The Tar Heel Outdoorsman

Rails.  Marsh Hens.  Mud Chickens.   What fun little birds.  The tide is the big factor---very high, often around a big moon in early fall---high enough that these marsh fowl don't have much of a place to hide, hopefully congregating around the floating mats of dark reeds, or maybe just off some of the higher areas of marsh or a small island with some brush and scrub live oaks.  We push the skiff through the spartina grass, trying to jump some birds.   We strain looking for them.  Sometimes they try to sneak off, we barely see their heads as they slink away through the water, out of scatter gun range.  We have to get close to them for the birds to take flight.  Sometimes we have to almost give them some encouragement with the push pole to hop up airborne.  Sometimes they don't fly far, sometimes they try and make it to the next "hammock" over, the next higher section of marsh.   It's lower, slower shooting than those ...

My blog has been dormant like an alligator in the winter mud.  I'm trying to awaken it from its slumber.    In an attempt to rouse this online place where I occasionally jot some things down, I'm looking back a ways, back to March of '22.  A darn fine weekend.  Or a collection of a few weekends.  Regardless, darn fine.  Oysters and drum and cool, clean, and clear salt water, and azaleas in bloom.     Picking oysters---knocking the too-small ones off the clusters, toss the ones you keep in the fish basket sitting in the still cold, early spring, southeastern Carolina water, still cold and clean, maybe even shuck one of the bivalves for a briny mid morning snack, or maybe it was mid afternoon.  Find a few mussels too, just poking through a mud bank of a small creek, pull them, often connected together in a big clump, out of that dark rich mud that smells like marsh.   A few drum---casting up on the oyster bank, let the jig a...

          There's the sound of a splash.  Over there.  Off to the right.  Right on the edge of that thin, stick-like, sparse and spread out bit of spartina grass.  25 yards from the skiff and closing, with the boat drifting ever closer as the tide pulls it out of the tidal salt marsh.  Ever closer.  Won't be long until the fish sees the boat and it'll be too late.  There's a wake, like a bow-wave of some miniature coastal Carolina submarine, chasing bait.             Sling a cast just ahead of it.  Bump.  Bump.  The line goes tight, you feel the tension, you set the hook, and the rod bends over.  The fish runs.  Line peels off the spool.  Steer him clear of the oysters.  You work him back.  He runs again.  Work him in, closer and closer.  Closer.  Scoop him in the net.  Doesn't get much prettier.  

Rails.  Marsh hens.  Rail birds.  Marsh chickens. Whatever you wanna call 'em. I'm by no means an experienced marsh hen hunter . . . I've only tried for the salt marsh fowl a handful of times. There can be some work required for this briny mix of dove and quail hunting.  Especially trying to push the skiff through the spartina grass when the tide hasn't risen quite enough . . .  especially with a not-quite-long-enough push pole.  You, like me, may be huffing and puffing. But when you spy a rail-bird through the grass, when you see that long distinctive bill, when you see that dark brown, slinking through the flooded grass, low, low like a nutria or a rat, those hunting instincts that lay dormant in many of us start to stir. This really is hunting , though the shooting isn't all that difficult.  Your eyes straining, looking for the small bird, the bird just trying to evade your detection.  He, the bird, won't jump up and flush easily....