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RELOADED EP303: History Series- Nash Buckingham & Waterfowlers For America · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:03
  VO: Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast, RELOADED, where we bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In RELOADED, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.
• 0:35
  Katie Burke: Today on the show, we're gonna be talking about Ducks Unlimited's history and the forerunners to that. Today on the show, have Dan Theil. Dan Theil is the COO of Wetlands American Trust. He's also the executive secretary of Ducks Unlimited. Welcome to the show, Dan.
• 0:49
  Dan Thiel: Thank you, Katie. A lot of folks don't understand or know what Wetlands America Trust is. That is the forerunner actually, it's the end result of what was once the Ducks Unlimited Foundation founded in 1955, and then in the early nineties, the name was changed to better reflect a broader mission. Wetlands America Trust is the land trust for Ducks Unlimited and also the foundation. And we're very proud of the fact that Wetlands America Trust is actually one of the nation's largest land trusts based on the number of conservation easements we hold and the number of acres permanently conserved by Wetlands America Trust.
• 1:29
  The other role is executive secretary for Ducks Unlimited. There've only been a handful of executive secretaries at DU. They tend to stay in the position for quite some time. The role is, in many ways, the liaison with the board of directors, and that's both a wonderful job and an all consuming job because we're very proud of the fact that Ducks Unlimited is very much a volunteer based and volunteer led organization, and great volunteer organizations have very great boards and very strong boards, and our board is a bit unique in that there are 65 officers and directors, so that makes for a very large board. The board meets three times during the year.
• 2:16
  Very important for listeners to understand that all members of the board of directors pay all of their own expenses. So when we have a board meeting in Fort Worth, Texas that we did two weeks ago, each of those board members paid all of their travel expenses, hotel expenses. When they have dinner and drinks, we actually bill them back for dinner and drinks, and that's just the efficiency of Ducks Unlimited, and that's how you attract and maintain a great board of directors. And I've been in that position for about fourteen years.
• 2:48
  Katie Burke: And how long have you been at DU?
• 2:50
  Dan Thiel: Twenty one years. I was brought here in 2000 to serve as the National Director of Development.
• 2:56
  Katie Burke: So, today, and actually in a few episodes, this is just the start of a little series that Dan and I will be doing. We're going be talking about Ducks Unlimited's history and its founding. So today, we are going to go back a little earlier than that, and we're going to start with local waterfowling hero, Nash Buckingham, and his role with the American Wildfowlers and how that eventually became Ducks Unlimited. Nash Buckingham is a local Memphian, so his background here, his parents were pretty well-to-do parents in Memphis, and one thing I always like to talk to when I talk to collectors and historians, I like to talk about how their childhood then reflects where they went into where they are as adults, as collectors, or sportsmen. What is it about Nash Buckingham growing up in this area of the country that informed those later years as a writer and sportsman?
• 3:49
  Dan Thiel: So, if you go back to when he was born, he was born in 1880, and Memphis at that time was somewhat the cotton capital of the world. It had a very affluent class that greatly enjoyed outdoor sport and recreation, primarily upland bird hunting, duck hunting, fishing. And even in that era, there were a number of wonderful private clubs, and Buckingham's family were members of the Wapanaka Outing Club, which is in the Northeastern corner of Arkansas, a wonderful area with oxbow lakes off the Mississippi, tremendous duck hunting, great fishing, and as a young man growing up in an affluent family, that was the social fabric of his early years. He had a rod and gun in his hand from an early age, and it's very interesting, understand as Memphis geography today, not far from where the Memphis Airport is located, a major tributary to the river is known as Nonconna Creek, and in that general vicinity, there's actually a Nash Buckingham Park that's part of our municipal park system. He used to quail hunt near the airport along Noncona Creek, and there was a You know, it's one of the most interesting elements of Nash Buckingham.
