Jim Bradshaw: 'The best shooter that ever was'

In days long gone by, when people thought we could shoot as many ducks as we could hit, and when they were in big demand at New Orleans restaurants, hundreds of sharpshooting market hunters earned a good living in the south Louisiana marshes.

People said Florine “Pie” Champagne was the best of them.

Pie was born Aug. 4, 1889. He was barely into his teens when people began to notice that he was a better shot than most grown men, and was earning a living with his shotgun by the time he was 17.

He was only 19 in 1908, when he and his brothers Henry and Alcee organized a camp on a little bayou south of Lake Arthur. That lasted only a few years, but the Champagne boys were recruited by Fred Dudley, who bought 10,000 acres of marsh and set up a professional operation.

Dudley guaranteed 2,000 mallards a day to the restaurants in New Orleans. Pie’s quota was 200 ducks. He not only met that quota with ease, but shot so well that his ducks seldom had BBs in parts that might chip a diner’s tooth.

He began to earn big money and a bigger reputation, but it didn’t last. He was still a young man when his trade was all but abolished. Market hunting came to an end in 1918 with passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that ended commercial sale of migratory birds. Pie had to find other uses for his skill.

The next year, in 1919, Pie, his brother Henry, and their friend Bob Wortham formed the Three Aces Hunting Camp, and began to cater to affluent hunters looking for a class camp and class company.

Pie provided both. It’s said that he was a great storyteller, and his skill at the camp’s poker table became almost as legendary as his shooting skills. The Three Aces guest list regularly included names found in New York society pages, baseball greats such as Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, even Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was an avid hunter before he was stricken with polio.

But his skills were known only locally until 1922, when Texas cattleman Jim Gardiner made Pie his personal hunting guide and talked him into entering the Southern Zone Trap Shooting Championship in Atlanta. Pie had never competed before, and the regulars laughed, not always behind his back, at the funny, French-accented fellow who used an antiquated 12-gauge shotgun.

They’d quit laughing by the end of the week, after Pie beat them all. He went on to win state, local, and regional titles for years to come.

It didn’t take long for his reputation as a skeet shooter to spread far and wide, and he used his fame to market his camp and the duck calls and decoys he’d begun making. (A newspaper article promised that hunters who used Champagne decoys came home with more birds, especially if they used Pie as a guide.)

Pie’s career as a guide and shooter seemed to be over by 1951, when arthritis abetted by years of wading through frigid marshes had crippled him so that he couldn’t stand up for any length of time. He spent most of his time sitting on his front porch, weaving cast nets and telling tales of the old days to anyone who would listen.

That’s why it caused some dismay when he decided to enter the trap shoot that was part of the big Golden Oil Jubilee organized in Jennings that fall to celebrate the first well drilled in south Louisiana.

His son and some friends tried to talk him out of shooting. Pie was 62 years old and in failing health. They were afraid that he would embarrass himself. They wanted him to be remembered for his glory days.

Pie insisted, and a large crowd gathered at the skeet site off Highway 90 on Sunday morning, September 23, to watch the man of legend.

They worried about how steady his aim would be. He couldn’t stand like the other shooters, but hobbled onto an old kitchen stool he’d brought from home.

They groaned when he missed his first shot.

But that was their only groan and his only miss. He won the singles competition. Then the doubles. Then the overall, for a triple crown.

Pie Champagne had again proved himself “the best shooter there ever was,” and reminded front-porch visitors of that fact until his death in 1966.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.