Gordon MacQuarrie - More Stories of the Old Duck Hunters

With the exception of The Big Pothole, these stories appear with the kind permission of Ellen Gibson Wilson as copyright holder. The Big Pothole is reprinted from Sports Afield magazine, June 1939; copyright the Hearst Corporation. All rights reserved.

Drawings by Paul Birling

from photographs originally appearing with Gordon MacQuarrie stories published in Field & Stream and Sports Afield.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-62343-591-2

As solemnly as possible given the circumstances, this book is dedicated to all bonafide, God fearing, paid-in-full members of the Old Duck Hunters Association, Incorrigible... no matter what.

When I decided many years ago to compile the first group of MacQuarrie stories, it was my plan to leaf through the old outdoor magazines (the New York Public Library had them all) to discover and copy them. This would have been a tedious task and an expensive one. Copying then cost 25 cents a page, as much as the issues themselves at the time. Happily I found that Macs widow and his daughter had saved his manuscripts and kindly sent them to me.

Somehow I instinctively knew there would be a pattern to the stories, a story behind the stories. Indeed there was a memorable one. First came the rollicking friendship deepening to love, the death of Mr. President, followed by the story of MacQuarrie going it alone in the cabin and in a situation hardly equalled in pathos telling how good it was. Finally MacQuarrie finds a new Mr. President and the stories start anew...only to be shut off by the authors untimely death.

This untold story is that I had a hand in some of this. I came to Sports Afield in 1955 and one of the first things I suggested to then-editor, Ted Kesting, was that I write MacQuarrie and ask him for more of Mr. President stories. Ted readily agreed. I made the request and the series flowed again. What I realized only years later is that when Al Peck, MacQuarries father-in-law and the model for Mr. President, died the writer had no thought to continue on. Mr. President was dead, how could there be any more Old Duck Hunters Association, Inc. stories? My letter was an invitation no professional writer could resist. It came as the spur for MacQuarrie to find another companion. The MacQuarrie talent easily elevated him to the Presidency.

There will be no play within a play in these pages. We will take the yarns as they came out of the redheads typewriter. (Unlike the first book where I received typewritten manuscript all these stories appeared in publication and can be roughly dated from that.) We can watch his themes and moods develop. You can see him sharpen as a writer. Most of all, look for what we who have worked on the books have come to call the MacQuarrie Magic. It starts out small, a touch here and there. Slowly it grows until whole passages are poetic, bursting with description and color. The humor, too, is hesitant and shaky at first. Not for long. Smiles turn into chuckles. And, to top it off, tell me if the man spinning these yarns isnt having more doggone fun than anybody.

Contents

This book, like the first compilation, is a labor of love. Correction: A labor of many loves. The first is mine. My debt to MacQuarrie is deep and real. As a boy I read each story eagerly as it appeared. Naturally they shaped my attitude toward the outdoors. (And Im not much of a trout fisherman.) But they went far beyond that. They helped teach me what life is all about. Friendship. Decency. Fun. Feeling deeply. Savoring. Good stuff like that. When I was appointed Boats Editor and had time, my first thought was to repay the debt. That may sound self-serving but it is the truth.

Secondly there have been the loves of his widow, Ellen MacQuarrie Wilson, a resident of York, England, herself an author, and his daughter, Mrs. Sally Wiemer of California. Their attitude, one with which I heartily concur, can be summed up by a statement of Mrs. Wilsons. I am of the school that would print all (the stories), as even Gordons weaker work was better than most things I read! Their cooperation has been total.

In the intervening years since ODHA came out, many have written me asking where more ODHA stories could be found. I could only direct them to old issues of the magazines. I did so to a John Case in 1977. A Minneapolis resident, he found Field and Streams and Sports Afields dating from 1930 to 1950 at the Agricultural campus of the University of Minnesota. He copied 29 of them in book form and sent me a copy!

I was stunned. But like any member schooled in the ODHA tradition I rose to the occasion. I picked up the phone and called Tom Petrie of the Willow Creek Press, publisher of the present paperback edition. I told him what I held in my hands and asked if he wanted to publish another group of the incomparable yarns. Heck yes, said Tom. In fact he may have said, Hell, yes.

When my father died and we sold his house I found nine old editions of Field and Stream saved from the 1945-1946 period when I was in the army. These contributed several more stories that Johns search had missed including, thankfully, Nervous Breakdown. Mrs. Wiemer kindly sent me copies of the original manuscripts which yielded a few more. They also revealed another labor of love. Editors love to tinker with writers copy. A comparison of the originals with what appeared in print showed that with MacQuarrie hands off was the rule.

I have saved the best for last. There are twenty stories as yet unpublished. Some great ones. Man Tired, When The White Throats Sing, The Bluebills Died at Dawn. If this edition meets with approval, it is our plan to publish those. In that regard I ask anyone who runs across an ODHA story to so advise me by sending the title. I have no doubt there are more.

There are three authors from the same era whose works are still in print Gordon MacQuarrie, Havilah Babcock and Nash Buckingham. It is of immense satisfaction to me that I had a part in adding MacQuarries name to that list.

Zack Taylor

Canvasback Lane

Easton, MD

This is the first of this series published in Field and Stream in January of 1932. It is fitting that to start it is about a slamaroo of a duck shooting day. In Ducks? You Bat You! that appeared in the first collection we saw MacQuarries introduction to the sport. But here he is an old hand, sharp of eye to kill 15 birds with 22 shells and make a story out of it.

It might be added to save the reader the trouble of figuring it out that the frequent allusions to automobiles, new and (mostly) used, occur because Mr. President owned a car agency in Duluth