CHAPTER III.
CURRITUCK MARSHES.
Duck shooting has held its own better than any other kind of sport in the States east of the Mississippi. Ruffed grouse have almost disappeared, woodcock have grown scarcer and scarcer, English-snipe visit us less abundantly, while the bay-birds have nearly ceased to be in sections where they were once overwhelmingly abundant, but it is possible still, on Lake Erie, along the coast, and at many inland places to make a fair, if not, as often happens, an excellent bag, of ducks. But the best place, one where the birds seem to exist in their original abundance, and where magnificent shooting is still to be had, is on the eastern shore of North-Carolina. Of this favored locality Currituck is the most famous. So celebrated is this county that the entire marshes, the duck-haunted lowlands, have been purchased, and to-day there is absolutely no free shooting to be had. A stranger is as thoroughly debarred as if he were in the most barren portion of our land. No one is allowed to shoot from a battery unless he is a native, and to get a chance to go out at all after the innumerable flocks of wild-fowl that temptingly cover the water, the visitor must belong to one of the numerous sporting clubs which have so wisely and assiduously secured all the shooting grounds, and most of which are so particular that they exclude invited guests.
But if you are one of the favored shareholders you can have a glorious time. Fifty ducks a day to each gun is no unusual average, and while a hundred is a large bag, a hundred and fifty is nothing uncommon, and as many as two hundred and fifty have been killed by a sportsman and his gunner in a single day. Moreover the birds are of the best possible kind; there are canvas-backs in the open water, red-heads in still greater abundance, and broad-bills or blue-bills so plenty that they are rarely shot at, while in the pond holes black-ducks, mallards, and widgeons abound. These are all well-fed and fat, and such a thing as a poor duck is unknown. The law wisely forbids shooting before sunrise or after sunset, and the club members are wise enough to keep the law, knowing as they do that one gun fired after sunset is more injurious than a dozen during the day, so that the ducks do not seem to diminish but rather to increase and multiply, and as fine a day’s sport has been had by the members of the club during the past few years as at any time in the history of the country. A result partly due to breech-loaders perhaps, while from a battery it is nothing unusual to kill a hundred brace of red-heads or canvas-backs, and some times twice as many.
This favored spot is, as it ought to be, of no easy access. The sportsmen must first go to Norfolk and thence take either the little steamboat Cygnet, endeared to so many of us by the memory of pleasant excursions in the past, or travel by a new railroad just finished which passes twenty miles from the traveller’s destination, a place known from the name of the enterprising widow lady who formerly owned it, as Van Slyck’s Landing. By boat the entire day is spent in the journey, and by rail it is not much shorter, but the boat arrives so late that it is not always possible to make the trip across from the landing to the club house the same night. Opposite Van Slyck’s are the two most famous and successful sporting clubs in that section of the United States, the Currituck and the Palmer’s Island clubs. They own or control immense tracts of land, and below them to the southward the bay widens out so that there is no chance to kill ducks to advantage. There are a few good stands at Kitty Hawk Bay, thirty miles further south, and at the lower end of Roanoke Island Raft ducks can be shot from batteries. Then again along the eastern shore of Pamlico Sound, at Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets and in the western part of Core Sound, to the south of Harker’s Island, there is good duck, and in its season brant shooting, but these places can only be reached by the fortunate sportsman who has his own private conveyance. Therefore it may practically be said that the Palmer Island marshes are the ultima thule of duck shooting.
As a general thing, there is attached to every sporting club some old experienced gunner full of wild-fowl lore and quaint and curious phrases, who is a mine of interesting information to him who will explore the vein. Such a one belonged to the Palmer Island club, in the person of William S. Foster, a resident of Long Island, who had followed Shinnecock Bay for many years, knew the ways and habits of the birds as well as if he were one of them, and was as fond of shooting as the most inveterate sportsman. Honest to a farthing, faithful, anxious to give the person he was with the best sport he could, he was ready to take any amount of trouble, endure any labor for a good day among the ducks, the members of the club looked on him, rather as a friend than a paid employee. Many is the hour I have spent with him on the Currituck marshes, many a day of splendid shooting have I had, many the big bag have I made with his aid. One of his peculiarities was that he never was in a hurry. No matter how thick the birds were, how easy it seemed to choose a point, he would stand quietly in the bow of the boat with the sea-glass in his hand scanning the movements of the flocks and deliberately selecting the best place. I would often grow impatient and fear he was losing valuable time, but the result rarely failed to justify his judgment and vindicate his deliberation.