• 5:13
  He was truly a horse and buggy man. He was born in 1880, he lived to be 91 years old, and so here's a man who grew up in the birth of the automobile age, and he never learned to drive a car. He was a horse and buggy man and a train man, and so being an affluent member of Memphis society, he would catch a morning train, and that early morning train was known as the Limb Dodger, and it would carry the hunters down to Tunica, Mississippi. They would stop on the tracks near the Tunica Outing Club, and they would be met by a buckboard, and they would go out into the environment and have their big morning duck hunt. So, growing up in that society, his father was a banker, and he ran in those circles.
• 6:01
  And all of those, I guess I'll use the term landed gentry, had great plantations, had access to phenomenal hunting. You know, a bird which has mostly disappeared in this part of the world is the bobwhite quail, and Nash Buckingham was a tremendous quail hunter, and back in that era, everyone had dogs, and you had retriever dogs, you had quail dogs, and in his early writings, you have these most wonderful descriptions of wagons filled with dogs going off for their various bird hunts. So that's how he grew up, and, you know, with that very affluent early background, he went to Harvard, and he did three years at Harvard. What a lot of folks don't realize is what an incredible specimen he was as a person. Number one, he was highly intellectual, but he was also incredibly handsome, well built, he took great care of his body.
• 7:02
  You know, it was the general course of behavior in that era that everybody drank and everybody smoked cigars, not Nash Buckingham. He drank a little bourbon, but he was never a smoker, and he was always keenly focused on good health. And in that period, he contracted malaria when he was at Harvard, came home to recuperate, and rather than return to Cambridge, he opted to go to Knoxville, and it's interesting, he was at the University of Tennessee for a fairly short time compared to his time at Harvard, but you don't read much about his time at Harvard, but he was all about being a volunteer. And when he was at Knoxville, NCAA rules were much less stringent than they are today. He lettered in four sports and was captain of the football team.
• 7:50
  So, he cut a pretty wide swath when he was at University of Tennessee.
• 7:54
  Katie Burke: Right. I mean, you could tell he took care of himself. He lived in '91. One thing about him is when you look at his career, it takes him a little while to get to where he commits to being a writer and a conservationist. Like, he goes through kind of a little bit of some failed businesses there for a while, or he kinda like, not necessarily fails, but starts and stops a lot of things.
• 8:14
  And one thing I noticed or I thought about when I was looking at that was, do you think there was a pressure on him from his society where he grew up to be something other than a writer? Like, was that not necessarily thought of as the right career in that time, and that's why he didn't commit? I mean, obviously, that's what he needed to become because he was fantastic at it.
• 8:35
  Dan Thiel: So I guess I'd answer that two ways. The first way, when he did finally become a writer, he really was one of the very first, what I would term conservation writers. Conservation was a fairly new term in our country during that time period. But the other part of that, as you alluded to, he was failed in a couple of businesses. He started a sporting goods store in 1917.
• 8:57
  He operated that sporting goods store until 1925. He sold insurance. He tried his hand at several things. One thing that I wanna point out, he married well. He married a wonderful woman by the name of Irma Jones, I believe in 1910, and she was his lifelong companion.
• 9:21
  If you look at his early writings, she joined him. You know, she was a hunter, she was an angler, she was a horsewoman. They traveled, they camped, and, you know, we know mainly about Nash in the Mid South, but in their early years, Nash was accepted into a lot of Western adventures, and he and Irma traveled West and did a variety of fishing and hunting activities out there. So, just want to point out they had one daughter, but Ehrman was his He was completely devoted to his wife. She was a big part of, I guess I'll say his success, because beside him, she was with him through all these adventures.
• 10:02
  So the transition from not very successful businessperson, as you read a lot of the history about him, you kind of discover that he just didn't have his heart in it. He wasn't interested in it. He was interested in being outdoors, being in the field, and it's you know, I said earlier, he never learned to drive a car. Another fact about Nash, he never owned a house, and, you know, I've wondered what does that mean? Did he did not have the resources?
