The Tar Heel Outdoorsman

It was the first weekend of the first "split" of duck season.  Mid-November.  Unfortunately . . . our first hunt on the sound this year didn't go quite as planned.   Several buddies and I had two Currituck National Wildlife Refuge Blinds, off Knotts Island.  We've had good hunts there before , and I love going up to that part of the world.  Northeastern North Carolina is a special place, a place full of water and waterways.  A place full of history, thanks to all that water.  One of the first colonized areas of Carolina.  Knotts Island is an especially unique place . . . and getting there from the rest of our state requires boarding the Currituck ferry or driving into Virginia, and coming back south, down NC 615, through Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, and onto Knotts Island, the island-peninsula jutting out into the Currituck Sound. This year, we rented a cabin at a campground right on the state line.  Wate...

 It's truly a land held in by water, these inner islands and peninsulas and lowlands of Northeastern North Carolina. Through Creswell and across the Albemarle.  Past Hertford and over the Perquimans.  Around Elizabeth City and over the Pasquotank.  Into Virginia, and then across the Northwest River, followed by the North Landing River.  Down the narrow peninsula with Back Bay and Virginia's outer banks to the East.  Back down, across the border again, rolling down NC 615, through Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, and onto Knotts Island, jutting out into the Currituck Sound.  We are there.  Well, we got there, but a day early.   ...

The week truly began a day early.  Not Sunday the 18th, but Saturday the 17th. Opening day of the final split of duck season.

Sometimes that's what we are asked… 

It was Thanksgiving morning, pre-sunrise, close to the Northeast Cape Fear, and my brother and I trudged through the flooded millet field, out to the duck blind. "Dang that's a full moon… don't even need a flashlight," David said. "Yeah… it's shining like a streetlight…"