Pancakes and Sausage

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host Ramsey Russell, join me here to listen to those conversations. Folks, welcome back to duck season somewhere round three. It’s a Warren Coco Go-Devil motors. A fascinating story about South Louisiana. If you have been listening and I know you have, you all heard all kinds of good stories, we’re going to continue on today, a gifted storyteller. And I tell you, and this, hang on, we’re going to have a lot more episodes coming, he’s got so many stories. But when we left last week, Warren, Maurepas if I’m saying that right, Maurepas? That’s one of the French word. Just hard for me to say Maurepas has kind of faded because of Sylvania, the dynamic it changed, the timber died out, he was on the outside looking in, in a one in a million lifetime opportunity come along to buy some good marsh habitat down in hackberry. But before we get started, I wanted to go back our mutual friend Mr. Dale Burling. You were telling me before supper, you all are somehow related and I thought I understood you to call them cut and say something about. You were telling me about the history of Coco dating way on back and somehow being related to Dale in Avoyelles Parish. Can you elaborate on that because I thought it was pretty interesting story?

Warren Coco: Yeah, when I was growing up, my grandmother spoke French, all the family French speaking now, I was always told we were French and I kept looking and looking, I said, that’s Italian in the woodpile here somewhere else, I aren’t buying that. Anyway, my grandmother died when I was 13 years old and her and I never spoke, she couldn’t speak a word in English and I couldn’t speak a word of French and I always heard different stories and everything and I finally got the family tree, you know, everything was written up, guys came from France and fought the revolutionary war. Instead of going back he stayed and he had a floating trading posts in the Mississippi river and point to peak parish near it, now new roads. His name was real hard to pronounce, his name was Dominique Balonide. And his name is real hard to pronounce. So they call him Lahham the Coco that was French for man of the coconuts because he traded and sold coconuts to the Indians and the Indians really like the coconut. So as that went on he only changed his name to Coco. So that’s how the name Coco came about and everybody were like, you relate so and so, of course we’re all related. Because it’s not that far back. You know, late 1700s, sounds like a long time ago, we’re looking generations of families that’s not that far back. And then when I got the family tree and who was related to who Dominique Coco senior married such as such, Burling was right in there. So Dale and I related somehow, you know, that’s what I call him cuss because there’s no question. And the other part of the story when I first met Dale, he called me up one day and says, man, I heard you all bought, he told me who he was, he said they had a grain elevator in Bunkie, and he said we got some property, so I heard you bought the farm up there Black River Point. I said, yeah, we bought it. He says, so we got a place we’re hunting south of there, not far from, he said every evening I see them ducks getting up out Lake falia [**00:06:04] flying north trying to figure out where they’re going. So I tell you every one of them is going there and they are thousands more, they’ll come and eat my corn at dark. They all show up here at night and all the corns are planted for the ducks, that’s what they’re coming up here to eat. And that was the first conversation I had with him. We got to know each other and we were on the same page as far as duck hunting and we have all the same likes like fish, like to hunt and then he was telling me one day about his dad used to pick up my grandfather walking down the road. My grandfather was blind and they’ll grew up where my father was from Mansura, Louisiana. And my grandfather walking down the road and his father would stop and my grandfather, he’d recognized sound a vehicle to call his name in French. You pick him up and ride to town, and Dale told me that story and when I met his father he told me the exact same story, he knew my grandfather and all that he knew all my dad and all of them, he knew my all. And then my grandfather died the year before I was born that’s how far back this was. And my dad was the oldest of nine kids growing up during the depression and they all left from up this part of the world. They wouldn’t they all went, most of them wind up in New Orleans, I had one aunt in the Ohio, uncle in California and it was only about two of them left. And my dad was oldest and he’d be 100 years old right now if he was still alive.

Ramsey Russell: How did Dominique Coco fare in the coconut trade?

Warren Coco: Well, he eventually became one of the wealthiest people in Avoyelles Parish. He was known as a large planter, they didn’t call you a farmer then, and they called you a planter. And he owned two plantations. One of them is where the casino is in Marksville now and to build large plant you had to own over 100 slaves and I think you own 116 slaves at the time and that’s all stuff that we’ve turned up reading. Then another thing really interesting it came about, Dale called me one night and said, look can you go in internet or google it, there’s a house in Mansura, that your ancestor built and it’s called the Fawcett house and you can google it, you can google the oldest house in Avoyelles Parish and they’ll come. Dominique Balonide built it in 1790 and it’s done been refurbished, restored by a Dr. Desfosse it gives you the whole history of it. It’s got mud and moss and the walls for insulation. It’s on the national registry tour. The house like, I think it’s only one day, like Friday, one day a week you can go there and tour it and like I say, it’s the oldest standing structure in the Avoyelles Parish and say in Mansura Louisiana, they really need a Cajun style house, Cypress house. They got metal roof on it now, I don’t know what was on, well, as far as that when it was built I don’t think it was a metal roof for a really neat deal.

