Courtesy of Joe Macaluso and the Baton Rouge Advocate

---

Housing Ducks

By Joe Macaluso - Advocate outdoors writer

Tom Dufour is leaving town today.

His destination -- Bismarck, N.D. -- is much farther away than the trips he made 58 years ago, a youngster's adventure that started him on his way today.

Dufour, 68, is a duck hunter, a passion his dad's brother fired up nearly six decades ago.

"My dad didn't do anything but work. My uncle was the outdoorsman of the family," Dufour said. "My mom took me to the Kansas City Southern train station at North Street and Government Street, and I'd get on the train with my shotgun and a sack of clothes. I'd get off in Alexandria and walk to my uncle's house, and we'd go off to the woods to hunt."

Those central Louisiana woods teemed with game and young Tom was good with that gun.

"I used to deer hunt, rabbit hunt and go quail hunting, too, but I quit all that for duck hunting," he said.

For years he meshed duck hunting with his job at Dow Chemical in Plaquemine -- he was a supervisor when he retired 12 years ago -- but there was more to his avocation than the days the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowed him in a duck blind. Like thousands of Louisiana duck hunters, Dufour joined Ducks Unlimited.

"I wanted to do something for the ducks," he said.

In the same breath, Dufour said how his heart changed over the years, how subtle changes in his perspective on duck hunting and a trip to DU headquarters in Memphis, Tenn., ratcheted-up his desire to do something for ducks.

"I don't want to make a big deal out of this, but I saw changes in Ducks Unlimited that I didn't like. It was turning out to be a social organization," Dufour said. "I knew there was something else out there, another organization named Delta Waterfowl, but I really didn't know a whole lot about it. There was nothing around here (with Delta Waterfowl) that I knew of."

Roy Hill, the son of former assistant LSU baseball coach Ernie Hill, grew up duck hunting, too. His passions ran as deeply as Dufour's and others in the Baton Rouge area. Three years ago, the Hills brought Delta Waterfowl to the area, and Dufour and dozens of other duck hunters liked what they found.

"I had toyed with the idea of doing what Roy did, but I was interested when Roy started a (Delta Waterfowl) chapter," Dufour saud. "I told Roy at that first meeting that if I was there to have another beer-drinking party that there was nothing in it for me, but if we were there to work for the ducks, then he could count me in."

The long-standing feud between Delta and DU forced Dufour and a growing number of Louisiana hunters to make a choice the past three years. DU focuses on breeding habitat and uses funds raised throughout North America on that habitat. Delta's plan is to make the most of that habitat with programs for predator control and other research-based plans to enhance duck-nesting success. A catch-all for Delta's approach is "intensive management."

"Early on, I felt like Delta was doing some things for ducks and duck hunters," Dufour said.

One predator-control tactic caught his eye: Hen houses were Dufour's chance to help. A hen house is a cylindrical device installed in and over ponds that breeding hens can use to build nests, lay eggs and raise their brood until the ducklings are ready to take to water.

"Everything I've heard from biologists is that a hen returning to her breeding ground won't use it for the first year, but if she gets back there the second year, she is more prone to use the structure," Dufour said. "A hen house costs Delta about $40 a year to buy them, and I thought if I could make them, then Delta could use that money for predator control."

So early last year, he got the plans. He needed pipe, wire, a welder, grass and help.

Friends led him to their friends and eventually to folks like Buddy Ohmstede and Ted Verret and others. Ohmstede had scrap pipe -- "good stuff like chrome-moly pipe he uses in his business to make heat exchangers," Dufour said -- and Verret welded the frames at his shipfitting shop at Jack Miller's Landing near Plaquemine.

"A rice farmer from Maurice gave us the rice straw, and two Boy Scout troops got together to help build the nests. It's all donated but the wire. I buy that, it's not expensive, and I get about 20 houses per roll," he said.

Dufour supervised and the Scouts did some of the work.

In late summer 2003, Dufour set out on his 1,750-mile, near four-day adventure to Lake Alice, N.D., where U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel stowed the 103 hen houses for installation in still-frozen ponds in March.

"I stopped at Mac's Prairie Wings in Stuttgart, Ark., last year -- it's a place all duck hunters should visit once in their lives -- and I wanted to show them what some guys in Louisiana were doing for ducks," Dufour said.

Mac's Prairie Wings is a nationally known retailer of duck-hunting merchandise.

"Mac McCollum, he owns Mac's, was impressed. I told him that it would be great if we could get southern duck hunters to get 10,000 hen houses to put in the prairie potholes to make ducks. It must have made an impression 'cause I saw a photo of him donating $10,000 to Delta Waterfowl this year."

Today, Dufour leaves his home for Bismarck, where Delta Waterfowl has its national headquarters. He's toting another 139 hen houses.

He plans to stop in Blue Springs, Mo., near Kansas City to show the Delta Waterfowl chapter there the Baton Rouge chapter's contribution.

"The trip up there last year made it easier to do this again this year. Guys down here can't appreciate what goes on in the prairie pothole area in North Dakota until they see that country up there. There are ducks there, lots of ducks," Dufour said. "I guess the motivation is selfish. It's really duck hunters doing something for ducks and duck hunters."

---

Copyright 2004 Baton Rouge Advocate. Republished here with the permission of Baton Rouge Advocate. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the Baton Rouge Advocate.