Avoyelles man lives to share Louisiana's heritage

During the coronavirus pandemic Avoyelles Parish resident Dale Bordelon spent time paddling a dugout boat into one of the lakes where he hunted ducks as a boy. For most active 58-year-olds, quiet times like these, when you’re by yourself, often bring nostalgic moments. With each swish of the paddle there is something to reminisce about.
Bordelon is someone who passionately connects with the past. So much so, you’ll often hear it in the words he speaks.
Flavored with a heavy Cajun-French accent of the Avoyelles Parish region, his rich baritone voice includes phrases like “my old uncle,” sounding more like mah-ole-awnkle, with an ardent desire to connect you with his ancestor.
Bordelon, who traces his genealogy back to 1720 with members who fought in the Revolutionary War, is on a mission to not lose the heritage or traditions of the culture which were handed down to him.
For Bordelon, one of the things that is a huge part of his culture is duck hunting. During his formative years he spent weekends at the camp with family. Something that continues today.
Two of his biggest influences was his father John Bordelon and uncle, Paul Bordelon. The two brothers were World War II veterans and were unmoved by the hardships of primitive camp life.
Bordelon said, “I remember my old dad and old uncle and them. Those people hunted hard. They had tents and they slept on the ground. If they got cold, they laid on their backs and made them a fire. They never had heaters in the blind. They never had camouflage. But, daddy wore them old khaki pants on the coldest days you ever could see.
“My old uncle and dad, all they had was them old World War II coats because they both were in the war,” Bordelon continued. “They had that forever and this was in the seventies and eighties. They was some tough men is what I’m leaning to. And, I grew up with these old men from that era. So, to this day I don’t have a heater, because I’m trying to honor those old men. It’s kind of a tradition.”
His desire to maintain those traditions also includes things handed down from his grandmother as well. Bordelon drinks coffee regularly from a French enamel drip-type coffee pot, circa 1800s, she gave him that came from New Orleans he says.
Nevertheless, it is duck hunting that he tries to mimic the most when it comes to the old traditions and his heritage. And, as a way to honor his ancestors and culture, everything Bordelon hunts waterfowl with is either antique or handmade in the fashion someone would have seen in the early to mid-1900s.
As a labor of love during the spring of 2019, Bordelon hewed by hand a dugout from the trunk of a cypress tree that measured eighteen feet long and ranged from thirty-six inches on one end to thirty inches on the other. Given to him by his daughter-in-law’s father, Bordelon said the dugout would one day be handed down to the two grandfather’s grandson.
“He got that log and I built it. So, it’s a good connection between two grandfathers. It’s gonna be from both of us. But I counted the rings when I got it. It’s a 175-year-old tree. That tree started growing in the early 1840s. And the French people in Louisiana at the time, they learned this from the Indians when they came here in the early 1700s. You couldn’t go to Lowes or nothing back then. You had to make everything,” Bordelon said.
Bordelon went on to say dugout making is a lost art.
“They did this, you could say roughly from the early 1800s for 130 years. There’s a lot of these boats down in south Louisiana in museums. This type of boat was commonly found in the bayous of south Louisiana 100 years ago. And now, it’s no more,” Bordelon said.
The dugout Bordelon paddled this spring made its maiden voyage in late July 2019.
Though heavy, weighing much more than aluminum pirogues of similar size and length, he hunted with the boat during the 2019-20 duck season with terrific results.
His trips to the duck blind include decoys he made and painted by hand using no power tools. He uses an antique wooden firkin once used for storing flour and sugar to sit on that the older French speaking duck hunters call a “bedon.”
He always carries one of his personalized “Bayou Beast” burlap sacks to carry out his ducks, and a 50-year-old water jug he drinks from. Bordelon also uses an old box-type antique lantern to see his way to the blind in the dark.
To call ducks, Bordelon makes his own Bayou Beast Game Calls from bamboo like the duck hunters of the region would have used to make calls with in the early 1900s.
Bordelon said, “People say, ‘Man that’s a true craftsman you,’ but I don’t consider myself a true craftsman. I’ve seen some boats made by true craftsmen. Anybody can do this if they wanted to. But, I had enough digging I can tell you that.”
Bordelon often shares videos of himself on Facebook blowing a duck call, making decoys, building his dugout, and even cooking traditional Avoyelles Parish Creole dishes.
His desire is to share anything he can about the traditions and heritage he grew up with and those of the French people of Avoyelles Parish.
Nineteenth century composer and conductor Gustau Mahler once said, “Tradition is not worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
For Dale Bordelon that fire burns deep.