Ramsey Russell: Does it look like one implantation houses? One of typical plantation in Louisiana, you know, what you’ll call the style houses.

Warren Coco: Kind of like that. It’s what I call a got Gable Ends on it, you know, got a roof on the front, tent metal roof slammed the front and back, it’s all built out of Cypress. And there’s a really neat house and you can see a picture of it. You go google it on the internet.
Ramsey Russell: How old you reckon that house?
Warren Coco: Built in 1790.

Ramsey Russell: 1790 my goodness. Your roots go way back to Avoyelles Parish, don’t they?

Warren Coco: Right. And I was born and raised in Baton Rouge.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Warren Coco: And my dad was from Mansura. And that’s where all Cocos are from Avoyelles Parish, somewhere up the line they come from Avoyelles Parish.

Ramsey Russell: And you had told me back when we was to in your property earlier, he didn’t hunt, he worked, he grew up depression era, the practical man and I think you told me what he hunted was to eat, feed his family with.

Warren Coco: Yeah, they shot birds and grow backs and whatever, they don’t know where the next meal was coming from. There was no duck hunting, recreational hunting, they never deer hunted, it’s just they shot what, they’re shooting birds to eat.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of that generation didn’t hunt for sport, did they?

Warren Coco: No. There’s nowhere the next meal was coming from?

Ramsey Russell: You know a question I had, I was thinking about Go-Devil. You started that not too long after high school, back in the mid 70’s and our storyline in the last few episodes, kind of went on up into the 90s, what transformed with Go-Devil during that time frame? I mean kind of walk me along because you started with a long tail motor?

Warren Coco: Right.

Ramsey Russell: The original?

Warren Coco: Yeah, the original was started long tail motor, we would call the Go-Devil because it goes like the devil. It’s just there’s nothing would perform and go, this thing will go in a hard bottom marsh where one boat couldn’t run, they run the vegetation or run on the stumps and logs where mud boat can’t run and it just absolutely worked fine. And for years I saw the belt was, the engine, the drive unit, and wasn’t really much and I started building aluminum boat. First aluminum boat that I build was in 1980 which was that mud boat, Chevrolet engine in it. My friend Jimmy Nugent and I built out together at hunting Hackberry, we hunted with it one year and we could load it down, put nine people in it, it was more of a workhorse than it was anything else. And then we evolved building the Go-Devils and I started getting into boats, and then we built, started building boats back in I think that was 1994. I built a boat it ran so good. I said, I got to start building these. So I said, well it worked and we started building boats in 1994 and then that progressed and then as time went on I’ve always had some type of competition, always, there’s always somebody whenever you’ve got something good, somebody’s going to copy it. And then than other competitors on I’m going to call competitors, indirect competition came out, surface drive came out, and that came out their version of it. A couple of those who was, in fact, there’s three others had built theirs and then I put my head together with my engineer who has worked for me the time and said, we’re going to build our version of this and then I designed, this is how I want it built, this we’re going to make it work, that’s how we’re going to make it work. And then he, I have certain expertise’s, but he has the education, he had education and the tools. Yeah, he built it all on solid works, which is a computer program that I had never seen before and it was totally amazing. He could make it move, operate, you could see the thing function where would steer tilt up and everything on that program and I was shocked. And I think he had a bootleg copy of it from school. He said you can’t print any of this. You know it’s not legal copy so we’re going to buy one. I paid $4,000 for that copy. I can’t even turn it on. But I bought legal copy of it and we still use it today. I mean he still use it, he doesn’t work for, he was working for me full time at that time now he just does it on the side. He was so good, he went to work for Shell. I can’t pay him what they pay and I just can’t afford him. But he still does what I need him to do as far as a mechanical engineer. And we’re real close, I bring him up here deer hunting and he comes with me quite a bit. But anyway that’s the business turn from the long tail engine, which we still sell quite a few of. Then we start building the surface drive and we first started with a non-reverse and then now we’re into a reverse model and we got boats with hydraulic steering, center console steering and all that, which all that does and make everything more complicated.

Ramsey Russell: I noticed the trend because I’ve, heck I’m old enough to have seen the trend, the trajectory of how these mud motors, so to speak have evolved. And at some point time it did go to the surface drive. You know, a lot of people started transition surface drive and I’m a little old school. I can see the advantage of them for getting around. But man those things are loud. I mean compared to the original Go-Devil.

