Hunting Season has begun

Gerald Harris and Mike Lewis, Goose Hunt early 1950's
Photo courtesy Lewis Family Collection (C)

 
   I awoke early this morning to the low rumbling of "boom, boom."  It was the sound of shotguns echoing across Core Sound at daybreak.  Yep, duck hunting season has started.  The distant rumbling of the guns firing, the brisk cool air conjured up images of duck hunters sitting low in duck blinds, sipping coffee and waiting for the early morning migration of waterfowl to come swooping down onto the Sound.
     I have heard so many hunting stories in my lifetime that I wouldn't know where to start.  When I was a young girl, I grew up across the street from Gerald and Ruth Harris.  They were family, cousins to be exact.  Ms. Ruth was the mail carrier on the Island and Mr. Gerald assisted her.  They never had any children, so me and my sister Heather were kind of like "surrogate" grandchildren.  One of my biggest memories of Mr. Gerald was his love for hunting and shooting.  He loved to go dove and duck hunting.  I can still see his gun cabinet on the "back porch" that had all of his shotguns, polished and ready for a hunting trip. 
     Many times, he would call my daddy Curtis to come over and do some skeet shooting in the back yard. His excuse was that he needed to get ready for the approaching hunting season.  More times than none, it was daddy loading the skeet thrower and Mr. Gerald doing all shooting.  Mr. Gerald was always good at shooting the skeet as it went away from him.  But in order to understand Mr. Gerald and his hunting techniques, you needed to have known Mr. Gerald.  In a word, Mr. Gerald was what I would call "something of a mess."
      I can still recall seeing Mr. Gerald and Daddy in their camouflaged jackets, shotgun shells in pockets, and heading down a field in an old pick up truck to go dove hunting.  Daddy said that Gerald always wanted to hunt away from the light wires.  And for good reason, Mr. Gerald would kill his dove's from the light wires! They didn't stand much of a chance of taking off in flight if Mr. Gerald was around.  Same thing for duck hunting.  Basically, Mr. Gerald shot the most of his fowl at almost, and I emphasize almost, at a stand still.
     Mr. Gerald was not the only one who loved hunting on the Island.  The Leary brothers Scooter and Benny Charles, Mitchie Ray Midgett, and Edward Bennett are probably some of the best known hunters and trappers around.  It's almost like they have a sixth sense about the life cycles and biology of animals.  Otters, bear, birds, deer and even terrapin turtles couldn't hide from these men. It's like they had a premonition of where and how these animals lived.
     One story I do recall was about a certain duck hunter who was heading out the creek by boat to bait his blinds.  His boat was so loaded down with corn, that it began to take on water.  As the boat was sinking, the corn started floating all around.  And as the corn began floating around, the ducks began to come.  Weren't nothing for the hunter to do but to begin shooting at those ducks, standing in a sunken boat with the bait scattered all over the bottom. 
     In high school, I had an Island classmate who loved to go hunting on the way to school.  Most of the time, if some of us Lowlanders caught a ride to school with him, we had to ride along the back roads all the way to Bayboro.  For most of us, we'd been better off to have rode the school bus those mornings than to ride around listening to CB chatter and looking for a deer.  But one morning, he got lucky on his way to school.  He shot a bear.  He loaded the dead bear in the back of the truck and went on to school for his early morning English class.  It was a trophy bear and I can still recall all the guys "oohing and ahhing" over the kill.
     I am quite sure all of us have some memories of the hunting stories on the Island. I think the hunters on our Island know they are in a hunters paradise.  It's a place where they can escape their daily burdens and park themselves in the great outdoors.  Seeing ducks 'lighting" in the horizon or the low grunt of a bear walking across the marsh, the hunters of the Island appreciate the natural abundance of wildlife we have here.  The natural landscape of marshland, flooded fields or the tall pine hammocks, make for many beautiful sunrises and we have been blessed that our little slice of heaven has been left untouched.