R 



remembers hunting with 

 his father and grandfather 

 nearly 00 years ago. 

 "At drat time, you could hill 

 anything ... There was 

 no limit whatsoever. 

 You could hill all you could 

 hill, and you could sell em. " 

 Saunders, hnown for a 

 tach-sharp memory, 

 is one of die few men 

 living who recall firsthand 

 anything at all of the market 

 hunting era that defined 

 Currituck Sound from the 

 1870s through the IQlOs. 



Roy Saunders takes aim with his grandfather's douhle-harreled shotgun. 



he says. "Can't see out of my left eye and 

 can't hear out of my right ear!" Saunders, 

 known for a tack-sharp memory, is one of 

 the few men living who recall firsthand 

 anything at all of the market hunting era 

 that defined Currituck Sound from the 

 1870s through the 1910s. 



For nearly 50 years, this northeastern 

 comer of North Carolina supplied untold 

 numbers of waterfowl and shorebirds — 

 hundreds of thousands, surely; millions, 

 perhaps — to the tables of Norfolk, 

 Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and 

 beyond. Initially overlooked and over- 

 shadowed by the ubiquity of market 

 gunning in the Chesapeake Bay region, 

 the market gunners of Currituck had by 

 the 1910s earned the scorn of the nation's 

 scientific and naturalist communities. 

 As America struggled with the loss of 

 passenger pigeons, the destruction of 

 heron and egret populations for the 

 making of hats and the decimation of 

 buffalo herds, market gunning in 

 Currituck and beyond was held up to the 

 U.S. Congress as an egregious example 

 of the shortcomings of national wildlife 

 policy. 



Then, in 1918, the sale of migratory 

 waterfowl was banned. Nearly overnight 

 an enterprise that for a half century 

 supplemented the winter incomes of 

 hundreds of Currituck families vanished. 

 Men who once gunned Currituck Sound 

 for the market turned to guiding for the 

 grand and glitzy duck clubs owned by 

 wealthy Northern businessmen. 



Books are plentiful about the duck 

 clubs of the North Carolina coast, but the 

 heritage of commercial waterfowl hunting 

 and the role it played in shaping America's 

 conservation ethic are little considered. 

 Market gunning is known mostly by 

 reputation, a handful of pages in local 

 history books and scratched, blurry 

 photographs that surface in the occasional 

 journal. And it is a story increasingly 

 difficult to tell. 



Q 



Id duck hunters would have 

 loved the Currituck weather that greets me 

 one howling winter day: skies gray as old 

 fish, winds roaring at 25 mph and raw 

 cold, just a notch or two above the freezing 



mark. I hope to find a few men who 

 remember the region's market hunting 

 days, but this is a tall order. Eight decades 

 have passed since market hunting was 

 oudawed, so any memories will be in the 

 heads of Currituckians 90 years old or 

 better. I travel from Corolla to Jarvisburg, 

 to Currituck village and Waterlily. 

 Everywhere I hear a common refrain: / 

 remember my daddy tellin' me... .No, I 

 wasn 't born yet, but ol' man Wright, why, 

 he 'd tell us about those days. 



I meet folks like Norris Austin of 

 Corolla whose daddy was postmaster and 

 whose granddaddy was the last keeper of 

 the Currituck light. Austin remembers his 

 father's tales of killing and shipping ducks, 

 but no, he came along too late to ever see 

 them pack a barrel full of fowl or reload 

 brass shells by lantern light. 



There are folks like Walton Carter, 

 down at the Currituck-Knotts Island ferry 

 depot. No, he doesn't remember either, but 

 his mama lived above the old store at 

 Coinjock, and she might have sold market 

 hunters shells or bought ducks a time or 

 two. No, sir, you'll be hard-pressed to find 

 any of those fellows still around. 



8 SPRING 1999 



