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Long Island is located on the eastern flyway for
waterfowl. Many Long Island hunters
supplemented their often-meager income by market gunning. Hunting ducks for fancy New York restaurants
was just one way to survive. This took place from around 1840 until 1918 when
the new conservation law went into effect preventing the practice of market
gunning. At the turn of the nineteenth century, all first
class hotels and restaurants served game dinners. From the 1840s until the law changed in 1918
market gunners supplied their tables with wild birds. Commercial hunting was
always frowned on by the sportsmen of the day. After 1918 many of the market
gunners became professional guides. The local duck farms in Eastport and Moriches used
to shoo the wild ducks out of their domestic Pekin ducks and their feed. The sky would be black with thousands of
black ducks taking wing.
In the early days before the Civil War there were no
laws and the resultant slaughter caused many laws to be enacted to preserve the
duck population. The numbers killed were astounding. In the 1800s Captain
Wilbur Corwin of Bellport and one other gunner killed 640 in one day according
to his written log.
The earliest hunters on Long Island were the
Indians. It wasn’t long before the
Colonists learned how to shoot ducks and snipe as they had in Europe. The early settlers depended on hunting to
survive.
People who are interested in a particular cause
usually band together and form some sort of organization. Duck hunters formed gunning clubs and were
able to buy or lease property on the bay to set up a gunning preserve. Early Sportsmen’s clubs were for the well-born and
high achievers.
At the other end of the spectrum there were many small
clubs sometimes sponsored by townships and open to residents.
The first such club was believed to be
on Carmans River in old Brookhaven.
Daniel Webster rented a piece of land there in 1823 soon after he caught
the famous trout. He invited his
friends, including Martin Van Buren [later to become our eighth President] to
fish and hunt. This later developed into the Suffolk Club organized in 1858 in
New York City. These owners built a
lodge on the site. The property
eventually became Suffolk county’s South Haven Park.
Many of the exclusive hunt clubs
started in New York City. With the new
Long Island Railroad, hunters could reach anywhere on Long Island easily.
In the Bellport area, the Brookhaven
Gunners Association was formed in 1924.
It later became the Pattersquash Gunners Association. They leased the gunning rights to Bellport
Bay from Brookhaven Town. Other gunners
in the area could only gun on Fiddleton Flats and Pattersquash Island. Headquarters was on Pelican Island at Old
Inlet.
As the duck
population shrank due to over hunting, the Federal government stepped in and
imposed limits and rules. To help pay
for the program during the depression, Federal duck stamps were and still are
sold through the Post Office and were affixed to the required State Hunting
License.
Gunning clubs leased or owned beach land and
sometimes hired caretakers to live on the land to keep the poachers
out. The ducks were baited with corn by their
caretaker to insure a plentiful supply of targets for his
employers. Hunters would employ live callers. These ducks
had their wings clipped and
couldn’t fly. They were tied and staked
out amongst the decoys. They would
attract ducks flying by their quacking.
It was considered unsporting to shoot ducks swimming. Shooting
into the stool would damage them and
if live callers were used, it might kill them.
The law changed and live callers were done away
with. Hunters turned them in to such
places as the Quogue game preserve. My father turned his in at Quogue and many
years later, when visiting, his tame goose would come to him. These birds were
formerly kept all year long and sometimes became pets.
Some of the clubs were the Wyandanch Club, the
Southside Sportsman’s club of West Sayville, the Wa-Wa-Yanda Club on Captree
Island and the Flanders Club near Riverhead.
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Inadvertently the people of Suffolk County owe these clubs a debt of
gratitude for the public parks resulting from the county’s acquisition of some
of their lands.
At the East End of Smith Point County Park is an area
known as Great Gun beach. It is reached
by boat down the Great Gun channel from the inter-coastal waterway at Moriches
Bay buoy 14. In the late 1800s duck
hunting boats were outfitted with what amounted to cannon. They were #4 deck mounted shotguns. A few shots with these “great guns” and the
hunter had but to scoop up the hundreds of dead ducks to deliver to market.
Keeper “Rose” Gordon of the Moriches Lifesaving
station used to supplement his income by arranging gunning parties near the
station. He was close enough to be called in an emergency at the station.
Decoys or
duck stool, as they were known were made in the home workshop. Heads could be purchased or carved. The eyes were often made of brass tacks.
These heads were mounted on blackened cork shaped like a duck, brant or
goose. The first cork is said to be from
old cork lifejackets found washed ashore on the beach. A square stick called a shallow keel, was fastened
to the bottom to hold a piece of lead and a hole through the keel to fasten the
string to. The other end of the string
went to a lead weight cast in some sand with another screw eye.
Gabe Pelletreau of East Moriches used to saw out
decoy heads for 15 cents each. He kept
the patterns the customer preferred on hand with their name on them.
Capt. Bill Payne of Paynesville (Mastic at Montauk
Highway) was a noted duck hunter in the 1860s through the 80s. He used to gun at Smith’s Point west to Old
Inlet. He made his own decoys using
cedar. He mixed chimney soot and fish
oil to make the black paint. For white
he used white lead.
