EP 572. Sparkleberry Swamp Legend (Part 2)

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where today we are continuing our conversation with Mr. Toy McCord, legends of the Sparkleberry Swamp out of South Carolina. Mr. Toy, last episode you were wrapping up, we were talking about the competitive nature of sports, you played baseball, you played football, you were your number one competitor and you know I’ve always figured athletes that could hit a fastball could kill a duck pretty hand, at least the ones I’ve seen sure could, but you know what kind of borrowing from that same parallel is like anybody that can figure out that picture, what he’s going to throw next and hit that ball and get ready for that pitch can sure figure out a duck too and you ended up last episode talking about how you would work those ducks in, you would watch the flock, call to them and look for just any one of them to respond and then you start talking to him, not them.

Toy McCord: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Continue on that conversation, I think that’s one of those tried and true experiences that you just learn as you go on how the art of breaking ducks down.

Toy McCord: Well, it’s trial and error, I noticed one day that we had a pair of ducks that was going to light outside the decoys against the woods and I think we were in the 54 hole then, in Sparkleberry, me and Lex, we had 4 or 5 people with us and those ducks was going to light, so I saw they were going to light in the woods, so I shot way off to the right into the timber because the echo was there, echo was blowing, the wind was blowing back toward us. Those ducks flared up and turning, come straight over us, we killed both of them. Now, I’ve done that on 3, 4, 5 occasions and I did that on the lake one day. Well, I did it in Arkansas and I had a doctor, hunting with me and the ducks were going light way off from us and I shot and we were in 2 boats and the ducks came up and we killed both of them and the doc said, I never seen that before and Lex on the other boat said, well, I have. So that’s one thing, but you got to get to where to win, trial and error. And back then, shells were 15 cent, they weren’t 80 cent like they are now. But it worked and I was dedicated, so I tried different things, I saw ducks when they light, they lit, I shot at them to get them up, just to get them up, then I highballed them and they turned and came in, but the wind was blowing so hard, they didn’t know where the shots come from, but I knew that, but I highballed hard as I could, I’d hit 20 note calls right here and any single note to make a duck wobble, I just use that note. I mean, so many times I said, peek, while he’s breaking every time, never do anything else, until he gets there, instead of saying peek, like you calling in a contest, 20 note call and he breaks on the first call, why blow the other 19, really blow 5, blow the 5 note, if the short, quick one’s working, use a short, quick one, if you lose him, drag him back, if you break on that, drag him back, but you – why give up? I mean, you might not see the –

“Never give up, you can’t give up on it”

Ramsey Russell: You can’t get, like your daddy said, never give up, you can’t give up on it –

Toy McCord: You never give up, you might not see –

Ramsey Russell: But you can’t talk the same thing to every single duck or every single flock.

Toy McCord: No, sir. When that pintail comes over, you might – you don’t use that, use something else. That wigeon does quack too, people don’t know that, but they got a little quack in, you can quack them, gadwalls quack all the time, you can quack them right down, but the black duck and the mallards are – black most times, a little more hoarse than a mallards, but it’s about the same, but the diving ducks, I use something with them on the same duck call, with my same mallard call. Now I have a mallard call, a goose call and a whistle with me all the time and the widgeon and the pintails, I do a lot of whistling, the teal, the green winged teal, the blue winged teal don’t do that good, they do better with the call and they might do the green winged teal or the teal call, they got the quack, that can be used, but everything’s moot, you don’t need any of that if you know where they want to go.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: You got to make out, that you – When you figure, you got to figure, if you know where they want to go and you got to know you can’t do so much, you’ll call them away from you. If they want to come here anyway, then hit it one time and shut up.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Toy McCord: Until they get away. If they don’t look like breaking back, then hit one, whichever one was doing at the same time, don’t look at the rest of them, call that one there, because he’s doing what he –

Ramsey Russell: Well, I love those hunts where I can call a little bit, finish him and then just shut up and watch the show while he comes in, but not all of them do that. There’s times one of my, seemed like as long as it’s working, I do it, it’s just, they start coming in, you get that soft mac, mac, he just keeps kind of fluttering closer to you, he’s only getting closer.

Toy McCord: I just thought of saying, you just let –

Ramsey Russell: Like a lot of guys hit that when they first try a call, they try to hit that mac, that one big note and I’m always looking for the low end, the mac, that real low end about the volume of a duck talking to himself that I can sometimes, that’s how I like to finish him ducks, get him right there, but every time you’re –

Toy McCord: You are not supposed to tell anybody that now, so don’t tell anybody what I’m getting ready to see. Yeah, that quack, you got to start off with that when you’re talking to people, okay, but let’s say this, let’s say he’s coming and you got and you say you give him a kee – and then he’s coming and he’s been breaking off on, so you just say kee, kee, again –

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: Stay with that same call – Forget the rest of that one – and not loud, check in that duck, one of that ducks coming to that, that’s the duck you want.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. I’ve got, I do a tut, tut in a call, I don’t do all the real good sounding feed chatter that a lot of folks can do and one time my son asked me, what is that? I go, well its working, son, you’ve killed ducks with it your whole life and it’s just –

Toy McCord: You mean you will go – instead of chuck – I don’t do much of that.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t either.

Toy McCord: It’s just that, when they get that close, I am going to shoot them.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: I got them anyway. But I might just say a couple of – if you fly across my head, if I don’t know right where they are, instead of hitting hard, I might do that, but as I’ve gotten older, where I can’t hear as good when I’m with my son or with one of his friends, Patrick Ross, if Patrick will say, I heard him grunt, that means the duck that’s there is close enough to hear. TJ that’s my son, Toy Jr and he’s very good at all this, when he takes that little earplug and sticks it in his ear, I know they close, but I watch him, if they see those ducks I can’t see now, they hear them, the ones I can’t hear, I hadn’t heard a chuckle in 4 years but I can hear the quacks, I can hear that tone, I don’t hear the chuckle now. So I watch them when the ducks get away, if I don’t see the duck, I watch them, watch these eyes, then I know where to look, but if I see him put that earplug in, I know we getting ready to do something. And I get really, dear, but I’m a good long range caller, I can break the duck a long way, there’s some of them you’re not going to break no matter what, they know where they’re going, whatever. So that’s why I say, everybody says, we’ll call the lead duck, yeah, look at the lead up when you’re calling because he’s leading the flock, but if that back one breaks, I can think of a 100 times, I broke the back duck off a drove of 15 or more, yeah and that’s the only one that came.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: But he saw and he came, but I was glad he came.

Ramsey Russell: Well, if one of them will break, he may pull more of the flock with him.

Toy McCord: Well, normally it does. Normally, especially if they’re in the flock. Now, when you get to where – this is another thing, you got 8 ducks coming over, mallards coming over and they flying erratic, you see them go up, they are flying and you see them come back, they flying erratic. You know what they’re doing, they’re chasing that hen, there’s 8 green, 7, 8 greenheads chasing that hen, you might as well throw the greenhead call out when try to call the hen. And if you get the shot at the end, you shoot the hen first, which you don’t like to do, but sometimes the greenheads are right on them.

Ramsey Russell: Perhaps.

Toy McCord: But what you want to do is you got to call that hen, and if the greenheads winning, you got to make them pay the price.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. You mentioned, change the subject, you mentioned last time that you had done some guiding. At what point did you decide to turn your love for the swamp and duck hunting into a livelihood? How old were you and how’d you end up doing that?

“I was doing things that the older men couldn’t even do.”

Toy McCord: Well, my daddy said, Toy, I got some customers coming down, I need to take them hunting, daddy, I’ll take them and I was a young boy, but I was successful and I found it. I was doing things that the older men couldn’t even do.

Ramsey Russell: Like what?

Toy McCord: Like killing the duck and taking it serious and doing the hard work, like pulling the people around in the boats, getting them in the right spot, see – play to win, even if you didn’t call, play to win and that’s so important when you set decoys up to where you want to shoot the duck. Some people says, put the decoys right here in front of us. Well, that’s good, if there ain’t nothing going on, but the wind’s blowing 40 yards, this way, let’s put it up 30 yards, because if you watch them, everything is coming off, is coming at us and they get about 30 yards from us, they’re breaking down low, then they’re pulling off, we want to get them out on that pool. We are not worried about them lightning those decoys. We want to get them, they’re coming in and break, we want to shoot them where they’re breaking off at, right there and then like I say, if there’s big trees around, you want to get on the best side of the big trees instead of, they won’t light in the trees, then if the wind’s blowing a certain way, so you might be 30 yards from the decoys, so you’re not always sitting on the decoys, but the decoys I think are very important. Now, late in season, they’ll flare off a decoy.

Ramsey Russell: Oh boy.

Toy McCord: They were really, I don’t use many mechanics, robo ducks much, sometimes I do a lot of places you can’t use them anymore, but they’ll flare off them big time too. Once you see them flaring off them, you know you’re hunting, this is important, you know you’re hunting the same ducks that’s been there every day.

Ramsey Russell: Stale ducks, yeah.

