A Week at Cobb's Island
TWO WEEKS ago I was showing the series of beautiful and interesting "Shooting Pictures" by A. B. Frost to a friend of mine. When we came to the "Bay Snipe Shooting" Dave had a "point"; his eyes bulged out; he seemed to be living in the past or having a gunner's dream. He was; but a slap on his back awoke him. "Jay," he said, "that reminds me of Cobb's Island; that was my blind on Curlew Bar fifteen years ago." He told me of his trip there and how often he had wanted to go back. We were not inoculated against the shooting fever, and besides, "it was a long time between hunts" for both of us. In a few minutes our plans were made to spend a week at Cobb's Island.
We met in Philadelphia, and at 11 P. M. got aboard the Cape Charles sleeper. After cautioning "Old Virginia" to get us up at 5, as we were going to get off at Cobb's Station, we turned in. It was raining hard when we found ourselves and our impedimenta in the midst of a sweet potato patch; but after the train had pulled out we saw on the other side of the track a cube 10ft. on a side labeled "Cobb's Station." We were just about enough awake to have sense to "come in out of the rain" and hold a consultation to find out where we were "at."
When Davy had been there before he had come around the cape, but now an oyster shell ballasted railroad (quite a curiosity to us, accustomed to the Pennsylvania) puts you off at Cobb's. In a few minutes a young jehu appeared with a carryall and informed us that if we were the young gentlemen who were going over to the island we were to go to "ma's" for breakfast and the launch would come over for us at 11. You may be very sure that after our two-miles drive in the rain we were glad to see "ma," but gladder to see the breakfast auntie prepared for us. After breakfast we walked down to the shore to look around and see what the prospects were. We were delighted to see quite a number of curlew and graybacks out on the mud bars. Finally the naphtha launch appeared and we were soon winding our way in and out of "creeks," as they call them there, but in reality channels between the mud bars, as it was ebb tide. In about an hour we were approaching this little island, ten miles out at sea, containing only fifty-four acres, one acre more in number than the handful of men with whom Sir Francis Drake "picked the lock of the new world."
We were welcomed at Cobb's and soon found ourselves quartered in the Baltimore House, our bodily wants to be attended to by Preston, a genuine Virginia darky than whom there could be none better. We were a little crestfallen when we asked Arthur, our guide, what the prospects for shooting were. He said: "You are just between seasons; May and August are the best months for birds." But we were not easily discouraged and made up our minds that we would keep everlastingly at it and get all there was out of it.
It is always cool there, with only ocean breezes and better still, no mosquitoes. You shoot on either the rising tide or falling tide, not between tides, and it depends on the tide what time you have to get up in the morning to shoot. Between Cobb's and the mainland is Broadwater Bay, nine miles wide and fifty miles long, which at high tide is a beautiful sheet of water, while at low tide thousands of acres of mud and marshy flats, bars, creeks and channels are exposed.
Our first morning's shoot was to be at Cove Creek and Preston had us up and our breakfast ready at 4. It was nearing low tide when we sailed away in our 20ft. English-rigged boat. An hour's sail brought us near our blind, to which we waded with our guns and shells. Our guide, after anchoring his boat, set out the decoys, snipe and curlew, thirty-six in all, some in a little pond in front of the blind and others on the shore in the mud. He then took up his place back of us and we were ready for the first incomer. The blind is about 6ft. in diameter, made by sticking branches of trees in the mud and covering them with dried grass. While waiting for the birds to come in we ask our guide innumerable questions. We find out that he is not married, that he made the decoys in winter, that he had never been off the island except for two years' schooling on the mainland, that the shooting is not so good as it used to be, that the island is gradually being washed away, and while we were talking the selfsame tide had been rising and must have covered some bar where the snipe had been roosting, driving them off to seek higher ground and their breakfast, for our guide said: "Mark -- front; get down." When Arthur said "Mark" there was never a doubt in our minds but that the birds were coming in; it was like seeing a dog point. He began to whistle and soon we saw two birds flying low, turn and come toward our decoys. They came in, circled above the false lights, and would have lit among them, but Dave said: "You take the one on your side and I'll take the other." Dave got his birds with the first barrel, while I went "bang! bang!" and saw my bird just get out of range for Dave's second shot. Thus it was the birds came in and for an hour we had plenty of chances and picked up twenty-three graybacks. We could have had half a dozen shots at willet, but they were protected by law until Aug. 1. Hungry and tired, we returned to the island perfectly satisfied with our first shoot.
