morning.”

Ramsey Russell: How far is that from here?

Mike Bisigalope: Probably northeast of here, probably three miles.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, I didn’t realize we were that close to it.

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah, they’re right across the Intracoastal.

Ramsey Russell: Because they back up right to the marsh, don’t they?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, they back up to the marsh.

Ramsey Russell: That reminds me, somebody told me that virtually all of southwest Louisiana. Virtually all of it. Not all of it, but most of it is held by about four or five families. Is it still like that? It’s like, not the house lot, but these big. They said, you know, you could look at southwest Louisiana, and there are just four or five companies or families that own virtually the whole thing that are related to all from back in the day.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, you got Miami Corporation and Vermilion Corporation and Sweet Lake. Sweet Lake Land and all. They own a bunch of property and different. There’s a couple more.

Ramsey Russell: When you say a bunch of property, what would be a typical land holding for something like that? 10,000 acres or a million acres?

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, no, we got it. We have 11 sections over here. Miami. I don’t know what they own. Probably they own a bunch of property here, and they own a bunch of property in St. Mary Parish. I don’t know how many thousand acres they own.

Ramsey Russell: Did you all ever figure out how does anybody know how this club came to be in 1932? I know it’s owned by one of the big corporations, but how did it come to be to become a duck camp that’s now 90 years in business?

Mike Bisigalope: I think Mr. Wynn Hawkins, the one that started the camp in Grand Cheniere when he was down here with the army, and he loved the place, and he just opened up a hunt. He used to lease from Dr. Martin Miller in Grand Cheniere.

Ramsey Russell: I’m staying in the Wynn Hawkins room. That’s named after the founder. He must have been in the army. He must have been the connection to Eisenhower coming down here.

Mike Bisigalope: He was.

Ramsey Russell: He must have been way up in the army.

Mike Bisigalope: I think he was.

Ramsey Russell: To get his old buddy Ike down here.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, my first year, 17 years old, I took Mr. Wynn Hawkins every day. Every single day.

Ramsey Russell: What was he like to hunt with?

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, he was fun. He had two guns. He had a modified. He had a choke them hot dog. He’d roll them.

Ramsey Russell: He brought two guns to the blind.

Mike Bisigalope: Every day.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Every day. I can tell you some stories with me and him, man.

Ramsey Russell: Tell me some stories.

Mike Bisigalope: One day, it was slow, and it was slower, and he was hunting with me. And, well, he hunted with me every day. And it was all just looking around. After a while, I looked over there to the south. They had five pintails coming probably 10 feet off the water. And Mr. Hawkins always had a five-gallon. Back then, it was platform blinds. And he had a five-gallon can he sat on with a cushion on it. And he had a bad habit of putting his guns across the blind, the top of the platform blind. And boy, I was looking. After a while, I looked, and when I saw them, I got excited. I said, “Mr. Hawkins, five!” And he loved shooting pintails.

Ramsey Russell: I do too.

Mike Bisigalope: I said, “Mr. Hawkins, five pintails!” So boy, he went to jump up, and he was looking for his gun. One of those guns hit him behind the head. He fell back to his knees. He jumped back up. The other one hit him behind the head. He fell back to his knees. So I went to shooting. I killed three for three, you know. He said, “Son, what’d you kill?” I said, “Well, Mr. Hawkins, I killed three.” He said, “You little so-and-so. Don’t you ever tell them hunters you the one that killed them ducks.” That’s a true story. I hunted with him every day, every day, every day, every day. The first time. The first time I hunted here, the next year, he turned me loose. Can you shoot his ducks. Oh, we had some time with him.

Ramsey Russell: What is you all’s favorite way to cook duck down here?

Mike Bisigalope: My wife can cook some duck. What we do, we cut the breast open, and she stuffs it with mustard greens and garlic. And she’ll pot roast that sucker. Bone. The meat falls off the bone. Brown, brown gravy. And that’s how I like my duck with mustard greens.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve never heard of such. Never heard of such at all. Like it?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Mr. Fred, do you have a favorite way to eat duck?

Fred Stewart: Yeah, I like the way they cook it here. It’s just pot-roasted dark gravy.

Ramsey Russell: You know, anytime you ask somebody in this part of the world how they cook a duck, it always says, make a gravy. Just cook it. They put it in a pot and cook it down. Everybody down here makes a gravy.

Mike Bisigalope: And they put it with rice. They put that gravy with rice. Ramsey Russell: Cooked with rice. You know, I’ve always said that nobody, no duck hunter on earth that I know gets up and goes out. Whether it’s an easy walk or a hard boat ride, nobody goes out just to watch the sunrise. We all want to shoot ducks, but there’s so much more. Just in the less than 24 hours I’ve been in this camp, there’s so much more to duck hunting. And in the context of this camp, this hunting club, a lot of it had to do with your stuff, Fred. I mean, the food and the service and the hospitality. Do you recognize that? Like, the hunters come in real happy because they had a great morning. They come in kind, well, you know, it was all right. Do you see that, how important that is?

