Folks:
It has been a while since I posted anything of interest, so I thought you would all enjoy the following article, dating to the turn of the twentieth century. I suspect the Nimrods among us will revel in this story about a hunting party from the past on Barnegat Bay.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
DUCKING IN BARNEGAT BAY.
TRIBULATIONS OF A RAILWAY MAN IN GETTING A FEW DAYS’ DUCKING.
“What do you say, boss, to a ducking trip to Barnegat for Thanksgiving week?”
“I won’t turn down a proposition of that sort.”
“Say we start on Tuesday.”
“That suits me.”
“We’ll meet on the train. Goodbye.”'
The interlocutor was the busy head of one of the departments of a trunk line plotting a scheme to get out of the harness for a few days.
On Monday came a dispatch: “Sorry I can’t leave on Tuesday. Must be in Philadelphia. Meet you in Barnegat Wednesday evening.”
We met in Barnegat at 8 P.M. via the beautiful Lakewood train of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, Thanksgiving Eve on the club boat, where Fred Bahr, its veteran steward, had what can be called a marine dinner, or a dinner of marine things, ready to serve piping hot, or frosty cold, according to the thing. There were natural bed oysters, freshly tonged, and not enervated by replanting in fresh water, clam soup made up in a way known only to Fred, perch of a pound size just out of the bay, young redhead ducks, with sundry side dishes and dessert, a menu that could be duplicated in kind in New York, but hardly in quality, with its packed and travelled material. In any case, such a bill is an appetizing break to the routine of the home or the restaurateur’s table.
The itinerary of a duck hunt is: That no matter how you may procrastinate about going to bed, you must breakfast at 2 A.M. and be afloat at 2:30 A.M. As far as the ducks are concerned, this is superlatively early, but it is essential, especially on a holiday, to get such a move on, otherwise there will be little choice of desirable points to shoot from. You row or sail to such point, according to wind conditions—that is, your gunner does—and, in case oars are the motive power, taking you in tow, the outfit being two Barnegat ducking skiffs, one each for the gunner and his guest.
After securing the point, say shortly after 3 A.M., there is nothing to do but look at the stars or the clouds until daybreak, and think how much more logical it would seem to send a scout to locate the points while you slept the two or three waiting hours away. Yet perhaps it is well thus yearly to see the morning constellations and wait for the sun to scatter into flight, the stars before him from the field of night. Besides, it is inspiriting to revel in the illusion of hope as to the daybreak flight of ducks.
We revelled thus for three dark, cool hours before the Thanksgiving sun threw light on the waters, and it seemed not in vain, as our first callers were a flock of fourteen geese that came steadily on to our imitation wild fowl until within 125 yards of them, when their pilot gander saw something to make him question the hospitality of their reception, and he gave the order to right about on the double-quick. There was the usual thrill of expectation in all this, and then we settled again into the realms of hope in our seaweed hidden boats to receive our next callers. But they made no drain on our time. There had been as yet no cold storm to bring the later flight of wild fowl from the North, and most of those in the bay had experience enough to differentiate the painted ducks and their own fellows. The result was that flocks would head for our imposing bed of decoys, but there were enough among them to give the danger signal in time to veer off. The brant and black ducks had all graduated in wisdom, and not one would swerve from his course to look at us.
Our Thanksgiving game bag was a dozen broadbills, one redhead, two mallards, one pintail and one coot, that we shot specially for a Gothamite, who said a coot was the best duck he ever ate. (We were too polite to ask the range of his experience in wild duck eating.)
This was a small crop for three hunters and their three guides, but the real sportsman takes things as they come, the good or the bad, and is happy. He has all the other accompaniments of such an outing, and if game were its only issue, it would save time and be a heap cheaper to go into Washington Market and load up.
When we got back to the comforts of the club-boat the railway official found a dispatch that required him to be at a conference at his office Friday morning. “Well,” he said, “I more than half expected this. I’ll go, but come back in the evening for the Saturday morning shoot.”