The first and most important object, as he explained it under such circumstances, was to so arrange the stools that the ducks would “come right,” that is would approach without fear and would offer the sportsman a fair shot. This is a matter of the greatest moment and is not understood by men who consider themselves expert wild-fowlers. First, there is the question of the wind to take note of, then the position of the sun, next the cover, and last, but by no means least, the nature of the species of ducks that are flying. It will not do to string out the decoys dead to lee-ward of a point as is so often seen, except perhaps when canvas-backs and red-heads are alone expected, mallards, sprigtails, and especially the wary black-duck will never or rarely approach a point. If a point, with the wind blowing directly off from it has to be chosen, it is better to stretch the decoys around to one side of it so that the wind “will catch the birds under the wing” as he expressed it and swing them in farther than they expected. Points projecting far out into the open water are the favorites of tyro gunners, but they are especially unsuited for any of the marsh ducks, the black-ducks, mallards, sprigtails, and even the widgeons, all of which give a wide berth to such spots, especially after they have been shot at a few times, and most of which prefer to alight close under the lee of a bank, in the “slick” as it is called.
There are two great divisions of ducks, the deep water, diving or raft ducks, and the shoal water or marsh ducks, which reach down for their food and can never feed in water more than two feet deep. The habits of these two varieties are remarkably dissimilar. The open-water birds, fearless of ambush, are less timid than their pond-loving brethren, who dread an enemy in every tuft of grass or bunch of reeds, when canvas-backs once make up their minds to come to the stools, they come straight on regardless of deficiences in the gunner’s blind, and very frequently pass completely over the stools. On the other hand, a black-duck in approaching the stand is a model of caution, he is all eyes and ears, the slightest movement by the sportsman, the least evidence of danger will arouse his suspicions, and he will veer suddenly off. Black-ducks and mallards rarely cross the stools to alight at the head of them, but if they reach them at all, drop in at the lower end, or more often stop short and alight at a distance just tantalizingly out of shot, where they remain to lure off every fresh arrival unless they are driven away. Their noses are especially keen, and care must be taken to so arrange the stand that the wind will not carry the scent of the gunner across the water to the lee-ward of the decoys, and the birds get it before they reach them. If they come in contact with such a warning they jump into the air as if they had been shot at, and flee with all the speed that terror can lend to their usually vigorous wings. It is desirable to set the stools under the lee of a bank of reeds or rushes, for none of this class of ducks likes the open water, and the most convenient plan is to place the stools to one side of the stand, quartering as it were across the wind, so that even if the birds alight before actually reaching them, they may be within gun-shot.
The location of the stand is most important. I remember once when I was shooting from what is known in the club as “Kidder’s Point,” that I was particularly impressed with this fact. The day had been dull and rather quiet, with but a few birds stirring all through the morning; a haze lay upon the marshes, not dense enough to prevent the ducks flying if they had been so minded, which they did not seem to be, the wind scarcely stirred the reeds or rippled the surface of the bay, which was spread out before me. I was making a poor bag and hardly expected to do better, when about midday there came a change over the spirit of the earth and air, the clouds began to condense, the wind commenced to blow, the air became rapidly colder, a thin steak of gray faintly marked the sky in the northwest, while in the south the clouds grew blacker and denser. Then the rain fell in spits and flurries viciously. The atmosphere intimated a decided change in the weather, which the ducks were the first to recognize and regulate their proceedings by. Evidently a vast mass of widgeons were bedded to the lee-ward of us. They commenced to fly not in their individual capacity, but as the part of a great movement, as if suddenly they had made up their minds all to go. In whisps of threes, fours, tens, twenties, in large flocks, or solitary and alone, they came heading towards me directly across the marsh and visible for miles. Then it was that I learned that I was not in exactly the right place, that the birds for some reason best known to themselves did not care to cross that spot in their migration. Most of them, especially the largest flocks, passed outside of me and just beyond the range of my gun. I was in the wrong place, I knew it, but I had no time to move, the ducks
FLORIDA “CRACKER.”