Fred Stewart: Very important. People are happy with the food, and they’re happy with the service. That’s the main thing. That’s what Oak Grove was all about, the service. This wasn’t just plain service. But you won’t find it the same at other clubs right around here.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What would the remainder of the season be like now? What do you expect? Because you all a pretty darn good start.

Mike Bisigalope: I hope these two weeks we’re in the break. I hope we get some ducks down here. If we don’t, it’s gonna be tough.

Ramsey Russell: Gonna be a tough season.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How hard is it to kill specs? You all shoot many specs? Somebody shot one this morning, but I’ve heard they. Somebody was saying, telling me they give us a fly, a high fly over most days, they go into the rice fields.

Mike Bisigalope: Before Rita, we were killing. It wasn’t much. We’d kill like one goose a year at Oak Grove, but they were lit in the marsh different places, and whatever they were eating, the saltwater killed it. And since Rita, we ain’t had no specs.

Ramsey Russell: That’s been a long time now. It’s been 19 years.

Mike Bisigalope: Now we’ll kill them here and there, you know, flying south or north. But it ain’t like it used to be.

Ramsey Russell: Do you all still go out and duck hunt? Do you all get to go out and duck hunt yourselves? I mean, do you like to duck hunt after all these years you’ve been doing it?

Mike Bisigalope: I take my grandkids whenever, on our property, or if we get a day off over here. The guys get to take one or two of their grandkids with them. I like duck hunting. I could do it every day. My favorite time of the year is September for teal season. I love that teal season.

Ramsey Russell: Man, there’s so many people I hear in this part of the world that say that is the new duck season. Those birds are coming in.

Mike Bisigalope: Every day. I mean, we do well.

Ramsey Russell: You all shoot blue wings throughout the season down here too, don’t you?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, we’ll kill blue wings till the last day.

Ramsey Russell: We saw some this morning. They were hard-headed. They didn’t want to come in.

Mike Bisigalope: Now, when it gets real cool, you swear they all left. You won’t see a blue wing. The minute it starts warming up, you’ll start killing a few.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be dang.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You know, I had this conversation last night about hunting pressure. So many people in the United States go out on every square inch to shoot a duck on a constant basis. Hunting pressure is real. It really makes these ducks spooky. A buddy of mine told me that last duck season in Arkansas, he hunts rice fields. He told me within four or five days of the season opening, he felt like those ducks had gone completely nocturnal statewide. How did you all manage hunting pressure on this camp? You all got a great program.

Mike Bisigalope: I’ll tell you. Well, one thing about it, we don’t put our blinds close together. Now, this morning, they sounded close because when it’s calm, they’ll sound.

Ramsey Russell: Now, we were off in no man’s land. I didn’t hear nobody.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah, but, you know, ducks learn the marsh, and they learn how to get in between the blinds and them potholes and stuff. There’s four or five people that have told me, “How you all do it every day? Hunt the same blind and kill ducks?” It’s always been that way. When we hold a lot of ducks, there are a lot of areas we don’t hunt, and that’s where we get our shooting from.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean, if those birds have got somewhere between the blinds that they can lay up without getting pressured, that is a form of refuge, a sanctuary.

Mike Bisigalope: That’s what they do.

Ramsey Russell: And then one day, if they’re hanging around, they’ll make a mistake. Come over them decoys.

Mike Bisigalope: Oh yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They’ll forget.

Mike Bisigalope: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: The weather changes, or the sun will be in their eyes or something. They’ll come right through there, you know?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, you know, ducks make mistakes. But you know what surprised me? We left the boathouse this morning at 5:30 to 5:40, depending on how long a drive you had. And at 9 o’clock, Braden’s alarm went off. Boom. No more shooting, no matter what. That’s it.

Mike Bisigalope: That counts a lot too. You know, you got a lot of hunters that hunt till 12 o’clock to 1 o’clock. We get out of the blind at 9, them ducks get to rest. And, you know, we don’t overdo it. And we don’t hunt in the afternoons either.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. If you think about it, in a 24-hour period, you’re only hunting two and a half hours.

Mike Bisigalope: Right.

Ramsey Russell: And the blinds are spread out, so there’s a lot of marsh birds can go to. But they’re not hearing gunshots for more than two and a half hours. They’ve got 22 and a half hours of having it to themselves. Do you believe that makes a difference? How long has that rule been in place?

Mike Bisigalope: It’s been in place since I’ve been here.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Do you feel like back in the day when you started here, you could talk about 40 ducks on the bow every day?

Mike Bisigalope: Every day.

Ramsey Russell: So there is a general decline in waterfowl hunting productivity down here?

Mike Bisigalope: I’ve been seeing a decline now, these last five or six years, I can see it every year just doing this.

Ramsey Russell: Getting worse.

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Is it more habitat or weather, do you think?

Mike Bisigalope: I think it’s the weather.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I do too.

Mike Bisigalope: I think it’s the weather.

Ramsey Russell: I think it’s a lot of changes going on. I really do. Mr. Fred, what’s your favorite duck?

Fred Stewart: I like the pintail.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You like to hunt them or eat them? Which one?

Fred Stewart: Either way.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Fred Stewart: To me, they’re all good. But, you know, this area is a big area for bird watchers.

