A Boy's Life: Hunting in Old Back Bay

My husband and I are plummeting down, down, down at a dizzying speed via Google Earth.  We are hurtling downward to the world, to North America, to Virginia, then to a small point of land on the coast, and a dock with a boathouse and a treelined inlet. 

 “Well, I’ll be.” My husband says quietly.  “There it is, there’s the boathouse.”

We are staring at a place on the laptop screen he hasn’t seen in almost forty years. A place now called “Wash Woods” inside the False Cape Virginia State Park.  In 1966, a commission recommended that the State purchase over 4,000 acres of land on a thin barrier strip between the Atlantic Ocean and Back Bay.  The land was condemned over strong protests  by the owners and a failed lawsuit, and just like that, a way of life abruptly ended.

Once, men were men, and men had guns, and men had dogs, and together, they all went hunting. For the past century some of the wildest and most abundant hunting land on the Eastern Seaboard has been found along the edge of Virginia straddling the North Carolina line in a life infused body of water known as Back Bay.  The grass savannas, creeks, and islands are all part of the Eastern Flyway; that great annual southern migration path followed by millions of geese, ducks and other birds in an ancient journey programmed deep into their feathered DNA.  

Etched deeply into the human genetic code is the drive to hunt, gather, and foray. When the autumn skies filled with thousands of birds and the air echoed with the wild calls of waterfowl, the hunting season began in earnest. During the off season, men oiled their guns and practiced shooting, carved decoys, practiced bird calls, told stories, and fantasized about bringing down birds with a single crack shot.  Young boys waited impatiently for their initiation into the the rites of manhood.

For at least a couple of centuries, duck hunting has been one of the most popular sports in the South.  A hundred years ago gentlemen arrived by train religiously each fall for the season  in Virginia, often from as far away as Boston.  The astonishing abundance of water fowl promised happy shooting for everyone. How could you miss when the air and the water were thick with birds? The gentleman hunted for sport and to escape from the tedious restrictions of civilization in their rustic lodges.  Then there were the so called "outlaw gunners", who hunted for survival and profit, and there was nothing sporting in their wholesale slaughter.  These men were killing machines, and singly destroyed thousands of birds that were quickly packed and sent by train to Baltimore or Washington, where they would fetch the highest prices. Finally, there were the local families, born to the outdoors and the watery landscape, and a sense of  sportsmanship and stewardship over the land and water.

These days the only thing my husband takes with him for outside excusions is his digital camera and his iPhone, but that’s not how he was raised.  Late autumns were spent learning about life and death in the waterways of the southern Virginia shoreline.  Growing up in Newport News his large extended family were members of the Newport News Ducking Club, one of several well known hunt clubs dating back to the 1920‘s.  These clubs owned thousands of acres of islands, shoreline and marsh of almost pristine wilderness in what is now known as the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge and False Cape State Park.

The Newport News Ducking Club alone owned almost three hundred acres of the Great Marsh on Horse Island, Big Ball and Little Ball Islands. The property included two old houses on the inside shore of the mainland which served as a rustic clubhouse and a caretaker’s house.  The houses could only be reached by boat or by driving down the beach for roughly eight and a half miles starting at what is now the end of Sandbridge, just beyond the old Coast Guard Station.                   .

When the hunting season got under way a pronouncement would be made that the men in the family were going to Back Bay, and then a well organized ritual unfolded. Groceries such as steak, eggs, coffee, bread, and other provisions were packed. U. S. Royal Hip Waders, camouflage and wool hunting clothes were hauled out of closets, still stamped with the slightly musty smell of swamp and mildew that had permanently seeped into every fiber. Milk gallon containers were filled with water for drinking and cooking. The dogs were let out of the kennels in panting anticipation of their time to hang with the men, and fulfill a hunting imperative bred into their brains, muscles, and tissue.

The jeeps must have been redolent of stale clothes, dogs, men, and swathes of cigarette smoke.  Indeed, all of the manly arts were practiced in this male clubhouse environment, outside of the civilizing restraints of women and society. I can imagine my husband, a small, rather frail boy in the photos, anxiously bouncing along in the backseat in the night, straining to keep up with the older boys.  There was never a question of not going, it was simply taken for granted that every boy worth his salt was in for the hunt, an unbroken code of life spanning generations.

The packed jeeps set out with their journey timed to synchronize with low tide when the sand would be packed hard enough to drive on.  My husband remembers the miles of dark beach, the line of waves, and every eye searching for the almost invisible turn into the dunes just past the cypress stumps.  When the turn was located, which sometimes took a couple of passes, his father would roar in a deep voice, “Hang on to the dogs, Dougie!”

Then the jeeps started spinning, grinding, pitching and rolling into the deep sand of the dunes. The churning seemed endless, tires clawing and spinning deeper and deeper in search of traction, dogs and boys rolling and falling back and forth over the seats, until with a final clutching groan the jeep mounted the dunes and spun out on to the beach forests beyond.

Then they rolled into the clearing by the old brown shingled house, hunkered down on pilings, with the sloping slate porch roof shrouded by an enormous tree. The jeep doors would open at last, and out would spill the men, cursing with gusto, the dogs panting with excitement, the boys nervous and grinning, and the endless gear to be hauled inside.

For years my husband was too young to be allowed outside by himself at night. Packs of feral pigs roamed wild through the dune forests, and could appear suddenly and kill with stunning efficiency.  The pigs were the descendants of domestic pigs from the old and long abandoned settlement of Wash Woods. The ruins of a few houses and a church were reputed to have been started by shipwrecked victims. The shallow waters around False Cape, named because of it’s deceptive resemblance to Cape Henry, lured many ships to their demise and were known as one of the graveyards of the Atlantic.   The old houses and church were built of salvaged cypress wood from the shipwrecks.  