• 10:29
  Did he not want to be tied down to home ownership? But at the end, he was a renter and kind of had a vagabond existence as he followed the season, and even at a fairly early age, he was a frequent guest. People loved having Nash Buck, and he was a great storyteller, and it was interesting, his introduction into writing was a result of being a great storyteller and then being with some of the wonderful, interesting people that were at these hunting camps. And so, while everybody hunted in those days, the hunting camps that he got to frequent had some very special guests, and one of those guests was a famous military man by the name of Paul Curtis. Nash was also a tremendous wing shot, and this Paul Curtis, who was also a successful author and a famous wing shot, commented that this young man had had that same skill set, and that became fairly known in those circles, and eventually he became a a representative and a demonstration shooter for the Western Cartridge Company, and this was the beginning of a fairly long and probably financially important relationship with firearms ammunition manufacturing companies, because he represented and demonstrated new shotguns.
• 11:52
  In fact, later we'll talk a little bit about the famous bow whoop shotgun, and, you know, that was a very special firearm that wasn't just for anyone, it was for someone with his skill set and his familiarity with firearms. So that early relationship with Western Cartridge eventually led to a fairly well paid position as a director, so that was very important. And as I understand it, you know, it's kind of neat that we live in Memphis in that there are individuals in Memphis who knew Nash Buckingham, and there is a wonderful retired surgeon in Memphis by the name of Doctor. Howard Meisner. Howard Meisner was a very successful surgeon very early in his career, and he met Nash in Nash's final years, and he shared many adventures with Nash.
• 12:41
  There's a well known medical doctor who has been deceased for several years, but was a great Ducks Unlimited volunteer by the name of doctor Chubby Andrews. Those two individuals knew Nash Buckingham in his later years, and they helped sustain him in his later years. And, unfortunately, as you read some of the final chapters of Nash's life, he lived to be 91, and he really outlived his financial resources. And in his final years, he was forced to sell shotguns, books, artifacts, all manner of items that he had collected over a wonderful career, individuals like Chubby Andrews, Howard Meisner, famous philanthropist and big game hunter in Memphis by the name of Barry Brooks. All of those individuals purchased on a regular basis some of Nash's personal treasures, and in fact, some of those treasures are now on permanent display at Ducks Unlimited due to their philanthropy in helping us showcase the Nash Buckingham story.
• 13:43
  So, Nash eventually, at the encouragement of his friends and through the circle of people he met, began to write short stories. And, you know, a lot of folks today don't understand how incredibly important magazines were in the world at that time. You know, we really didn't have radio, we didn't have TV, and so people read their news, and they read stories for entertainment. And he became an associate editor for Field and Stream. He was published in all of the great outdoor magazines, and he wrote on an incredibly broad array of topics.
• 14:17
  But ultimately, he began to in his own experience, he began to see that the autoloading shotgun was having a negative impact on waterfowl hunting, that with that auto loading shotgun, you could shoot all day and kill waterfowl. And bird limits of that era, there were no limits. And so this kind of leads to what is, for me and for Ducks Unlimited, probably the most important component of his contribution to Ducks Unlimited and conservation. There were a group of very influential philanthropists and sportsmen at a very national level, both in New York and Washington, who were also becoming very concerned about a lack of game laws and overactive hunting population. Again, people don't realize that hunters of that period would hunt the birds as they migrated south.
• 15:10
  They would hunt them on their migration north. So, Waterfowl had a pretty tough time during this period. So, an organization was formed in 1927, and that organization is the American Wildfowlers. And if listeners get anything out of this broadcast, that's the most important component because most people have no idea that there were actually two forerunners to Ducks Unlimited. And so it's also important to note that Nash Buckingham was the executive secretary, the only paid staff person of the American Wildfowlers.
• 15:41
  Katie Burke: He wasn't one of the founding members. He didn't come in till a year later.
• 15:46
  Dan Thiel: That is correct.
• 15:55
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 16:10
  Katie Burke: What was it about Nash Buckingham that kinda came to mind when they were looking for that position?
