Jarvis Snow, who was a guide at the 

 Whalehead Club before World War II 

 and whose father served as superinten- 

 dent there for 28 years, says the club 

 was a hub of activity during hunting 

 season. "Everybody was up way 

 before daylight," Snow says. "The up- 

 per folks ate in the dining room. My 

 mom cooked breakfast for 'em. We'd 

 all leave the clubhouse just before 

 daylight, everybody in four skiffs. As 

 we went along we'd drop off two hun- 

 ters and a guide at each blind. They'd 

 hunt most of the morning, then we'd 

 collect 'em for lunch. After lunch we'd 

 take 'em out for the afternoon. 



"Some of the guests were great skeet 

 shooters, but couldn't hit a duck or 

 goose in the marsh no matter how hard 

 they tried," Snow chuckles. "They 

 always blamed their troubles on their 

 guns, too." 



Snow says Adams leased the club 

 during World War II to the U.S. Coast 

 Guard for a training area on the condi- 

 tion that his father be made a Chief 

 Bos'n Mate and be stationed at the 

 club to protect Adams' interests. Snow 

 said the Coast Guard looked after the 

 house well and returned it to Adams in 

 better shape than they received it. 



Adams had dreams of developing 

 the area into a vacation resort, but 

 those dreams died with him in 1958. 

 Since then the property has passed 

 through numerous owners and was 

 finally bought by realtors in 1971, then 

 divided into lots. The clubhouse still 

 stands abandoned and deteriorating. 



Besides the Whalehead and Curri- 

 tuck Shooting Clubs, other major 

 hunting clubs were the Martin's Point 

 Club, the Swan Island Club, the 

 Narrows Island Club, the Monkey 

 Island Club and the Pine Island Club. 

 Morris says the clubs were in their 

 heyday between 1880 and 1930. He 

 says hunters arrived by railroad where 

 they were picked up by boats, first 

 sailboats and later motorboats, or by 

 horse and buggy and carried to the 

 clubhouses. "Those who came stayed 

 for a long time because it was such a 

 job to get here," Morris says. 



Morris says the wealthy clubs were 

 an asset to Currituck County. "By 

 buying up most of the marsh, the clubs 

 preserved the natural beauty of the 

 land here," Morris says. "Our natural 

 resources are this county's main asset. 

 We don't have industry or commercial 

 fishing to fall back on." Morris says 

 the clubs provided a lot of jobs for the 

 natives of the remote county. Also, 



many wealthy club members donated 

 heavily to county schools and libraries. 



Today, the Swan and Monkey 

 Island Clubs are owned by the Nature 

 Conservancy. Earl Slick of Winston- 

 Salem bought the Narrows Island and 

 Pine Island Clubs (he has since deed- 

 ed the Pine Island Club to the 

 National Audubon Society). 



While wooden decoys and dogs seem 

 synonymous with waterfowl hunting, 

 that's not always been the case. 

 Hunting with dogs has become popular 

 during the last 50 years and Neal Con- 

 oley says some hunters near the turn of 

 the century used live ducks and geese 

 as decoys. The ducks and geese were 

 either trained to hold their position or 

 tied into place. Hunters would throw 

 in corn to the live decoys so they would 

 feed and draw in their wild compa- 

 nions. Dick Brame says old hunting 

 guides in Currituck County claim that 

 some hunters had geese trained to fly 

 into passing flocks and bring them 

 down to the hunter's firing range. 

 "They could easily spot their own 

 goose as the flock swung in because it 

 was usually larger with a squarer 

 breast from being better fed," Brame 

 says. 



Conoley says decoy makers began 

 making wooden decoys about 1880, 

 but they were not in prominent use un- 

 til the 1920s and 1930s. A typical 

 decoy stand for a hunter was 200 

 wooden decoys. 



Courtesy of N.C. Archives and History 



"Decoy-making was a folk art in 

 Currituck County," Conoley says. 

 "Many of the early decoys were blocky 

 and crude, but very functional. The 

 canvasback goose decoy was typical of 

 the time. It had a wooden bottom with 

 a brass wire frame that makers 

 stretched canvas over to form the 

 body. The body was painted and a 

 head carved to complete the decoy." 



Jarvis Snow remembers his father, 

 Dexter Snow, chopping out the bodies 

 of decoys with a hatchet. "He didn't 

 work on 'em steady," Snow says. 

 "He'd cut the bodies out one time and 

 whittle the heads another. Before you 

 knew it, though, he'd have ten or 

 twelve or fifteen decoys. He probably 

 made ten thousand decoys during his 

 life." 



Snow remembers a lot of the decoy 

 makers whose works are now valued as 

 collector's items — Ned Burgess, 

 Wallace and Pat O'Neal, Joe Ham- 

 mond, Marvin Midgett and Bob Moss. 

 Conoley, who collects old decoys, says 

 each maker had his own style of mak- 

 ing the decoys that distinguished them 

 from others (decoy makers did not in- 

 itial their work). Old wooden decoys 

 not lost or used as firewood are being 

 collected today as a reminder of the 

 days when wealthy gentlemen 

 gathered around the clubhouse fires at 

 night after a day hunting ducks and 

 geese in the Currituck marsh. 



— Kathy Hart 



Photographed in 1972, the Whalehead Club reigns king over the 

 Currituck marsh 