Warren Coco: Well, it as loud as it can be like. It depends what kind of exhaust. If you put a stock exhaust system, it’s not, yes, it’s louder than a long tail, but it’s not that loud. It’s when people put modified exhaust systems on, that’s when they get loud.

Ramsey Russell: They do that to get more horsepower.

Warren Coco: Yeah, they can’t leave anything alone. They start hopping them up and then they losing, once they start doing that, they start losing longevity. People can’t leave things alone. They try to go faster, faster, faster and it’s been in, you know, they go two or three miles an hour past, it cost you three grand to go, just to gain a little bit. Then you lose your liability and your warranty on the engine because Briggs and Stratton motor won’t warranty that engine once you modify your, there were no warranty at that point. And now what they’ve come out and started out, when the surface drive came out, the biggest thing we had was a 31 HP. And then now they’ve got 35, now they’ve come out with a 37 fuel injected and now up to a 40 fuel injected, but that’s going to be the limit on pretty much a stock engine because the limit is 1000 CC. Then you get into a whole new tier of emissions. And I was talking to, you know that’s the limit. And so I asked the guys that the whole new tier of emission gets a lot more expensive to reduce the emissions, where it has to be to meet with the E.P.A requires. So I asked the engineer from Briggs and Stratton, well, give me an example of an engine in the next tier of emissions, so like what you’d see in a forklift, I said I can relate to that 13 years ago and I didn’t realize that long until we’re looking it up to that, I bought a caterpillar forklift brand new, fuel injected propane. I never knew there was such a thing, fuel injected propane, but I specifically wanted a propane forklift not to have to deal with gasoline, And then I had certain criteria, I needed a truck, this size, high reach, side shift, soft tires and all that. And when I say I want propane because there’s a fuel injector. I guess the only thing that broke on it, fuel injection, somewhat went out on it, but it wasn’t long after, but in 13 years has only had two malfunctions. It’s been a great truck, you know, and that’s why I bought the caterpillar.

Ramsey Russell: You know talking about that original motor with the long shaft and all that mess. I know it was evolved down here in the marsh. I know that’s where it started, where you know Thailand here. But I’ve got a real close friend that run Joe motor. And I asked him one time because he’s in the cypress timber a lot like you described Maurepas. And I asked one time, why don’t you get one of motors that got a reverse and got this and got that? And he says I’d never get around. He said, you wait and I tell you I’ve hunted with him long enough now to where, you know, you got the submerged trees, you’ve got the cypress roots, you got all this mess under water, the water levels vary year to year. And he uses that long tail like leverage. There aren’t nothing that can stick him. He can’t get stuck in there because he’s got all that shaft out there. He can leverage and work, it’ll work them to death sometimes but he gets us in there.

Warren Coco: A lot of customers will never buy a long tail, instead of working to death but they don’t know how to run it for one thing. If it’s beating them up, is not set right, for one thing, now that it does take more effort to run. But they will look what they compared to an outboard. Well the center of point to the shaft is 10 inches long where Go-Devil 6 ft. long. Yeah, it’s going to be harder to steer. But look where it can carry you. And the surface drive will never replace the Go-Devil because customers will call me, well, yeah, so what should I buy? So let me put it this way, if you get on plane everywhere you’re going, surface drive is going to do a better job, if you got a bumping grind and you can’t get on plane, you better have a long tail to go there because I don’t think it’s going to get you there.

Ramsey Russell: He used it, like I said, we’ll center up on a Supper stop or something. He’s like, hang on and man, he got that, he uses it like a pry bar. He just gets us right off [**00:18:46]

Warren Coco: Well, he raises out of the water, dropping that water and it’s going to climb, you know, like a 23 HP on a boat. One of our boats, which are not like that made out of 1-5 aluminum. I can pull up to a log six out of the water and stop, just bump it and stop, shut the engine off, crank engine back up wherever wide open, dropping water and hop over the log, six out of water. He’s going to push that whole boat right over that log. You can’t do that with surface drive because you can’t reach, coming over the log, you can’t reach the water.
Ramsey Russell: And you were showing me, I guess a blind back up in here and you duck whole today is one, you got like a floating blind. You all actually sell that commercially?

