Brant Shooting on the Atlantic Coast
At the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, opposite Cape Henry, is Smith Island, named after Capt. John Smith. It is a desolate place about three thousand acres in extent, and surrounded by the sea, Chesapeake Bay and the Broadwater. The only inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper and his family and a life-saving crew. It was on this island that I spent the month of December, 1888, shooting wild fowl, for although the place has few other charms it is a paradise for sportsmen. WIth me was my friend Mr. Fox.
The mainland is about five miles north of the island, and this intervening space is known as "The Broadwater," which consists of flats, oyster banks, ocean meadows and sand hills, through which the sea forces its way, forming estuaries, coves, creeks, basins and lakes. Some of the creeks are as straight and level as a canal. In high tides these flats are mostly covered with water, and are the resort of ducks and geese, especially brant, the gamest birds that fly. In low water the banks are bare and they are the feeding ground of the snipe; and oysters can be picked from them by the shipload.
One morning Tom, the assistant keeper of the lighthouse and one of the keenest sportsmen I ever met, roused us before dawn, and after a hurried meal we started off, breaking a path through the snow for nearly a mile along the artificial causeway that led to the rear of the island where the boats were kept. The storm had ended, the clouds had rolled away and the Northern Lights made the air almost as clear as day. Our two boats were small, and were crowded to their utmost capacity with three men and their traps in each, besides fifty brant decoys. We had a hard pull some three miles out to where the blinds were situated; a brisk wind was blowing, and the spray dashed in so fast that one of us was kept bailing all of the time. Reaching the blind we dropped the decoys, fronting the entrance. Each was anchored by a couple of bricks tied to a stout piece of twine, although the sea was so rough that several drifted away. The blinds were built on the favorite feeding ground of the brant, a wide stretch of flats covered with about nine inches of water in low and about six feet in high tide. These screens consisted of branches of cedar, sharpened at a point and driven deep in the mud. They must always be constructed in the fall, so that the wild fowl will get accustomed to them.
Now, a word about the brant, the wariest fowl that swims, the hardest duck to kill, and the most luscious bird that ever graced an epicure's table. The brant is always called a duck by the sportsmen along the coast, but it is really a species of goose. In the nomenclature of the naturalist it is classified as B. Brant Goose Steph. It is about eighteen inches long, with an extent of wing of some three feet, and weighs between three and four pounds. It is solely a salt-water bird, breeding in the far north and stopping on the Atlantic coast on its way south. Very frequently they remain in one locality all of the winter, taking flight in the early spring. It is very shy, an expert diver, swift on the wing and its flesh is incomparable. The brant's food is marine plants, mollusks and crustaceans. I think sportsmen will bear me out in saying that brant shooting is the most fascinating sport to be found on the coast, or, for that matter, anywhere. Their size, their rapid flight, the beautiful way in which they approach the decoys, the great splash they make when struck down, all combine to thrill the gunner with a keen delight and make him sit for hours in a blind miles out at sea, with the north wind blowing a gale and chilling him to the marrow of his bones; content indeed if he can every now and then stop one of those black-headed, white-breasted birds in its careening flight and see the heavy body hurling through space, striking the water with such force as to send the spray high in air.
There is not on average more than one day in the week that the sportsman can have good brant shooting. On a calm, sunshiny day one can look through
a field glass and see them by the thousand, feeding on the banks and shoals, but any attempt to approach them is labor lost. There have to be three elements conjoined to have good sport over the decoys: the tide has to be just right -- that is, on the ebb -- the sun must shine brightly, and lastly the wind must be stiffly blowing. In our month's stay upon the island, these three essentials only combined four times. If the wind was blowing the tide was wrong, should the tide be right there would be a perfect calm, were the wind in motion the sun was not shining. If the wind was blowing and the sun was shining, the tide would be on its flood, or the tide being just right, with a spanking breeze, then the clouds were banked up in the sky. In fact, these three uncertainties, in all making one harmony, were as risky to count on as a call on three-card monte. The reason of this is simple. The best time to shoot brant is the break of day, because as they clump together during the night in deep water, the dawn finds them en masse, and they strike for their feeding grounds as soon as they can see to fly. Hence the gunner strives to be ready for them, as one can rarely get flock shooting except when the birds are coming or going to roost. Then the wind has a tendency to scatter the flock and keep the waifs on the wing looking for their companions, and, of course, they come boldly to the decoys. A calm day is a kind of Sunday for the brant, it is a time of rest; they neither fly nor swim if they can help it, but sit on the oyster banks all day and preen themselves. The sun must shine on the decoys, so as to make them visible a long distance. In dull, gloomy, rainy or misty weather the decoys cannot be seen until close upon them.
