Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
44 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S story: You have to pay the piper if you want to hear the song. And if you've ever been out in the duck blind—at dawn, you know, with your fingers freezing, your ears straining—man, it's an awful pretty song." Bing imbued the role of the conservationist and good sportsman in 16 consecutive seasons of The American Sportsman—his last, filmed hunting in Tasmania for sand grouse six months before his death in 1977. Host Curt Gowdy said his happiest shows were filmed with Bing and Phil Harris, a longtime hunting buddy. "They were fun guys and good outdoorsmen. I did six or seven shows with them," Gowdy said in an interview published in the New York Times commemorating the 20th anniversary of the preeminent outdoor television series. "Harris was an excellent wingshot. Some years ago we did a pheasant- hunting show in Nebraska, and he showed up with a 28-gauge Winchester pump. He loved that little gun, and when our Nebraska host saw it, he said, 'Mr. Harris, I'm not being smart, but these Nebraska pheasants are big and tough, and you can't bring them down with that little thing.' He was wrong." Grits Gresham, co-host and a producer of The American Sportsman for 13 years, echoed the same sentiment when he and his son, Tom Gresham, host of Gun Talk Radio and Gun Venture TV, joined me in 2006 for a week of pheasant and grouse shooting in Scotland. It would be Grits' last bird-hunting trip, but happily, it was captured on film for Dez Young's Wingshooter's Journal (available on DVD on Amazon.com). "Bing really was an excellent shot and a great sport," Grits grinned from one mutton-chop sideburn to the other under the brim of his trademark cowboy hat. "But Phil never missed." An all-around sportsman From the time he played second base at Gonzaga University ("I was a good fielder but a poor hitter"), sports were a big part of Bing's life. Best associated with golf, he earned money in high school as a golf caddy. Finding he was pretty good with a golf club, he quickly developed a real love for the game. In 1937, while riding the wave of his success in Hollywood, he realized how little money professional golfers made. So he partnered his celebrity golfing buddies with professional golfers "So the next cold, blowy winter's day, when you're sitting by the fire, sort of wrapping yourself in a nice hot buttered rum, you give a thought to those poor DU guys. DU is doing things that have to be done if you want to keep the flyways busy when our sons and grandsons are taking our place in the blinds. "Well, we still get bad years and good years, but as time goes on the bad years aren't so bad and the good years get better—partly because people are supporting DU projects. I guess it really takes society a few generations to cotton to the idea of conservation, but if you let it go now, it's 'Goodbye, Charlie.' It's the old big they darkened the sun. Maybe they were . . . for a while. But you know, soon North America started filling up with people. For a while nobody paid too much attention to the situation, till the '30s, then a survey was made, and it proved that the ducks were declining. Yes, they were declining very rapidly, indeed, and the reason was that the breeding marshes were drying up. Well, this worried a lot of folks. Soon these worried folks got together and they organized Ducks Unlimited. Since that time this international conservation organization has been spending millions— sort of a colossal home-improvement program for ducks and for geese. Bing Crosby and Freddie Steele mock-spar for a publicity photo in 1936. Image CourteSy herItage auCtIonS/www.ha.Com