Bay Bird Shooting on the Chesapeake
I HAVE been putting my breech-loaders, and notably my Greener trap gun No. 10, to a severe test during the last two weeks, for I never in my life saw so many birds, especially curlew, and I have had sport sufficient to satisfy the most insatiate sportsman. As I have written up Cape Charles for the FOREST AND STREAM. I will not indulge in a descriptive vein, but simply copy from my diary verbatim:
May 16, 1883. -- Stopped at the Hygeia Hotel, Old Point. May 17. -- Started for the Chesapeake shore on the steamer Northampton. The wind was blowing high, the bay was rough, and the passengers as a general thing yielded up their breakfast. Reached Cherrystone, a pretentious village of many streets and avenues, but no houses; hired a darkey, a mule, and an antiquated spring wagon to carry me to Ketchum's. The animal was in the last stages of goneness, and I believed if the mule could cheat the buzzards I would make the trip sure. Reached Ketchum's in about five hours -- a little grocery and a one-horse oyster and clam steamery built on piles in the bay. Captain Ketchum is a retired merchantman sailor, grum in manner, but accommodating and kind. George Hutchings carried me over to Smith Island.
May 18. -- Set the decoys on the mainland shore. Much to my surprise the robin snipe have not made their appearance, but the curlew and calico-back snipe are in abundance and stool well. Result, forty-one birds.
May 19. -- Went with ox cart four miles up beach of Smith Island to Mud Hole, where El. Cobb, of Cobb's Island, killed two hundred birds in one day last week, but then Cobb is a pot-hunter, and shoots for the New York market, and he has the thing down fine, his decoys are life-like and numerous, his patience untiring and he can whistle every bird to him for a mile around. Did not have Cobb's luck by a long sight, the spoils only amounted to thirty-two birds. No sign of the robin snipe. It is terribly hot, face and hands scarlet and burning.
May 19. -- Woke up this morning and upon going to the looking-glass started back with feeling akin to the unfortunates who gazed at the prophets of Kohassan's countenance unveiled -- skin coming off in flakes off face -- nose, already large, now of double size, cheeks puffed out, eyes bloodshot, hands cut and sore shoulder, bruised and black from kicking of the gun. Some would not call this fun, yet as the Cockney would say, "Wat's the hodds, long as your'e 'appy." A stiff wind blowing and the birds flashing by on the pinions of the wind. Shot until evening and the score was seventy-one birds, all killed singly and on the wing. Still no sign of the robin snipe, which have invariably hitherto stopped here on their migrations about the first of May. The old inhabitants say their absence is something unheard of.
May 20. -- Sunday, a day of grateful rest and ease. It has been the custom from time immemorial, both in verse, song and story, for the enamored swain to express his desire to fly to a desert isle with his fair one and live in the light of her smile evermore. It is a beautiful sentiment, but I would recommend the love-sick youth and the bashful maiden to stay for a week at some lighthouse, where the moaning of the surf sounds a requiem in one's ears.
May 21. -- Again at the blinds; birds more plentiful than ever. Only stayed a couple of hours. Spoils, twenty-one. No sign still of the robin snipe.
May 22. -- It is a wonder to me that some of the votaries of the rod and gun do not erect a club house on some of the uninhabited islands scattered around here, where the gunning is fine, the fish plentiful, and where one is free form mosquitoes. I know of one gem of an island in this vicinity.
May 24. -- At the blinds at sunrise, and the like of the curlew I never saw before. They came from every point of the compass and in flocks. Such an exciting time don't come often. I had shot both barrels into a whirling, quivering mass, and when in a frenzy of haste tried to unlock the barrels I found they would not open. I separated the barrel from the stock and with a rod tried to force out the shell, which was a brass No. 10 with Berdan primer. In vain -- the shell was stuck fast. I rammed and rammed until the rod shivered, and one half stuck in the barrel. And there I was with an empty gun, and the curlew, calico-backs, black breast and yellow-legs, fresh from their slumbers and fearless, were lighting and hovering over the decoys in hundreds. I have been in many situations of trying nature in my life, but never one more aggravating and more trying. There I sat -- I could not do anything else -- the nearest house was two miles distant, and by the time I could walk there and get a ramrod the birds would be scattered to their feeding grounds. I became silent at last, for words were inadequate.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, oh sea;
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
May 25. -- The tide not being exactly right, did not go hunting. The greatest case on the island is George Hitchings; he has a most exuberant fancy. The islanders say that when George wants oysters he goes to a bed and tells some of his colossus lies, and as he proceeds the oysters mouths open wide in astonishment and then George helps himself with a fork -- and old Joe Millerism -- but it shows how rustic tradition hands it down.
May 26. -- Walking along the beach this evening found the robin snipe had arrived -- they come all at once -- to-morrow they will be in millions, and I have to go home to-morrow. Just my luck.
CHASSEUR.
OFF THE VIRGINIA CAPES, May 28.