Warren Coco: Yeah, that’s a small. We’ve got two versions. We got the Reginald blind 16/8, its 16 ft long, and 7 ft bottom, 8 ft wide. Put an engine on it and go. Put 40 hard surface drive on their run, you know, 20 plus miles an hour loaded to go. Now, the blind you saw today is a little smaller version of that. No motor, we don’t put no motor. Don’t ask to put no motor. We’re not going to put a motor on it because there’s no Coast Guard, no flotation. That’s made more, you can use it in the marsh, but it’s made for like this scenario hill farm ground. I also have what you didn’t see is a hitch that boats on the front and the axle that you dropped a blind on tight on the rope. You hook it on side by side, take off across a muddy field, you can’t get stuck. No fenders, is just an axle and the tires about a foot out past side of blind. You take off the mud flies, no fenders or nothing to stop it and go and you pull out where you’re going to drop back in the water. You can float the blind off the axle, you’re untied back and the water floats off, you can leave the hitch on and take it off it don’t matter, floats where you’re going. I got four legs on it, four Jack up legs, you drop them down, take a farm Jack, put on lifted up a little bit pin, pin the legs. Now you’ve got to stabilize, sitting on the ground, the feet is sitting on the ground, you step on like standing on dry ground when you get in the blind, don’t move.

Ramsey Russell: That’s about perfect. I can think of several places I’d like to hunt out of something like that.

Warren Coco: It’ll also work in a soft bottom situation when it comes, you get spuds with it as you push in the ground or you can get in a deep part of situation and take a ratchet strap, strap it to a tree, you’re tied onto the rails and come around wrapped around the tree, tighten up and lock it onto the side of tree. But we built that with a hard top version in an open top, low profile with a flip top on it, got a Cardura top with little frame that you can put over you and you can take a gun and it flies back to come up to shoot. Or you can have the hard top version like the blind you saw about just like the blinds were built in the woods and hunted out of the wooden blinds, we hunted our same style blind.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. What’s next with Go-Devil? Can you say where you all going from here?

Warren Coco: We just got into the steering rig, center console steering rigs. And we built like that one we built, kind of a test model and you know, it’s for sale, the 2472 with twin 40s on it. I just shipped one boat, it went to Florida 2072 with twin 40s, took it out to run it. Shut one engine off trim, they run 32 miles an hour, three of us in the boat. Shut one engine off, trim that up around 20 miles an hour with one engine.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Warren Coco: Yeah, it’s just that 40s have got a lot of humps. And twin engines got a dependability, you know, with two engines instead of one. My personal boat I run, I’ve been running twin engines since 2006 that I go back forward from a camp hackberry and got 2456 and I got twin 35 service drive on, tele steer, non-reverse, simple, except electric start, that’s it. And somebody said, why don’t you put reverse models on and I said, I don’t need them. I crank it up, go to the camp, shut off, crank it up and come home so I don’t need reverse. You know, it’s been running like that since I was six. I put a 2000 pounds fuel tank in that boat, those 200 gallons and get up on playing around 24 miles an hour with that tank sitting in it because the boats 24 ft long and it’s got twin engines, you know, 70 HP on it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, a lot of duck boat.

Warren Coco: Yep. And then one time I got full cabin goes on it, like sit down and look through the glass and drive or stand up and look over the top, thereby driving and running and running. I’ll never forget the first time I come out here and out with my wife, with rain we got in the boat we’re running. She said, I don’t know what this cabin costs, but this sure is nice.

Ramsey Russell: That goes back to those creature comforts you were talking about as we get older, why not have a roof?

Warren Coco: That’s exactly right. There’s just the cost of the glass is what kills you. I got safety glass in and it’s just expensive, but it’s so nice ride, in the wintertime it’s like riding in the truck. You know, it’s great.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s go back to 1999 again because we were talking, Dale and me lifetimes comes along, you finally opportunity, you just, I mean, first guy to close on it and you got what sounds like a dream property down in Hackberry. Tell me about it.

