I have long found enjoyment searching out trivial bits of information others might discard as worthless. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you the date when the Magna Carta was signed (or even what it was), but I do know that the first pump-action shotgun was patented in 1882 and that a duck sent aloft in a hot-air balloon in 1783 was one of the first animal aviators.
Somewhere along the way, I started stuffing a shoebox with scraps of trivia torn from the pages of newspapers and magazines. Later, many of these items found their way into files on my computer, including the following tidbits of unusual information about Arkansas ducks and duck hunters. I hope these amazing facts will surprise, intrigue and entertain you as much as they have me.
Hunters Who Really Quacked Us Up
Stuttgart, Arkansas, hosted the first World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest on Nov. 24, 1936. Back in those days, it was known as the National Duck Calling Contest, and no one expected anyone but an Arkansas boy to win, for hunters from “The Land of Opportunity” were considered by everyone to be the very best callers.
When the contest was over and the winner was announced, however, the duck-hunting citizenry of Arkansas was stunned. Thomas E. Walsh of Greenville, Mississippi, was proclaimed to be the winner, and to make matters worse, he used his voice, rather than a duck call, to imitate the sounds of a mallard hen. His prize for winning first place was a hunting coat valued at $6.60.
After the contest, Walsh noted that he raised ducks as a hobby at his home in Mississippi — and not just any ducks. Walsh kept trained callers (live duck decoys called “tollers”) in his backyard, and for 11 years, these live ducks had been teaching him the trade.
Only one other person besides Walsh would ever win first prize in the World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest without the use of a duck caller. His name was Herman Callouet, and like Walsh, he was a native of Greenville, Mississippi. Callouet took top honors in the 1942 calling contest.
Champion of Champions
Only one person has won all five major competitions held at Stuttgart’s World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest. That lady, Pat Peacock, was also the first woman to serve on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. In 1950, at age 12, Peacock won the Junior World title. In 1951, she took the first of five straight Women’s World titles. In 1955, Peacock won the Arkansas title and the first of two straight World’s Championships, and in 1960, she capped her duck-calling career with the Champion of Champions crown. In 1956, Peacock also won the first-ever Queen Mallard beauty contest.
It’s Raining Ducks!
In November 1973, on the day before duck season started, hundreds of ducks fell from the sky and rained down on Main Street in Stuttgart, breaking storefront windows, damaging roofs and denting cars. Most were believed to have been killed by hail, but others were covered with ice when they hit the ground, suggesting that uplifting winds had carried the birds to a high altitude, where ice accumulated on their bodies and wings.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission reported another weather-related duck incident in fall 2000. Workmen were preparing a mobile home near Hot Springs for transport that day when a thunderstorm blew up. They all felt a mild shock when a lightning bolt lit up the sky, and a few seconds later, ducks began raining down all around them. Apparently, the flock of 20 birds was struck in midair — a rare, though not unheard of, event.
Wide World of Ducks
On Dec. 23, 1956, 4 million viewers of NBC’s Wide Wide World, hosted by Dave Garroway, watched one of the most amazing hunting shows ever broadcast on live television. An estimated 300,000 mallards were sitting on the Claypool Reservoir in northeast Arkansas’ Poinsett County when the broadcast started at 3:14 p.m. — 40 acres completely covered with birds that were cleverly maneuvered into place by Game and Fish wildlife officers in boats.
To add to the excitement, a rocket holding three blocks of TNT was fired over the ducks and exploded in midair. Then there was another explosion as more than a quarter million ducks flushed into the air. Wallace Claypool, owner of the reservoir, then called in ducks for 12-year-old Lynn Parsons to shoot with his new shotgun. Garroway closed the 7.5-minute segment by saying, “Now if you will brush the duck feathers off your sofa, we’ll go on with the rest of the program.”
Ancient Mallard
Mallards typically live to be about 2 years old in the wild, but a few birds beat the odds and survive much longer. According to the national Bird Banding Laboratory, the oldest mallard on record was a drake banded in Louisiana on Jan. 9, 1981 — the winter after it hatched. An Arkansas hunter killed that bird on Jan. 17, 2008, making it an astonishing 27 years, 7 months old.
Peabody Ducks
Hundreds of thousands of people have seen the March of the Peabody Ducks at the famous Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, but few know this tradition started after an unsuccessful Arkansas duck hunt in 1932.
Peabody general manager Frank Schutt and his friend Chip Barwick had returned to the hotel empty-handed after a weekend hunting trip in Arkansas. They had with them three English call ducks — live decoys, which were legal at the time — and thought it would be funny to put the ducks in the hotel’s lobby fountain. The stunt turned out to be a hit with the guests, and since then, the Peabody Ducks — one drake and four hen mallards — have lived in the Royal Duck Palace on the hotel’s rooftop and are brought down daily for a swim in the lobby.
In 1940, bellman Edward Pembroke, a former circus animal trainer, offered to help with delivering the ducks to the fountain each day and taught them the famous Peabody Duck March. Pembroke became the Peabody Duckmaster, serving in that capacity until his retirement in 1991.
Coat of Many Feathers
And finally, no compendium of Arkansas waterfowling trivia would be complete without sharing the story of the beautiful Coat of Many Feathers, created by two-time (1963 and 1967) women’s world-champion duck caller Ruby Abel of Stuttgart. Abel owned Sportsman’s Restaurant and was a professional duck dresser — someone who plucked and gutted birds for visiting hunters who didn’t want to do the job themselves.
Believing that the iridescent green heads of the mallard drakes were being wastefully discarded, she started saving them. At the end of one year, she had skinned 450 heads, which she tanned and hand-stitched together to create a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind coat whose worth was estimated at more than $20,000. More than 600 hours of work went into its making.
Ruby wore the Coat of Many Feathers herself, and from time to time loaned it to friends. On two occasions in the mid-1960s, she wore the coat in New York City when she appeared as a contestant on the television game shows To Tell the Truth and What’s My Line?
Ruby’s masterpiece mostly stayed on display in Sportsman’s Restaurant, but when she died in 1985, she willed the coat to Stuttgart’s Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie, where you can see the coat displayed today.