National Hunting and Fishing Day was established in 1972, when Congress passed two bills to have a day celebrating the conservation contributions of U.S. hunters and anglers. The day is celebrated by all 50 states on the fourth Saturday in September. In Bossier, it’s celebrated every year at Bayou Bodcau Reservoir. In this history column, we highlighted the day on Wednesday, Sept. 17 with the story of Miss Mary Babb, the fishing centenarian. Here’s a follow-up piece, this time featuring hunting and Miss Mary Babb’s friend, Margaret Hill, along with her husband, Walter.
Mary Babb, whose passion was fishing, fished at least once a week on a pond in Bossier Parish that was owned by JoAnne McDonald and her husband. Ms. McDonald is the one who shared a clipping about Ms. Mary from the Sunday, June 4, 1995, Shreveport Times with me. The article noted that Mary also was an honorary member of the Sailes Hunting Club in Bienville Parish. When she was in her 90’s, she was the club’s oldest member. She and her friend Margaret Stewart (later Hill) of Benton were also the only two women at the deer camp. Margaret was the club’s first and only full voting member of the hunting club.
Like Mary Babb and her zeal for fishing, Margaret Stewart Hill’s passion for hunting started later in life. She picked up a gun for the first time well into her 40s, and shot her first deer that very day. Born and raised in Atlanta, Texas (which is just due west of north Bossier’s Plain Dealing community), Margaret Groves married Carl Stewart soon after graduating from Atlanta High School. She raised 6 boys and a girl, and worked for 30 years as a hospital LPN, much of that time on her own after her first husband passed away in 1981. Once the kids were raised and she started hunting, she spent the next 30 years outhunting most of the men at the hunting club. One of these men was Walter Hill of Benton, a farmer and public servant who’d been hunting at Sailes since the year it opened in 1960. As Margaret’s friend, neighbor and hunting buddy since the mid 1980’s, Walter, also widowed, became her husband on Valentine’s Day 2007.
Walter was legally blind, a result of a 1970s industrial accident. He was also 85 percent deaf. Because he was deaf, she had to elbow him to stealthily let him know a deer was approaching, or if he was inadvertently making any loud noises. She also was always the shooter for him. Then she read in a magazine about a blind hunter in Texas who was able to hunt with a special laser scope. She called the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to see if Walter could hunt with such a scope and was told no; it was against the law. Margaret, who also had a blind son, and was an experienced advocate, straightaway called her state representative and friend Henry Burns of Haughton. She asked Henry to get the law changed.
Sixteen states had already put such a bill in place. HB 39, introduced by Mr. Burns and signed by Governor Jindal in 2009, allowed him and others with sight of 20/200 or less to hunt with a sighted hunter and a laser scope to properly align the rifle or shotgun. Margaret reported that seventy-five percent of the meat they ate was what they killed, and now Walter could help keep up the supply.
Margaret also volunteered as a guide for small groups of youth during the state’s special youth hunts, when kids 16 and under could hunt with a certified hunter prior to the regular shooting season. An October, 2000, article in The Shreveport Times featured Margaret, at age 65, reporting that two of the five youngsters in her group, who were aged 12 and 13, brought home a deer. Margaret praised the youth hunt for building up the young hunters’ confidence.
Mary Hill passed away December 8, 2015 at the age of 80. On her October 28 birthday that year, opening day of the season, she shot her last deer. As reported in her obituary, it was “a big, beautiful 8 point.” Her husband Walter passed away a year and a half later.
Like Mrs. McDonald, who passed along to us the story of Miss Mary Babb, which then led us to the story of Margaret and Walter Hill, we’d love for our readers to visit us with stories, clippings and photos of other remarkable people and memories from around Bossier Parish. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive, Bossier City, LA. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org
For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to visit the History and Genealogy Resources page at Bossierlibrary.org or follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.
Image: Walter and Margaret Hill with doe he harvested using laser-sighted gun/special to The Times/Jan. 5, 2011
Article by: Pam Carlisle