• 16:15
  Dan Thiel: If you go back to ten years ago when Ducks Unlimited was beginning to celebrate or preparing to celebrate our seventy fifth anniversary, we were in an all out search at headquarters to try to provide material for the publication known as the Ducks Unlimited story. And as part of that project, a former employee and I were in what's called the the warehouse mezzanine, and the executive secretary position actually has a little corner of the warehouse, and in that corner are dozens of cardboard boxes. And this was literally a needle in a haystack. It was like a treasure hunt, and we were in the mezzanine on a hot summer afternoon, and we just started going through random boxes. We opened a box, and it was a it was a moving company shipping box.
• 17:03
  Inside that box, written in black marker, heavily taped, was an old cardboard box, and it said, from New York City headquarters, older than dirt records. And so with that as kind of the introduction of what was in that box, we knew we had something special, so we took out our Swiss army knife, cut the tape off and opened the box, and of all cool things, in fact, it's on display at the Waterfowl and Heritage Center, we found the official records of the American wildfowler. I don't know that they had been seen in many, many years. In fact, at the time, we really didn't know what we had until we started to do a a deep investigation in. You know, like most minutes of that era, they were in scripts and pretty hard to read the handwriting of that era.
• 17:52
  And I'll never forget kind of the incredible thrill and excitement of seeing Nash Buckingham's name as the recording author, executive secretary, America Wildfowler, and the book is filled with all of the records of what that organization was attempting to do. Dig deeper into the DU records, and you find some correspondence from that group as to why they were in search of Nash Buckingham, and it was because of his national recognition. You know, in that era, there were not a lot of names in the outdoor conservation world. He was the name. And here's a kind of an interesting statistic.
• 18:30
  His annual salary in 1928 was $4,000. And in 1928, $4,000 was an incredible salary for someone, and he did relocate to Washington DC. They had a DC address, and he lived and worked in Washington. And let me just share that this group had some pretty important influence quickly, and they advocated for increased funding for the Bureau of Biological Survey, which is the forerunner to the Fish and Wildlife Service. They lobbied for an increased number of federal wardens, because at the time there weren't very many wardens.
• 19:06
  He was a huge advocate for waterfowl shooting limits. During that era, you can see in some of the old club manuscripts, you know, we encourage you to not shoot more than 50 birds a day, so there were no limits. And so this group was very instrumental in getting some of those first limits established. AWF also conducted one of the first expeditions onto the breeding grounds. They sent a team up to the Prairie Pothole region of Alberta just to see what the breeding grounds looked like, and, you know, the average sportsman in the South had no idea where birds came from.
• 19:40
  They have no idea what the Prairie Pothole region looked like, so they were much like explorers going up there to see where are these birds coming from and and what's happening to these populations. They also launched the first large scale duck banding operation which took place in North Dakota. I haven't done enough research to know what ultimately led to the decline of AWF. I do know that in the records, in 1931, the group determined that they had done all that they could do with the limited resources that they had, and they opted to send all of their materials to an organization that was just beginning, and that was known as More Game Birds in America. If there's a second part to this story, another future cast would focus a little bit on More Game Birds in America, because that in itself is an interesting topic.
• 20:35
  What's interesting is there are a handful of people whose name appears in all three organizations. Right. And John Phillips is you know, the history I've read of American Wildfowlers, believe was written by John Phillips. John Phillips played a role with more game birds and with Ducks Unlimited, and I won't jump ahead to the next chapter, some of these same people played a pretty important role in all three organizations.
• 21:00
  Katie Burke: So, I wanna go back to one thing that I just I didn't know this about, but it felt pretty advanced for that time, is they noticed they were doing these counts of clubs, duck clubs. And one of the things they noticed when they were putting out the wardens and constricting like some of these limit laws, that it wasn't as important that they restrict the clubs because it was more important that the habitat was there. And I thought that was pretty advanced sentiment at that time. I mean, I don't know how much it really actually played, but just even that they were thinking about habitat over what the numbers were like, that was more important that the habitat was there versus.
