Book Review: The Gordon MacQuarrie Sporting Treasury

In a first for this blog, I'm going to submit a book review.  Truth be told, this will be the first time I'm doing a "book report" since I was in high school.  Not sure which book that would have been, but I'm sure it had a lot of pictures.  I recently completed The Gordon MacQuarrie Sporting Treasury.   A co-worker of mine loaned it to me after a recent conversation about good books.  I had never heard of Gordon MacQuarrie.

MacQuarrie was an outdoor writer for the Milwaukee Journal in the 1940's and 50's.  Prior to that he was an outdoor editor in Superior, WI.  In this book, he mostly writes about two things:  duck hunting and trout fishing in northern Wisconsin.  Many of his trout fishing stories take place on the River of Presidents- the Brule River.  MacQuarrie is credited with being one, if not the first, full-time outdoor writers in the country.  Unfortunately, he died in 1956 at age 56.

MacQuarrie's partner in his exploits is his father-in-law, who is referred to as Mr. President, or some form thereof.  Mr. President is the head of the Old Duck Hunters Association, Inc.  As MacQuarrie explains, Inc stands for incorrigible.  Mr. President frequently leads MacQuarrie on trips on the Brule and first exposes him to duck hunting.  Mr. President took MacQuarrie on his first duck hunt on one of the last days of the season in frigid weather, but great hunting.  Mr. President told MacQuarrie that he had waited to take MacQuarrie duck hunting because, "Too much of a good thing is bad for a growing boy."

MacQuarrie's descriptions of his duck hunts are vivid and paint images that we have all dreamed of and occasionally experience.  The stories are over 60-years old, but they are told in a manner that make them timeless.  He describes canvasbacks dropping into decoys in a snow squall.   The descriptions of the wooden decoys and putting on his Mackinaw field jacket takes you on an old-time hunt.  His hunts are all from long before people conceived of posting their hunts on Facebook or texting bragging pics to friends.  No, he hunted in a time when hunting was serious, uninterrupted by modern distractions of technology, and live decoys were legal.

In doing some research, I learned where some of his haunts were.  In his stories, he's always vague about where he actually hunted.  The places have names, but I'm sure they are self-applied locations.  Unfortunately, these places are no longer the honey holes MacQuarrie experienced.  He wouldn't even recognize his Hole in the Wall blind.  Where MacQuarrie was hunting stands of wild rice and wild celery grew to attract mallards and canvasbacks, today there are large homes and developments that have denigrated the water resource and made it unsuitable for those plants.  In turn, the ducks don't visit the same either.  This is, of course, the worst thing that can happen to a honey hole.

It is winter and many of the states' duck seasons are closed.  Reading some Gordon MacQuarrie hunting and fishing stories will be just the elixir you'll need to get you to another duck season.  Maybe next year I'll have my own "The Bluebills Died at Dawn" story.

Happy New Year!