THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 1997 TAG: 9701280413
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB HUTCHINSON, OUTDOORS EDITOR
LENGTH: 174 lines
Once, they came by the thousands. Vast, low-flying clouds, winging their way south before chilling fall and winter storms. They could almost darken the sun.
They settled into coastal lakes, ponds, creeks, bays and sounds from Long Island south to Florida and even Mexico. They dined on dense, unpolluted stands of aquatic grasses, sego pond weed and wild celery.
These migrating waterfowl were greeted by the guns of autumn, thousands of them booming over virtually every coastal water, no matter how small.
Gunners, many of them wealthy businessmen from industrialized Northern cities, flocked to the coast to welcome them in their own way. The hunters supped in comfortable, cozy, man-smelling lodges at strategic points along the waterfront.
Many came to Back Bay and Currituck Sound. At one time more than 100 waterfowling clubs rimmed the marshes and dotted the islands of these two sprawling, connected, shallow waters that straddle the Virginia-North Carolina line.
Visitors included at least two presidents, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, as well as boxing icon Jack Dempsey.
Owners included some of the giants of business and industry, people like Ogden M. Reid, owner and editor of the New York Herald-Tribune; George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Co.; and Edward Collins Knight, a part-owner of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The period: between 1875 and 1918, the halcyon days of waterfowling, then known as ``The sport of kings.''
There were no closed seasons. No bag limits. No rules. No regulations. No game wardens. No thought that this, too, would come to pass.
Well, it has. The sport's glory days are gone, most likely never to return. And just as gone are waterfowling's widespread love and enthusiasm among sportsmen.
In the 1970s, the federal government sold as many as 2.4 million duck stamps a year. By 1990, sales had declined to about 1.3 million.
Final figures for the season just ended are not available, but stamp sales may have risen after waterfowl biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service predicted that the fall duck migration would set a modern-day record.
After surveying the Canadian breeding grounds where most ducks spend the winter and raise their young, biologists predicted a 1996 fall migration of 90 million birds.
It would be, they said, 25 million more than the 1995 flight and the greatest since surveys were launched in 1972.
A modern-day record, yes. But a record that pales compared to flights of the late 1800s, which historians say may have exceeded 200 million birds.
But for reasons still being argued, projected 1996 numbers never developed. Most Virginia and North Carolina hunters say the season was among the worst ever. Thus, duck-stamp sales almost certainly will resume their plummet in 1997.
Tommy O'Connor does not plan to be one of the dropouts.
``I had one of the worst seasons I've ever had,'' said O'Connor, who divides his time between Suffolk, where his family owns a peanut brokerage, and a retreat at Capeville, hard by the saltwater marshes of the Eastern Shore seaside. ``It was supposed to be just a great season and it didn't happen, at least in Virginia. I guess there were a lot of reasons, including mild weather, which held the birds up north until right at the end.
``I was disappointed. But that's a part of it. I still love it and I'll still be out there next year. It's my sport. It's not just the hunting, not just the shooting, not just the killing. I love all aspects of it, from building the blinds to getting my rig (decoys and boats) ready.''
Jim Prince, a retired CPA from Norfolk, once mirrored O'Connor's sentiments. No longer.
Years ago, Prince said that if there were only seven ducks left in the world, he still would want to build and occupy a shooting blind. He was quoted in the press.
A woman reader took umbrage. ``This man is despicable,'' she said. ``He wants to kill the last seven ducks in the world.''
To which Prince replied, with a good belly laugh, that the woman had missed the point, that killing ducks is not what duck hunting is all about. Seeing them in the wild, along with the anticipation of and preparation for an approaching season, are major elements.
But this past season, for the first time in as long as he can remember, Prince didn't buy a duck stamp.
``I don't like to say I've quit,'' he said, ``but I haven't been in a couple of years. I still have my rig and all my guns, even some shells. But I know I may never go again.''
Prince stopped fowling when the Eastern Shore farm on which he had hunted changed hands. At about the same time, he hurt his knee, an injury that still bothers him.
Buddy Vaughan of Virginia Beach never owned a hunting lodge and never had access to the marshes of an Eastern Shore farm. But until five or six years ago, he was, by admission, an obsessed waterfowler.
``I loved it,'' said the customer-service representative for Virginia Natural Gas. ``I had a blind on Back Bay and I went whenever I could. I'd go a lot of mornings before work.
``I lost interest because it got too complicated, too much hassle for what you get out of it. I still have a rig and I still paint my fishing boat duck-boat green. But I guess I'm through.
