Description: In 1901, at Crane Lake, seven miles west of Illinois Highway 78, four hunters killed over eight hundred ducks in a single day. In 1902, owing to that kill, a federal limit of fifty ducks a day was established, a limit that has now shrunk to three. But limits were never for the likes of Dale Hamm and the market hunters who took waterfowl out of season and sold them to restaurants. Hamm learned market hunting from his father, Pete, and during the 1930s and 1940s, he kept his family alive by plying his twin skills: shooting ducks and eluding the authorities. At the peak of his career, Hamm poached every private hunting club along the Illinois River from Havana to Beardstown. After market hunting died out, however, he became a legendary and almost respected - if controversial - character on the Illinois backwaters. Eventually, he was invited to hunt on the same clubs from which he had once been chased at the point of a shotgun. Judges, sheriffs, and even the head of undercover operations for the Illinois Department of Conservation hunted with him, and of course, all of these hunters knew his reputation. And their reward for hunting with the most notorious poacher in Illinois? If the joy of the hunt alone were not worth the risk of a slight taint to the reputation, these hunters certainly got their money's worth from Hamm's lifetime of outdoor knowledge gained from slogging through mud, falling through ice, hunting ducks at three o'clock in the morning, dodging game wardens, and running the world's only floating tavern.

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