The only time Dougie was allowed outside after dark was to go to the dock or run down the path to the caretaker’s house next door, where the Waterfield family lived a rustic life in a house ripe with the smells of people and swamp life. There he would breathlessly pass along the bags of food and his father’s instructions to Mrs. Waterfield, to make forty bologna and cheese sandwiches for the early morning excursion.  Then running, panting back to the house, the strange smells of the island people still in his nostrils, the stars glittering overhead, and the anticipation of the predawn hunt. In the background were the sounds of the wind kicking up, and the water splashing against the dock portending bad weather for men, and good weather for ducks.

Later in the chill of the early hours, quilts were reluctantly thrown off and layers of long johns and wool donned.  The boys were sent out to haul the four horse powered engines out of the boat house, fill the gas tanks, and yank the cord until the cold engines reluctantly stuttered and started. The weed grass props were curved like sickles. The decoys would already be stacked in the boat like cord wood. By 4:00 AM men, dogs, boys, thermoses of hot coffee, guns, and decoys were underway in the overloaded metal john boats, poling through the grasses.

Andy, the family’s beloved labrador, assumed his position on the prow of the boat, toes and nails hanging over the edge, nose thrust forward sniffing the air, head swiveling.  His eyes scanned the dark water and gazed watchfully over the rafts of ducks on the water. He was vibrating with anticipation as the boat v’d towards the blinds. Several times Andy jumped overboard when they passed too close to a raft of ducks; the temptation was simply too strong for a dog to endure. When they arrived at the blind he would take off, and inevitably return with the first duck, before they had even unloaded the guns, sandwiches, thermoses and ammunition.  He was known as the “duckinist” dog. 

The decoys were homemade from cork in the backyard, or recycled and repainted from earlier years. New decoys were sometimes purchased from Wilcox Bait and Tackle, still on Jefferson Avenue, or from the mail order catalogs like Hurters Hudson Bay Outfitters. To this day my husband knows his ducks.  Along the water he will point out marsh ducks, which are different from open water ducks like Canvas Backs. Open water ducks stay in the deep water where they dive for food. The legs are set so far back on the body of diving ducks that they can’t walk on land, they just fall over.

Marsh ducks eat mud, nibbling and straining the bugs and other good stuff out of the mud and marsh weed.  To set out the decoys, you had to know what species of ducks weren’t sociable, since you couldn’t have their decoys sitting next to an antagonistic breed of duck decoy.  Everybody had a different opinion on how to set them out. “Put them in front in a pipe formation, no, over there.” “Leave a hole in the middle." "Hurry, get them set out!”

Hurry, because soon it would be sunrise over the marsh. You had to be in the duck blinds, decoys out, when the sun came up. The blinds were fashioned with sheets of plywood nailed haphazardly over a two by four frame. Earlier in the fall the boys would be sent out to bush them, cutting marsh grass in bundles and covering the blinds for camouflage. You had to hide your face against the reeds and peer out so the white of your face didn’t spook the birds.

“Here they come, get down, get down!” 

You would instantly hunch down, hide your face.

Harsh whisper, “Get down, get down.’’

“Where are they?”

“Don’t look, don’t look!”
 

It was very difficult to get close to these ducks since they were completely wild migratory waterfowl, and very wily.  They definitely weren’t hanging out at the museum pond. His father was always at the end of the blind.  Ducks fly into the wind to land, so his father would always be on the right end of the blind for the direction of the wind. This ensured that the ducks would be on his side so that he had the best shot. Dougie would be in the middle as the youngest and most inexperienced hunter. There was a strict sense of safety instilled, because danger existed all around.  It was second nature to the men who had been hunting since their childhoods. 

When the ducks would get close there would be a hiss. 

 “Take’m, take’m now!” 

Everyone would stand suddenly, three in a blind, and you had a split second to pick your duck, calculate the lead, and shoot. Then that concussive, deafening “BOOM” from the combined magnum shells, and the gas operated Belgium-made Browning shotguns.  Like a bomb going off by your head, it would part your hair. 

If you turned around and looked for Andy he would be lunging off the bank, head and eyes riveted on GETTING THE DUCKS!  He had one speed, wide open, and an unstoppable instinct, GET THE DUCKS! You could scream, plead, fire the guns, blow the whistle, he wouldn’t even turn.  GET THE DUCKS!  Once they tried to chain him to the edge of the blinds so he wouldn’t go early and he pulled the boards off the blinds. GET THE DUCKS! Another time they tied him to a pony stake in the ground and he pulled it out with a huge plug of marsh, dragging it all out to the decoys.  GET THE DUCKS!  He was a duck machine.

Then after the limit was bagged, toes frozen, fingers numb, it was time to slog your way through the sucking marsh, fifty feet or so over to where the boat was hidden in a separate boat blind. The ducks were packed in burlap bags to deter any hungry dogs who viewed them as caviar and catnip rolled in feathers.  Then it was time to pick their way in the boat through the marsh back to the clubhouse. The motor bogging down in the duckweed until you tilted it up, spraying duckweed everywhere, and then you were off again. Once back the men would go into the house, leaving the boys to bale the freezing water, and put the motors in the boathouse.  Then everyone would take a nap.

When I asked my husband what stands out in his memory forty years later, he pauses a moment before answering.

“I think it was being with Dad outside in that landscape. There was all sorts of stuff flying around, ducks, geese, swans, cormorants, and nutria in the water. And just the thrill of being grown up enough to go. Just to be around the boats and motors and shotguns, hear the stories of the men and be a part of the family.”

When I asked him if he would like to go down to Carolina and find a way to navigate back to the house site by water, he shakes his head. Perhaps sometimes just memories are best.