Warren Coco: When I bought that piece of property. It kind of set things straight. It was just you know, we’re all in shock. I said, yeah, I said back hunting in the swamp, we’re killing all malice in the swamp. I made the statement, I said, somebody ever asked me is anything in south Louisiana I’d ever buy. I said no, there aren’t nothing out to buy and I said wait a minute, that’s one place will never come up for sale. Well guess what? It came up for sale and I bought it. And what I learned from that and everybody listening to this podcast needs to remember this never in your life, spent everything you got. You need to keep something right hold away because the best deal of your life could come along, you’re going to have to pass because you can’t capitalize on it. And what I was able to do to buy piece of property. You know, I have money invested in my business in inventory and I built my house. I save my pennies and I paid for my house. I don’t have a house. No. And when I bought the property, I had to finance it. I didn’t have my share. The deal was like $336,000. Well I couldn’t write a check $336,000. You know, we had to put 20% down, which wasn’t a problem. And we had issues, we’re going, looking at financing, I went and call Hibernia, which is now capital one. They wanted a survey, I said don’t need, no survey. He said, environmental phase 1. So then I called federal land buyer and that’s who you finance land through. And I call them up and I said, what about survey? They said, you got good boundaries, you don’t need a survey. So I said what about environmental phase 1. So we go and look, we don’t see nothing, we don’t need that, it’s all right. So I brought them out here and looked at it. Everything and they said, everything looks and I said another and we pulled up to the location with my camp is all the location. And I said this where I want to move my camp in. And when that guy don’t let nobody come across this property and I have to get permission to come across everybody in my camp in here if you let me. He said, well, you don’t have road access? I said, I told you that I didn’t have road access, I already told him. I said, we got issues so we may as we’ll talk to it when we get back to the office. So we come back, so we got problems, what’s your problem? So we don’t have road access. And so I told you that before we started. That’s that guy wanted nobody come across as it’s my private. So well you have to put more money down, you need 40%. I said well I don’t have a problem with that, my partner is going to have a problem with that. I said what do you need? More collateral? And see that work, well can you use my house? He said yeah, so let me get back with you. I’ll come back and I call my bank and I said what kind of interest rates will give you in the house? At that time, trying to get my numbers right, Capital One was 10% on Financing Land, Federal Land Bank was 8%, at that time in 1999, it’s pretty high. And I said, what you all give me to my house. So we’ll give you 5 and 5/8s. I said, so I mortgaged my house, paid for the property. So then I had a house looked like everybody else said that I didn’t have before going up 15 year note and said adjustable rate mortgage fixed for three years, can’t go up over half a point at some kind of limit on how much you can move. I said, well, I’ll pay it off for three years. Well, my business was growing. I built my boat shop so I didn’t have the cash to do that. So I just kept paying a note. Went down, it got our way down to 3 and 7/8. I said, I aren’t paying this off. So I just find paying it out 15 years but had I not had access to that money. Best deal in my life went by it and I have never been able to do it.

Ramsey Russell: Well tell me about this property. That’s the deal of a lifetime. What’s so special about it?

Warren Coco: The duck hunting was absolutely phenomenal. The bass fishing, back years ago we caught hundreds of bass but they were always smaller and after you know, got the property I had plans of things that I want to do to make improvements but all that’s got to go through the permanent process or the Corps Engineers and Officer Coastal Management which is the D.N.R Department of Natural Resources, Louisiana and the work I want to do, I couldn’t afford to do at that point time. So as time progress what we’re made to play so great was the location. And back in the 70s, everything north of there was rice, vent Louisiana and all that, that’s why we had all the pin tails. We bought a serene refuge 2.5 miles, so the ducks coming out of refuge flying over us, going to this rice. In 99 and I bought a place, I see 30,000 pin tails a day coming out of that refuge and that for two years they were like that and then they’ve dwindled down. You know the pin tail’s numbers have dropped, but the rice was gone. The rice was gone in, it was virtually going in and I said why did the rice leave? What happened the production was low and the mill shut down in vent. And that was the end of the rice, there weren’t more rice. So that all that rice production went up here but in this part of the world went to Arkansas, went to Missouri, so there’s no more rice, so it’s all the duck hunters totally changed. And I’ve always had this project, I want to do what I call the wetland restoration project and that’s a whole other story there. But the hunting has been off and on, good years and bad years, when Rita came through the same year, Katrina hit New Orleans area, we got Rita and it destroyed southwest Louisiana and we had virtually no damage. The levy on the refuge pool stopped all debris and trash and stuff and we couldn’t miss a limit that year, we shot limit every hunt. You know like I was telling you one hunt, we went hunting what we call Mallard ho, friend of mine and I shot eight green heads, came back up at my blind shot up Pintail green wing teal drake each. Next day went back to the same thing, shot eight green heads came back up and shot up Pintail green wing teal drake out of my blind open water. And but fishing has always been up and down and then I want to do this project. It was happen, I got too many openings where the tiding energy comes in and out too fast. We don’t have a tide that moves up and down like on the coast. But we get what I call the wind tide, get a south wind for cold front water comes up to the north wind and water goes down. And what happens with all these openings in the water moving too fast, you get a south wind for cold front turns up your settlements, suspend them in the water. Here goes the north and wash that goes your punk, you settlements going out into the cement into the canal, out into the by, out to the gulf and gone. And that’s what’s happening to the marshes on the coast. A lot of them are getting deeper. They’re losing these sediments. We don’t have a river building this anymore because the Mississippi river don’t flow this way anymore. So we’re not getting anything building land anymore like did hundreds of thousands of years ago. So we’re losing those settlements. So to stop that in my project was to put a levy on the south side with structures and then block off another location of by coming in that was once plugged off before. But you can’t plug anything off 100% because national marine fisheries wants to tide to come and go and I want that too. I want salinity, I don’t want to hurt some fresh water. I want the salinity because that keeps the water higher, something salvation from growing. So anyway I commenced on this project but to do the project I had to have a marsh buggy excavator. So I finally found one and I bought it. The 318 Caterpillar on Pontoons, it floats and had a short boom. So I had to buy a long boom for because on the marsh buggy you need the long reach to build do your work, to build terrace levies and the protection levy on the south side. Well, next step was to get permits and I’ve gone through that before, had clean ditches on the property and hired a marsh buggy to do that. And I was like, I don’t know, pulling teeth that you didn’t want to pull like pulling woods and teeth were using pan nail clippers to get it out with, you know to get a permit. So I started on that. I’m trying to think of the right word trek or whatever you want to call it is the biggest nightmare I’ve had to deal with in my life. The D.N.R was easy, had that permanent eight months. You know girl called me up, wanted to a site visit, brought her out there, said man there’s a great project this is what we want to see. Nobody takes on a project like this and funds that they’re looking for somebody else to pay for it. Yeah, the marsh buggy was a quarter million dollars that I bought. So by the time I put the boom on it. So anyway, next step was a permit with the core. I finally got to permit after three years, it was how long it took. They don’t get in a hurry for nothing to nobody. So I finally got the permit and started my project and I moved every bucket of dirt myself. I ran a machine, worked on it, service to change the drive chains on it twice with help doing that. But I run the machine myself, nobody else runs a machine and when you got one operate running a piece of equipment, when something sounds different, you stops and find out what’s wrong with it. And I’ve had great service out of it, it’s been great. I only had $1,500 on about it. And I think I’m, what I’ve got 3400 hours on it now, that’s as many hours I put on it on location there and it does a lot of other work, you know, built shed, department generators under and driving pilings where they built a pile driver and but based on what I’ve done is going in, built terrace levees or the terrace levy is a low lying levee that stops the wave action and open water and it stops the turbulence so the water stays clear, so the aquatics can grow. The biggest area where will put those terraced levee with zero vegetation, what they call U.A.V underwater Quality vegetation. It’s 110% now, you can’t fill a fish bait in, and it won’t sink in the water, the solid vegetation at this point of time. In those terraced levee, wherever you excavate you create fish habitat. You know, we’re catching bass over 4 pounds that never caught a bass over 3 pounds in that place before I did all the work. And then shutting the flow off from the south, I went from 60 ft wide cuts with the water come, flowing back and forth to 4-foot culvert with flaps on both sides and then my permit, a wrote and accepted this. The flaps will stay open all year except for hunting season. I closed outside flap to keep south wind water from coming in, I only let water out. And after the day hunt seasons close, open the flaps back up. Now the events of salinity gets above 8 parts per 1000, I close the flaps and keep the salt water from coming in. But what I have that most nobody has on my east side is a 2600 acre impoundment, full of rain water that drains on me. And it used to flow out into the refuge when I built that levy. Now that water comes down that ditch where I dug that levy. Now I can divert that water across my property wherever I want.