Toy McCord: They’re local duck. They came in November and they there in January, they are tough duck. You can get them early and you can get them in a big win or something when they can’t hear good, something like that. But if you cutting those everyday duck, you got to change your calling technique to very little calling and you might want to rearrange your decoys from 30 in the spread, the 2 over there, 4 there and 1 there.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

“I missed 3 canvasback on the water this year”

Toy McCord: To get him to come in here. When you say decoys, if I’m going diving duck hunting, I put 60 in the boat, but I always carry a couple mallards even if I’m going where there’s no mallards and I always take a wigeon decoy or 2 in case I see wigeon in there and I like a few gadwalls. The gadwalls in, you can put them with the mallards, they blend in well. But the diving duck, we have a lot of ring necked down here, so we got a lot of ring necked decoys, we use them. But now when I go out west, I take my canvasback decoys and even take 4 or 5 goldeneye decoys, stuff like that and what you were saying earlier about hunting certain kind of days you can enjoy it more now instead of killing 30, but one guy told me, he said we going after real duck today, they were talking about mallards. I said, well, you all do good, we and TJ when he’s going to try to kill us 2 or 3 canvasback drakes and maybe get a goldeneye and maybe a wigeon or something and we go hunt that way. I mean, we like now, we want – we saw a pair of blue winged teal, we saw him yesterday fishing in the swamp, TJ Said, daddy, if this was duck season, I’d be right there with them to deal it, I said, I know you would, son. So that was a big, beautiful blue wing drake, he said, if we get him, I said, yeah, we would. We enjoy that now, it’s not necessarily killing. If I’m around the ducks, I can kill the limit, okay. He can shoot like 5, he can shoot like I used to shoot when I could see good, but so, I tell you the truth, I missed 3 canvasback on the water this year, I’m talking about 15 yard, I tried to shoot the 2 drakes at one time over the head, I didn’t even see any bullets hit the water and I had 50 out there, but I had them 3 right there and I missed them, I said, TJ, I am sick and tired of you all telling me, good shot, Mr. Toy, him and his buddies, every time something falls, good shot, Mr. Toy.

Ramsey Russell: Nice shot, Mr. Toy.

Toy McCord: Yeah. How about this, though? We were sitting there and we killed 18 and whatever and we needed 5 or 6 more and they said, well, good thing, Mr. Toy’s getting them and I said, yeah, I said, we got 18 duck here on the boat, I just counted my shells and I got 21 shells left. I’ve killed 18 ducks with 4 shots, every time I go to shoot, you all crumpling me. So it ain’t me shooting and I appreciate you all saying that and I asked old boy, I said, Johnson, why don’t you all hunt? He said, Mr. Toy, when we were kids you used to drag us everywhere. I said, well, you all embarrassing me now, I mean, you all make me feel like an envelope I mean, you all won’t even let me get up and put decoys out, you won’t let me get out and drag the boat. He said, no, you drug us around for years, we going to drag you around now.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: I said, okay. But guess what they let me do, every trip, I can take my wallet.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, that’s right. You can buy the gas, buy dinner.

Toy McCord: Yeah, but they take care of the old man now, they really do. Well and I can still go now, I can still go.

Ramsey Russell: But get back on to, how long did you guide duck for?

Toy McCord: Okay, I’m sorry to get off that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s all right.

Toy McCord: I got doing that, then when I was playing ball, doing that, I said, about the end of time to go back to play ball, I was about broke and I didn’t want to get another job because I wasn’t, it wasn’t in me, I didn’t want to work 3 or 4 months. I said, I came to the landing one day and the game warden said to me, he says, you got – We used to catch 10 stripers when I leave and I fish doing the stripers school and I fish about every day there, I’d have my 10 and then the said, I got a bunch of people going, I don’t have any guys left, will you take them one day? I said, yeah, I’ll take 2, but I took them in a John boat, right? Guess what? We caught more than everybody. And they paid me, they paid me cash and they tipped me too and I said, this ain’t bad, I get to fish anyway, now I can buy my bait actually instead of borrowing money to buy bait. And so that’s when I started when I was playing ball in my 20s and I did that for a long time and then I got my guide license. First few years I wasn’t, I didn’t have a guide license, they’d pay me some cash and stuff to go, then I took my guide license, we had a bunch of people down here, they had classes and we got it and then when I don’t have my guide license. Now is it played out, about the last year of my marriage, my renewal came in and I didn’t get to look at it, it was put somewhere else and then when I saw it, the deadline was a day and a half too late and I went to him, explained right now I said, I’ve been doing this 50 years, 40 years, whatever, they said, I’m sorry, you’d have to retake the whole test now and I’d have to go for 2 or 3 weeks to take the test, a month, whatever, paid several thousand dollars to get the guide license, the thing I had for 30 something years. And so I decided not to do it, so what I do now is I take people fishing, hunting and I don’t take them for pay, that if they would like to go me to bring them some mops and brooms and some stuff, cleaning supplies, I can do that, that’s what I do for a living. It works really good.

“Ffor 30 years, you were guiding folks, since that fishing trip, what were some of the biggest challenges, taking paid clients out versus just taking you taking your friends, your buddies and the folks you normally hunted with, like lakes, what was the biggest differences in guiding versus just hunting with folks?”

Ramsey Russell: Well, for 30 years, you were guiding folks, since that fishing trip, what were some of the biggest challenges, taking paid clients out versus just taking you taking your friends, your buddies and the folks you normally hunted with, like lakes, what was the biggest differences in guiding versus just hunting with folks?

Toy McCord: It can be very stressful. Let’s say you going out of the – and this is where an old experienced guide is worth everything you pay him, at this time, I wasn’t experienced much like that. They came to Randolph’s. Day started off real good, I backed my pontoon boat in the water for daylight, but I had unhooked it before and I looked around back and there goes my boat floating across the lake, so I dive in off the pit dock and I caught up with it, then I was trying to figure out how to get in it, I had to crawl up on the mortar and crunch and I didn’t want nobody to see me, especially my guide party know what kind of idiot they had. So then I got to the dock and then get the man told me, says I went to get the bait out the pool we are here in that I had caught and put in the pool for my guide party, that I had caught and with it – he’d already sold them to 3 different customers, man, it had – so here I am with a guide party with no bait, so I call over across the lake to Harrison Jones, thank goodness, Harrison’s friends let to fishing into lakes, says, come on, I got you bait. I said, well, you give some bait and meet me out of the lake and I got and he poured some bait in there and all right, that was a catastrophe so far, then we went out there and then the wind got up like a hurricane. All right, so I’m fishing for stripers, we caught 2 or 3, but you couldn’t fish out there, so then I went to the freeze and I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I said, well, listen, we’re going to try this, I took them here and cut them up, put some layers on them and I put some little pieces of bait on there for some little fish, want to catch something before you know it, I had about 15 catfish, they were absolutely tickled. I said, the wind’s slowing down, you all want to go stripe fishing? They said, no, let’s stay here, so I looked out there, but I didn’t quit. Some of them old timers, when that wind got up, they just said, well, we got to go, they weren’t going to do nothing else, but I always took, like on the front of my boat. I had 8 rod holders on a pontoon boat, 8 rod holders for live bait, but I had 2 on the front, I would throw cut bait on the bottom, middle ways I had one, I dropped one at the bottom and pick it up a little bit, off the back I’d had 2 on the corner, so I fished 5 cut bait rods at the same time, I’m fishing 8. So I’m fishing look like a Christmas tree and everybody laugh about that, but I’d have some fish when we got the deal, but –

Ramsey Russell: Did you ever guide duck hunts?

Toy McCord: Oh, yeah. Yes, I did. I could guide every day doing that. I could still do that, but I don’t do that now. But I got –

Ramsey Russell: What were some of the special challenges and stressful moments? Because listen, so many young people want to be a duck guide to heck and heck with 8-5 job, I’m going to be a duck guide and get to duck hunt every day. I mean, is it that simple, Mr. Toys are just duck hunting every day or does it present its own set of challenges?

Toy McCord: It’s not that simple when you had ducks, now if you don’t want 4 or 5 ponds to take them in, you can say you can guide them in the pond, if you don’t have 4 or 5 ponds, you get to, you going to go roll, you ain’t make a living, because it’s tough and I’ll give you an example. My son and I decided we wanted to go across the lake where we grew up hunting, he wanted grass in the water, algal mats, hydrilla mats, duck should be everywhere. We went over there 4 times and one time never saw a duck, on a hydrilla mat and we could see out across the lake and the flats we can see for a mile and a half, never saw a duck all 4 trips, never fired our gun. Yeah, this is in between our trip, my son’s a travel nurse, so he gets 3 or 4 days off too, but we would come back and we tried it and we want to kill a duck there so bad, now that’s going where you want them to be instead of where they really are.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: Now let’s go up around the refuge line. If let’s say you guiding there, that’s the only place you can kill a duck, around here, 7 days a week, whatever, have a chance because you got the refuge there, now they lead the refuge, they fly into the ponds. Every once in a while want to break down and come in to those flats, but guess where everybody else is, in those flats.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: I mean, you can have, the flats are made for like 3 boats, 3 groups, there’ll be 13 groups there, don’t get to work, whatever, so if you’re guiding, think how stressful that is and the guys, you go and can’t get a shot and you might have seen them a day before and get there, they might be come around you and set up around you, because they heard this was a good place to hunt, the refugees there and they say that’s where the duck are or somebody looks on the social media and say somebody killed 24 ring neck, they hunt in the Santee, they didn’t tell him he was hunting his pond at Santee with all the ring neck are, he said they killed 24 ring neck.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: He got people from all over the state and out of state coming right down that area, right bit of refuge. So if you’re guiding now it’s very stressful and it’s not many people guiding out on the lake because you cannot be successful even if the weather is perfect. Because I’m telling you, it’s tough and when you can get on a hydrilla mat and the whole lake is 8 foot, 4 foot with grass everywhere and you can’t kill a duck and they up in the cornfields and stuff. It’s very disappointing.