``The season was too short, the bag too little. Too few ducks. Too much work. Too much expense. You could go for days and never see a bird. That's not my kind of duck hunting. It reached the point that there were more game wardens watching to see if you broke the law than there were ducks.''
Curtis Fruit, clerk of Circuit Court in Virginia Beach, was a member of the North Landing Gunning Club for several years. The club hunts the marshes along the river, which empties into Currituck Sound.
Fruit hasn't been waterfowling for six years. He, too, maintains a stand of decoys but has sold his olive-drab boat. His reason for quitting, he said, was a lack of ducks.
``The last year I hunted,'' he said, ``I went 21 times and killed either seven or eight birds. Man, it's just too much work for what you get out of it.
``You see, I never really enjoyed all the work. Cutting pines or straw to build a blind, then building the blind, getting the stools (decoys) ready. That was work. I enjoyed the hunting and when that was gone, I'd had enough.''
For Jack Hood, a semi-retired electrical engineer from Chesapeake, steel shot was a load he refused to carry.
``I loved duck hunting,'' Hood said. ``I hunted all over, from Back Bay to the Eastern Shore. But hunting for canvasbacks up on the James River was my favorite. Now I haven't been for years, although I still have everything you need.
``Over the years, they (federal officials) cut the season from 70 days to 30 days, then went up to 50 days then back to 40. The bag limits kept getting smaller and smaller and you either were limited to one canvasback a day or couldn't shoot any.
``But the final blow came a few years ago, when the feds said you had to stop using lead shot and had to use steel shot. I treasure my guns and I didn't want to ruin all the barrels by shooting steel shot. Besides, steel cripples a lot more birds because it doesn't have the weight and killing power of lead.''
Dan Arris of Virginia Beach, a former member of the North Landing Club, still hunts. ``But I sometimes wonder why,'' said the insurance executive.
``I just love it, all aspects, from building the blind to challenging the cold on a nasty day when you know the birds are going to be flying. It's just a great, great sport.
``But I'm really discouraged right now. The Back Bay season was terrible. Just awful. And it was supposed to have been great.
``We managed to get in a couple of good days over on the Eastern Shore and I hear they had some good shooting down on the (North Carolina) Outer Banks. But I don't know what I'll do next year. I'll be somewhere, because I love it. But I don't know where.''
For Jim Holmstrom and many other hunters, the end came several years ago, when federal officials banned all hunting for migratory Canada geese in Virginia and North Carolina. That ban now covers the entire Atlantic Migratory Flyway, from Maine to Florida.
``I was a field hunter and I was a goose hunter,'' said the retired telephone company executive. ``I never liked to go out in a small boat on icy water in the middle of winter.
``It became really tough to find a place to hunt, tough and expensive. Then the geese started getting scarce and finally they outlawed goose hunting in Virginia Beach.
``So I'm a former hunter. I miss it because I really loved it. But the days of great hunting are gone and they'll probably never be back, even for future generations.''
Few outdoor experiences can match that of watching a flock of black ducks, flying high, spot your stand of decoys, turn abruptly, set their wings and pitch, feet skimming across the water's surface, within range of your blind.
While waterfowling is a dying sport, it is not a dead sport. Most likely, there will be waterfowlers as long as there are people like Tommy O'Connor.
And while Back Bay and Currituck Sound no longer are rimmed by elaborate hunting lodges, a few still exist - the Barnes Hunting Club, Ships Cabin Club, Drum Point Club, Winchester (Pungo) Gunning Club, Creeds Gunning Club and Swan Island Club, plus a few others.
Over the years, many lodges burned or were destroyed by storms. Others were leveled to make room for development. Some were converted to permanent homes.
The most elaborate of all, the Whalehead Club near Corolla, N.C., on the Currituck Outer Banks, is in the process of becoming a waterfowl museum. This 20-room mansion, complete with Tiffany chandelier and an elevator, was built in 1925 at a cost of $383,000 by Knight, the Rhode Island financier. It was originally known as the Lighthouse Club.
Knight built the mansion when the original Lighthouse Club, of which he was a member, refused to accommodate his new bride. He purchased the property and built his own ``clubhouse.''
But the bottom line is that hunters are not there because the birds are not there. And because of that, many guns of autumn have been silenced. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
At one time more than 100 waterfowling clubs rimmed the marshes and
dotted the islands of Back Bay and Currituck Sound.
KEYWORDS: DEER HUNTING