Nash Buckingham - de Shootinest Gentman & Other Tales

WING SHOOTING CLASSICS

DE SHOOTINEST GENTMAN

By Nash Buckingham

Published by The Derrydale Press, Inc.

printed August 1997

Inquiries should be addressed to the Derrydale Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 411, Lyon, Mississippi 38645
Phone 601-624-5514
FAX 601-627-3131

ISBN: 978-1-56416-164-2

Printed in the United States of America

The courtesy of
FIELD AND STREAM,
RECREATION,
and
OUTDOOR LIFE
in permitting the publication
of these stories
in book form
is acknowledged.

TO IRMA
WIFE AND COMRADE
OF UNENDED YEARS TOGETHER;
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
THESE GLEANINGS FROM PLEASANT
YESTERDAYS OUT-OF-DOORS, ARE
DEDICATED WITH ETERNAL LOVE,
ADMIRATION AND RESPECT

DE SHOOTINEST GENTMAN
The late Captain Harold Money

To The Author and his Book

By COLONEL HAROLD P. SHELDON

(Chief Conservation Officer,
U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey)

IT is well that the best of the shooting and fishing sketches by Nash Buckingham have at last been collected into a single volume. Appearing from time to time in the sporting magazines of America, these notable contributions to the literature of our field sports have, for years, delighted a national audience of Mr. Buckinghams fellow gunners and anglers. In this more lasting form, they will afford an equal and even greater pleasure to future generations of Nimrods. For every present sign and portent indicates that we are nearly to an end of the sort of shooting this author portrays.

With an inherited love of sport and great opportunities at his door, it is not strange that Nash Buckingham became one of our best game shots as well as a most skillful and seasoned observer of the habits and habitats of wild birds and creatures. An experienced live pigeon shot and for years possessor of a worthy trap-shooting average, Buckingham profitted through access to gun and shell manufacture that rounded out his natural bent for gunning and its tools. Much has been written of his skill, at upland game, and particularly of his ability at high ducks with his now famous 12 Bore Burt Becker magnum. It has been my pleasure educationally, to spend a good many days with him in duck blinds, or behind his dogs after Bob Whites in Tennessee and Mississippi. Elsewhere I have myself written of seeing him bring down a limit of fifteen ducks with seventeen shells. I sincerely doubt if any duck was closer than fifty yards, and the two extra loads were used to second-shot badly winged mallards. I fully concur, therefore, with the comment of no less a shooting personage and critic than Captain Paul Curtis, gun editor of Field & Stream who wrote, in March, 1927: When a shooter like Nash Buckingham says that sort of thing about a shell, it is time to listen. For Nash makes a practice of shooting at ducks and bringing them down dead with surprising frequency at ranges where I leave off shooting at them. I have shot with him on the Mississippi, and I can say, irrespective of whatever other value he may have to his company, he is the best exponent they could get of what a 3 inch shell is capable of doing in a special magnum gun. I have helped a lot of men kill ducks, and at his special forte of knocking them cold at a distance, he has forgotten more than most of us get a chance to learn. The Nash Buckinghams are scarce.

A natural athlete, Nash Buckingham distinguished himself in football, baseball, track and field events during Prep days and Varsity exploits at the University of Tennessee. For years, on a great southern newspaper, he wrote a distinguished column as gridiron and general sports critic. During that period he also became perhaps the most formidable but least publicized of the countrys amateur boxers. To these physical attributes and accomplishments, the Gods who have in charge the allotment of human faults and virtues, gave him a deep and fine appreciation of literature, music and that most gracious talent of alla loyal and understanding heart. The reader may conclude as much from his own perusal of the many fine poetical and descriptive passages appearing in these stories. There is ample evidence in the sympathy with which characters are considered and drawn, that the author, like Abou ben Adhem is one who loves his fellow man whether encountered in evening clothes or poised splay footed on the stern of a ducking skiff with a muddy push pole gripped in toil scarred hands.

While the adventures related herein are those generally associated with the destruction of wild life, yet Nash Buckingham has spent an equal energy and sincerity in efforts to aid development of a practical plan for such conservation and perpetuation. He was selected to head and develop the progressive game restoration (incidentally he is the coiner of that now national term) project of a far-sighted ammunition company into what is today associated industrial endeavor along such lines. He later served four years (1928-32) as Executive Secretary of the American Wild Fowlers, a national group, at Washington, D. C., interested in wildfowl restoration, research and their remedial legislation. Many of his ideas and suggestions for the improvement of conditions and shooting ethics adversely affecting wild life, are to be found in plans and programs now under way by Government and States. But, more effective than all the measures and publicity he has created and helped enact, has been the influence of his own personality in fearlessly fostering a greater respect for the principles of rugged, fair minded, tolerant sportsmanship. After all, the best method of securing converts to ones own faith, if it is a reasonably worthy philosophy, is to practice its precepts as Nash Buckingham has done.

DE SHOOTINEST GENTMAN

De Shootinest Gentman
The late Captain Harold Money

SUPPER was a delicious memory. In the matter of a certain goose stew, Aunt Molly had fairly outdone herself. And we, in turn, had jolly well done her out of practically all the goose. It may not come amiss to explain frankly and above board the entire transaction with reference to said goose. Its breast had been deftly detached, lightly grilled and sliced into ordinary mouth size portions. The remainder of the dismembered bird, back, limbs and all parts of the first part thereunto pertaining, were put into an iron pot. Keeping company with the martyred fowl, in due proportion of culinary wizardry, were sundry bell peppers, two cans of mock turtle soup, diced roast pork, scrambled ham rinds, peas, potatoes, some corn and dried garden okra, shredded onions and pretty much anything and everything that wasnt tied down or that Molly had lying loose around her kitchen. This stew, served right royally, and attended by outriders of cracklin bread, was flanked by a man-at-arms in the form of a saucily flavored brown gravy. I recall a side dish of broiled teal and some country puddin with ginger pour-over, but merely mention these in passing.