• 21:38
  Dan Thiel: So if you read some of Nash's early articles, pretty early he began to be a habitat focused individual at a time when most people didn't know what bird habitat looked like. So he was somewhat of a pioneer in that. So I guess now we should talk a little bit about the transition to author, because he's you know, no one knew that he was the executive secretary of this, you know, what is essentially the forerunner of Ducks Unlimited. He's best known as an author. You know, some of his books which listeners are more familiar with would be The Shooting This Gentleman, Mark Wright, Game Bag, Old Miss, Bloodlines, and then there are a number of stories about Nash Buckingham, collected stories.
• 22:24
  Chubby Andrews wrote a wonderful book. So there's a great deal of literature about Nash Buckingham, and again, another call out to national headquarters. There's a charming story. If you read Nash's books, you know that there's one individual mentioned more than any other, and that's Hal Howard. Hal Howard was Nash's most trusted and loyal hunting companion.
• 22:51
  And as I understand it, Hal appears in more of Nash's stories than any any other one person. Unfortunately, Hal Howard died fairly young. I believe he was 51 when he died. His son, and Nash was his godfather, is Hal Howard Junior. And when Billy Donovan and Chuck Smith and a group of great Memphians brought Ducks Unlimited to Memphis about thirty years ago, Howe Howard donated over a $100,000 to establish a diorama, if you will, that's in the lobby of our headquarters that tells the Howe Howard Nash Buckingham story.
• 23:26
  Well, that story is not complete until we talk a little bit about Bo Woop. And so, one of the you know, earlier we mentioned that Nash was a demonstration shooter. He was quite prolific with a shotgun, and if the ammo companies were bringing out a new brand or a new load, they would send it to Nash. Nash would test the firearm, he would test the load. And at National Headquarters, we have an incredible historic firearm.
• 23:56
  I've read in different places that it's considered one of the top five or top 10 most historically important shotguns in The United States. That gun is Bow Whoop, and the Bow Whoop story is is a wonderful story. We're very fortunate here at Ducks Unlimited that that gun is in our possession. An individual by the name of Burke Becker, who was a Philadelphia gunsmith, bored the chambers out on this gun to accommodate three inch shells, and that gun became Nash's most trusted firearm. Back in the day when most shotgun shells were two and three quarter inch, here's a guy with a 30 inch double barrel shotgun shooting three inch loads primarily in flooded timber.
• 24:40
  When he would pull the trigger, it would echo in those woods, and the sound was, bawoop, and that's where the name bawoop came from. So the gun was famous. He wrote about it quite often. He would say, my trusty BoWoop and I, you know, took a brace of Mallards. He's checked by a game warden somewhere in the Eastern Part of Arkansas in 1948.
• 24:59
  When the game warden identifies that he has Nash Buck in him, he says, oh my gosh, I'd love to see Bo Woop. Well, of course. So, they take Bo Woop out of the case, they look at the gun, the game warden leaves, they get back in the car, they take off, and about five miles down the road, Nash says, oh my gosh, I don't remember putting Bo Woop back in the car. They immediately turned around, went back to where they were checked, no sign of the gun. This upset Nash greatly.
• 25:25
  That gun was his pride and joy. It was a famous firearm. He put ads in every possible newspaper and magazine offering rewards trying to recover Bo Woop. Unfortunately, he never saw the gun again. The gun was lost.
• 25:42
  And now, on the positive side, the gun was recovered. In 2005, the gun, I'll use the term mysteriously, appeared at fairly famous and very respected gunsmith in South Carolina. Think it was Darlington was the name of the gunsmith. And he pretty quickly realizes, holy Toledo, I've got Bo Whoop. And if you look closely on on the barrel, it actually has Nash's name chiseled into it.
• 26:11
  So, they call the Fox Firearm Company, and Fox says, yep, that's that's the famous gun. And everybody always knew that gun would turn up, they just didn't know how or when. And so, jump ahead to 2010, the gun goes on auction with the Julia Auction House in Maine. And here's an interesting story that will be interesting for Ducks Unlimited people. One of Ducks Unlimited's most ardent supporter is a man by the name of Jim Kennedy.