“I cut my teeth on public land, that and you were telling me a story last episode remind me of – I ain’t been hunting forever, I’ve been hunting 35 years”

Ramsey Russell: When did public land hunting in your lifetime, when did public land hunting take a turn? And I see I cut my teeth on public land, that and you were telling me a story last episode remind me of – I ain’t been hunting forever, I’ve been hunting 35 years maybe and I cut my teeth on Arkansas public with a group of men, one of men reminded me of yourself, he was the patriarch of the bunch, he had been squirrel hunting, barefoot as a little boy all over that property and it was federal. And we’d go off into pitch black and little jon boats holding lights and flashlights and he knew the wood like the back of his hands, knew just where to turn and where to cut through and where to bust through the thickets and where to go where he wanted to go and long story short, if we shot, say we left at 5 this morning and we shot some shooting, this was 35 years ago, if we shot, that implied we had to get up an hour or 2 early the next morning because he felt like folks going to come in on us and if we shot again, we had to get up midnight, I can remember pitching the last decoy at 2 in the morning and laying down on that cold bottom of that metal boat and sleeping, watching stars until daylight and shooting time, it just – but that was a long time ago, it ain’t nothing like the stories you hear now. But folk would come in and he was always like it and I learned so much from him on – to this day, it defined how I want to duck hunt, back in those days, how I want ducks to behave when I want to shoot ducks, but when did it really take a turn for the worse, anywhere, what would you say? I mean, was it any particular, anything that happened or something that happened or a timeline, was it social media? What was it?

Toy McCord: Down here, we had the ducks in a swamp called Pocotaligo Swamp between Manning and Sumter, we had thousands of mallards and they were there even after the season, in February, they were there, we had them. Then we had 2 straight years of very warm weather and no high water, low water and that made, we lost – From then on the next year, no matter what you go and up on our code, I think they open a big refuge up on the northeast coast somewhere around New Jersey, so that stopped some ducks. But we had, I’m trying to think when that was, that was good all through college and after that, so I must have been in my 50s when it started, really into getting into this, see different amount of ducks, you can still kill ducks, but I would say in the last 20 years, 15, 20 years, the biggest day I had in mallards in the last 10 to 15 years, me and my buddy and TJ killed 11 one morning and we let a hand get out for our limited, now and we killed 11. But I’d seen them the day before and they were up around 87 flat, but I didn’t go to 87 flat because they were flying back to us, I went to the breakout hole, we killed them there. And since then you’d go and you’d kill 3 or something, then most of your hunting came out on the open water, so we noticed we were seeing a lot, to get some shooting, we had to buy some diving duck decoys and then everything that was happening down here was more conducive to the diving duck, you used to go to the coast and see wigeon everywhere, but I’d say the last 10 or 15 years, 20 years, we don’t see the wigeon like we used to, I don’t know where they are. That was a stable duck for us. But we have a lot of wood ducks and but the wood duck was, that was that big pretty duck you wanted to shoot when you just want to take a break and something else. But not sold now, he is a price on his head too now.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, that’s the truth. You just mentioned 87 flat, tell me about that duck hole and then tell me about some of your favorite duck holes over the years and how they got their names and what they were like.

Toy McCord: Well, the first one up in the swamp, we thought it was a regular hole on York Creek, there’s Mill Creek against the hill, then there’s York Creek, then there’s Snake Creek, then there’s Pine Island, then there’s Little Indigo and then there’s Broadwater and there’s all kind of other creeks down on the lower end, in the big flats, it reminiscent of and you can get lost in that swamp, every tree looks just alike there. So you better and they used to put signs all over the trees and people would take toilet tissue and put on the bushes, but they didn’t realize that when it rained that toilet tissue ain’t there, when you’re coming out after dark and that’s when you start spending the night sometime, there’d always be somebody lost and you have to go in the next morning, try to find them, find out which way they went, you go and try to get them out of there. But I kept noticing there was fewer and fewer duck and then when you noticed it, that the most duck you were killing weren’t mallards anymore, if it was a mallards, it might be a released duck, had a band, a toe clip, I mean he got where you would look or he didn’t flare when you shot at him, he just kept going, so we started watching that and the same place where we used to see hundreds, well, we were starting to see a pair and 5 maybe, well almost, so we started getting some more gadwalls decoys and teal decoys and stuff like that, but we were trying to find what is the cause of the ducks, what is the cause? I don’t know. Now I went to Canada for years, see millions, I went for about 20 straight years to the COVID, didn’t go anymore because they didn’t want to get up there and they tell me I have to go to hospital for 14 days just to get checked and they can’t go in there to it. So we stayed, we hadn’t – I hadn’t been back in 4 years, 5 years. But there was a lot of mallards there, but we’d mostly shoot snow geese and the Canada geese.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: And I hate to say this now at my age, I really want to protect the mallard as best I can because we don’t see many wild mallards, we really want to see things get better as best we can. But I would like to know what’s happened to the mallards, I would like to know what’s happened to the wigeon, I don’t know who’s got an answer. But we don’t have –

Ramsey Russell: Times have changed, that’s for sure. Times have changed.

Toy McCord: Well, now, they did develop, excuse me, Go ahead.

Ramsey Russell: No, go ahead.

Toy McCord: They did develop the Eastern Flyway, there’s some lakes, next thing, you hunted there, you can’t hunt there now because there’s 3 new houses right in that creek that cold. So the habitat was gone and then the government didn’t have some money, enough money for put the corn out, they used to spread the corn on the refuge in afternoons you just see all them ducks get up and be riding in circles going in and then the next morning, if the weather was right, they’d still leave the refuge and go to the flats, into the swamp. Well, they stopped putting that corn out, they thought, well, that would really help the hunt out there, but what happened, it diminished the amount of bugs that stayed on the refuge, so the fact that they not taking care of them, that not they, but now that we’re not taking care of them on the refuge as like we used to has to have something but that is not going to bring them if there’s none there to go back and bring some more. But I think the whole development of the east coast is what hurt us down here more than anything. We saw out the switch over to around Arkansas and Mississippi and Louisiana, now that duck are flipping over to Oklahoma and California and all that, so I don’t know.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know what the duck doing a term for shifting, but I do know that in the last 25, 30 years from the Gulf Coast clear up to the boreal forest, there’s been a tremendous amount of habitat conversion, habitat change, wetlands, drainages, whether we’re converting to shopping centers or row crop agriculture or residential development, it’s just the whole landscape is different than it was when you was a 15 year old little boy running around in that swamp, it is all changed.

Toy McCord: They’ve cleaned out a lot of the creeks because the landowners didn’t like the grass in the creek, because they will run their boats in there and in our area. So we got to kill that grass, we get that grass out of there and the next thing you know we lost all our diving ducks out in the lake, in the middle of the lake, they put grass carp in and they sprayed and they did it for the landowners and the boat owners and stuff like that and I’d rather ride through grass all year and see a duck during the winter than not, myself, but I didn’t get a vote on that one.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to change gears and ask it this way, I heard you mentioned earlier in the podcast about 87 flat, you all had a duck hole named 87 flat?

Toy McCord: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: What? How did that duck hole get this name and what were some other favorite duck holes around the swamp? You growing up and you said the last episode you had said you had some spots, you take folks and some spots you never have yet. Tell me about some of these spots without putting them on a map, but just tell me about some of these, I’ve always been interested in how a duck hole gets a name, tell me about some of these –

Toy McCord: I’m going to tell you about 87 flat, here’s the deal on 87 flat. Opening day of duck season, the day before – the duck season came in at 12 o’clock.

Ramsey Russell: In the afternoon.

Toy McCord: In the afternoon.

Ramsey Russell: Never heard of that.

Toy McCord: Me and my friends –

Ramsey Russell: When would this have been? Back in the 70s?

