Tom Horn.....

[MarketHunter]

Just had word from Father that my old friend Tom Horn had passed away this afternoon. He'd been fighting cancer for a couple years and it finally wore him down. Tom followed this forum but never posted. He was fascinated by our double gun culture, but was a Winchester Model 12 man of the old school.

I met him the first week I started college at 18 years old. My father worked at the school and introduced me to him saying: "This guy loves to duck hunt as much as you do". Tom was several years my senior and was a night security guard, picking nights so he could spend his days hunting and fishing. I'd been waterfowl hunting for a few years but was still struggling to build any true skill. He immediately took me under his wing and began to teach me that skill, starting with how to really blow a duck call. I remember the first thing he said to me in relation to it: "Forget this highball bullshit, a live duck never does more than 5 or maybe 7 notes at a time. You learn to blow 7 good notes and you can kill every mallard on the lake."

I've carried the knowledge Tom taught me to many places, even blowing those 7 notes at mallards in far flung destinations like the Western Isles of Scotland. I think of Tom in the back of my mind every time I pick up a call up and blow an "acorn feed chuckle" or "5/7 Arkansas Set Down" to a bunch of suspicious ducks. There really aren't the right words to thank a man for opening up the world of waterfowling to a young kid that way.

We hunted together regularly till I left Southern Illinois in 1995. We always stayed in touch and afterwards, when a hunt was possible, it was the most special of occasions. I was with him at Mermet Lake when his oldest son Shawn killed his first duck. Over the years that son built a fantastic hunting camp for the family down on the Cache River. Tom and I had our last hunt there together in the swamp blind two seasons ago. We had a fine shoot that day as I recall, both his boys with us (Shawn and Shane), all laughing and cutting up. That's how I'll remember him....