My maternal grandfather taught me about duck hunting the old way on the Eastern Shore. Back then feeding(baiting) was allowed as long as it was some distance away from the blind. Started out as bait being OK outside 100 yards then 250 yards and then 500 yards. The creek and marsh we hunted on was about six miles long and a mile wide along most of its length and must have had a dozen or two dozen plus areas of bait, five were family farms. Bait was used just to bring ducks into the creek not bring them into the blind. And that creek could have several thousand ducks on it. Today it does not have two dozen.

If they wanted ducks for a “fancy” dinner, no shot holes in them, they would bait up a narrow gut and trap the ducks. We did not do that but I’ve seen several setups and was told in no uncertain terms to leave another mans business alone.

After they started cracking down on baiting, methods were found to keep duck local without getting caught baiting. You would cut a cedar tree pole and strip all but the top few branches. Put your bait out and sink the pole as a marker. Ducks would find the bait and associate the pole with dinner. After a couple weeks they would follow that pole around the marsh looking for dinner. Then when you wanted to hunt them, move the pole into your decoys. Ducks would dive in. Game wardens figured something was up. Had a game warden drag and dredge out in front of my blind looking for bait. He just knew it was there, somewhere. But it was half a mile away and long eaten up. After awhile the game wardens figured out what was going on and told us if we did it they would just salt our marsh and write us up. Then they changed the law so bait within a mile was illegal. End up baiting on the Shore. And end of big duck numbers.

My other grandfather was the quail hunting side of the family. He was a farmer who also delivered the mail as a side job. As a rural mailman he knew where every covey of birds were in the county. On a few real cold days he would bring a dog with him in his car. Stop along his route, just to let the dog out to pee and stretch his legs, point a few birds, shoot a few birds, then put him back in his car and finish his route. Back then every farmer’s wife could clean a bird for dinner. Today they’d call the law and claim it was a hate crime.

Back then everybody, let anyone hunt, without even asking. He would often leave a quail in the mail box of a widow or poor person. They were glad for the free meal. People asked each other who left them that nice quail. People figured out he was doing it. Word got around what he was doing and people would mention to him that they had a covey of quail on their farm, tell him in detail where they were and he was invited to shoot anytime. And thanked him for giving so and so that quail the other day.