Ramsey Russell: It sure is.

Fred Stewart: They’re all over at times down here. In fact, right here in the front where this tree is, where we parked out here, remember a few years ago, you got all those birds over here? Parakeets from South America.

Ramsey Russell: You’re kidding.

Fred Stewart: Michael was asking me, “What are those?” I said, “They’re parakeets.” They were all over for two days. I mean, you couldn’t even hear out there with so many of them.

Ramsey Russell: Was that after one of those storm events or something?

Mike Bisigalope: I guess they were here.

Ramsey Russell: Golly. I never dreamed to see it.

Fred Stewart: And a couple of years ago, we had those pigeons, some racing pigeons.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Fred Stewart: One stayed here. You know what? He stayed here for about a week. He was out there, and I put some food out on the kitchen porch. He came up on the pedestal there. I said, “You care to fly over there to that yard?” He must have understood. He flew over there, went around the tree, and came back. I said, “Well, that wasn’t too great.” Then he went around the whole building and came right back. But, you know, two days later, he was gone.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Fred Stewart: I guess storms or whatever bring them in.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Fred Stewart: Yeah. On those races.

Ramsey Russell: One last question, then I’m gonna wrap up. Do the members enjoy this camp year-round, or do they come here just for duck season? I mean, do they come down here for crawfish boils or fishing or anything out in this marsh?

Mike Bisigalope: They come during duck season. In the summer, Fred will get some of the stockholders coming to fish.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Mike Bisigalope: Saltwater fishing. They’ll stay here.

Ramsey Russell: Do they go out of the same boathouse, or do they stay here and go elsewhere?

Mike Bisigalope: They go to Calcasieu Lake. They drive there.

Ramsey Russell: Did you grow up hunting and fishing in that lake?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Big Lake. Is it really the big trout fishery they say it is?

Mike Bisigalope: It is, but it’s like duck hunting. You go one day and limit out in 10 minutes, then the next day, it takes you almost all day.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What’s the biggest trout you ever caught down there?

Mike Bisigalope: Ah, five pounds, maybe six. I love them speckled trout.

Ramsey Russell: I do too.

Fred Stewart: I thought that redfish had been big. I’ve been over with some of the owners here.
Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.
Fred Stewart: Whenever their clients say, “Well, they don’t want to go, Fred, take your crew,” we go over there.

Mike Bisigalope: I’ve seen redfish. As a guide, they were like jumping everywhere. Yeah. I said, “God darn.”
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you know, I really do. I like to catch a big redfish, but I like to eat the rat reds.
Fred Stewart: That’s the one, I like the small drum.
Ramsey Russell: Small drum, just whatever the minimum keeping size is. Last time I fished for them, I brought home two gallons of fillets, and my wife and I ate them in about a week and a half, you know, because we just love them. We blacken them, fry them, grill them, and do stuff like that.
Mike Bisigalope: I love to catch them speckled trout. I need a light along the Calcasieu River.
Ramsey Russell: How do you do that?
Mike Bisigalope: You got a light over the river, and they’ll just start popping, and you just throw your rig out there and catch them.
Ramsey Russell: My goodness. When do you all start catching crawfish down here?
Mike Bisigalope: November, December.
Ramsey Russell: Really? That early?

Mike Bisigalope: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It seems like that’s one of the offsets of a warmer winter. It seems like those crawfish are producing earlier and earlier.
Mike Bisigalope: Well, let me tell you, the crew that fish across the highway right here, they just pulled up in September. They fished all summer long, and it was easy to peel.
Fred Stewart: They caught all across the road too. Everywhere, all over.
Mike Bisigalope: When it rains in the summertime, you’ll see them all over the highway, just crossing the roads. But they caught a lot of crawfish out here this year.
Ramsey Russell: Well, we’re fixing to go out there to this five-stand shooting range, go shoot a few targets, have a good time. Last two questions I’ve got. What will be for supper tonight, and what will be for breakfast in the morning?
Mike Bisigalope: Tonight, you have pot-roasted duck.
Ramsey Russell: Oh boy.
Fred Stewart: We’ll have a few who don’t care for duck, but they’ll have Cornish hen.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Fred Stewart: Roasted Cornish hen. And tomorrow, it’ll be fried chicken and potato salad.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, real fried chicken. The way I’ve heard the fried chicken described, best ever. And I’m like, now wait a minute, because I’m a fried chicken snob. So, the best-ever has got to be something.
Mike Bisigalope: Ella makes it. She does a good job on her chicken.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, I’d like to thunder. You all are busy. You all got a house full of folks to take care of and a respected job. And I appreciate you all very, very much for joining me today and giving me some insight into Oak Grove Hunt Club. I very much appreciate you all.
Mike Bisigalope: All right, pleasure.

Fred Stewart: Thank you.
Ramsey Russell: Folks thank you all for listening us this episode of Mojo Duck Season Somewhere podcast down here at Oak Grove Hunt and Camp. What parish are we in?
Mike Bisigalope: Cameron.
Ramsey Russell: Cameron Parish, Louisiana. See you next time.