Gunning for brant requires more endurance, more exposure, than any other kind of waterfowl shooting. The blinds must necessarily be placed way off from shore where the slanting sea wind strikes the gunner with its unbroken force.
It is a great risk to trust one's self in a small boat so far from shore. In truth there are few men who are willing to face the hazard, or who can undergo the hardships. Tom's wife used to say she spent the time in praying when he was absent on a brant hunt on a rough, stormy day. Certainly, the country people along the
shore looked upon us as a parcel of lunatics.
There were three of us in each blind, which were about one hundred yards apart. The tide was at the flood and just about to turn and as our boats were above the blinds it was useless, until the water lowered and hid it from view, to expect the birds to come to the decoys.
Whew! it was cold, the wind was of razor-like sharpness, and the chopping waves were capped with foam. Mr. Fox and myself had on two pairs of flannel drawers, two pairs of trousers and a pair of canvas breeches. Three pairs of yarn socks covered our feet, over which our rubber boots were drawn. Our bodies were protected by three woolen shirts, vest, hunting coat and oil cloth, a fur cap with ear flaps surmounted our head and country knit yarn gloves served to keep our hands from freezing, though we would often have to take the gloves off and plunge the frigid fingers into the water to get the frost out. Even wrapped up as we were the cold made us shiver, and out eyes would be so blinded with tears when we faced the breeze that we could hardly see anything. At last the tide dropped a couple of feet and the cedar tops hid us from view. The decoys dancing on the crest of the waves looked like things of life.
Here come four brant and as they hover over the decoys the guns crack, and only one gets off. But look across the way, an immense flock circles around the other blind; a volley is fired and the scared waterfowl scatter and, reuniting, head directly for us.
"Lay low," says Tom in an excited whisper; "don't show your heads above the blind till I tell you, and shoot 'em on the turn." A dark cloud steadily approaches and we crowd in the bottom of the boat. With cocked guns, fingers on the trigger, and with bated breath we await the eventful moment. We hear the rushing of thousands of wings, and then Tom sings out, "Give it to 'em!" A dense mass is over the decoys; some have flown by, while many pause stationary in the air, but most of them are swirling in a circle. Six reports followed each other in as many seconds and almost a dozen ounces of shot were driven into them not over twenty yards distant. A number fell, and the swarm of birds fly in other directions; many are bewildered and circle back from decoy to decoy and the guns of both blinds kept up a lively fusillade. In our excitement we peel off our oil cloths and coats and shoot in our flannels.
For an hour the sport continues and then slackens. We take this opportunity to get the dead birds, which have drifted over a wide area, but as for the crippled ones, they dive and seem never to come up again, so we don't waste any time over them.
As the day advances the wind freshens, and it gets colder and colder. We hastily resume our cast-off garments and take a long and strong pull at our flasks. The ducks only fly at intervals and it becomes slow work. Our friends across the way got enough of this and before noon they gather up their decoys and start for the lighthouse. All day we remained in the blinds, cheered by occasional spurts of luck, and killing broadbills, sheldrakes, fugitive black duck and single brant.
It requires a good judgment and quick aim to kill the latter when darting on the pinions of the wind by the blinds, at the rate of eighty miles an hour. The gun would have to be slung at least six or eight feet in front of him. Beating against the wind the shooting was easy. While other species of ducks would alight among the decoys, the brant would generally detect the cheat, and when within a few feet they would take alarm and hurry off with their peculiar cry. Toward evening our clothes became saturated with the salt air and spray and were frozen stiff. Every movement would cause them to crackle and snap, and we lost many birds by the noise we made getting ready.
