The Tundras of North Carolina

Brad, thanks for that history. I didn't know they tried to drain that lake but really doesn't surprise me. There is a group of people here that have put a history book together of families for the area and one of the things in there was talking about the farmers that owned sections of the dismal swamp and how they said if they could ever drain it then it would have the potential for excellent farm land. Well a few years later they figured out how to drain it and now the area is called the desert for how expansive the area of nothingness is. Even the windrows are gone now which has caused a decline in the quail population.

I have been to a couple of farms down in Morehead City and it is something seeing square mile fields. I think one of those farms was bigger than 40,000 acres.

Around here the swan seem to stay more in the corn and bean stubble while the snow geese are the problems in the winter wheat. We don't have as many snow geese migrate here as we did even 10 years ago, which the farmers seem happy about.
 
David,
I have been around Belhaven and the Alligator River and always wondered why swamps in those area and all around lake Mattamuskeet had canals running through them. Always though who would take the time and equipment to go in there and run a ditch through a swamp. Never occurred to me that it was an effort to drain those swamps.
 

Ben,

Just a suggestion about mounting yer drake Pintail. Ya got a Dandy of a Sprig there.

If ya plan on using it for reference for decoy carving. A standing pose has helped me for many years. In fact once I began to carve, the birds I did have mounted are all standing. As long as the form and feather placement are where they should be. The bird will serve ya well, and be more than just a memory. It will impact yer carving and painting style up close and personal.


my 2 cents
 
Brad

I worked at Mattamuskeet NWR in 1980 for a year. Sorry I missed you. Steve Frick and Kelly Nagle Davis are good friends of mine to this day. Not sure if Steve was still the refuge manager when you were there but I know Kelly was the biologist.

My Mother is from New Holland and still owns her family farm. Hyde County is an interesting place. As everywhere it has changed a lot since the 80's. The lake's water quality has declined drastically and the lake has lost all SAV's. This has changed the ducks and swan's wintering patterns a great deal. There are still a lot of birds in the area but they have changed distribution.

The swan used to hit the lake upon arrival in the fall and eat the SAV hard. Then as they depleted that they would shift to fields. Now they hit the fields immediately. The amount of winter wheat planted has declined in the last few years. The swan on Mom's farm seem to be grazing green shoots in the cut bean fields this year. The corn is harvested in mid to late August so there is almost no waste grain left by the time the migratory birds arrive. The swan are still fairly easy to decoy but no where near as easy as in the 80's.

The ducks are sucked into the large flooded corn impoundments that now ring the lake and fill the county. The hunting pressure is tremendous. So the ducks go completely nocturnal unless there is weather to move them during the day.

I would love to see your information.
 

Steve was the manager and Shaw helped me collected swans. Kelley was around too. Please pass along my greetings to them all. I'd love to catch up with them. The refuge should have a copy of my thesis somewhere. But basically swans arrived in November fat and fed on SAVs, in December they started loosing weight and field feeding. They continued to feed in fields and loosing through departure in March despite abundant food, they spent much of their time just hanging out and not feeding. They were lighter in weight when they left than when they arrived but were in good condition. My largest adult male weighed about 26 pounds but most were in the 19-20 lbs range. What was interesting was that I found imbedded shot from 7 1/2 to 00 buck in 9% of the birds I collected. I even found a .22 cal bullet in one bird. It had not been legal to hunt them for 60 years at that point and 00 buck and rifles were never legal in that time period too.
 
Steve retired from the service and then DU. He is in Arkansas. Kelly married my cousin and is on the NC Wildlife Resources Commission now. She is a great pick for the Commission.


I do know that farmers would shoot at the swan to chase them out of winter wheat fields at the time. That is probably where some of the larger projectiles came from but 9%, wow.

I have only seen one over 20 lbs. It had a 84 inch wing span.
 
Brad, one of the guys I hunted with in NoDak for the first seven years was stationed on Guam with his wife who was also in the Air Force. They were doing touch and go drills with their fully fueled B-52. Janet was off-duty at their home when she received a call that John's bomber was leaking fuel and would have to make an emergency landing. John was the weapons officer who sits behind the cockpit with a bunk behind him and the radio equipment. When they discovered the fuel leak the sent someone back via a catwalk that terminates at the old tail gunner position. He could see fuel spraying from the left wing tank via a hole. They were instructed to fly around over a section of the Pacific Ocean and burn fuel while various personnel attempted to come up with a fix. No solutions were conceived so they burned their fuel reserves down and the set-up to land. The bomber came in and made its emergency landing and skidded off the runway into a grassy area in case it caught fire and the flight crew dumped out of the belly of the plane through the emergency exit hatch hit the ground and started sprinting to a sandbagged fortification that had been hastily arrayed while they were flying around. Nothing blew up and no aircraft damage ensued. When the bomber was inspected there were several bullet holes in the wing's underside. The Air Force had employed civilian personnel to shoot birds off the runways to keep the collision risk down. Apparently, they got tired of shooting at small game... and altered their targets. That incident brought an end to civilian personnel on an active flight line at that US Airforce Base... The other issue John mentioned was the tree snake infestation there.
 

Thank you Mr. Bortner and Mr. Farley.

As now we are getting the factual story of the Atlantic Flyway Swan season that needs to be told. and recorded.


Best regards
Vince
 
Thousands of them raft-up offshore along the Lake Michigan coast from Whitehall north to Traverse City during their migration. When I lived in the dunes north of Pentwater, Mi. I would sneak down the beach to take-up a stand in the beach grass to pass shoot the divers that their rafts would cause to congregate with them as the ducks broke-off the water to fly-in to feed in Bass Lake. We really cleaned-up on redheads and scaup with a occasional canvasback once I secured a couple of access points on Bass Lake for seasonal property owners. It seemed that the swans would be more active during snow squalls. Always fun to hear them and be alerted that divers were moving with them as well.
 
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