“I went across the creek to the one I named the 54 and the deal on that was we could kill 55”

Toy McCord: It was yeah, they came in at 12 o’ clock, I promise you that. Me and Jim Smoke and one other guy, come on, who was down went up York Creek in Sparkleberry. We run a few ducks up there and we’ve been scouting, my brother and a couple of his buddies, let’s see, about 5 of them went up to the 87 flat, what wasn’t called 87 flat then, there’s a big long ridge flat, if you go through bus through a couple ridges you run into it. Well, they were just looking around and saw some ducks, they went in and run into a message up. They sit there and they killed 25 or whatever it was and me and Jim, we didn’t kill nothing until about 03:34 o’ clock, somebody went whip swamp, run some ducks up, then we kill some ducks. So the next morning we’re going to go back without any of them, where they were, so we killed, we had a limit, I think was 5 or so, I can’t remember but we were within the limit and we killed like 30 or 30 something and they’d kill like 25 that afternoon before. But in 3 days we’d killed 87 that we picked up and we could have killed 90, so how you take how many people it was, but they said well, let’s kill next 3, 3 more getting and I said no man, yeah, they know we got enough, let’s get out of here, so we named that 87 flat. Now the first 3 days of season, which was 2 and a half days, now we could hunt all day down here but usually you don’t kill much afternoon, open day you could. But there was a lot of ducks in the swamp, I mean there was thousands in the swamp, wasn’t no one place, but that side of 87, we picked up 87 there in 3 days. Now it wasn’t just me, it was 7, 8 of us 6, 7, we had 3 boats and stuff like that and the water’s about knee deep and the mallards are coming in there and it button bushes and a lot of grass and it’s on the edge of an acorn ridge and they were back on the edge of that acorn ridge where it dipped in, which now is good to kill some hogs about the only thing right there, because I went there last year to try to hunt and I had to shoot a hog, keep him from shooting me. But that was the one and in that flat that’s the one we were hunting and the guys, we were hunting there and the guys come up next day and saw us and then next day they were sitting there, so I had to flip over, so I went across the creek to the one I named the 54 and the deal on that was we could kill 55. But we kind of thought we had 55, kind of we had 54, guys we need to kill one. I said no, we threw, ain’t no difference between 54 and 55, we threw and that was 2 days hunt, so it wasn’t one day hunt. And that was with guide parties right there so of course I wasn’t going to do things, it should, but I named that the 54 hole, that was way up. It’s straight across from 87 flat, but it’s way up the swamp and that hole, when I found that hole I went through there and bust through some ridges and I’d seen some ducks go that way. So when Morrison said let me set up here, I don’t know when it been raining for 2 days, so I set up there and I swear they came in and they came in good. So I took the part of the next day right back down, we kill them again, that’s the hole that I shot the 2 ducks trying to light, I shot at them in the woods and echo running back crosses. So that’s where that started, but that was the 54 hole, now that hole is eat up with sawgrass now as beautiful as it was, it had a big run there, the big creek was right sided, you cut through the tree, cut across a little ridge, there’s an open hole with acorn ridges all the way around it. And it’s in an open hole with acorn ridges all the way around it and the ducks would go in the acorn ridges, but if the weather was bad so I could get the ducks to come in the flat out there, now the flat’s not open as such, there was grass and stuff like that and some sawgrass, but that was to fit the fold, that we started we named the York Creek hole, the regular hole. The breakout hole is up in the swamp right before you get 87 flat and 54 hole, you take a hard, that you can’t tell the creeks there, you better take a hard left right there, otherwise you’re running out into what looks like the creek, but ain’t no creek and it’s mud, flat, stuff like that. And that’s where the big trees are that you better not get under them trees with the wrong wind but –

Ramsey Russell: A bunch of water bikers.

Toy McCord: I took my boy up there when he’s 8, 9 years old one afternoon and you can’t even tell where the creek is sometimes. But the weather changed on us, we had, I broke the boat, the motor, off the bracket, motor wouldn’t go, I’m all the way up there, I have one paddle in the jon boat and my little 9 year old boy back there and the weather changed, dropped 20⁰, no waders, nothing. I had to jump out the boat, I was trying to push the boat through the creek. I had to jump out the boat, find where the room was and I had no waders, but I paddled and I paddled, 2 and a half hours later I paddled up to Sparkleberry landing to that swamp with him. I remind him of that all the time, I say, TJ, daddy, yes, I do remember that, I was worried we’re going to get out of there, I was worried what your mama’s going to do to me. But at any rate, he remembers all that stuff and I always tell him something else, I said, when you go to those holes, when I show you how to go there, don’t think you know everything and go somewhere different, that’s not the way to get to them. Because if you go another way, you don’t get there and you’re going to tear your gear up because you got maybe 3 or 4 places, you don’t have 3 foot on 2 yards you can get through it and you’ll be out, but don’t try to change that and I tell them this, always use the same route in that swamp that you went the time before. Because they are moving stumps when the water changes, when that tree falls, you won’t recognize it, so you got to go to that same route every time. Even fishing men, say TJ run the same route in case we have to go in here one morning, full daylight and really get in here quick, we can run wide open right here, so run the same route every time because them stumps will move, they will move and so always take the same route in a place like that, not only openly, but in that swamp. And look up in the top of the trees, look for the biggest limb there because it ain’t going to break and fall, look at the green trees, don’t look at the dead ones because them dead ones will fall, that place, if you don’t come in 3 months, it’s going to look different, so you look at something that’s going to be there, that’s tell you where you are and you feel, oh my gosh, I’m glad I see that because there’s something that’ll let you know but it’s also, you don’t know everything and you can get turned around. But I had, then I had a hole way up the swamp, the everyday hole, I meant Midday hole. And then I have one that was called Little Indigo, that’s where you killed a lot of black ducks, it runs out the top of one of them creeks and floods out when there’s one little hole in there I swear, it ain’t 15 yards long and 10-15 yards wide, we call it the black duck hole, because you kill some black ducks in it.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, that sounds like a spot I’d like to hunt.

Toy McCord: Yeah, that’s right. You sit right there and you might kill 6 ducks and you’ll have your limit of 4 black ducks and a pair of mallards, something like that. But these places, not many people bother you there, guess what they do? They ride right by. You be sitting there, you don’t cut cubing on them, they ride right by. They’ll hear you shooting, they wonder where you are, but they’ll ride right by, so I let them ride right by. And then there’s the Mill Creek hole is up there, you go up top of that and you break out the right toward the hill, there’s a little button bush flat there, I was kind of turned around one day and I run into that to run 40 or 50 black ducks up out of it. I said, I got to come back in, so I marked it, but I didn’t mark it with toilet paper, I marked it with something else and I didn’t know, I took it down eventually because I broke a little twig off about 4 yards off either way. And I learned my lesson about the markers when I went up all the way up which broad border one time took a crook a creek off that went way up further, we went up there, we kept seeing ducks going up, we didn’t know, we knew there was a club up there, so we didn’t know where it was public, private land and we went up the creek and then we got to a place we couldn’t see where to go, this was nowhere to go, wasn’t no boat rope, I look around and I look around and I said, Greg, I was with Greg. Greg, let’s go right through there, that’s it, he says, Toy, there ain’t nothing. Greg, let’s go right through there. We bust through there, busted it and came out into the stream again. How’d you know this? I said, I didn’t, but somebody put a shotgun shell on that wheel, I saw that shotgun shell, I went to that shotgun shell. Now that shotgun shell ain’t there no more, but that’s how I found that and I got in that run, came into a beautiful little lake up there, little small lake on the very close to a club called Sumter Columbia and the people that had that are very nice people, good friends of mine and they had a whole place to deer hunting, turkey hunting, all that, still have it, I don’t know what they call it now, but 30 – 30 Club I think what they call them, but they’re great people and I would never ever do anything to upset my friendship with them. But I’ll tell this story too, because we didn’t know where the lines were up there, Greg came back one day and said, Toy, I found a pretty hole, let’s go in the morning, so we went that morning and we got this little round hole and we up then broke off the main creek to the right, waited to the pretty little open hole, so like somebody dug it out. But it was a pretty little hole, we put about 15 decoys there and right before daylight we hear something, I looked and they come some lights, then the lights went down, went off, looked again, here comes some lights, then it went off. Now I’m here, lights went up, went along, I said, Greg, you got any idea where we are? He said, no, but I guess we’re getting ready to find out, they drove up to us in the middle of the swamp in a truck. My good friend, Greg I mean, Greg and I used to follow –

Ramsey Russell: How long have you ridden in a boat at night to get there? And they just drove right up in a truck.

Toy McCord: That’s what I’m talking about. We left packs and we didn’t been 3 hours and goddamn, he drives up in the truck, he jumps out, you know I don’t stop here – I said, I’m sorry, he said, that’s you Toy. I said, yes, me and Greg said, come along with us, just like that, come on along with us. I said, we just pulled in and said, yeah, you right on the middle, this is our route, it’s our logging route and they were going, they had bridges and all the creek, when they get on the bridge, the bridge is a floating bridge, they would sink the truck down, they’d go – he was like a dinosaur, lights and nothing and he pulled right up in our decoys, I said the fellows pulled up on me before mine, but never like this. So we went, we got to hunt with him and they’ve been back up there since that day, but I’ve been invited up there many times with him, good person. So there’s a lot of – You make a lot of good friends duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yes, you do.

Toy McCord: And playing sports too. Like, we play some – with all these people around here, I tell the story all the time about, I was trying to speak to everybody when I’m on the road, when I’m working, they said, why? Why would you even speak to him? I said, well, I’m a salesman, if I break down, I want that man to ride by and say, there’s that fool that spoke to you, just go back and help him and fella told me that the other day, said, you must know him accord, black guy in something, I said, yeah, you meant when you pulled over 2 years ago and helped me and I was broke now. I said, I do. I said, you guys the deer hunter? Wrist brace yes, I am. He says, I always look for you on the road, I said, thank you. But that same way on the boats, he said, daddy, why’d you speak to that guy? TJ, we getting ready to go on the lake now, how many times we’ve been pulled off? How many times we pulled people off? You speak to all of them.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: Speak to everybody. Don’t say the negative, speak to him, just be nice.

Ramsey Russell: I had a question, you talk about hunt with your son TJ and we talked a little bit about in the last episode about your daddy teaching you how to duck hunt, you and your brothers. How long did you hunt with your daddy? I mean, when did he age out or not quit? When did he quit duck hunting, your story?

Toy McCord: My father died at 67, he died as young as is now, I’m 78, but I missed him, but he stopped hunting about 5 years prior to that, but he gave us everything he had.

Ramsey Russell: How would you be, I mean, when’s the last duck hunt you shared with your daddy?

