James Woods
Active member
My name is James Woods, and I joined the site just about a year ago, thanks to the efforts of Eric and Steve Stanford. I apologize for not introducing myself earlier. Mastering IT stuff is not in my skill set. Steve and Eric had to get me set up.
I am another marsh rat, to borrow an expression from a new member on this site recently, from the North Shore of Long Island, New York. I grew up in the 60s and 70s less than a ½ mile from an 11,000 acre salt marsh (includes bay acreage bottom as was the custom when they measured in the those days) about 60 miles from the city. Directly across from my house was a six-acre millpond dammed in the mid 1600s. The adjacent village was a bucolic mixture of residences, and truck farms set on North Shore glacial moraines. The salt marsh or “Harbor” was surrounded by large estates of early settlers and the society people of New York, and thus was protected from development well into the 80s. No longer.
In the summer we swam in the Harbor, clammed, fished for snappers, and eeled on still, humid “no see em” --beer filled nights.
As fall came, in the early sixties I would watch the black ducks tumble into the Mill Pond in the early morning across from my house on my weekend walks around the pond—I would also put them out—just to watch them return—or the magic of their return to the Pond-I should say--with all their different approaches. I soon learned that in the early morning they were returning from nights feeding in the salt marsh to roost during the day
As soon as I got licensed, into the salt marsh my friend Jack and I went—on foot, which meant learning the tides and weather at our risk. For instance, one late afternoon, in a screaming Northeaster in that Harbor—we learned the hard way that the tide never really goes out much in this marsh on a Northeaster and returns quickly with higher water than normal. Happily, in those years the early split season was in mid-October and weather at that time of year was more forgiving.
And we killed black ducks-but not a lot--and from 9th grade though all of high school I spent most of the fall in that marsh—on the low tides. We also were unknowing miscreants because we figured out the birds left the pond late, and we stayed late. The black-crowned night herons were our guide; “Gawk” and we knew the Bds were on their way.
After we learned the error of our ways-by Junior year in HS, we set crude blinds on the salt marsh banks, which we covered with salt hay in chicken wire on the sandy channels—what were we thinking? They lasted about a week, and we would rebuild them again almost every week. Then the energy of youth and stupidity. But it was all worth it as I recall in particular a fabulous opening day, maybe 1967-- which was coincident with a morning low tide. we killed birds. A crisp, clear lovely mid October day with a light NW breeze. A glorious sunrise with the local BDs coming into the low tide to feed. Gulls screaming and turning in the bright sun, and local crows prowling the marsh. We had many birds stool, and for a couple of kids, we shot well, and had our four BDs within an hour, missed some, but had many stool. We had arrived—or so we thought!!
One other observation as a teenager, we soon learned that the first NWsters in November brought the first flight birds, hefty black ducks, which were always nervous, picking up and moving from one pothole and to another. Just constant black duck movement on the marsh. If you could get out on those days, time of day didn’t matter. They just moved all day. On one of those days, I emptied a box of shells and killed only one duck—learning days.
Neither Jack’s father nor mine hunted ducks and we were on our own, learning it as we went. As we approached junior year in high school, we got to know one of the local duck hunters—Charlie M. He kept his gunning rigs on the salt marsh at one of our access points. Mostly North Shore boats, which could be best described in the simplest terms as a 9-11 foot rowboats showing 4-6 inches of freeboard when loaded. They were decked over, sometimes flat, often with a low crown. The cockpits were rectangular or sometimes U shaped both with short afterdecks. They had to be light and small enough to drag over sandbars and lift up onto the salt marsh. Usually not with grass rails, typically you just piled the salt hay onto the boat to hide. Charlie had a cousin named John who also kept a gunning rig there. They gunned when the weather was right, and not often and kindly lent their boats to Jack and me as long as they weren’t using them. Took only a telephone call, and we could hunt in all tides. In my college years I ended up working for Charlie’s construction company, and John became a life long friend. I also started carving decoys, and buying duck boat wrecks from locals when available. Bought a traditional north shore duck skiff boat without a bottom, and put on, inartfully, a new bottom. I used lots of caulking and paint to cob together a few other boats so that Jack and I had our own rickety armada sitting on the salt marsh opposite the Village during the season.
