How I came to own the
marsh
I am the son of a navy
chaplain, a Presbyterian minister…he was also a duck hunting fool.
I shot my first duck-a
drake mallard- from a boat hide along the edge of the Santee- Cooper River
outside of Charleston, SC. Being that my dad was military we moved around a
lot. Every 2-3 years the family would uproot then resettle. Part of the
resettling process was learning where to hunt near our new home. Any navy
base is on the water and if you have water, you’ve got ducks. All we had to
do was find ducks we could access. My dad wasn’t above using his status as
a preacher to get at the fowl.
Dad learned to hunt amidst
the marshes of the Great South Bay on Long Island, NY. As a result, in
later years, he was always partial to shooting black ducks and scaup;
staples of the Long Island sounds. One would be well advised not to
get between the preacher and a decoying black duck.
My brothers and sister
didn’t care much for duck hunting, but I was crazed for it. Consequently,
from the age of eight, my dad and I were fairly inseparable gunning
buddies. Throughout our moves, I was blessed to explore myriads of marshes,
little known backwater and bays. In particular, I have memories of the
areas around Charleston, SC, Northeastern NC, Southern VA, coastal NJ,
Newport, RI and Lake Erie layout shooting just above Chicago, IL. Since
1978, however I’ve settled very comfortably into my life here in
Northeastern NC.
A brief sidebar at this
point will explain how I ended up in the situation I am now in- how I ended
up owning the prettiest marsh in North Carolina.
As an offshoot of my dad’s
love of duck hunting he also began collecting decoys before it became
popular. Any family trip would include a visit to one or several crusty old
carver’s, gunner’s or collector’s houses. The family was usually required
to wait in the car while my dad talked and traded, but I could usually
exercise my status as gunning buddy to get at least a peak at the decoys and
decoy makers of a bygone era.
I was in the shops of and
spoke to the likes of the Ward brothers in Chrisfield, MD. I also met Hurly
Conklin, all the Jobses, T.J. Hooker, the Veasy clan, Erleen Snow, the
Waterfields, the Brunets, Bill Mackey, Dr. Starr and Bud Ward, to names just
a few. Also, and just as important, I’ve held the carvings of all the great
decoy masters from the Mississippi eastward. Crowell’s, Hudson’s, Lincolns,
Wards, Masons too numerous to mention, Dudley’s, Cobb's, Verity’s, Shourdes',
Elliston’s and Perdue’s. I’ve also fondled the unidentified regional
masters from Monhegan Island scoters to hollow little gems from the Delaware
River. The folksy Carolina clunkers, Susquehanna flats, pretty painted
brilliantly preserved Mississippi blocks and ingeniously designed New
England beauties have shaped my views of the classic decoy. In the sense of
gunning history I’ve been truly blessed.
Anyway. The man who
founded Outer Banks Waterfowl (OBW) did so around 1965. His name was Jimmy
Curling and he was a native Outer Banker. In the summers he was the mate
for boat builder and Captain, Bobby Sullivan. In the winter, Jimmy was the
boss and Bobby the helper for duck guiding. On the second to last day of
the 1977 season Jimmy had a boating mishap and drowned as he was returning
to the marsh to pick up the day’s hunting charter and return them to shore.
As one of Jimmy’s best
gunning buddies, his family called my dad right away. At the funeral my dad
learned that they were going to get rid of Jimmy’s marsh in Oregon Inlet,
called Herring Shoal Island. The marsh is located across from a small bay
to the south of the Bodie Island Refuge, and is just a bit to the north of
the expansive Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. Jimmy’s marsh covers an
area of approximately 85 acres, and when you factor out all the creeks and
ponds, encompasses 44 acres of actual land and five duck blinds.
When my dad returned home
from the funeral (He was the stationed at Great Lakes, IL), he realized he
had a very small window of opportunity. I remember my dad coming up to me
and asking my opinion. He didn’t have much money, but he did have one of
the country’s largest decoy collections. The pivotal question we had to
answer was this, “Would we rather look at the birds on the shelves in our
house, or the birds in the air over Herring Shoal Island?”
My
dad made the call that night. A wealthy buddy had been after my dad to sell
him the collection for years. Dad simply told the collector that he had an
opportunity. If he could find a suitcase, fill it with cash, and make it to
our house by the following evening, my dad might be disposed to negotiate
the sale of some decoys. Two days later we owned a marsh!
When
Vern took control of OBW there wasn’t much to work with. He did have the
marsh, which was very good, but there was virtually no client base. Jimmy,
for lack of a better term, was organizationally challenged. He had a
logbook, which at first sounds good, but the only information it had was
last names, the number of men gunning and how much was owed. That was all
the information Jimmy ever needed because all of Jimmy’s clientele came out
of his summer fishing charters. Addresses, Jimmy didn’t need no stinken
addresses! If they wanted to hunt, then they’d best get a hold of Jimmy
themselves and of course, they always had.
About this time, Vern was
diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, a result of being Agent Oranged during
a tour in Vietnam. Despite the interruption of an aggressive regimen of
chemotherapy, Vern set out to run a guide service. The first year was
pretty much a wash. Allied with 2 guides and a list to use as backups, all
pretty well starved that first year. During the previous summers fishing
season all of the old clients learned of Jimmy’s demise and due to Vern’s
non-native status shifted their business to another captain from the fishing
fleet. Business was good for him. Not so for Vern and company.