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An outgrowth of duck hunting is the
fine art of decoy carving. What is considered the first real decoy show was
held in 1923 in Bellport, L.I. sponsored by the Howell’s Point Anti-Duskers
Society. It eventually died out and in 1964 the Great South Bay Waterfowlers
Association revived the show which has become the National Decoy Show. These intricately carved decoys can get as
much as $320,000 at auction.
During the depression years a hunter, not doing too
well, sometimes shot a sea coot, legal, but difficult to eat. The recipe given by old-timers was to skin
the coot, parboil it overnight and place it on a shingle, bake for at least an
hour, then throw the coot out and eat the shingle.
There are many local wild duck recipes. Some parboil them to remove the “fishy taste”
before roasting them. Others just stuff
an onion in them and roast with a hot oven.
Of course before the cooking comes the hanging for a few days in a cool
place, then plucking the feathers and eviscerating them.
There were many other shorebirds that were hunted
complete with decoys. High fashion hats
for women required feathers. Terns, sea
gulls, herons, and egrets were hunted for their plumage. The Shea White Plumage Act of 1910 should
have put an end to this slaughter, but in merely drove it underground. It took a long time for it to diminish.
The market gunners saved the duck and goose feathers
and sold them by the pound to make feather beds when they plucked the fowl for
market.
When I was in high school, my father would take me
gunning. Opening day was a must! One year after he had moved out of the prime
hunting area of East Quogue in Shinnecock Bay to Blue Point, a first day
expedition was undertaken as usual from the boat. By this time my younger brother was old
enough to hold a shotgun. Ignoring
weather warnings we took off early in the morning in a wind and rainstorm to
look for a place to gun from. In the
“old” days a place would have been staked out with a gunning box in place and
permission from the landowner. A likely spot was found off of East Patchogue
and the gunning sharpie and duck stool was arranged. We settled in to await the ducks. It was blowing so hard it was amazing a duck
could fly in such weather. After a few
hours of this we decided to pick up and move.
I was out gathering the stool when a duck decided to come in. My brother decided to shoot at it, showering
me with spent shot.
After that we picked up decoys and attempted to
return home via boat. Unfortunately the
wind had blown most of the water out of the bay and the boat was sitting in
mud. I was elected to go back ashore and
call for my stepmother to rescue us by car.
I found a house and knocked.
Surprisingly the lady let me in, dripping with mud and seaweed. I made the call and we were rescued. My father came back when the water came back
in the bay and got the boat home. When we got home we discovered that we had
been in a September hurricane! That was my LAST duck hunting expedition!
In early times gunners could find themselves witness
to a shipwreck while gunning on the beach.
Horace Raynor, his brother and a friend were on a gunning trip to Narrow
Bay off of Mastic, L.I. Nov. 28, 1893 when the LOUISE H. RANDALL hit the bar near them. The ten men and the Captain’s wife took to
the rigging. Horace was a part time
reporter for one of the New York papers and scooped the rest with his report. The complete story can be found in WRECKS
& RESCUES on LONG ISLAND by the author starting on page 91.
One of the ways to hunt duck is called
Battery Gunning. The idea was to get out
into the bay in the flyway. The battery
was a deep box with four wings of wood and canvas laying flat on all four
sides. The stool was spread out around
the rig and the box was weighted down with as much a 1000 pounds of pig iron,
to get it low in the water. Gunners had
to have others in duck boats standing off to chase the dead birds and get the
gunners in and out. It was towed out
into the bay. It also stood a good
chance of sinking in the freezing water if the weather got bad. |
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Duck hunting today is accomplished much the way it
has been for a great many years. The
hunter needs some sort of cover to keep from spooking the flying ducks, and
something to invite them to drop in.
Duck boats have remained popular.
These small covered boats have rails or racks to hold meadow grass to
camouflage them. There is room on the
stern to carry the duck stool (decoys).
Hunting boxes are usually used when they can be staked out and left for
the season. They are also covered with
grass. The duck stool is arranged in a
natural pattern and the hunter may choose to use a duck caller or he may be
talented enough to imitate a duck. Of
course different kinds of duck make different sounds. The time of day the season is open and the
bag is all spelled out in the State’s Conservation laws. The speed of a black duck in flight can be 60
mph so it requires some skill to bring one down.
Geese used to be scarce, but anyone on Long Island
knows there is no shortage of them or their excrement anywhere locally. Somehow the geese got patterned to stay here
rather than continue on their southern trip. There’s now a special open season on
Canadian geese in September. Jet skis sometimes end up in the line of
fire. Summer play doesn’t mix too well
with gunning season!
Some of the local decoy craftsmen were: Ben Hawkins
1800, Henry F. Osborne 1846, Wilbur R. Corwin 1876 all of Bellport. There was Thomas Gelston of Quogue, 1897,
Charles Howell, Center Moriches, and George Robert of Mastic in the 1900s. The list is by E. Llewyllen Reeve, master decoy carver of East Moriches,
L.I.
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