New Year Traditions

[Kevin McCormack]

John - we leased a nice little waterfront farm on the upper Sassafrass just southwest of Galena but it proved to be marginally productive at best. It yielded a few geese per season out of the stick-up blinds but nothing flew past our duck blind that you would want to shoot to eat. So we moved down to Church Creek Club just north of the Eastern Neck Island WMA bridge at the end of the peninsula, one of the three clubs of Trumpington Manor (Church Creek, Hickory Thicket, and Holly Grove) estate. Despite the close proximity to the WMA, you still have to "hunt" them and there are no giveaways, the weather notwithstanding.

In 1975 a group of us rented a great waterfront farm on Skipton Creek off of Wye Landing, just north of Easton MD. This of course was in the beginning of the heyday of Eastern Shore Canada goose hunting. The season was 90 days long with a daily limit of 3 geese per person per day with hunting allowed 6 days a week. Many was the day we took home limits! The best goose hunting was out of field pits (we had 2) and the duck shooting was OK but not great until the winter of 1977, when the bay froze solid from shore to shore from Tangier Island to Havre de Grace. In the few weeks before the ice closed, everything flew!

In 1983, we had another severe winter with bad ice conditions on our creek. That year was the end of a MD DNR 3-year experimental Canvasback season, which we had scant luck at in the first 2 years. The season was a week long for Cans, limit of 5 birds per day only one of which could be a hen. You had to have a free permit which registered you to report back to the DNR so they could build a data base on kill ratios, sex distributions, and such. We hit everything right that week; broke ice and moved decoy rigs several times a day, rigged out about 6 dozen Can decoys with other species, paid attention and did it right. At the end of the week we totaled 78 Canvasbacks killed, only 5 of which were hens, of which we were very proud. My young Lab learned more in that week than she had in all her 4 years of training and retrieving on the marsh. I will never forget it.

We had the farm almost 20 years, up until 1993, when the son of the deceased owner sold out. The property comprised 778 acres named after 3 parcels designated in the original land grant well before 1700; the Cleghorne Lands, the Long Woods, and Winodee (a contraction of the Scot settlers loosely translated as "Win Or Die." Ours was the Winodee. Below is a photo of the now demolished clubhouse of the Club Winodee.

[Blind Dog]

Rode the KLR over to the Wiggletown AMVETS when it opened and, even though there were a couple of knarly areas, made it in as the First Bike of the Year one more time.

[Big D]

Kevin- We kept our boat at the marina at Galena, and used to eat at the Granary. We would arrive at the marina , load ice into the boat's ice box, then head dowen the river, and spend the night in the cove at Knight's Island

[Pa. Parker Pal]

went out with my 11 yr. Brittany to try for some of the roosters stocked by my local club, only hunted for 1 hour and he made beautiful point and I was successful with my 16 ga. Trojan.

[Double Lab]

Ah, the Granary. Back in the mid 70's through the 80's I had a wonderful farm in Cecilton. We would hunt New Years Eve, celebrate that evening then, if we could, get out on New Years day for a shoot. Usually ended up at the Granary for dinner during the season dressed in camo. Those were the days.

[Brian H]

For 11 of the last 12 years I have spent new years in South Texas with dear friends of mine and the better part of those with my son. On a 35,000 acre ranch we have killed many deer, quail, pig and coyote. Cindy knows that New Years Eve is not a holiday we are gonna watch a ball drop. A couple pictures from the years.

[Dean Romig]

That looks like a real nice tradition Brian!





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[charlie cleveland]

now thats a good way to break the ney year in...charlie

[King Brown]

Kevin, any idea why they're called jinglers. Around here we call them whistlers. I favour blacks for the plate but nothing beats goldeneye from the blind for action for me.

[Kevin McCormack]

Originally Posted by King Brown

Kevin, any idea why they're called jinglers. Around here we call them whistlers. I favour blacks for the plate but nothing beats goldeneye from the blind for action for me.

The name was derived by the local watermen on VA's Northern Neck and their counterparts across the Chesapeake in lower Dorchester, Wicomoco and Nanticoke River MD marshes. I encountered them on my first"real" duck hunt on Little Monie Bay near Dames Quarter, MD in 1967. You could hear them way far off in the rains, snow and gloom; the wind whistling through their primaries made a choppy sound sound like sleigh bells in winter. I have always connected it with Christmas and the New Year coming in.