The following summer,
Vernon discovered advertising. Ducks Unlimited brought in, by far, the most
clients. Numerous other periodicals and print media were explored and
utilized. Many hunts were ‘comped’ to outdoor writers in a bid to bolster a
now burgeoning mailing list. By the ’80-81 gunning season (the year after I
graduated college with a Biology/philosophy double major. What better
degrees could a duck guide have?!) Outer Banks Waterfowl, Inc. was a
steamrolling juggernaut.
No one had ever advertised
nationally for waterfowling on North Carolina’s Outer Banks in conjunction
with access to Currituck County immediately to our north. Vern wheeled and
dealed and eventually consolidated several smaller guide services. The
calls came in and the days of starving through duck season were in the
past. The 80-81 season was also the best in terms of ducks harvested.
There
was little room for me in the guide rotation that first year out of school.
Vern had himself and another guide working our marsh daily. Besides. Vern
had a more pressing need that year. A duck plucker. Nobody else would take
the job. I had moved back home and hadn’t gotten a job yet. “Hey boys,
meet the new duck plucker!”
In
the two and a half years since Vern took over OBW, Inc., he had gotten the
business humming. Twenty to 30 gunners per day, two men to a guide and the
guide sits with you all day. That’s a max of 45 men in the marshes per
day! The scene in the hotel parking lot each pre-dawn was hilarious. Dogs,
cammo, boots and boats exploded, then dispersed like a smoke grenade at an
out of control rock concert. Caravans grouped then headed out until,
eventually, there was nothing left but a parking lot devoid of everything
but the preacher, his dog and a duck boat. He’d sit around with another cup
of coffee and talk to the night clerk long enough for any phone calls to
report broken down outboards to reach him. Barring that he’d slide out and
find himself a spot to hunt a few hours by himself.
That first year out of
school we reached the thousand duck threshold before the season was even
half over! Fowl, weather and clients all cooperated. I couldn’t start
cleaning the fowl until the gunners returned each evening so my work began
well after dark. All birds gathered that evening needed to be cleaned,
packaged and returned to the hotel coolers prior to the time the hunters
would embark the following morning. That first year I was pulling two to
four all-nighters per week over the duration of the gunning season. The
up-side? $20-30.00/hour cash. The downside. Duck lice and too tired to do
any gunning myself. Even though I was the owner’s son, believe me when I
tell you, I started at the bottom and worked my way up.
The benefit of starting
out as duck-plucker is that I was there to greet the gunners each evening.
I got the stories of the day first, all the hits and the muffed shots- those
rare situations that last a lifetime on the back shelves of a waterfowler’s
mind. It was wonderful being totally immersed in ducking and goosing.
The other benefit of a
duck-plucker was watching the gunning reverend work his crowds. He needed
to organize the next day’s hunt each evening prior and the process started
each evening at 7PM. If he could, he met everybody in the hotel’s bar,
where a little noise and confusion was expected and encouraged. All
money due was collected prior to your first day’s hunt. That
lesson I learned early on! The hunters who had gone out that day were
showered and cleaned up by then and those arriving that day were raring to
go. There was an older two-man group over there and 12 man group from
Michigan just showing up. On the other side of the bar was an eight-man
group of police officers from Pittsburgh, PA talking to a group of seven
podiatrists with only one vehicle. On the other side of the coin Vern had a
list of all the guides, their limitations and the geographic areas each
guide could work.
Everybody wanted to buy
the Reverend a drink and hear a few duck stories. Pretty much he delivers.
Around 10:30PM everything is pretty well lined up as Vern shakes hands with
the elderly two-man group. Told where they’re going to hunt the next day
and for what you can see them stiffen noticeably. “No, we’re not going to
hunt Currituck. We’re here to hunt divers. That’s all we want. Divers.
Preferably cans.” Monkey wrenched- totally! Vern hustles off to rearrange
all the magic he had just spent the last three or so hours creating.
The
saying in Oncology is that if a patient lives five years past diagnosis,
they call him cured. A survivor. Vern passed six months past that date.
It was in the spring, with a full load of memories fresh from the previous
season. He only spent the last 10 days in the hospital and that was good.
I
took over the guide service full time in the ’85-86 season. For four years
I ran the business full bore until one evening I heard myself apologize in
advance.
“Tomorrow’s going to be slow, but I promise you’ll get this or that the next
day. He’s the hot guide with the hot blind.”
The
client kind of flinched and gave me a bit of a look. At first I put it off
on him as being, ‘one of those difficult hunters.’ The next day in the
blind, during one of those slow times of the day, I started thinking; I have
worse guides and filler guides; I have good guides with bad blinds; and
mediocre guides with good blinds and bad equipment. Hmmm.
Soon thereafter I embarked
in the direction of guide servicing that I am now on. I weeded out the rest
and I’ve kept the best. Twelve to 14 clients and the service is full. One
decent size group and we’re booked for the day. The people appreciate it or
they don’t return. We shoot lots more fowl and have lots more fun. And on
no occasion do I look in the mirror and see a pirate looking back, nor do I
ever feel the need to apologize in advance.