The Harbor was all about black ducks in the salt marsh and whitebirds on the channels, shellpeckers, buffleheads and the occasional broadbill or even a redhead or can, though rare. Geese might make an appearance once a year, and brant I only observed once and in an absolutely screaming NWster in November 1977, 40-50 mph, no way to hunt and a small bunch was looking for shelter in a lee during a high tide which was nowhere to be found. I just sat on the bluffs over the bay and watched the birds—amazing showing in amazing weather—nothing for me can ever approach sitting on that bluff over looking that salt marsh especially in extreme weather.
Now I mention my experience in the 60s and 70s with respect to species, only because they now routinely have killed from about 1980 on, widgeon, gadwall, pintails and geese in the Harbor. During my years, we killed two widgeon; saw two pintails and what was a gadwall? Anecdotally, on the North Shore, pintails in my area were rarer than hen’s teeth.
There was a commercial fisherman who was an old time duck hunter, who then in the mid 1970s kept a mother ship in Port Jeff Harbor, the Snipper Snapper from which he sold fish to visiting sailboats during the summer. The rest of the year, except for duck season, he mostly lobstered, and then went to the whirlwind of striper and blue fishing in fall on the east end, boxing several hundred pounds a day. In 1975, he was his late 50s. An old-timer who had hunted from Huntington Harbor to Mount Sinai Harbor. We were on the Snipper Snapper in midsummer in Port Jeff, and when in my youthful enthusiasm, I told him we killed two big drake Pintails in Conscience Bay the previous winter, he basically called me a liar—not a problem-he had already finished a half-quart of gin and I was a kid. But that winter day with the South Shore of Long Island totally frozen, all birds were heading to the North Shore where the tidal fall always kept the mudflats open, and where there was food-periwinkles, minnows and other small crustaceans on the flats. Notwithstanding that encounter, he was basically an interesting man and unfortunately died after falling into the hold of the Snipper Snapper after he moved South to get away from the development of Long Island.
I am being long-winded and I hope you guys are not bored. I have never written this stuff down before, and probably more important to me than you, but I want share what were to me remarkable experiences.
While working for DEC (the State Conservation Department) just after college, I met another DEC employee, my age that lived and hunted on the South Shore on the Great South Bay. We became friends and I joined the club he belonged to on the Bay. The Bay required more equipment, better boats and more experience that I had, and my friend was a terrific mentor and waterman. He worked as a bayman in between seasonal employment and eventually permanent employment at DEC. His best friend had become the caretaker of the gunning club we belonged to. The shack was located on the barrier beach side of the bay. This club was a totally democratic operation with the only requirements were proper gunning equipment, residence in the Town and the ability to cross the bay to get to the hunting grounds. Minimal membership dues. As a result it was a fascinating group of watermen, working guys, law enforcement guys, and various professional people from all economic classes, almost all competent gunners and competent on the water. For the most part a hard-core group of older gunners were distant mentors— and often bemused mentors by the antics of us younger guys.
So with our friend as caretaker, many evenings we stayed at the shack, often before opening days. For close to ten years, I had some extraordinary experiences, entirely due to the courtesy of my friend and the caretaker. In many respects the experiences we enjoyed there were like a trip back in time. On a remote Island in the Bay, no hints of modernization anywhere but for the contrails of jets. In the mid-seventies we also had good populations of birds, as well. Wake up on opening day, and there were black ducks and brant all around the shack, broadiebeeks in the channel and rafts of black ducks in the marshes on the barrier beach. First couple of years, I took a fair amount of pictures which I will post when I figure out how. To be quite frank, while I had certain skills, I never developed the necessary skills and equipment to continue to gun the South Shore—in part because my work took me to New York City, and later to upstate New York-a regret.
So in 1989 a transfer brought me upstate New York, and we picked out a village which best resembled my former home on Long Island before the development and destruction of Long Island. When I moved up I bought 2 dozen Herter’s Black Ducks, 2 dozen geese and stored my cork black duck and broadbill rig in the barn, and the North Shore skiff in the back yard. Thought I would be predominantly hunting upland birds, but soon found out there were waterfowling opportunities and an old friend moved up and he and I developed new friends and our waterfowling continues.