Ramsey Russell: And you can manage the salinity that way.

Warren Coco: Yes sir, I can manage because all fresh water coming in from the southeast corner and I can help manage my salinity with that.

Ramsey Russell: What does all that work done for the duck hunting down there?

Warren Coco: The duck hunting is off. You know we talk about good years and bad years, we’ve been in a bad stretch for the last several years. You know a lot of people say they aren’t never coming back and things have definitely changed. But the thing I see, you know, everybody’s talking about plant corn. That’s a whole another story. Yeah the corn stopping all of ducks and there’s a big push right now and all that and my answer to that, I got two stories on that, one when we planted corn up here and it works. There aren’t no question about it. I saw it first hand on this farm and when I was buying a tractor we went to auction up here in rival. And looking at this tractor is one sitting on the shed out there right now at 4650 and I was looking at it. Another guy from Marksville was looking at, I got to talking to him, telling me what it was from. I said, yeah, we bought place across the river for about Black River Point for duck hunting. He says huh, he said, we don’t kill, this was in 04. He said, we don’t kill no ducks up here, no more thanks to ducks unlimited. I looked at him, I said, you really believe that, don’t you? He bowed up in the neck, he’s ready to start a fistfight. And I said that, I said and I looked at him, I said, you really believe that though? He said, I sure do. I said, I tell you what, they must, I knew what he was hinting at. You know, ducks into the story, ducks limos feeding, putting corn out. I told him, I’ll tell you what they must have borrowed all the warms and warm ranches and put them out to because they should have stopped him Robbins. He looked at me, he had a revelation. He said man, I aren’t seen Robin in three years and I said that’s right. You know 2, 3 and 4 was the worst years I ever saw, you hunting hackberry and here. And after that he said, man, I never thought of that. I said I’m telling that’s right. You start sitting in Robin’s, you can start seeing ducks again and it gets cold they come and if don’t get cold they aren’t coming, especially mallards. Well I bought that corn, bought that track and start playing that corn, everything changed. But the big argument I have on the corn, you know, everybody says corn stopping the duck, stopping the ducks. So I said, yeah, you think so? Oh Yeah. So let me ask you something. What’s the number one duck we kill in south Louisiana? People will argue one will say Gadwall some will say Teal. I say Gadwalls, Gadwalls don’t eat corn.