Toy McCord: Oh my gosh, I mean, I –

Ramsey Russell: I mean, if he aged out about 62 years old, he and I mean, he carried on his legacy with you and your brothers, but I mean, do you remember the last hunt you shared with your daddy?

Toy McCord: I do not remember those –

Ramsey Russell: Or did you carry him out to the swamp and took care of him, as an old guy?

Toy McCord: We carried him out, but he got, when he hung it up, he hung it up he wasn’t feeling good, he didn’t walk very good, like some of us now get a little slower, we get older. But he went slow so hard, I mean, all the time that when he burned out, he burned out. But I expect, I mean, it’s been a – I don’t even know how long ago, I can’t remember, my sisters will be getting mad at me now by not knowing, but I always had one of my sisters tell me everybody’s birthday and everything and she passed. So I have to guess now, but I was probably my 30s or something like that when my father passed.

“Was he just getting old and tired or did he just get tired of hunting and putting forth the effort it took to duck hunt?”

Ramsey Russell: And why do you think that – Was he just getting old and tired or did he just get tired of hunting and putting forth the effort it took to duck hunt?

Toy McCord: Well, he got, I mean, like I say, he put a lot of miles on. So his miles was a lot more than 1970 people’s, he put a lot of hard miles on too. So, I mean, he just didn’t wear out, he just got where couldn’t, he couldn’t see as good, couldn’t hear as good and when you lose that hearing and seeing, it takes something from it. It really does.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You ain’t tired yet, are you?

Toy McCord: I’m tired right now, but no. I wouldn’t tell you if I was, I said I’d keep going for this. Fact is, the fellow gave me a real good compliment the other day, he said he was talking to people and he said, first thing he said was Toy hadn’t changed, he’s the same Toy and that’s the guy I’ve known for since he was 9 years old, we went to baseball camp together and he just got put in the Hall of Fame in baseball at university Of South Carolina, a good friend of mine. So I appreciate him saying that.

Ramsey Russell: A mutual friend of ours, Clark McCrary introduced us, in fact he’s sitting in his house right now its recording, you got any stories on Clark? You ever got any hunting stories with Clark?

Toy McCord: I’ll tell you one. Easy now, he took me, he said, let’s go, I said, well, I’m going with you, you’re not going with me, I’m going with you. Because I didn’t know Clarky, I said, where we going and where you want to go? He told me, where you want to go? He said, well, I went out here and I killed some birds, such and such, I said, but Clarky, this is going to be a Saturday coming up where you kill them birds that’s out around pack flat, I said, we’ll have to take a ticket and go there, let’s go somewhere off the cuff. So he took me and put me in his boat, would not let me do a thing and we went out and in the middle of the lake –

Clark McCrary: I ain’t going no further with that.

Toy McCord: We’re now in the middle of the lake and he had everything just about right, Now, he did do one thing that I didn’t understand and I said, I ain’t going to hunt him like that. Well, after you put everything else out, he said, can I – was a sport decoy or pelican or something like that, I’m going to stick this out as a confidence decoy. I said, well, I ain’t got no confidence with it, I ain’t going to let none of my friends right here see me hunting over a stork decoy, you can take that thing down right now. I’ll always remember that, we killed one green winged kill that day and we’re glad to kill him, there was no shooting around us.

Ramsey Russell: What if you put that confidence decoy out there, you might have shot 2 or 3 of them.

Toy McCord: I had no confidence. I told him you’re going to have to kill that without me.

Clark McCrary: I thought you were going to tell him the time on another hunt when we had one drove a gadwall come at him and I called the shot too early.

Toy McCord: Yeah, we did. It was flame area, but we had to drove it and he – and I said, with that, Clarky, you got to understand in open water, it takes them ducks longer to get to you because you’re looking at them so long. So you’ll want to get up and shoot quicker, but they will, we shot one duck all up and down but we shot too quick and he called it too quick and I’m down and I’m with him, so I don’t want to do nothing that he doesn’t want to do. Now, I told him what I thought about the setup after we finished. I told him what I thought about how I would have done the deco always and not knowing anything about where we were and stuff like that, something I could help him, I try to tell everybody I go with, it’s not to help them, but it’s to pick me a little bit, let me tell them, maybe I can say something that’ll help them, maybe kill another one day. So I will say something, because I’ve gone a lot, I still go every day now, I don’t – somehow I know that, but I got it where my job allows me to do it. I’ve been doing my job a long time and my bosses allow me to do it and I work it into my hunting, I take them the hunting and vision to my customers and stuff like that, so it works out good for me.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you learn a lot. I mean, well, I’ll put it to you, I read something recently that wisdom is a product of experience, experience normally comes from mistakes, doing something wrong, you learn from it, is there any memorable mistakes or learning lessons you’ve had over the years that just made you a better duck hunter, Mr. Toy?

Toy McCord: Well, I’ll tell you one story is that me and Lex were hunting in a place, had a little guide party. We heard a motor come up and this was a mistake because we didn’t pay no attention to it and then we kill our ducks and the game warden rise up, wants to see you duck and stuff like that, we okay? Well, you all quit kind of early, didn’t you? Yeah, we got the limit, so we quit. He said, well, did you all see me over there on that point? We said, no, we didn’t see you, kept talking and 10 minutes later, you all sure you all didn’t see me on that point? No, we didn’t see you, so you all just quit? Yeah, we just quit. Little while later, asked you all – did you all really see me on that point? No. Then we got ready to go, Lex said, yeah, we saw you on that point. So you all – that’s why. No, we quit, we got a guide party, we got the land, we had, there’s 4 of us. So now this same game warden, the next morning, he was at the land and took off right before us and he had – we had 25s with the 3 of us in the boat and he was by himself and he raced us to the hole that he checked us in, making on, that same game warden.

Ramsey Russell: He was duck hunting.

Toy McCord: Oh, yeah. He went duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Toy McCord: Yeah. And then that same area one day, me and Lex went day for the season, to get on the ducks. Lex got on one point and I come around and get on the other point and this day for the season, then I see a boat coming and the boat comes up and he comes up and he looks and he says, Toy, is that you? Yeah. Where’s that, Lex is over there, he said, okay, well, I’m going home. I said, what were you going to do? He said, I was going scouting, it’s my brother now. I said, well, you’re not going to scout. He says, no, I’m going to come get right between you and Lex, you all have done all the scouting, I don’t need to scout, I know you all know where they are.

Ramsey Russell: I heard that.

Toy McCord: Next morning he was there, but that’s a good one.

Ramsey Russell: I think so, yes.

Toy McCord: I have a name and I call the game warden saga.

“You think so you seem to have been mighty lucky based on a lot of work you put into these duck hunts”

Ramsey Russell: The game warden, we see, now, here’s the deal, we’ve talked earlier today about folks hearing you shoot and coming up on you, but shooting also attracts game wardens and I was going to ask you, you seem to have been fairly successful, you worked hard enough. What’s old saying? The harder you work, the luckier you get. You think so you seem to have been mighty lucky based on a lot of work you put into these duck hunts. And sometimes people that are lucky are cheating and it’ll attract game wardens, tell me about these game warden sagas.

Toy McCord: Well, I’m going to tell one story that that wasn’t right, shouldn’t have been happened. But we knew the ducks were leaving, coming to swamp, going across the swamp couldn’t find them, so we worked hard and I finally found the ducks where they were going. And so, we went in the swamp the day before, I found them a day before that, so me and my buddy Greg, we had a boat full of decoys, we were going to spend the night in the boat and the rest of them are going to come in that night and spend the night with us. And this part of the water had come up, then there was only thing, there was green grass, it was green grass and the waters about waist deep, with a duck, Excuse me. But there was quite a few mallards in there, I say, several hundred and it was no ducks anywhere else, so only ducks were seeing and there was some wigeons coming in there on too and I love wigeons. But anyway, we said, that’s where we’re going to hunt, then we hear a motorboat coming and a guy comes up there and he said, hey, you guys, where were you going? Yes, he says, there are some ducks in it. Yeah, there’s some ducks in, said, we going to hunt them tomorrow, we’re going to stay, so, okay, he says. All of a sudden, her plane comes over and the plane circles and then the guy says, yeah, I’m a game warden, we look, we heard of some ducks here, we checking it out. I said, well, listen, if there’s something wrong, tell me now, because there’s going to be about 7 of us, we don’t want to do anything wrong, we want to get on out of here, I didn’t find any ducks till that morning, now said, but if something’s wrong, you let me know and he got on the walkie talkie and he talked to the pilot and he said, all right, look at what you’re going to do, tell these guys whether they can hunt or not tomorrow. He cranked up and left, the plane surf again and they come across us and said over the walkie talkie, everything’s okay. We will not be back. Now, what does that tell you?

Ramsey Russell: Hunt it.