• 26:42
  Jim is a former head of Wetlands America Trust, former DU board member, still very active with Wetlands America Trust, and Jim called me the day after the auction. He said, well, Dan, I have bad news. He said, I bid over $200,000 for that gun, and I didn't get it. And he said, at $200,000 I just stopped bidding because that's too much to pay for an Ochokraft.
• 27:03
  Katie Burke: And not many guns that have gone.
• 27:05
  Dan Thiel: That was the call from Jim Kennedy. The next day, had a call I received a call from Hal Howard Junior. And I'll just admit, I didn't even know that Hal Howard Junior was still alive. And, oh my goodness, what a charming and delightful gentleman Hal Howard Junior was. So he called and he said, hey, I understand.
• 27:23
  I need to talk to you about this firearm I just bought. He said, I'd like to loan it to DU to put on display with the diorama of my father and Nash. I said, mister Howard, number one, we'd love to do that. Mister Howard, how how old are you? And I believe he said he was in his late eighties.
• 27:41
  And I said, mister Howard, would you consider donating that gun to Ducks Unlimited? And just, you know, that is a treasure, and it's a treasure especially for Ducks Unlimited, and he said, absolutely, I'd love to give that gun to DU. Working with Hal Howard Junior and his family, we had an incredible celebration in Memphis where they handed the gun to Ducks Unlimited. He was the featured guest at our national convention that year in, I believe in, Grapevine, Texas. He came on stage, and he presented the gun to Ducks Unlimited to an incredible standing ovation, multiple standing ovations.
• 28:17
  People, to this day, come from around the country to see Bo Wu, which is on display here.
• 28:23
  Katie Burke: Yes. It's the most requested item at the museum, actually. And they're always very disappointed that it's at headquarters, which they can come see it.
• 28:31
  Dan Thiel: I could see that.
• 28:32
  Katie Burke: And I have to explain to them that in the donation that it has to be at the headquarters.
• 28:38
  Dan Thiel: So, it's important to note that when Nash lost the shotgun, a group of his patrons and good friends had another BoWoop, it's called BoWoop two, kind of a facsimile shotgun created, and Billy Donovan, our great patron in Memphis, donated that firearm to Ducks Unlimited for display at our museum. So, we're the proud owners of both the original BoWoop and BoWoop two. Also, Howard Meisner donated a duck call and several first edition books by Nash Buckingham. I had the good fortune a couple of years ago to receive a random phone call from a medical doctor in Knoxville, Tennessee, who wrote a book, and the title of the book is Once Upon a Time, and it's a collection of Nash Buckingham stories. This medical doctor was good friends with Robert Urich, the actor, and he and Robert Urich eventually tracked down Nash Buckingham's daughter and Nash's granddaughter, and the granddaughter is living in Reno, Nevada.
• 29:46
  I flew to California and met with this young lady in Reno, Nevada, and she donated all of the Buckingham family papers and photographs to Ducks Unlimited. So, now, they are not on display, they're in our archives, so I would suspect Ducks Unlimited probably has the finest and most comprehensive collection of Nash Buckingham materials anywhere in the country.
• 30:10
  Katie Burke: We will continue this on another episode and kind of move from American wildflower into more game birds and some of the other history that surrounded the founding of Ducks Unlimited. Thanks, Dan, for coming on.
• 30:22
  Dan Thiel: Well, this was fun. Thank you, Katie.
• 30:23
  Katie Burke: So if you'd like to learn more about Ducks Unlimited's history and American wildflowers, you can visit the museum at the Pyramid Waterfowling Heritage Center, or you can visit national headquarters Monday through Friday, five days a week, or you can visit our website, www.ducks.org. Thanks to our guest today, Dan Theo, executive secretary of Ducks Unlimited and COO of Wetlands American Trust. Thanks to our producer, Clay Baird, and thanks to you, our listener, for hanging out with us today and supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
• 30:57
  VO: Thank you for listening to the DU Podcast proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited.
• 31:22
  Until next time, stay tuned to the Ducks.