Around the turn of the century, 

 according to Elizabeth City native Jack 

 Baum, the price for canvasbacks varied 

 from $2 to $5 a pair, but it seldom 

 dropped below $2.50; redheads brought 

 about $1.50; scaup about 75 cents; 

 ruddies from 50 to 75 cents; marsh ducks 

 and swan, 75 cents; and geese from $ 1 to 

 $ 1 .50. "A man had to work hard to make 

 a living at these prices, but some of them 

 did it," Baum says. 



As the market matured, with greater 

 numbers of birds and more reliable 

 transportation, hunters sold their birds on 

 commission. In her elegiac memoirs, 

 Edith Gallop Parker recalled that her 

 father had brass stencils from the 

 "commissionmen" he most frequently 

 sold to. "It just took some lamp black 

 mixed with kerosene and a stubby brush 

 to stencil on who it was consigned to and 

 who it was from," she wrote. "Most of the 

 game was shipped to Northern cities to 

 commissionmen who put them on the 

 market and sold them on a percentage 

 basis. And Pa would get a check in return 

 .... All produce was shipped this way, as 

 well as game." Fowl buyers also would 

 visit the batteries out in the sound and 

 purchase ducks directly from hunters. 



For the hunters, gunning for market 

 was a reliable source of income at a time 

 of year when there was little money to be 

 made. "The returns in game killed and 

 secured ... are as sure as the profits of any 

 ordinary labor of agriculture or trade, and 

 far larger for the capital and labor 

 employed," observed Ruffin. 



During the winter of 1907-1908, the 

 Audubon Society of North Carolina 

 reported that 400 men, "a conservative 

 estimate," shot ducks and geese in 

 Currituck Sound for the market trade. 

 From 1903 to 1909, by another estimate, 

 Currituck market hunters were paid no 

 less than $100,000 per year for fowl 

 shipped to Northern markets. In the 

 winter season of 1 9 1 0- 1 9 1 1 , according to 

 one report, just under a quarter of a 

 million wildfowl were shipped from 

 Currituck Sound. 



q 



S-s uch harvest drew the ire of a 

 nation in the midst of birthing a new 

 conservation ethic. Across the country, the 

 trade in bird skins and feathers for the 

 millinery trade had raised a legion of 

 politically active naturalists with a potent 

 name: the National Association of 

 Audubon Societies. As early as 1885, the 

 trade in wild birds for food had been a 

 cause for concern among the scientific 

 community. By the turn of the century the 

 American taste for wild game had whittled 

 the billion-bird flocks of passenger pigeons 

 down to pitiful remnants — the last 

 sighting in North Carolina came in 1894. 



Scorn for market hunters, and in 

 particular the gunners of Currituck, 

 bubbled over at all levels. Few railed with 

 the thunder of William T. Homaday, the 

 obstreperous director of the New York 

 Zoological Park. Currituck County, he 

 wrote in 1913, is "the bloodiest slaughter- 

 pen for waterfowl that exists anywhere on 

 the Atlantic Coast." A poster outlining the 

 migration routes of ducks from across 

 North America to their Currituck wintering 

 grounds was distributed to gamer support 

 for protective measures. 



Increasingly, the market hunter 

 became a paradox of his time, the provider 

 of a much-sought commodity to a public 

 that could no longer accept the facts that 

 lay beyond the rim of the dinner plate. 

 Measure by measure, a wall of regulation 

 was built around his trade. In 1900, the 

 federal Lacey Act went into effect, 

 establishing the framework for states to use 

 protections afforded interstate commerce 

 by the U.S. Constitution to enforce state 

 wildlife laws. Between 1901 and 1902, 

 portions of the American Ornithologists' 

 Union's "model law" were passed by 

 legislatures in most Atlantic seaboard 

 states. 



On March 6, 1903, the Audubon Act 

 became law in North Carolina making it 

 unlawful to kill any wild bird other than a 

 game bird (liberally defined to include 

 even plover, robin and meadowlark) and 

 various nuisance birds. The Audubon 

 Society of North Carolina was given 

 authority to sell out-of-state hunting 



licenses in order to pay for its own "bird 

 and game wardens" to act on behalf of the 

 state. It was, according to the society's T. 

 Gilbert Pearson, "the first law ever enacted 

 in any South Atlantic or Gulf state to 

 provide for a state game- warden system." 



The North Carolina organization 

 threw itself into its new duties. In its first 

 year, the Audubon Society of North 

 Carolina fielded 29 wardens, with four 

 stationed in Currituck County to help stem 

 the growing practice of shooting ducks at 

 night with the use of a bright light. By 

 1907, the Audubon payroll included 100 

 wardens from the mountains to the coast, 

 and the society's new gasoline-powered 

 patrol boat, the Dovekie, was launched in 

 Currituck Sound. Its home mooring was 

 just off the Poplar Branch waterfront. 



Then, in 1909, North Carolina passed 

 legislation that broke the back of the 

 Audubon Society's protection efforts. 

 Fifty-two counties, including Currituck, 

 exempted themselves from the Audubon 

 Law and gave local county commissioners 

 enforcement power. The state's short-lived 

 experiment in allowing a private concern 

 to police its marshes, waters and forests 

 was over, but not the movement that gave 

 it life. 



In New York in 191 1, the Baynes Act 

 was passed, banning the sale of native wild 

 game throughout the state. As the gavel 

 sounded in Albany, 191,376 wild birds, 

 including 98,156 ducks and 48,780 

 plovers, lay in cold storage in New York 

 City. The East Coast's largest game 

 markets were shut down. 



In March 1913, the Weeks-McLean 

 Law took effect, placing waterfowl, 

 migratory game and migratory insectivo- 

 rous birds under the custody and protection 

 of the federal government. For the first 

 time a federal agency, the U.S. Department 

 of Agriculture, was given the authority to 

 write and enforce regulations to protect 

 wild animal populations. In 1916, federal 

 law prohibited the shooting of wild birds in 

 the spring and banned all night shooting. 

 The United States began negotiating with 

 England on items that had already been 

 agreed upon with Canada penning the 



12 SPRING 1999 



