Beaver Dam

Tunica County, Miss., has changed a lot since Nash Buckingham’s day. U.S. Highway 61 South long ago replaced the railroad and Limb Dodger as the primary mode of transportation for sportsmen traveling from Memphis to Tunica. The thickets full of quail are mostly gone, replaced by laser-leveled cotton and soybean fields. A strip of failing casinos sits on the banks of the Mississippi River, skeletons of promised economic progress in a region that consistently ranks among the country’s poorest. Yet, the iconic Blue and White Restaurant is still here. It still opens before sunup and it’s still where many duck hunters like to eat breakfast, just as Buckingham did. And if you jump in a boat and motor a few hundred yards into the cypress trees of Beaver Dam Lake, you’ll see a world that hasn’t changed since Buckingham’s day—a world the ducks still haunt every winter.

Most Southern duck hunters know something of Buckingham, arguably the most celebrated wingshooting writer in history. His adventures were immortalized in seven books— most famously De Shootinest Gent'man and Other Tales—and countless articles, including many in Field & Stream, where Buckingham was a regular contributor and, for a short stint, associate editor.

Yet, perhaps more famous than the man himself is his gun—the double-barrel Super Fox nicknamed Bo Whoop, due to the sound of its report at a distance. Bo Whoop was built by renowned gunsmith Burt Becker, choked Full and Full, and it was designed for the hot new duck load of the day, Western Cartridge Co.’s Super-X 3-inch load of No. 4 lead shot. With that shell, Bo Whoop reportedly produced a 90 percent pattern at 40 yards, and Buckingham’s ability to hit the “high birds,” as he described them, with the combo was legendary. Bo Whoop was a key character in many of his stories.