Ramsey Russell: They sure don’t.

Warren Coco: Right. They aren’t coming. So what stopped them? Water and weather. River has been flooding for the last two years and it aren’t got cold. That’s why we had, that’s why worst season we’ve ever had here and there was last year. I mean it was absolutely horrible.

Ramsey Russell: You think any of this, you know, you alluded to the loss of the coastal marsh, do you think that’s affecting Gadwall at all?

Warren Coco: Yeah, it’s got less habitat, but there’s still, there’s plenty of habitat for them to use, but there is less habitat. There’s no question in my mind, my best bass fishing spot at the mouth of the Mississippi River, on the east side of the Mississippi River, there’s 300 yards out in the Gulf right now. It was all Roseau cane and it was palms. It was called Mr. Tease Pond. If you go look on the old map and look, it was one of the hottest bath spots down there and it’s 300 yards out in the gulf right now. That’s how much the Roseau cane has washed back from hurricanes. And that’s been happening since forever. I mean you look at old maps of Jackass Bay down there, it was all closed in now. It’s wide open. It’s just what I have seen in my lifetime and what it was. Yeah, we get a whole another story about the mouth of the river, about what transpired down there.

Ramsey Russell: We’re going to talk about that later.

Warren Coco: Yeah, I’ve got a friend of mine that was down in the 60’s and he died before Katrina, fell out of Rufus camp, died. He lived down past and he told me all kinds of stories about what it was like down there, different things that were down there, what they saw, marsh was all solid at that time when he first went down there. But anyway, Hackberry is just, it’s kind of a unique places. You know right now, my bass fishing, the shot through the roof, we’re catching fish, hand over fist has been great, been managing it. We don’t keep anything over 14 inches. And this past weekend we caught, three of us caught 170 fish, kept about 35 home.

Ramsey Russell: And you were telling me, for folks listening, you had told me that your camp house is seven miles boat ride out in the marsh.

Warren Coco: Right.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a good ride.

Warren Coco: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: And you live, you’re just immersed in that marsh. That’s where you’re living.

Warren Coco: Right. Now, there is a road comes in there and I can come in when my neighbor lets me come in there. You know, if I can’t get in the boat, I call him, let me come in. But you know the guy on 16,000 acres, you want to buy on this property, you know, so that’s just the way, I knew that going in and I can respect that, that’s his land. He don’t want and I can understand that.

Ramsey Russell: We’ve got time for one more store. And I want to ask you, can you tell a story about cooking pancakes and sausage in the blind? That was a very good story

Warren Coco: Right there at the end of Mariupol, it might have been a good year and it might have been the last year we hunted it. I was bringing Mason, my youngest son. Now you got to understand Mason, Mason has Down syndrome. They had to come get me out of duck blind when he was born and he came five weeks early. He had an abdominal attrition, had to have surgery when he was born and they had come to get me out of duck blind, this is even better story than a pancake sizes. I’ll put these on before the pancakes. They came got me out of duct blind, I get there, my wife’s in the hospital, he says, so we’re trying to have his baby without me because I don’t have babies during hunting season. That was not playing. When she was trying to get pregnant, first time she had Lance, I said all right, if you’re not pregnant by this date, we stop it. She thought I was a kid. We got to a certain point, she wasn’t pregnant. That’s all right. That’s it. She said, what do you mean? I said, remember I told you and she said, I can’t believe that. Let me tell you something that aren’t nothing meaner than a madder than a woman who wants to get pregnant and they can’t.

Ramsey Russell: Because of ducks.

