A few most memorable upland covers and a litany of our most cherished waterfowl hunting blinds and locations:
Uplands
Wet Cheek Bottom: a slick clay bottom creek near Union Mills MD that one of our party (not me!) went AOTC (ass over teacups) in trying to jump over while pheasant hunting in northeast MD.
Castle's Bottom: a wonderful 2-3 mile long forested valley floor along a meandering creek that always held pheasants in abundance; within sight of the MD/PA border above.
The Graveyard: a steep sloping hill filled with headstones dating from the late 18th centuery, tended by the locals just enough to not look unkempt, but "shaggy" enougth that it always held some big roosters. Located above and to the south of Castle's Bottom.
The Rock Pile: A long (c. 40 ft. long x 15 ft. high) pyramid shaped pile of shale and field stones built from stones grubbed from surrounding fields cleared in the 19th century, located just off a logging road in a public hunting area in upstate NY. Always good for a grouse flush or two any time during the season; they knew how to put the wall in front of your gun!
Waterfowl:
Old 55: A blind on Eastern Bay south of Stevensville MD which was supposedly built on the edge of tidal dropoff into deep water reportedly great for Canvasback and Bluebill shooting. Given the mean depth of the Chesapeake Bay at 18 ft., the blind drew large rafts of divers off of the big water onto the shallower reaches behind the blind where the birds could easily feed on the sea grasses.
The Junk Yard: A makeshift boat launch landing at the end of a blacktop road which dead-ended into the marsh at Mt. Vernon MD. This point provided direct access via numerous canals to some of the best diver duck shooting locations in and around Monie Bay, Dames Quarter, Deal Island, and the lower Manokin River, all of which were prime locations in the 1980s for both puddle ducks and divers. The name derived from locals simply abandoning their no-longer serviceable boats at various points along the access canals. alway careful not to obstruct the outgoing boat traffic of fellow duck hunters!
Lay-Down Battery Blind: In the heyday of the early 1980s point system for ducks, I built a double laydown battery blind for duck shooting. Think not quite a true sinkbox but damn little freeboard, fully decked and marsh-legal, towed and poled out into the center of the shortgrass marsh at Deal Island. After I used it two times, I understood why they outlawed true sinkboxes. It was just too deadly: I never actually had a duck knock my hat off, but a couple of times I felt the wind on the side of my face as they whizzed by me from behind, out of my vision. Unwieldy and requiring two people to offload, handle and rig, which I seldom was able to line up, I abandoned it after the second season and "commended its body to the deep."*
|