96 NOVEMBER 2019
Come on down, he says (roughly
translated). Check out this clear-
ing in the high oak trees. There’s
rice; there’s shade. Your friends are
here, he lies, feeding and happy.
Sometimes he’s a waterfowl
whisperer, sometimes a squawk-
ing bird barker. This morning, as day just about breaks over
the Coca-Cola Woods—these 1,000-plus acres of swampy and
exalted flooded green timber, a fabled invite-only private reserve
known to initiates to host some of the best duck hunting in all
of the South—the head guide’s call is forlorn and plaintive. A
low, scratchy dirge: Donald Duck’s “Quack Quack Quack” song
covered by Blind Willie Johnson.
For a long time, nothing happens. The hunters, shotguns
aimed at the still-dark sky, stand alert, motionless, careful not
to send even a ripple across the thigh-high water. It’s December
and cold, though nobody notices, insulated in waders, inocu-
lated by adrenaline. All attention is tuned to Creasey’s increas-
ingly urgent entreaties. Finally, the call is answered. The mallards
come in quick, wings flapping to slow their descent, feet down
for landing. At last, Creasey gives the go-ahead. “Kill ’em!” he
shouts, shattering the meditative cadence of quack and response.
Duck hunting, for the uninitiated, isn’t always quite so up
close and immersive. “When you’re in a field, you’re shooting
birds 75 yards away. When you’re in the hole like this, they’re
gonna land right on top of you,” says John Dobbs Jr., the
Memphis businessman who bought the property eight years
ago. “I have 95-year-old guys who come to me with tears in
their eyes. They say, ‘John, I’ve been hunting my entire life, and
I’ve never seen ducks like this.’”
About the name: The property’s original owners also ran the
local Coca-Cola bottling company. They entertained business
associates and clients here, and the association stuck.
“It’s the volume of ducks” that accounts for its reputation,
Dobbs continues, “but also the way you’re really in their world.”
It’s a world not many hunters get a peek at. “It dang near
looks fictional,” one commenter noted on duckhuntingchat
.com, adding, “I’d about give my left nut for a morning hunt.”
This morning we’re out early in the land of ducks not just for
sport but to embrace and celebrate the full richness, glory, and
utility offered by these handsome, wild birds—which is to say
to clean, cook, and eat them, too.
“I’m really not a morning person,” says the Manhattan chef
and restaurateur Angie Mar. Yet here she is, half-submerged in
green Thinsulate boots, hair tumbling over her Frogg Toggs Pro
Rusty
Creasey
is talking
to the
ducks.