Friday we were afloat again by 3 A.M., barring the official, who had sleep till train time ahead of him. At daylight on our points the wind began to come out of the west northwest, and it wasn’t long in getting up a forty to sixty-mile gait, and holding its own all day. The ducks couldn’t fly against it; no muscle could row against it, and there was nothing but a bleak day’s lesson in patience in sight. Many a time during those cyclonic hours I wished I had been a railway official and had got an imperative summons to be at a conference in New York. I thought, too, of what the eccentric Dr. Abernethy said to a woman patient: “Well, madam, what is your trouble?” “Why, doctor, I can’t set, or stand, or lay.” “Why the h—l don’t you roost, then?”
We could not “set” nor stand nor roost, nor anything but “lay” and stiffen in the hulls of the little ducking-boats with their breakwaters up, wondering if we would have to make a night of it. But thoughtful Fred, taking in our predicament, with another old salt or two, came to our rescue with a yacht. It took them about eight minutes to reach us under close reef, and about three hours to beat back.
It was a record gale. The New York Sun said it made the greatest hosiery show that upper Broadway had seen for many a year. We envied our official his privilege of seeing that show. He came down in the evening, full of regrets that he had to go to Philadelphia on Saturday morning, and that being the case, we concluded to go too, satisfied not to try to add to our seventeen ducks, and satisfied, too, that we had had a very good time. The Thanksgiving shoot of the year before we bagged over fifty ducks, and that of the season before over sixty ducks and fourteen geese. It was a fresh flight of geese, and we were lucky in being of those to open their eyes to what they might expect on their way South.
We had three excellent guides and gunners—good enough to be recorded— Henry Grant, Jesse Birdsall and Charley Ridgway—experienced duckers, with good judgment in the ways of ducks, first-rate shots and faithful in their efforts to get the best results for their employers—not like some, whose chief aim is to get a job. They always gave their guests first crack at singles, and were judicious in a similar way in flock-shooting.
My first duck-shooting trip was to Barnegat Bay. The old folks, who took their annual there, would not take us along, alleging we were entirely too young. We had a shrewd notion that it was more because it might hamper their good time when they weren’t shooting. Our ears were not idle to their talk and duck yarns, and we got a pretty clear idea of the entire scheme, so two of us kids planned a trip on our own account, without inviting the old folks, and without doubt not telling them. We drove to Bristol, Pa., ferried to Burlington and drove across the State of New Jersey to Manahawkin. There we inquired for Mr. James’s place, who took shooting parties. They said there was no such person there, but maybe it was Double Jimmy we meant, whose place was over the bay on Long Beach. We guessed he was the party, and we were taken there in a sail boat. It was the right place, and a very quaint one, made from the wreck of a Norwegian ship freighted with wines. The house had the ship’s name nailed over its entrance, a hard Norse name, long since forgot, with “James James, proprietor,” under it. Double Jimmy’s house was well stocked with cases of liquor saved from the wreck. Other ducking parties spent their evenings playing cards and drinking of the liquors, in neither of which we joined, it having been always impressed upon us that both were very wicked. Still, we wondered if the old folks we left at home didn’t have just such a jolly time there, and didn’t want that we should see the difference between their preaching and practice, or else have to be on their good behaviour on our account.
We had our own gunners, and shot during Christmas week, having the time of our lives. We were possessed of such ardour, and there was such rapport between our gun barrels and the wild fowl that the mark was seldom missed. Our daily scores were large. This hunting fervour never dies out, but the eagerness and keen sense of enjoyment of youth weakens as we crawl along in life and begin to get a bit ossified.
There is no difference between now and then in the outfit. The boats and the methods are the same, and the gunners look as if they had been electrotyped. The breech-loader with nitrate powder is the greatest advance for cold weather over the old muzzle-loader, black powder, and capping with numb fingers. Two double guns, one loaded with heavier shot or with the Ely wire cartridge for the larger fowl, or long distance shots used to be the proper thing. The main difference is that ducks were abundant then and duck shooters not scarce; now the ducks are scarce and duck shooters superabundant The ducking laws are good enough in some regards as to the days, hours and methods of shooting, but the open season is too prolonged, and the illogical barbarism of the slaughter of wild fowl in the spring, when on their way back to their breeding grounds, still legally exists. If this practice is not prohibited, and other protective laws adopted, it will be but a little while before railway officials and other busy people will have no inducement to figure for an outing for ducks.
—O.T. HUNTER.
Extracted from Black Diamond Express, February 1903, pages 10-12.
