That map brings back so many memories. I grew up near Princess Anne and Salisbury Md. Hunted on family and friends land from Seaford DE, just north of Laurel DE, down to Chincoteague VA, over to just above Cambridge MD, back east to Fenwick Island and inherited three very small islands in the Chesapeake Bay, which no longer exist. Fantastic diver duck hunting and more than as few black ducks were taken off those islands. I could hunt every day, every bird, every wind condition without fail. I could name every river, creek and gut from the top to bottom of that area. I was so blessed and never even knew it at the time. So much has change and been built up in the last 60 years like everywhere else. The area is more like fully developed New Jersey than the wonderful places of my youth.
In fact if you were to zoom in on part of the farm I grew up on you would see 26 monster chicken houses. You can see them without much effort on a Google Earth photo. That area of the farm was five modest fields, separated by hedge row, not the million plus chickens, growing there today. I wish my father never sold off those fields, to his friend who just wanted to build a house. He passed and the next owner had other plans. They wont allow him to build anymore chicken houses because they figured out if a avian flu outbreak occurs the entire poultry industry could be decimated. Do you have any idea how big a hole you need to bury 60,000 dead birds? I have seen that happen. A million plus would be a mini Grand Canyon.
It was a fantastic place to grow up in the 50's and 60's. Every bird but turkeys, ducks and geese, deer, rabbits and land could be hunted with just a simple asking the owner. I loved quail, dove, ducks and geese hunting. Limits filled before the sun was fully up, or quail taken over bird dogs with little formal training but still a pleasure to watch. Walk out the rear of the house and hunt in any direction for several miles. Now every farm is posted and most new owners are appalled about nasty guns in hands of hunters who they think want to kill everything in sight. I have nurtured more quail in the last 50 years, trying to establish hunt-able wild populations than the tree hungers every will. Fighting mother nature, predators on land and in the air, evolving land use, changing crops, efficiency that left field devoid of anything to support a mouse, much less a covey of quail and then fighting the State of Maryland game department. All they, the state, are interested in are deer and turkeys, plus mismanagement of every other game species. Trust me deer need no help and turkeys are a pestilence on my land.
My best day of quail hunting I killed three legal limits of quail, in a single one day, in three different states when I was 16. But in those days we had quail in every hedge row and weed patch you came across. Today you would be lucky to flush three limits in a month of hunting. It makes me sad to go back there and see all the changes. My home farm has two covey of quail today, instead of the dozen plus in my youth. But I guess every old fart since 1492 has had the same regret.