Toy McCord: I tell him, I said, let me know because we going to leave. So when the others come there, I told everybody that story. I said, well, they gave us, okay, everything’s fine. So that morning, we hunting and we kill some ducks and I said, well, all right, we thought we heard a motor out there, but on the opening day, should be some motors out there and so we picked some ducks up and come back, by that time, we had motor racing, pull right up with us was the game warden with a lady game warden with him. He said, yeah, you guys, I think maybe you all might be hunting over bay. No, sir. It was checked yesterday, nobody found anything, I said, this game warden, he checked the thing and the plane flew over and they told us we were okay to hunt and the guy come on raise how many ducks they got? He said, well, let’s see how many ducks you all got, so we got about 22 right there, but we can kill 30 something because we got people, he says, yeah, he got 22, oh no, they got more than that, go find out where the ducks are. I said, the ducks in the boat that we just picked them up and by that time, the guy, one of the guys me, said, well, that’s John Land right there in that boat right there and he says, where’s John Land? John says, hey, Mr. so and so, well that was the game warden, he said, got on his walkie talkie and said, everything’s okay here, they’re fine. No sir, they’re fine. Mr. John, no, Senator John, have a good day, we are going and he took off and he was a head, John was at that time head of the wildlife stuff and all that, but you think we’d have been somewhere like that with him if they told us the day before? No, we got up, we picked up, everybody said well, we going to hunt, John looked at me and I said, John, I don’t feel comfortable, let’s get out of here. He said, I’m with you, we got in his boat, me and him left. But the man was a true gentleman that pulled up on us, but it came from another game warden from another area, not in that area that just is, it goes way back to something else, not us.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Toy McCord: Its just somebody told him something such and such, because I killed ducks, you know what I mean?

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: And he made a comment in front of another group one time that he checked us and then somebody, he said it from the wrong person and they jumped him and he never said nothing again. But when he said John Lands in it and he says, yes, so where is John, okay, have a good day, senator, they okay him, he left. John hunted with me for years and years and so we were okay, we wouldn’t have been there, but that’s a good story.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great story.

Toy McCord: But that’s my 2 game warden stories and so we were set up, somebody told them such and such and where we’d be such and such like that. But that was the only ducks in the swamp, that was the only ones in the swamp. See, that’s that one and he told us, he said, everything’s good, we will not be back and so that was a good one. But I tried different things with the decoys, I’ll say this, when I went up to the 87, excuse me, the Teardrop hole, you want me to go ahead?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Toy McCord: I went to the Teardrop hole. The Teardrop hole is a little round hole way on the other side, 87 flat, a little loop like a tear drop where you come into it, went up there and hunted up there and I see where I’m going with this now, that Lexus showed me that, oh, he named it Teardrop Hole, so we went in there and same things, some boys came in on us, the same way and he said, well, we’ve been hunting here, I said, you all been hunting where? Well, right where you all hunting, I said, ain’t no hunt saying we can pick them up, ain’t no bushes broke down. Well, yeah, I said, you all ain’t been hunting here, we hunting here today, we got in, you all go head back if you want to, but we’re hunting here today and they had come to the shooting and it’s a little, small, beautiful little hole and I took a good friend of mine who played professional ball, Mr. Bill Spiers and his buddy, had a big farm over here, that’s a really great guy too, just invited me to hunt his place several times, so we went up, they went in the Teardrop hole and me and Lex went and when I was leaving the house that morning, the day before, I tried some catfish and I took the rods out my boat. But when I got up in the swamp, I noticed I had a rod in the boat, a big cockfish with 25 pound inch line. So we got into in the hole and I walked over my boat and I said, I got this rod, I’m going to try something, I got me a mallard drake decoy and tied it on that on the line, I went back out there and the first couple bunches of ducks, circled us and left. Now I said, I’m going to do something, so I didn’t have a lid on that decoy, so I took that thing and put that decoy across the other side that creek, that hole, small hole, the next bunch of ducks come over, I started reeling, I called them, one hand reeling between my legs and I swear, if that drove, then it’s 4, they tried to light on that decoy and before I could get my gun up and shoot, all 4 of them were dead. So we started swimming decoys then, I take that rod a lot and then we started jerk stringing a little on that and sometimes it makes a big difference, that day it did. We cranked that thing and that thing swimming with them, waves coming off anything, they trust that light on it, 2 different bunches did that, that I don’t think we’d have killed other than that. So I’ll try anything.

Ramsey Russell: I think that little old trick with the ride and reel is like a precursor for modern day technology. We talked about previously being out there in uninsulated boots and canvas hunting coats and no insulation, nothing but some heavy socks and freezing to death along those lines right there, since those days, since the days you was a very young man 50, 60 years ago out there in that swamp duck hunting, there’s been a lot of technological advancements in duck hunting. Whether we’re talking about motors or camo or ammo or equipment or shotguns or anything else, there’s been a lot of technological advancements. Do you think, if you look back, I’ll just take it all into perspective, do you think that those advancements has made it easier or harder for people to appreciate and to respect duck hunting? And how has technology affected the way people hunt your area or around North America today?

Toy McCord: Well, I’ll tell you one example of that, that you really understand. We had a nice party of people, 3 of them from around Darlington area, Lex and I did and we did real well that day, sort of next morning they were going to meet us and we were going to go hunt this area that I’d seen some birds. Well overnight the temperatures went down in low 20s, ice was getting everywhere and the wind blowing 30 and where we were going to hunt we were going to have to go across some water and so we said – and the man came up and says listen, you think it’s going – we going to kill some ducks? I said where the wells blowing, we’ll probably kill some duck, but it’s going to be cold. He says well my people don’t want to go, I said you all don’t want to go? He says no, we don’t want to go, he says here I’ll give you the money, I said, no, give me this piece of it, he give me a little piece of money and they went on – they’re good friends, but one of them was, now, I didn’t know the other ones, well when he got there, Lex looked at me and said, Toy, leave him, we need to go. All right, now, I’m getting to the kicker here in a minute. So we go and I’m telling you, it’s the coldest day I ever hunted, we sit there and winds blowing 30 to 40 and we sit in a lope and flat and we got 2 of these brand new real high dollar heaters that we never have ever, we cranked them both up and we put them in our face and in our hands and our face right there and we missed the first 3 bunches ducks come in, we didn’t cut a feather, the wind was blowing holes so hard, we swear it’s blowing the bullet, but without that right there, we couldn’t have hunted. Now, we ended up killing 6, 7 doves, but we froze to death without that, now, regular heater wouldn’t have stayed on, this is one of them is covered all up and we had just bought those, but that right there made it easier. So now when I go after that heater in the boat anyway, it makes it heated to stay, you got people, you got young people with you, make it more comfortable. But the biggest thing is those coats now, the wind doesn’t go through them, you can sit there, all right, you can go any kind of temperature, it’s a rain gear, it’s a history[*01:21:48], the waders are insulated now and they are heavy, but they’re insulated and it makes it well, anybody will hit that weather well, maybe you and I would have gone in any kind of weather. They’ll say, well, we’re not going today, there’s a lot of that, they won’t go. Now that being said, I went one day this year, me and TJ went in a thunderstorm, it rained and stuff. We never heard another shot or saw another boat, we killed 8 ducks, but we had the rain gear, we had everything else and we watched the weather, we knew it wasn’t getting any worse, but it was – I never saw another hunt.

Ramsey Russell: That cold weather story reminded me of a true story. I’d met a guy, it’s been 25 years ago, we worked together and we went duck hunting on public, one of my favorite little spots and it was cold and back before, you could just launch off whenever you got there, the ramp took off, so we did and it was early, middle of the night early and broke ice the whole way, there was one open spot, I knew it was going to be open and we got there, there wasn’t a soul on the break and it was cold and we had a heater, it wasn’t enough, I’m going to tell you that right now, it wasn’t enough that one little old heater on the 5, but we lit it and once we fool with it long enough to get it to where it light, we got it lit and I had a dog and I put that dog on my feet just like it wouldn’t fall off and it started dawning light, other boats came, had come in and it started dawning lights and duck were fixing to work around, it was going, Mr. Toy is going to be one of them days and the boy said I got to go, I said do what? He said I got to go. He was all but crying in the boat, he’s about to freeze death.

Toy McCord: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And I took that boy to the boat ramp and when I come back, I don’t lost my spot and God is my holy witness, I ain’t so much as talked to that man since. I lost his number, I can tell you that right, I lost his number.

Toy McCord: I believe you, I’ve seen that, that’s what I’m talking about. They, nowadays the hunter and there’s a lot of good hunters and a lot of great people, but they ain’t as tough as it used to be, because they don’t have to be. Because I say around him, 80% of them are hunting private land and they can go out there and get in the blind and hunt and they don’t need to go to the lake, all the ducks in the lake on comes up if they shoot, did all those private lands the same day, but now they shoot one this day, one the next, one the next and after about a week and a half, nothing comes to the lake, ain’t it about right Clark?

Clark McCrary: About right.

Toy McCord: Nothing comes up the lake.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, by the time I had children, my oldest is 27, as I started getting to that point, public land was getting crowded, some of my favorite spots to hunt were getting crowded, getting competitive, getting tired and how do you teach a child? How do you teach a 5 or 6 year old little boy, the art and the tactics of real duck hunting? When it’s that competitive, it’s enough that you’ve got to elbow your way in and no fist fights, thank God, but you got it’s competitive enough, how do you drag children along and teach them the art of this kind of duck hunt when it’s that cutthroat competitive out there? And I did get into private property and joined the club shortly after they were born and still in it, not the duck hunting, the best in the world, but it’s somewhere we can go, they learn to be duck hunters and I’ve always felt that having cut my teeth on public land made me a better duck hunter because of that competitiveness, it made me – you compete to scratch one out and it made me, I felt like a better duck hunter. Do you feel like growing up on public land versus private gave you advantages? Because some of the best duck hunters I know are public duck hunters.

