By Mary Richardson

Members of the Contraband Flycasters Club can usually be found tying flies for flyfishing — or actually fishing with those flies on a river. But on a beautiful spring day in early April, several of the members were wading in the mud of a cypress-edged lagoon at Sam Houston Jones State Park, doing something concerning birds, not fish. With the help of staff at the park, they were installing five wood duck houses, because, as member Jim Gill said, “Who doesn’t like wood ducks?”

The project had been a couple years in the making. Club members wanted to do something to aid conservation, and they knew the wood duck houses formerly at Sam Houston Jones had been destroyed by Hurricane Laura. “We’re a bunch of old guys,” Gill said. “We knew we couldn’t stock a lake; we knew we couldn’t fix a river. But building wood duck houses – that was something we knew we could do.”

Gill and former club president John McCoppin approached Tracie Ramey, manager of the park, about their idea. She accepted the plan with enthusiasm, and offered to have members of her maintenance staff help with the installation.

The culmination of the collaboration resulted in three wood duck houses installed in the lagoon along the Red Trail, and two more installed in the nearby turtle pond. It marked part of a return to normalcy for the park. Contraband Flycaster members were on hand – some, like Gill, in the water, and others observing (and offering advice) from the bank. They were joined by three members of the park’s crew, who placed the poles in water and did the heavy lifting of the houses. “These young guys were great,” Gill said. “Their skill and equipment kept us old men out of the mud.”

It wasn’t very long ago that the area was a disaster zone. “We lost 82 percent of our trees to the hurricanes, and we had to close the park” Ramey said. “A logging company tried to salvage some of the remaining trees, but it just wasn’t feasible.” Then the Louisiana Office of State Parks sent in a traveling maintenance crew. “Those men lived here for eight months straight, cleaning up the mess Laura and Delta left us with,” she said. The park finally reopened in July, 2022.

In the meantime, the members of Contraband Flycasters began the wood duck project. Gill’s wife, Linda, had spent 25 cents to buy a discarded book at the Friends of the Library sale, which turned out to be very handy. “It was ‘The Wood Duck in Louisiana’ by Hugh A. Bateman,” Gill said, “and it had everything we needed to know about dimensions for wood duck houses, when and how to install them, and how to deal with predators.”

Gill made a couple prototypes, and then club members settled on the final design, which was fairly complicated. They used 1×12-foot cypress boards to make houses that were three-feet tall, about a foot wide, and had a 3×4-inch oval opening/exit. Inside Gill made little steps so the baby ducks could crawl up to the opening and fly out when the time came. The last step before placing them in the water was to add a layer of sweet-smelling cedar chips.

Because of donations, the club was able to build all five for $350. Home Building Materials in Sulphur donated all the cypress wood for one house, and the club bought cypress for the other four. Gill already had the screws and hinges. Kenneth Brough donated the sheet metal used to build shields that will prevent snakes and racoons from stealing eggs out of the nests. Jeremy Dickerson donated two-inch galvanized pipe needed to mount the houses. “It could have easily cost three times as much,” Gill said, “but people were generous.”

A project for ducks may seem like an unlikely choice for a group of fly fishermen, but Gill says it fits right into the club’s mission. “Fly Fishers International always encourages us to be involved with conservation,” he said. “We believe in that mission.”

Then he made a direct connection. Two of the feathers on a wood duck are prized by fly tyers—the wood duck lemon feather and the wood duck bared feather. “They are expensive and very desirable,” he said. “Trout bite on them in cold water, and you can make flies for a big assortment of fish with those feathers.”

But the main motivation was a love of nature and a love of wood ducks. “It just seemed like a good thing to do,” Gill said. “Everybody who is on a pond, riverbank, or any wooded wetland area, enjoys watching wood ducks. It’s such a beautiful bird; we were glad to help out.”

The Contraband Flycasters Club meets at 6:30 p.m. on the third Tuesday of every month at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 1620 E. Prien Lake Road. Several members come an hour before the meeting to practice tying flies or casting on the expansive lawn of the church. Visitors are always welcome.