BrOWn pelican ScottD. Taylor 



finished off one of the state's last four 

 colonies of Louisiana herons. 



Waterfowl populations also 

 plummeted. Currituck Sound gunners, 

 in particular, annually shipped north the 

 plumes and flesh of tens of thousands 

 of ducks, geese and swans. In addition, 

 the gunners led visiting hunters on 

 bacchanalias of wildfowl shooting, 

 when a sport club might kill 5,000 birds 

 in a day. Shooting without bag limits or 

 off-days, they used many hunting 

 methods now illegal, including live 

 decoys, baiting and night shooting. 



Waterfowl, which bred mainly in 

 the far north, proved less vulnerable to 

 market hunting than the birds that 

 nested on our coast. Nevertheless, 

 around 1900, Henry Ansell, a Knotts 

 Islander born in 1832, estimated that 

 market gunners had reduced waterfowl 

 populations on Currituck Sound to a 

 fourth what they had been in his youth. 

 Canvasbacks and boobies had all but 

 disappeared. 



By the 1890s, many coastal people 

 felt as if market gunning had gotten out 

 of hand. Poorer families missed having 

 the meat on their tables and regretted 

 not having the feathers to stuff pillows 

 and mattresses. Fishermen longed for 

 the great flocks of seabirds and shore- 

 birds that signaled schools of fish. 



Others fretted over life and limb. In 

 the spring of 1890, two or three crews 

 of Carteret gunners visited Calabash's 

 marshes. "The men aboard seem very 

 clever," a local waterman wrote the 

 Southport Leader, "but they are playing 

 havoc with the marsh birds. They keep 

 up a constant bang, bang daily ... . It is 

 really dangerous for a man to go in the 

 creek and stoop down to catch a clam 

 with a white shirt on." 



By the turn of the century, Pearson 

 and many other observers believed that 

 all of North Carolina's breeding 

 populations of coastal birds would soon 

 be exterminated. 



But out of this ecological calamity 



came a hopeful sign of a brighter future 

 for the coast's wildlife. In 1902, the 

 coastal birds' plight inspired the 

 founding of the state's first conserva- 

 tion group, the North Carolina 

 Audubon Society. The society became 

 a model of citizen activism, helping 

 coastal birds toward recovery and also 

 inspiring the state's people to campaign 

 for the protection and wise manage- 

 ment of other wildlife. 



Pearson was the Audubon 

 Society's first secretary. Led by him, 

 the society advocated successfully for 

 restrictions against the killing of 

 waterbirds and songbirds. In 1903, the 

 General Assembly granted the society 

 the authority to employ wardens and 

 enforce the new laws. This made North 

 Carolina the first Southern state to 

 adopt a regulatory system of bird and 

 game protection. 



The Audubon wardens met stiff 

 opposition. They risked violent 

 reprisals for arresting offenders. They 



22 MARCH/APRIL 1996 