Toy McCord: Absolutely. Now, listen, I love to hunt the private land, I have a good time there, but absolutely, this is – I’d rather hunt the public land, not the private land.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Toy McCord: Because I just, I will hunt and I appreciate all the invites I ever get and I got some great friends, got some great property and they do good. But if I was to take my nephew using something like that, I want to take them out on the public land and I want to tell them, don’t expect much, but what I’m going to show you is, in case you go somewhere else or you see a bunch of duck, this is the way you put the decoys out with the wind blow and see the wind blowing here, here’s how you want to do it. If the wind’s blowing the other way, you do it some other way, I’m going to show you how to put them out in case we kill a duck or 2. And I got them alone, I said, now, here’s what you’re looking for here, here’s the kind of duck you’re looking for here, stuff like that and here’s your zone to shoot ducks. I try to be a teaching thing, even if we don’t see a duck and I’m telling you, we saw some place, I’m telling you we didn’t see a duck this year from places. I mean, that I’ve always killed them.

Ramsey Russell: We were talking about technology and we started talking about the heat and boy, I tell you what, the clothing especially has so evolved, there’s so many great brands out there, I’m a huge fan of Sitka, to be honest with you and I think they really were a game changer. Even in some of the modern day last 30 year technology we’ve had, but when I started talking about technology, what I was kind of getting at, Mr. Toy, was when you look at the harder you work, the luckier you get, a lot of the tactics and the setups and the scouting and the stuff that you did back in the day to really earn those ducks on that vast public swamp, Sparkleberry, what do you think about some of – you were talking about, what made me trigger that thought was you reeling in that decoy and having a little homemade piece of motion, but today there’s all kinds of gizmos and G-wizards and spinning wing decoys and just there’s all kinds of stuff, there’s all kinds of crutches and shortcuts and I’m a huge fan, for the record, I’m a huge fan of MOJO, I never start the morning without one. But I may move it, I may adjust it, I may do some stuff with it, depending on how the duck’s reacting. But I don’t use it as just the end all, be all, I duck hunted before those days. I mean, what I was kind of getting at is how do you see in terms of some of the common tactics and your approach to duck hunting as that duck hunter that lived back in those simpler days to now, do you see it – do you think that it’s changed the way these younger duck hunters approach duck hunting or learn their skill set? I mean, because at the end of the day, we all want to shoot ducks, but man, a lot of the techniques and experiences you have come from 5 or 6 or 7 decades of out there doing it.

Toy McCord: Yeah, that’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And to me, there’s really no shortcut, there’s no substitute for experience.

Toy McCord: Yeah, well see, there’s some places now that do not allow any mechanized stuff that what we’re talking about, but you take that mechanized stuff and wherever you get and this, you don’t have it and there’s people down there for your – away from you. It does attract ducks, it might not finish them, but your ducks will come across you and they’ll head that motion, they’ll go to that motion. They might break off before they go in, they might circle they might have had a bad experience in something like that. But when they see that motion and that motion is deadly, the first 10 minutes of daylight is deadly then because they can’t figure it out, but a lot of them duck, if it’s the same ducks will shy away from that. But personally, what I want out of everything about my good clothes and wedges and everything, I want my duck call.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: I can kill a duck with my duck call, if I don’t have a decoy, if there’s duck, I can kill the duck. Because I’ll go where he’s going, not where he’s going, but how he’s getting there, I’ll get in between there somehow another and if he’s a wild duck, I got a chance. So I got to have my duck call, got to have my wigeon whistle, then the rest of it, then if I got 2 or 3 decoys, fine or if I got a robo duck, I might use a real small one instead of the big one and I might have it where as soon as the duck gets close, cut that booger off, instead of in them working, if he gets way off, put it back on, started dragging that, but a lot of places I hunt, you can’t have any of that.

Ramsey Russell: On another span because everything in American duck hunting has been elevated to art form, I mean, every single tool of the trade, the science and technological advancements has so gone up in the past 50, 60 years, but you mentioned earlier the surface drive motors, the loud motors they put on these boats, now, I mean, on the one hand, a lot of access, I mean, can you imagine having that power and that machine going through some of those things you did 40, 50 years ago? But on the other hand, you trading off with disturbance. Not only have you got the loud motors, you got these big massive light bars, it looks like a kid rock concert coming across the water and ducks are very sensitive to that disturbance.

Toy McCord: It blinds you. But the noise is – and the accessibility, it does a great thing, everything is more accessible in that motor. But when that motor is cranked up, I’m telling you, if you round where this place is up, when they crank that motor up, you see ducks start getting up way off. So I’ve seen them come start off the refuge and they start running their motor, they turn around and go back to refuge, just turn and go back and now those motors are great, I mean, they serve a purpose, but they’re not wildlife friendly.

Ramsey Russell: No.

Toy McCord: They’re not wildlife friendly.

Ramsey Russell: Do you feel like back in the days, back in the first half of your hunting career, hunting that vast swamp, there wasn’t as many hunters, there wasn’t the technology, there wasn’t the loud noises, there wasn’t the bright lights, there wasn’t as many people running around, there wasn’t everybody just bound and determined to kill the last duck on earth for whatever reason, do you feel like even back in those days there were still spots of that swamp because of access that ducks could just get away and hide on public?

Toy McCord: I can tell you something I do know about. They outlawed the airboats from 95 Bridge up towards the swamp all the way up, now, why do they outlaw it? Because, no, they outlawed it up around the refuge air, yeah, they left it alone on the bottom end, they outlawed up because the ducks up there where the refuge was, they proved that the ducks were getting up, going toward the swamp and stuff and the airboats up there, where they crank them up, the ducks go right back to refuge. The airboat go through a flat and they run ducks up left and right, now the only people that can have the airboats up there is the people that should be, that’s the government, the people that take care of the lake, the government workers and the lake workers, they got the jobs there to manage the grass and stuff like that and they never interfere with the ducks or the duck owners, stuff like that, they’re very good. But so, if they did it back then and that’s been ages ago, if they did that then, there must be something that noise, isn’t it?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Toy McCord: There’s something to that –

Ramsey Russell: I mean, I just think there’s so many – we know when we think about hunting pressure and hunting pressure is from coast to coast, north to south, I mean, there’s a lot more hunting pressure on the landscape than there was 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. But there’s also a lot more disturbance. We talked earlier today that there’s less habitat, habitat changes, habitat loss, wetlands quality, everything else, but boy, there’s a lot – it’s like more and more people more highly concentrate distilled on a shrinking landscape and we’re bringing a lot of disturbance in addition to hunting pressure. Do you perceive that?

Toy McCord: No, absolutely. How about you and I putting in our little jon boat with our little mortar, cracking it up and we going scouting a kind of duck, what we didn’t know was 30 minutes before us, a fellow put in one of them other mortars and he run the whole place there and he run every duck out of 3 miles out there, so we don’t see a duck now and those ducks, when they get up, let’s say they hadn’t lived for 10 minutes, they like for 10 minutes they get run up there, they go back to refuge, why? They can’t stay, they can’t lie, they can’t stay and that’s just with one. But now down here in our state, it’s all over the place. I mean, there’ll be 15 of them, one day put in there and 10 over here, its running all over. I don’t regards them having them, I don’t regards them using them. But the day of somebody easing out there, cutting off like I used to do and watch the bird let them light ease back out, go home, over, they got to run over and look at them and then they there no more.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: That’s what’s going on there.

Ramsey Russell: Why do you think it’s changing like this? I mean, do you think that younger hunters today have the same respect for duck hunting and for the swamp and for the resource as past generations or do you think there’s something else to play? Is it just a matter of convenience?

Toy McCord: I think a lot of them duck hunt now because that’s the thing to do. Well, so and so Clark and McClary went and killed a duck, so we got to go there too, we got to see and for goodness sake, don’t tell them where you killed one because you won’t ever get to go down no more. So, I mean, you just say, well, I was in South Carolina, I was in Mississippi, where’d you all hunt in Mississippi? We just hit here and there and whatever different places or something like that and I don’t even want nobody to know where I hunted a thousand miles from home, that’s how bad it is.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Toy McCord: Well, that’s where Toy hunts, that’s where we need to go. If he’s hunting, that’s where we need to go because he’s been out scouting, he knows where they are.

Ramsey Russell: No doubt. When you look at some of your past approach, back when we started last episode, going out there with your daddy and your brothers, disappearing on an island for 3 days, simpler times, 5 horse and a 14 foot, 5 horse longboard back in those good old days, are there any traditions from the past that you think we should go back to, that you think we should hold on to instead of just embracing the future blindly?

Toy McCord: Well, they could do something about certain areas of the lake with some of the gear that’s might ought to be cut that back on a little bit without me going in too much depth on that. If you go up to Sparkleberry on a Saturday or Friday during the week, you see some old timers, you see a lot of them, small boats with 5s, but not 5s, but about maybe 9.8 and 15 horsepower motor. You see a lot – with an old boat, you see with the old trailers, you see a lot of what we call swamp rats, been there for a long time and we still got them and they still look, because we fish up there too, it’s got tough on the lake on Saturdays down here fishing and you get run over on the fishing creeks in open lake, so that’s why I went in there yesterday, we went fishing in there. We can get away from someone. So there’s some things that I’m sure there’s something that could be done, but it boils down into, it’s not the sport, but the fishing and hunting that’s being looked at is, how can we build on it and how can we make some money off of it? Something like that and I think the money does play a lot of pace.