It has been a while since I posted anything of interest, so I thought you would all enjoy the following article, dating to the turn of the twentieth century. I suspect the Nimrods among us will revel in this story about a hunting party from the past on Barnegat Bay.
Best regards,
Jerseyman
DUCKING IN BARNEGAT BAY.
TRIBULATIONS OF A RAILWAY MAN IN GETTING A FEW DAYS’ DUCKING.
“What do you say, boss, to a ducking trip to Barnegat for Thanksgiving week?”
“I won’t turn down a proposition of that sort.”
“Say we start on Tuesday.”
“That suits me.”
“We’ll meet on the train. Goodbye.”'
The interlocutor was the busy head of one of the departments of a trunk line plotting a scheme to get out of the harness for a few days.
On Monday came a dispatch: “Sorry I can’t leave on Tuesday. Must be in Philadelphia. Meet you in Barnegat Wednesday evening.”
We met in Barnegat at 8 P.M. via the beautiful Lakewood train of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, Thanksgiving Eve on the club boat, where Fred Bahr, its veteran steward, had what can be called a marine dinner, or a dinner of marine things, ready to serve piping hot, or frosty cold, according to the thing. There were natural bed oysters, freshly tonged, and not enervated by replanting in fresh water, clam soup made up in a way known only to Fred, perch of a pound size just out of the bay, young redhead ducks, with sundry side dishes and dessert, a menu that could be duplicated in kind in New York, but hardly in quality, with its packed and travelled material. In any case, such a bill is an appetizing break to the routine of the home or the restaurateur’s table.
The itinerary of a duck hunt is: That no matter how you may procrastinate about going to bed, you must breakfast at 2 A.M. and be afloat at 2:30 A.M. As far as the ducks are concerned, this is superlatively early, but it is essential, especially on a holiday, to get such a move on, otherwise there will be little choice of desirable points to shoot from. You row or sail to such point, according to wind conditions—that is, your gunner does—and, in case oars are the motive power, taking you in tow, the outfit being two Barnegat ducking skiffs, one each for the gunner and his guest.
After securing the point, say shortly after 3 A.M., there is nothing to do but look at the stars or the clouds until daybreak, and think how much more logical it would seem to send a scout to locate the points while you slept the two or three waiting hours away. Yet perhaps it is well thus yearly to see the morning constellations and wait for the sun to scatter into flight, the stars before him from the field of night. Besides, it is inspiriting to revel in the illusion of hope as to the daybreak flight of ducks.
We revelled thus for three dark, cool hours before the Thanksgiving sun threw light on the waters, and it seemed not in vain, as our first callers were a flock of fourteen geese that came steadily on to our imitation wild fowl until within 125 yards of them, when their pilot gander saw something to make him question the hospitality of their reception, and he gave the order to right about on the double-quick. There was the usual thrill of expectation in all this, and then we settled again into the realms of hope in our seaweed hidden boats to receive our next callers. But they made no drain on our time. There had been as yet no cold storm to bring the later flight of wild fowl from the North, and most of those in the bay had experience enough to differentiate the painted ducks and their own fellows. The result was that flocks would head for our imposing bed of decoys, but there were enough among them to give the danger signal in time to veer off. The brant and black ducks had all graduated in wisdom, and not one would swerve from his course to look at us.
Our Thanksgiving game bag was a dozen broadbills, one redhead, two mallards, one pintail and one coot, that we shot specially for a Gothamite, who said a coot was the best duck he ever ate. (We were too polite to ask the range of his experience in wild duck eating.)
This was a small crop for three hunters and their three guides, but the real sportsman takes things as they come, the good or the bad, and is happy. He has all the other accompaniments of such an outing, and if game were its only issue, it would save time and be a heap cheaper to go into Washington Market and load up.
When we got back to the comforts of the club-boat the railway official found a dispatch that required him to be at a conference at his office Friday morning. “Well,” he said, “I more than half expected this. I’ll go, but come back in the evening for the Saturday morning shoot.”
