The Road South: Sure-Shot Game Calls

Most hunters along the upper gulf coast know the stretch of Highway 124 outside Winnie by habit.

After a while, you stop thinking about it. Early mornings. Headlights before daylight. Coffee in the cup holder. Calls in the console. The road south toward the marsh.

Depending on the time of year, the highway changes a little. Flatbeds hauling rice. Mud boats headed south. Tractors creep along the shoulder. During hunting season, you know where someone is headed before you recognize who’s driving.

The road carries people toward the same stretches of water generation after generation. Fathers and sons. Lifelong hunting partners. Guides headed south before daylight. Teenagers making the drive for the first time with borrowed waders and calls hanging from the rearview mirror.

For years, that drive passed straight through Winnie. If people stopped, it was usually in the Dairy Queen parking lot.

That rhythm looked different the morning Sure-Shot opened.

Grand Opening Day in Winnie, Texas

The lot was full before the doors opened at 10. By the afternoon, trucks lined the drive and spilled into makeshift rows out back. Winnie locals. Hunters from Beaumont, Orange, Anahuac, and southwest Louisiana. People stopping on their way to and from the beach. A few stayed most of the day.

The store was loud.

Cypress walls ran from floor to rafters. Mounted ducks and geese swept overhead while customers moved between stacks of apparel, coolers, fishing gear, and plenty of hats. The mounted Longhorn held its own, even deep in Buccaneer territory. The shot bar – stocked with shot gun shells during hunting season and High Life ponies year-round – separated the sitting area from the call counter running through the center of the store. Outside, the fenced yard filled steadily through the afternoon with people on the patio, and later, listening to the band.

Toward the back corner, one wall belonged to James “Cowboy” Fernandez. Old photographs, calls, and archival pieces lined the wall beside two of his hunting jackets – one with an embroidered mallard scene on the back. Throughout the day, people stopped in front of it longer than they meant to. More than one person asked if the jacket was for sale.

The Call Counter

Behind the counter were Shane Chesson, Nathan Wright, and John Chiasson — callers whose championship titles are difficult to keep track of and whose lives have largely revolved around duck and goose calls for decades. On any other day, the fine tuning would happen in the back room. During the grand opening, they worked out front – reeds adjusted, calls tested, sounds demonstrated right there at the counter where anyone could pull up and watch.

Nathan spent most of the day at the counter. He tuned calls. He watched people work through sounds. He offered instruction when it was needed. Otherwise, he didn’t say much.

Calls moved from hand to hand. Some customers picked one up and immediately knew what they were listening for. Others needed help hearing the difference between one call and the next. Nathan adjusted reeds, tested air pressure, and handed calls back without ceremony.

With adults, he was direct. Small adjustments. A nod when something sounded right.

When a child walked up, he changed.

At one point, a 12-year-old boy stood across the counter holding a specklebelly call built for experienced callers and competitors. Nathan leaned in close and walked him through it one breath at a time. The boy tried the sound. Nathan demonstrated it back. Again. Again. The lesson stretched on – not because the boy was slow, but because Nathan wasn’t finished.

The boy’s first attempts came out thin and uneven. Nathan never rushed him through it. He adjusted the way the boy held the call in his hands. Slowed the air down. Demonstrated the note again.

Around the corner, John worked with another young caller the same way. One note. One correction. One more try. Back and forth for nearly half an hour.

More Than a Duck Call Shop

Not everyone came to buy a call.

At one of the patio tables, 92-year-old wildlife biologist Charles Stutzenbaker flipped through a copy of his latest book, A History of Wildlife and Wetland Management Ventures on the Upper Coast. Every few pages, he’d stop to point at a photograph and offer commentary that didn’t make it into the text.

Inside, conversations moved easily between hunting stories, water conditions, dogs, boats, birds, old leases, and people who’d known each other for years. Others were meeting for the first time.

By evening the crowd had started to thin, but not by much.

Shane – who’d spent the day moving between the crawfish pots and the call counter – finally settled onto a barstool behind the counter. The sun had dropped low enough to throw the front windows into reflection. Outside, people still sat on the lawn. He could see most of the floor from where he was – the callers still working, customers still picking calls up and testing them.

Nobody seemed especially concerned with heading home.

A Place Worth Pulling Into

Driving south on 124 that evening, the store came back into view long before the sign did.

Trucks still lined the drive. The fenced lawn glowed under the patio lights. Through the front windows, people stood at the counter talking and listening while calls cut through the noise every few minutes from somewhere inside.

For years, the road through Winnie had mostly been a route to somewhere else.

Now there was a place along the way worth pulling into.