what clatter and scramble: There might be 

 three or four or a score of dead and crippled 

 ducks." 



In those early years, a waterfowler's 

 gun was most likely an English or French 

 muzzle-loader, a large 10-gauge shotgun 

 fired by flint and steel. Some used much 

 larger firearms — punt guns with barrels 2 

 inches in diameter, lashed to small skiffs 

 and fired like cannons. The numbers of 

 birds killed with the single blast of such a 

 gun were impressive, but by the late 19th 

 century a tactic had emerged in Currituck 

 that would define waterfowl hunting there 

 for decades: gunning from a floating 

 battery blind, or sinkbox. 



The battery was a complicated affair, 

 at its core a shallow rectangular box some 

 15 inches deep, slanting upward at the head 

 end so a gunner lying prone could barely 

 see all around. This box was attached to 

 horizontal wooden decking on all sides, and 

 large "wings" of woodslat and canvas were 

 hinged, accordion-style, to the decking. 

 Floating in the sound, these wings blunted 

 the action of waves, riding up and over 

 each crest. The battery was painted gray to 

 resemble the water surface. 



Using their shad boats or larger 

 vessels, market hunters would sail or motor 

 to the hunting grounds, then lower the 

 battery with a boom and tackle mounted to 

 a mast. Hundreds of decoys were placed 

 around the battery, mostly canvasbacks 

 and redheads. Once the gunner had 

 climbed into the shallow box, battery 

 weights and iron decoys were placed on 

 the wings to settle the blind even lower in 

 the water. The gunner's partner or "pick-up 

 man" waited downwind to retrieve dead 

 birds and aid the gunner if rough weather 

 suddenly appeared. 



Even in the best weather, gunning 

 from a "lay-down" battery (deeper "sit-up" 

 batteries or "sinkboxes" were subsequently 

 developed) was uncomfortable. "No favor 

 being accorded to the cramped-up 

 sportsman," reported Frank Leslie's 

 Illustrated Newspaper in 1878, although 

 occasionally gunners tossed hay in the 

 coffin box for a meager cushion or placed a 

 piece of heated soapstone between the feet. 



Shooting from a battery was "an 

 ordeal that must have been passed through 

 to be justly appreciated. To lie as though in 

 one's coffin, without moving a muscle, 



with the eye and ear ever on the strain, to 

 enjoy the luxury of cramps and stiffness 

 and soreness, while a curting breeze passes 

 over the 'sneakbox,' shaving the face as if 

 by machinery, is the inner life of battery 

 shooting ... ." When storms blew, wrote 

 one waterfowling historian, the hole of a 

 battery "was the coldest and wettest spot in 

 the world." 



Floating far out in the middle of the 

 sound, battery gunners slaughtered the 

 ducks. "On Currituck," wrote H.H. 

 Brimley of the North Carolina Museum of 

 Natural Sciences, "bags of a hundred a day 

 from a battery were not rare enough to get 

 one's name in the paper." One day in 1917, 

 Van Griggs, considered a crack shot even 

 by Currituck standards, killed 518 ducks 

 out of his first 600 shots. His pick-up man 

 insisted that his one-day kill must have 

 exceeded 700 birds. On another day, one 

 of Griggs' gunning partners killed 568 

 ducks, mostly ruddy ducks, out of two 

 300-shell cases. 



Battery blinds were so effective that 

 they eventually became illegal. "If you 

 ever sat in one, in a battery, you'd 

 understand right quick why they outlawed 



W7 



V \intering ducks, 

 geese and swans piled 

 into the shallow waters — 

 black ducks, pintails, 

 widgeon and teal packing 

 into open marsh ponds, 

 while diving ducks such 

 as canvasbacks, redheads 

 and scaup rafted up by 

 the thousands on the wind- 

 swept open waters. Stories of 

 duck flocks that darkened the 

 sky are not uncommon, 

 nor far off the mark. 



In this ph oto from the market-hunting era, men shoot from a double sit-down battery. 



10 SPRING 1999 