About sundown we made for the landing, and what with the cold and constrained position we had occupied so long, we were scarcely able to use our limbs. We found Uncle Simon, the old darkey, awaiting us with the ox cart, and depositing our traps and game we were only too glad to stow ourselves away in the bottom; albeit the vehicle, without springs, was drawn by an ancient ox that meandered along at the rate of half a mile an hour over the roughest corduroy road ever constructed by the hand of man. But what faded voluptuary would not have given his thousands, what satiated Croesus would not have parted with his gold to have enjoyed, as we did, the welcome that awaited us, the glowing
fire, the steaming punch, the glorious dinner, the soothing pipe.
Quick the measure, dear the treasure, sweet the pleasure after pain.
We counted spoils in the evening. Our party numbered sixty-three brant and twenty-eight ducks, the others only twenty brant and a few sheldrakes.
What constitutes a sportsman, anyway?
Well, a sportsman and a huntsman are about as different as a sculptor and a stone cutter, though the chisel is their common tool and marble their usual material. One meets many shooters who like to blaze away at the partridge on the heather, and to shoot all kinds of game, for that matter, as long as the surroundings are pleasant and it doesn't take up too much time or money.
A sportsman is a being of a different mold. He is generally a lover of the gun or the chase by inheritance. He must have an iron constitution to begin with, and be able to sustain winter's cold and summer's heat without flinching and without complaining; to sit, if needs be, in a sink box, with the thermometer near zero, and to keep his temper even and nerves steady, and have skill enough to drop the redhead or teal as they flash by at lightning speed; or to crouch in a sea meadow along with his snipe decoys, with the sultry August sun beating down upon him, straining his eyes, until he is nearly blinded by the dazzling glare, to catch sight of the birds so as to whistle them to the decoys, and then chasing wounded ones often waist deep in the water, while the sun's rays, reflected from the mirror-like surface, are peeling the skin from cheek, neck and hands. He must have a pair of strong legs to carry him over moorland and hill, and not break down when quail fly the thickest. He must have his temper under control and a philosophy that calls up content out of every situation that a hard luck may bring him, and, above all, he must not grumble. If there is anything on earth worse than a balking horse, a smoky chimney and a scolding wife all combined it is a discontented, croaking, fuming, sulky, glum, crabbed, repining sportsman, who cannot bear ill fortune with equanimity. Such a man destroys all the pleasure of an outing and casts a gloom over an entire party, just as a drop of ink will change the hue of a vessel of pellucid water. The ideal sportsman should have a touch of Rip Van Winkle vagabond in his temperament and be a union of ardent, genial Frank Forester and quaint, nature-loving Izaak Walton.
A week of intense cold, most unusual for this latitude, prevented any waterfowl shooting, for a thin skim of ice covering the Broadwater drove the ducks to the open water of the bay. All we could do was to hug the fire, read, sleep, smoke, talk and listen to the monotonous beat of the surf.
"Have you ever seen the Chesapeake frozen over," I asked the keeper.
"No," he answered; "during the whole decade of years I have been here it has never even been covered with so much as a crust of ice, and there has been some fearful weather, too; I don't believe such a thing is possible."
"You are wrong there," put in Mr. Fox; "not long ago I was looking over some tattered manuscript of the colonial times, in the library at Richmond, and found a mention of the coldest winter on record in Virginia, the year 1779. There was another like it in 1810. On both of these occasions Chesapeake Bay was frozen solidly across, and men and cattle passed over the ice in safety from the Maryland to Virginia side. Now, if there is any truth in history and tradition, the winters of a century ago far exceeded the present in severity, for, barring floating ice that has formed in the inlets and streams, no man alive has ever seen the Chesapeake frozen."
Uncle Simon, the old negro factotum, was pottering around the room, his bosom had just been expanded, his imagination stirred and his tongue loosened by a generous glass of cognac from my flask. He was of a type now nearly extinct, of that class of old family servants whose faithful services, superadded to his great age, had given him many privileges that were only possessed by the household. He did little odd jobs around the house and waited upon the table, and, notwithstanding his seventy odd years, he was still a spry old darkey. Uncle Simon was a most disputatious ancient; he never let a chance slip of contradicting an assertion, and if anything out of the common run was told, he would cap it by a tale more marvelous still. He was a genius in that line.