Lately I've been thinking about Harry Terry. I always do when autumn flames the land with her ripened foliage and ducks begin their long trek south. I guess its because Harry is dead. He died in August of 2001 from a massive heart attack following a short illness in which his kidneys were failing. Not long after he passed, his youngest son, Max, came by the house and gave me a dozen of Harry's decoys and one of his calls.

Harry's decoys were of the old style and were certainly not anatomically correct with near perfect feathers generated by computer. The anchor lines were weighted with old rusted bolts, lug nuts and sparkplugs. And every year in late summer he would paint the bills of the drakes and hens. The drakes received an almost red color and the hens a gaudy orange application.

The ducks didn't seem to care. There were no frills to Harry who was an extremely large man and as tall as timber. His remarkable strength matched his unusual skills at calling and killing ducks in public places. Harry never placed one of his large feet in a high-dollar lodge. No sir, he'd jump right in the middle of the crowd and come out on top. He knew every creek and run and hole in the swamp that he hunted near home. He always said, "All little creeks run into large creeks that will take you to the river and out of the swamp." More than once Harry was called out in the middle of a brutal winter's night to go and fetch some lost duck hunter or duck hunters. He never came back empty handed.

Harry did many things in life to earn money to duck hunt. Once we had a mighty hurricane by the name of Hugo to hurl itself from the coast through our South Carolina town. Harry was out the next morning with chainsaws and a hastily thrown together crew cutting trees. His last endeavor was a barbeque business.

In the beginning Harry cut his own wood, preferably oak, for green oak is a slow burning fuel and emits a lot of heat. Then he decided to start burning wooden pallets, which he got for free. One day a customer said, "Harry, why do use pallets to fire your ovens?"

Harry smiled a toothless smile and said, "Sir, my barbeque is French. I call it Barbeque Paillasse. Paillasse is French for pallet."

Before Harry began losing weight, he was so large that he couldn't find a pair of waders to fit him. So he had a young man drag him in his boat through the swamp and then cut branches to cover him and the boat while he shot ducks. Harry also had a charcoal grill between his legs for warmth. Not to say that Harry wasn't naturally insulated.

I remember going by his small barbeque restaurant late one Friday afternoon before the night crowd came. Sitting across from him was a woman who was probably in her mid-30s. And as we say in the South she had been rolled wet and dried hard from rough living. Even so, she was still quite good looking. She started reminding Harry about his days when he ran a beer joint aptly named the "Bear's Den."