Thirty yards from our house was the ocean and a great surprise was in store for me, who had only bathed on the Long Island and Jersey coasts, to find absolutely no undertow and yet a magnificent surf. You can go out as far as you please on either the rising or falling tide and yet encounter no undertow. It was the grandest bathing we ever had, and daily, sometimes twice, we enjoyed the Atlantic main.
Our next shoot was on a falling tide on Curlew Bar. In addition to our sailboat we took along an 8ft. shooting boat. Anchoring the sailboat, we paddled about a quarter of a mile and ran the boat into the blind. When the water got down to about a foot from the bar we put out the decoys and waited and watched the receding waters. In half an hour one bare spot appeared in front of us and in ten more minutes probably an acre of ground was bare. The birds flew thick and fast and, as around our blind was their only feeding ground at present, we had some very nice shooting. It was over only too soon -- a few minutes more and there were miles of mud bars exposed teeming with small crabs, food for the snipe. After a few shots at an occasional bird flying past us on the way to some feeding place our guide pulled our little boat, now high and dry on the mud bar, into a small creek and then a paddle back to our large boat. Eleven curlew was our bag, more than enough to satisfy two city chaps who had traveled 600 miles to get them. Curlew are nice birds to shoot at; I say "at" because you don't always get them. While they do not decoy so well as graybacks; they are much larger and make a better target.
In one week we shot five tides, never getting over two dozen birds at one shoot and never an empty bag. Fishing is very good there, but the way they do it does not offer the sport or attraction to one whose good fortune it has been to have spent a month on the Nipigon River -- the finest trout stream in the world. A hook, a line, a bait, a bite, a fish, a surfeit; they don't fish with rods and reel and never play the fish, and yet they call it sport.
November and December are the best months for shooting ducks and geese at Cobb's. The guides leave their blinds stay in the water and mud from season to season, as they say and believe that the birds get accustomed to seeing them there and are not so shy as they would be if the blinds were set up new each season.
The guides are courteous, good-natured fellows, their services expert, their compensation moderate. In shooting without a guide one would be very apt to find one's self high and dry on a mud bank with the pleasant prospect of waiting twelve hours for the tide to float him off. In fact, you must know how, or you can't do it. Shooting without a guide reminds me of the story of a man who shot over a dog for the first time. He was a Westerner and a great hunter, but he had never used a dog, and had only a faint sort of an idea that in some way a dog was of some assistance to a hunter. The dog was sent to him from the East, and the next day he took the pointer out quail shooting. That night he came home without a bird, and so disgusted was he that he gave him away to a friend of his, telling him that he was the worst dog he ever saw. His friend asked him what was the matter with the dog, and he replied: "He has fits. He was trotting along ahead of me all right when he got his first fit and stopped right in his tracks. He stuck his tail straight out behind as stiff as a poker, drew up one foot and stretched his neck out till his eyes nearly popped out of his head. There he stood like a stone dog, and I couldn't make him move. I whistled at him and called him, and then I walked around in front of him to see of he had gone mad. Just then a whole flock of quail flew up under my feet. If that dog hadn't got that fit right there I'd have got about half a dozen birds out of that flock. If you want him, you take him; I wouldn't have such a cur to hunt with."
Our week passed altogether too quickly, but we promised ourselves to go back soon again to this "sportsmen's paradise." JAY EIGHTY-SIX.
PITTSBURG, July, 1896.