THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701190087
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 115 lines
For hunting guide Tim Williams of Knotts Island, N.C., and ophthalmologist John Gore of Myrtle Beach, S.C., the final three days of duck-hunting season on Currituck Sound this weekend were the same as they have been for almost a quarter of a century.
Every year since 1973, Gore has organized a party of 10 to spend those symbolically important final days on Currituck Sound at Williams Lodge, a 100-year-old farmhouse overlooking the water at the southern tip of Knotts Island.
And every year, Williams has been their leader. Not much else has changed. Oh, it costs more - $40 a day when Gore started, and $175 now - and today they reach the duck blinds in metal Polar craft boats instead of the wooden skiffs, made of juniper, that Gore once used to ply local waters. But the essence of the trip remains the same.
Williams, 43, runs the two-story lodge just like his grandfather and grandmother, Elliott and Grace Williams, did for 50 years or so. Only now, Knotts Islanders Linda Cooper and Barbara Newnam do what Grandma used to do before she passed away.
Gore knows by heart the meals the pair will cook and serve family-style on the lodge's long dining room table each night - turkey and ham Wednesday, pork roast Thursday and fried chicken Friday. That's exactly the same meals that Grace Williams served in her time. They use ``Miss Grace's'' old recipes, a little of this and a lot of that, right down to the bacon grease in the corn bread.
Gore knows the meals will be accompanied each night by home-made biscuits, too, along with country vegetables like collards, sweet and mashed potatoes, and green beans.
Gore also knows that when he awakens each morning in one of the old farmhouse's five little bedrooms, Cooper and Newnam will have been in the kitchen since 3:30 a.m. fixing grits, eggs, bacon, sausage and biscuits (again) for a 5:15 breakfast. And he knows, too, that they have packed big lunches to warm him and his comrades out in the duck blind, complete with two sandwiches, peanut butter crackers, cookies and hot coffee, for each hunter.
In truth, it could be said that food is what keeps Gore and friends coming back to Knotts Island year after year. On the other hand, for three days, the men, when they are not eating or sleeping, spend their time in the Williams family duck blinds.
Two men and a guide in each wooden blind, they sit hunched on a bench exposed to the wind, rain and cold for about 10 hours running.
The wind turns their cheeks red and raw. The rain soaks their clothing, and the cold bites. Still they sit there, because the more miserable the weather, the better the ducking.
Thursday, Gore and his partner, Willie Todd, also of Myrtle Beach, brought in seven ducks, green-winged teal and wigeon. Williams had them cleaned that night. They would be carried back to Myrtle Beach for dinner on the grill. But it's not the eating that's most important.
``It's like golf or any other sport,'' said Gore, who wears three different duck whistles around his neck. ``The ducks are there, and you want to try and call them in. That's part of the challenge.''
``Mallard fever'' is how hunter Todd also describes this comfortless passion.
For Williams, duck hunting might be a challenge, but it's more ingrained than that. It's in his genes.
He's the fourth generation of the Williams family to serve as a duck-hunting guide, and his son, Timothy, who works with him, makes generation five. Another of his guides, nephew Sean Barnes, has the same long-running tradition on both sides of his family.
The passion for duck hunting in Williams' family, as in many other families on Currituck Sound and Back Bay to the north, began in the early part of the century when the area was called a ``Sportsman's Paradise.'' It was said that the flocks of ducks and geese were so huge the sky would darken when they flew overhead.
Williams, who's been guiding hunters since he was 15, was raised in the middle of it all, just a quarter-mile down the road from his grandparents' lodge. He grew up in a time when none of the boys attended high school on the first day of duck season, and the principal excused them.
Now he lives across the street from the lodge. The homes at that narrow end of the island are close to the sound. Russet brown marsh grasses edge the shore, and icy waters lap the bulkheads. The calls of geese flying overhead often break the quiet of remote Knotts Island, which, although most of it is in North Carolina, is really more a part of Virginia.
Williams works full time at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, also on Knotts Island, and saves up his vacation time for hunting season. By this week, the toll of rising many mornings at 4 a.m. to take hunters out to the blinds and make sure their three-day trips go well was beginning to show. So there was a certain pleasure in seeing the season end Saturday.
But for Williams, it's bittersweet this year. He knows duck hunter Michael LaBounty, a survivor of the tragic accident on Currituck Sound last weekend. Williams says an accident like that seems to occur every 10 to 15 years during the hunting season.
``And when it does, you just hate it,'' he said.
The last three days have been windy, and, Williams said, the accident made him think, delaying his morning departures just a bit to eye the weather a little longer. Still, no accident would keep Williams or the likes of him away from duck hunting.
``It's been in the blood for a while,'' he said.
His nephew Barnes described the passion another way.
``When you're raised to eat 'possum,'' he said. ``You eat 'possum.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by IAN MARTIN, The Virginian-Pilot
Tim Williams, 43, cleans his shotgun after a long day of duck
hunting on Currituck Sound. The fourth generation of his family to
serve as a guide, he now runs Williams Lodge, a 100-year-old
farmhouse overlooking the water at the southern tip of Knotts
Island.
Photo by IAN MARTIN, The Virginian-Pilot
Tim Williams, a duck-hunting guide since age 15, swaps tales with
fellow hunters after a day in the blinds off Knotts Island.
Williams' dog, Drake, rests on his son, Timothy, the fifth
generation of guides in his family. Williams works full time at
Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge.
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