I am another marsh rat, to borrow an expression from a new member on this site recently, from the North Shore of Long Island, New York. I grew up in the 60s and 70s less than a ½ mile from an 11,000 acre salt marsh (includes bay acreage bottom as was the custom when they measured in the those days) about 60 miles from the city. Directly across from my house was a six-acre millpond dammed in the mid 1600s. The adjacent village was a bucolic mixture of residences, and truck farms set on North Shore glacial moraines. The salt marsh or “Harbor” was surrounded by large estates of early settlers and the society people of New York, and thus was protected from development well into the 80s. No longer.
In the summer we swam in the Harbor, clammed, fished for snappers, and eeled on still, humid “no see em” --beer filled nights.
As fall came, in the early sixties I would watch the black ducks tumble into the Mill Pond in the early morning across from my house on my weekend walks around the pond—I would also put them out—just to watch them return—or the magic of their return to the Pond-I should say--with all their different approaches. I soon learned that in the early morning they were returning from nights feeding in the salt marsh to roost during the day
As soon as I got licensed, into the salt marsh my friend Jack and I went—on foot, which meant learning the tides and weather at our risk. For instance, one late afternoon, in a screaming Northeaster in that Harbor—we learned the hard way that the tide never really goes out much in this marsh on a Northeaster and returns quickly with higher water than normal. Happily, in those years the early split season was in mid-October and weather at that time of year was more forgiving.
And we killed black ducks-but not a lot--and from 9th grade though all of high school I spent most of the fall in that marsh—on the low tides. We also were unknowing miscreants because we figured out the birds left the pond late, and we stayed late. The black-crowned night herons were our guide; “Gawk” and we knew the Bds were on their way.
After we learned the error of our ways-by Junior year in HS, we set crude blinds on the salt marsh banks, which we covered with salt hay in chicken wire on the sandy channels—what were we thinking? They lasted about a week, and we would rebuild them again almost every week. Then the energy of youth and stupidity. But it was all worth it as I recall in particular a fabulous opening day, maybe 1967-- which was coincident with a morning low tide. we killed birds. A crisp, clear lovely mid October day with a light NW breeze. A glorious sunrise with the local BDs coming into the low tide to feed. Gulls screaming and turning in the bright sun, and local crows prowling the marsh. We had many birds stool, and for a couple of kids, we shot well, and had our four BDs within an hour, missed some, but had many stool. We had arrived—or so we thought!!
One other observation as a teenager, we soon learned that the first NWsters in November brought the first flight birds, hefty black ducks, which were always nervous, picking up and moving from one pothole and to another. Just constant black duck movement on the marsh. If you could get out on those days, time of day didn’t matter. They just moved all day. On one of those days, I emptied a box of shells and killed only one duck—learning days.
Neither Jack’s father nor mine hunted ducks and we were on our own, learning it as we went. As we approached junior year in high school, we got to know one of the local duck hunters—Charlie M. He kept his gunning rigs on the salt marsh at one of our access points. Mostly North Shore boats, which could be best described in the simplest terms as a 9-11 foot rowboats showing 4-6 inches of freeboard when loaded. They were decked over, sometimes flat, often with a low crown. The cockpits were rectangular or sometimes U shaped both with short afterdecks. They had to be light and small enough to drag over sandbars and lift up onto the salt marsh. Usually not with grass rails, typically you just piled the salt hay onto the boat to hide. Charlie had a cousin named John who also kept a gunning rig there. They gunned when the weather was right, and not often and kindly lent their boats to Jack and me as long as they weren’t using them. Took only a telephone call, and we could hunt in all tides. In my college years I ended up working for Charlie’s construction company, and John became a life long friend. I also started carving decoys, and buying duck boat wrecks from locals when available. Bought a traditional north shore duck skiff boat without a bottom, and put on, inartfully, a new bottom. I used lots of caulking and paint to cob together a few other boats so that Jack and I had our own rickety armada sitting on the salt marsh opposite the Village during the season.