Ramsey Russell: Do you feel, I see what you’re saying, do you feel like there’s a lot more ego at play in duck hunting or hunting in general than it was back in your day, today, you think people are out there kind of building egos and building reputations.

Toy McCord: Well, we all got egos and most of successful people have a good ego, yeah, that’s part of it, but I mean, we got a thing now called social media and when a man shoots a duck, he puts it on social media where he kill him, how he kill him, how many times he shot him, how many people there.

Ramsey Russell: I am one of them, yeah, I do that.

Toy McCord: Yeah. And when you did that it’s – somebody says, oh, we got to go there, but on social media does this good thing, but right then you can’t keep a secret no more, there’s no secrets and people are there. And if you go and we take pictures, we love that, I got a catalog full of pictures and the thing about it, the play, I kill all them, it wouldn’t matter who went down there anyway, none of them there, there’s no birds there, but if I do good, I’m proud of that, yeah. So, I mean, I still have an ego, it’s just I have to change it around a little bit into something else.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. If you could take a young hunter back in time anytime between now and the time you started, if you could take a young hunter today back in time for just one day of hunting in Sparkleberry Swamp in its prime, what would you want them to see and to experience?

Toy McCord: First off, I want them to see how desolate the swamp is, I want them to see it when there’s not many people there, I want them to see how we set up differently than anywhere else you hunt, I want them to see that the whole day they heard 3 or 4 volleys in the distance with nobody around them and then the ducks, they saw that you could actually call at them whether they came or not, they’ve worked without any harassing from other areas. I want to see that and I’m so grateful that my family was able to see that, I feel bad about people coming up, they don’t get to see that now, I wish it could be.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. A couple more questions, Mr. Toy, if you could leave behind one lasting message or legacy related to Sparkleberry Swamp or to duck hunting, what would that be?

Toy McCord: For duck hunting?

Ramsey Russell: Duck hunting or Sparkleberry Swamp, either one, what would you like for your legacy to be with respect to duck hunting or Sparkleberry Swamp?

Toy McCord: Okay, I would like for it to be, here’s a man that took his sears and he showed a lot of people a lot of enjoyment there and he was a very successful out and he shared that with people, that’s what I’d want, because I’d love to take people.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great –

Toy McCord: I still take them.

Ramsey Russell: Duck hunting has changed a lot since you started, changed a lot since I started, right now with the drought, with habitat loss, death by a thousand cuts for a lot of different reasons, we don’t seem to have the duck populations that we did 20 years ago, the ducks we do have seem to be subject to a lot of pressure and if you had any hope or let me put it this way, what do you perceive as the biggest threats to waterfowl populations and to duck hunting? And if you could change one thing, what would it be?

Toy McCord: There are so much pressure. I was telling somebody, I think my sons, yesterday, you have to understand the pressure isn’t necessarily what’s being killed around here, that’s got nothing to do with how many ducks we got, but the pressure now is duck season is 8 months a year or something like from one end to the other there’s always hunting now, it used to be the wildlife department said only a 5%, 8% of ducks were getting killed by hunters. Well, see, I’m going to have to take their word for it because I don’t know about that, but I said that’s hard to believe, but there is a problem, then the people that can figure it out, I would like to see us to put the resources towards that, not towards maybe plan just to be plan.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Toy McCord: I would like to be, let’s find what can help the duck, not to feed the ones as him, but find the ones, find out something to make more be here, are we shooting too many ducks now? And I come from way back when you shot him, if you saw him. All right, but I’m – what I’m saying now, is this, let’s take this thing the right way, right approach, we need to do something different, I don’t know what it is or something needs to be different and I could give you a list of 20 things, but then there’d be a – I don’t want to say it, because it affects other people that enjoying themselves and stuff like, doesn’t everybody look at it the same way? You can see that every day now. Well, one answer, there’s another for against it and stuff like that and I just happen to be at the pinnacle that I don’t – what I think don’t matter much, so what I can do –

Ramsey Russell: Somebody – go ahead. I’m sorry.

Toy McCord: No, I said what I can do is show the young people a little bit what I’ve learned.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir. I fear – I listened to somebody recently, somebody near and dear to me and he’s a young man less than 30 years old and he’s frustrated with the amount of effort necessarily expended to kill ducks today and the marginal results, let’s say, you work a whole lot harder to come up with less and I told him, I said you enjoyed the past 20 years of duck hunting because of the stars aligning and everything else, the past 20 years have been some of the best 20 years, maybe in 2 or 3 generations, when I talk to my daddy and my grand – back in the day, I talked to my granddaddy back in the 80s, but now when I talk to my uncle, man, back when he grew up in the 60s and 70s, it wasn’t just as crazy as you might think it was. I can remember showing my daddy when he was still alive, stopping, we’d been hunting the river on public and I stopped by and showed him a boat load of mallards we had shot, which is say 8 mallards, 8 greenheads it was a quick morning and I knew he had, we were passing right through and I knew he had a good cup of coffee, the man made some of the best coffee I ever had before, since and I said something to him out there at the boat like, man, what must it have been like back in the good old days? He said, son, the good old days are now. Look at this, he said, we didn’t shoot ducks like is every day of the week, but he said that and it stuck with me that and I feel like now we’re coming on the tail end for a lot of different reasons, we’re coming on the tail end, a lot of the historic areas are very hard to find ducks in and the ducks that are there pressured and you got to – boy, you got to fight the crowd to get to them now, like at no time in history and I just wonder, do you have any over your career, Mr. Toy, do you have any regrets in duck hunting?

Toy McCord: Well yeah, that I didn’t talk about preserving the – maybe preserving more, I didn’t put as much thought as that as I did, how many we going to have next year?

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Toy McCord: It’s not in – when my children’s children come along. Now that’s one thing that is being said, I know this, I appreciate the duck hunting more than I ever did because we don’t need as many to be successful. Like I said, we’re going to go shoot, we’d like to kill a couple green wings and maybe kill a wigeon and if we get 3 or 4 mallards, that’s great. Okay, so we can kill 6 or 8, if we had a good day, if they work right, they came in, we killed 15, we had a great day so we always tell each other, great hunt. We got out here, we got to do what we wanted to do, we are allowed to go, we got on the lake where they allowed us to go out here, we killed some birds, we had a great day, great hunt.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve come to hate limits, Mr. Toy. I’ve come to hate the concept of limits, but because it puts an artificial expectation and I went of all places back to Merry Old England last winter, where there are no bag limits, no shooting hours, you can shoot around the clock, shoot by moonlight, no bag limits, you can bait and the takeaway message I got was that we would leave with 3 or 4 or 10, didn’t matter which and everybody was happy, just to have been there and just to have done it, just to have spent time outside and in the absence of limits, everybody was freaking happy whether they shot one or 10 and that left a lasting impression on me.

Toy McCord: When we first went to Canada, it was always about big numbers to start with, the last 10 or 15 years ago, it was about those friends that let us hunt, the friends that lived up there that we spent time with and we could kill, let’s go shoot us a few snows this morning, hit a couple Canadas, don’t need to kill a limit of 5, that’s a 100, 20 snows is the limit, you don’t need to – you kill 10 or 15, that’s a good hunt, move over and then go shoot some ducks in the afternoon, kill 6, 8 and then that’s a good hunt? We got the way, we appreciated that way more than years ago and that’s got something to do with age and stuff and appreciate, just appreciate the opportunity to be able to go and I am glad I can still go.

Ramsey Russell: Yes sir.

Toy McCord: And that’s what people say, well, where you want to be when it is. I said I want to be taking my next step to the hole. When I pop down, that’s where I want to be.

Ramsey Russell: I hope it works out that way. Look, we’re going to wrap up this episode, I thank you very much for coming on and sharing your insights on duck hunting and on the Sparkleberry swamp, special thanks to Clark McCrary for introducing us and making this happen. Mr. Toy, if you got any stories you want to part with, I know you made a list of stories or any, we didn’t covers any stories, you want to give me one more story before we wrap up?

Toy McCord: I wouldn’t know where to go there, I got –

Ramsey Russell: We’ve covered a lot.

Toy McCord: Huh?

Ramsey Russell: We’ve covered a lot. Yes sir.

Toy McCord: We’ve covered a lot, we have. I’m trying to think which would be the better one, it’s up to you.

Clark McCrary: You told a bunch.

Toy McCord: Yeah, I know I told a bunch. Is there something that really stands out now, no I’ve covered – pattern TJ, pushing TJ out this morning, turned over 3 or 4 times and if I think back to the past, if I think about it, if you think about this and I told some people this the other day, if I look in my life, I can think of 50 times that if I had have looked left instead of right, oh, I turned over, if somebody hadn’t come along or if that stump wouldn’t have been there, I wouldn’t be in here, I can think 50 times that I could have been gone, my blind spot on the car, riding that, same with a boat, riding in a boat and then where you’re not aware, but you are aware, all of a sudden you sense something and you turn it and then another boat comes by or you see a stump that was in your way, see, I still sense that stuff. So as long as I can sense that, I feel comfortable going out and going – But as far as one thing now I could sit there and think, come up with 20 more, but I can’t think of the one thing that would just do me.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you’ve told a pile of stories and we’ve enjoyed it, Mr. Toy, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to come on and share your story today. Folks, you all been listening to my buddy, Mr. Toy McCord, talking about growing up, the past, the present, the future, Sparkleberry Swamp. Thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.

[End of Audio]

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