Warren Coco: Oh Lord, she was hot. Well anyway, then Lance was born March 10th or something, it all worked out with him. So Mason was playing and he was supposed to be coming sometime in March. And he was born January 4th, came 5 weeks early, six or whatever it was. I get to the hospital and they’re fixing induce labor. The water broke and before I left to go hunting that guy coming in to hunt who held my advertising, he was out of ST louis, him and his boss was coming in. We hunted, it was a slow day. We hunted about noon. I come in and this is before cell phones because this is, he’s 30 years old now. And we come in, I’m starting to cook breakfast, this is 12:00 clock, he’d come out of, Strabo was coming in. So what’s he coming so early? He always hunted in the evening. He never came out early. He said you got to go, your wife’s having a baby. So Lord. So I get in there. This nurse is explained to me. She said, you know we did a sonogram on your child and looking at length of his legs between his knee and his hip and looking at the lines on his hand, he appears to have Down syndrome. They can see that through solid ground. She said, you know, these Children you say they call mongoloids and she explaining me there’s a chromosome shortage. You know my response was that, so how do you fix that? She says you don’t. You know I was lost. You know so she has a baby. Everything is fine. Yeah the birth went fine. But Mason’s got abdominal treason, what abdominal treason is be back up, when I left to go hunting she was swelling. What happened when the baby is in the woman’s womb? He’s taking amniotic fluid and consuming it? Well when his intestines was blocked, he wasn’t taking in the fluid and she was building that fluid and she was swelling. And I asked I said, what did you going to do? So I said, you aren’t going to make, it getting too big and so all this happened, she’s in there having a baby and he came out fine. We had to do surgery immediately so he was in Intensive care for six weeks. So we’re going up there every night and I’ll never forget this. It was like why me? Why this happened to me? You know, it was really rough deal. And then I got to looking around all them other babies in there. You couldn’t count the tubes hanging out of some of them and there was this long. I said, man, my baby is going to be fine. He’s getting out here, these here might not make and that’s wonder why me went out the door, that was it. And he’s been healthy, he’s been great, he’s got a little hearing loss so his little speech and tember, but he’s, hey he’s happiest kid in the world.

Ramsey Russell: Every picture I saw of him in the many, in your photo album and you’ve been taking him since he’s a baby. And I mean every single one of them he is smiling outside.

Warren Coco: He never had a bad day. The story on the pancake exercises. We’re hunting, by the last year we had ducks in a swamp. It might be the last year we didn’t have any, went opening day, got up, we’re at the houseboat, we got up, I said, well, you want something to eat, you don’t want nothing to eat. So I bought a pack oatmeal cookies with us. We left, took off in the boat, run to the other leaks, went got the blind, we stayed there hunted. I said, boy you want oatmeal cookie. No, I don’t want that. He said, I’m hungry. I said we’ll get back to camp. I’m going to cook you some pancakes exercises, by this time it’s about 9.30. He’s getting hungry, so I’m going to go, I’m going to go eat. I said I was going to stay and hunt for a while. So we got done, we loaded up come out and stopped at the blue camp right there to visit. Guys, is that little hunting. And normally he’s in getting into everything, you got to watch him every second, at that point in time he went about 8-9 years old. He sat in the chair on the Porch, was really good, I’m real proud of him and I never forget got done, and by this time is about 12:00 now we’ve been up since 4:30. He had nothing to eat. We get in the boat and Lance lays down behind the bulkhead of the boat and we take off and I got a cold front coming started drizzling, rain is getting cold and he’s got his arm up on the Mason and Mason rose his head up looks at him, he got tear running down his cheek and he looks at Lance and he says pancake sausage please. Now we all died laughing. It was absolutely hilarious. And ever since then we go hunting, he would said, I want to go, we want to go, so I want to go to camp, we want to camp for us, we want to eat, I said, what you want to eat, they said, the only pancake and sausage. Every hunt that’s what I hear in every hunt. So now every Saturday morning we cook pancakes and sausage, that’s just tradition. And when they built the first floating blind, we got hackberry, second year’s they built big floating blind, got a stove in it. I said I’m going to fix him good so I might fix my pancake batter up, have my sausage cut up, had all the little ice just brought with us. Didn’t tell him anything. He never even seen the floating blind we pull up in a boat. He gets out on the deck of the blind, get in to turn the light on, your blind on the roof on it you got 3 ft roof, 2 foot shooting porch. Yes and that man, he’s all excited. Daylight come we start shooting ducks, were about half a limit. He said, I want to go, so we want to go, want to go to camp, he said, I want to eat. I said, what you want to eat, he said, only pancakes and sausages. I said, sit tight, we’ll fix you something, wait a minute, finish the limit. Shot limit of the ducks, I pulled out sausage out, started cooking. I mean, in his eyes. Then I pulled that pancake batter, native pancakes. That’s when he really got excited. He got these pancake and sausage for the first time in a duck blind that day.

Ramsey Russell: And I guess that’s every time you all hunt together now.

Warren Coco: Well we don’t always cooking the blind, Saturday morning, we’re cooking pancakes and sausage.

Ramsey Russell: Yes sir. That’s a great story to end on Warren and I sure appreciate your time and I appreciate you sharing that. I’ve always said, kids spell love TIME. And that’s just, that’s living proof of it right there. Folks, you’ve been listening to Warren Coco of Go-Devil. You all tune in next time, I’m sure we got some old stories coming. Thank you all for listening duck even somewhere.