The Harbor was all about black ducks in the salt marsh and whitebirds on the channels, shellpeckers, buffleheads and the occasional broadbill or even a redhead or can, though rare. Geese might make an appearance once a year, and brant I only observed once and in an absolutely screaming NWster in November 1977, 40-50 mph, no way to hunt and a small bunch was looking for shelter in a lee during a high tide which was nowhere to be found. I just sat on the bluffs over the bay and watched the birds—amazing showing in amazing weather—nothing for me can ever approach sitting on that bluff over looking that salt marsh especially in extreme weather.
Now I mention my experience in the 60s and 70s with respect to species, only because they now routinely have killed from about 1980 on, widgeon, gadwall, pintails and geese in the Harbor. During my years, we killed two widgeon; saw two pintails and what was a gadwall? Anecdotally, on the North Shore, pintails in my area were rarer than hen’s teeth.
There was a commercial fisherman who was an old time duck hunter, who then in the mid 1970s kept a mother ship in Port Jeff Harbor, the Snipper Snapper from which he sold fish to visiting sailboats during the summer. The rest of the year, except for duck season, he mostly lobstered, and then went to the whirlwind of striper and blue fishing in fall on the east end, boxing several hundred pounds a day. In 1975, he was his late 50s. An old-timer who had hunted from Huntington Harbor to Mount Sinai Harbor. We were on the Snipper Snapper in midsummer in Port Jeff, and when in my youthful enthusiasm, I told him we killed two big drake Pintails in Conscience Bay the previous winter, he basically called me a liar—not a problem-he had already finished a half-quart of gin and I was a kid. But that winter day with the South Shore of Long Island totally frozen, all birds were heading to the North Shore where the tidal fall always kept the mudflats open, and where there was food-periwinkles, minnows and other small crustaceans on the flats. Notwithstanding that encounter, he was basically an interesting man and unfortunately died after falling into the hold of the Snipper Snapper after he moved South to get away from the development of Long Island.
I am being long-winded and I hope you guys are not bored. I have never written this stuff down before, and probably more important to me than you, but I want share what were to me remarkable experiences.
While working for DEC (the State Conservation Department) just after college, I met another DEC employee, my age that lived and hunted on the South Shore on the Great South Bay. We became friends and I joined the club he belonged to on the Bay. The Bay required more equipment, better boats and more experience that I had, and my friend was a terrific mentor and waterman. He worked as a bayman in between seasonal employment and eventually permanent employment at DEC. His best friend had become the caretaker of the gunning club we belonged to. The shack was located on the barrier beach side of the bay. This club was a totally democratic operation with the only requirements were proper gunning equipment, residence in the Town and the ability to cross the bay to get to the hunting grounds. Minimal membership dues. As a result it was a fascinating group of watermen, working guys, law enforcement guys, and various professional people from all economic classes, almost all competent gunners and competent on the water. For the most part a hard-core group of older gunners were distant mentors— and often bemused mentors by the antics of us younger guys.
So with our friend as caretaker, many evenings we stayed at the shack, often before opening days. For close to ten years, I had some extraordinary experiences, entirely due to the courtesy of my friend and the caretaker. In many respects the experiences we enjoyed there were like a trip back in time. On a remote Island in the Bay, no hints of modernization anywhere but for the contrails of jets. In the mid-seventies we also had good populations of birds, as well. Wake up on opening day, and there were black ducks and brant all around the shack, broadiebeeks in the channel and rafts of black ducks in the marshes on the barrier beach. First couple of years, I took a fair amount of pictures which I will post when I figure out how. To be quite frank, while I had certain skills, I never developed the necessary skills and equipment to continue to gun the South Shore—in part because my work took me to New York City, and later to upstate New York-a regret.
So in 1989 a transfer brought me upstate New York, and we picked out a village which best resembled my former home on Long Island before the development and destruction of Long Island. When I moved up I bought 2 dozen Herter’s Black Ducks, 2 dozen geese and stored my cork black duck and broadbill rig in the barn, and the North Shore skiff in the back yard. Thought I would be predominantly hunting upland birds, but soon found out there were waterfowling opportunities and an old friend moved up and he and I developed new friends and our waterfowling continues.
