{"id":85156,"date":"2016-01-13T14:12:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T22:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=85156"},"modified":"2016-01-13T14:13:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T22:13:51","slug":"fred-silverstein-lay-rabbi-duck-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=85156","title":{"rendered":"Fred Silverstein – Lay Rabbi, Duck Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Field and Stream<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"duck1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fred Silverstein may be the country\u2019s most experienced flooded-timber hunter. He has hunted the last 60-plus duck openers and has no plans of stopping\u2014not when his camp is full of kids, grandkids, and in-laws who can\u2019t wait to hunt beside him…<\/p>\n

For the first time in years, things weren\u2019t looking good for Fred Silverstein\u2019s opening-day streak. Earlier that morning he\u2019d borrowed a shotgun from the USO in Seoul, hitched a ride on an M35 deuce-and-a-half cargo truck, and whistled for a stop in the Korean countryside when he saw ducks dropping from the sky. Now he stood at the end of a dirt path, in front of a small stick hut, flapping his arms with his thumbs tucked into his armpits, and gesturing toward ricefields a couple of hundred yards away. The stooped, elderly farmer who\u2019d answered his knock wasn\u2019t sure what to make of the skinny Tennessee boy in Army fatigues, holding a shotgun and quacking like a duck. That was in 1962, and Silverstein hadn\u2019t missed an opening-day duck hunt in 14 years. <\/p>\n

As a kid, he hunted with his dad on Tennessee\u2019s famed Reelfoot Lake. Through high school and college, he stalked the green timber and riverbottoms of west Tennessee and Arkansas. And as a soldier stationed stateside, getting a weekend pass to go home to duck country was no big deal. Then came the Bay of Pigs incident, and the 22-year-old Morse code specialist was shipped to the U.S. Army\u2019s base outside Anjung-ri, South Korea. Duck hunting got significantly more difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had to wonder what this idiot was doing,\u201d Silverstein says, recalling that morning half a world away. \u201cHe pointed and said, \u2018Go.\u2019 At least, I took it as go, so off I went. No duck call, no decoys\u2014but I was going to hunt. There was no such thing as a duck season over there, but it was opening day for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you give Silverstein credit for his South Korea opener, then this soft-spoken grandson of German immigrants, businessman (he still runs a large bathtub and shower manufacturing enterprise in west Tennessee), and lay rabbi has hunted 65 opening days in a row. He may have the longest, deepest, and most historic r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of green timber hunting in America, especially in the lauded woods of Arkansas. He has hunted most of the most famous pieces of timber\u2014Hurricane Hole, Bayou Meto, TNT, Bayou DeView. He has leased duck ground from the Cache River to the L\u2019Anguille to the Hatchie River of west Tennessee. Silverstein hunted timber before anyone called it timber hunting. Before Duck Dynasty, $200 duck calls, and spinning-wing decoys. Before flat ground in Arkansas was worth more filled with water and ducks than soybeans and corn. Before hunting green timber was duck hunting\u2019s big deal.<\/p>\n

And at 74 years old, Silverstein is still hard at it. Most days during duck season, he\u2019s in the woods with his extended family. The man knows the past and present of green timber hunting like few others. It\u2019s the future that has him scratching his head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Field and Stream: Fred Silverstein may be the country\u2019s most experienced flooded-timber hunter. He has hunted the last 60-plus duck openers and has no plans of stopping\u2014not when his camp is full of kids, grandkids, and in-laws who can\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85156"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85160,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85156\/revisions\/85160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}