Friday we were afloat again by 3 A.M., barring the official, who had sleep till train time ahead of him. At daylight on our points the wind began to come out of the west northwest, and it wasn’t long in getting up a forty to sixty-mile gait, and holding its own all day. The ducks couldn’t fly against it; no muscle could row against it, and there was nothing but a bleak day’s lesson in patience in sight. Many a time during those cyclonic hours I wished I had been a railway official and had got an imperative summons to be at a conference in New York. I thought, too, of what the eccentric Dr. Abernethy said to a woman patient: “Well, madam, what is your trouble?” “Why, doctor, I can’t set, or stand, or lay.” “Why the h—l don’t you roost, then?”
We could not “set” nor stand nor roost, nor anything but “lay” and stiffen in the hulls of the little ducking-boats with their breakwaters up, wondering if we would have to make a night of it. But thoughtful Fred, taking in our predicament, with another old salt or two, came to our rescue with a yacht. It took them about eight minutes to reach us under close reef, and about three hours to beat back.
It was a record gale. The New York Sun said it made the greatest hosiery show that upper Broadway had seen for many a year. We envied our official his privilege of seeing that show. He came down in the evening, full of regrets that he had to go to Philadelphia on Saturday morning, and that being the case, we concluded to go too, satisfied not to try to add to our seventeen ducks, and satisfied, too, that we had had a very good time. The Thanksgiving shoot of the year before we bagged over fifty ducks, and that of the season before over sixty ducks and fourteen geese. It was a fresh flight of geese, and we were lucky in being of those to open their eyes to what they might expect on their way South.
We had three excellent guides and gunners—good enough to be recorded— Henry Grant, Jesse Birdsall and Charley Ridgway—experienced duckers, with good judgment in the ways of ducks, first-rate shots and faithful in their efforts to get the best results for their employers—not like some, whose chief aim is to get a job. They always gave their guests first crack at singles, and were judicious in a similar way in flock-shooting.
My first duck-shooting trip was to Barnegat Bay. The old folks, who took their annual there, would not take us along, alleging we were entirely too young. We had a shrewd notion that it was more because it might hamper their good time when they weren’t shooting. Our ears were not idle to their talk and duck yarns, and we got a pretty clear idea of the entire scheme, so two of us kids planned a trip on our own account, without inviting the old folks, and without doubt not telling them. We drove to Bristol, Pa., ferried to Burlington and drove across the State of New Jersey to Manahawkin. There we inquired for Mr. James’s place, who took shooting parties. They said there was no such person there, but maybe it was Double Jimmy we meant, whose place was over the bay on Long Beach. We guessed he was the party, and we were taken there in a sail boat. It was the right place, and a very quaint one, made from the wreck of a Norwegian ship freighted with wines. The house had the ship’s name nailed over its entrance, a hard Norse name, long since forgot, with “James James, proprietor,” under it. Double Jimmy’s house was well stocked with cases of liquor saved from the wreck. Other ducking parties spent their evenings playing cards and drinking of the liquors, in neither of which we joined, it having been always impressed upon us that both were very wicked. Still, we wondered if the old folks we left at home didn’t have just such a jolly time there, and didn’t want that we should see the difference between their preaching and practice, or else have to be on their good behaviour on our account.
We had our own gunners, and shot during Christmas week, having the time of our lives. We were possessed of such ardour, and there was such rapport between our gun barrels and the wild fowl that the mark was seldom missed. Our daily scores were large. This hunting fervour never dies out, but the eagerness and keen sense of enjoyment of youth weakens as we crawl along in life and begin to get a bit ossified.
There is no difference between now and then in the outfit. The boats and the methods are the same, and the gunners look as if they had been electrotyped. The breech-loader with nitrate powder is the greatest advance for cold weather over the old muzzle-loader, black powder, and capping with numb fingers. Two double guns, one loaded with heavier shot or with the Ely wire cartridge for the larger fowl, or long distance shots used to be the proper thing. The main difference is that ducks were abundant then and duck shooters not scarce; now the ducks are scarce and duck shooters superabundant The ducking laws are good enough in some regards as to the days, hours and methods of shooting, but the open season is too prolonged, and the illogical barbarism of the slaughter of wild fowl in the spring, when on their way back to their breeding grounds, still legally exists. If this practice is not prohibited, and other protective laws adopted, it will be but a little while before railway officials and other busy people will have no inducement to figure for an outing for ducks.
—O.T. HUNTER.
Extracted from Black Diamond Express, February 1903, pages 10-12.
