The End of an Era

In January of 1979 I first ventured to Pamlico Point. McGee, Trevor and I hunted the Goose Creek Impoundment. Killed Pintails and Blacks. Doesn't get any better than that. So we started going up there on a regular basis. After a few trips to the impoundment we heard enough shooting out on the sound to get us interested in trying it out. Turned into my primary shooting location for many years.

About 10 years ago, Kelly Murphy and I pooled our money and bought Whitfield's trailer on Horne Road. We worked like crazy to fix up the 56 year old mobile home and get the yard shaped up. Didn't have a lot of money to work with, but we made it into a nice duck camp.

Then the birds started getting scarce. Then Kelly fell on some hard times and couldn't get up there to hunt very much. As I got older I didn't feel like making the trip and going to all the trouble just to hunt by myself. Slowly but surely I quit hunting up there completely. Never totally ruled it out in my mind, but something always seemed to keep me away.

This Summer we sold the place. It was a hard decision. Absolutely some of the best times of my life were up there at Lowland. But it all fizzled away to nothing. Just a place to have to fight the bugs and cut the grass. Am I sorry I sold it? In a way yes. It will always hold a million good memories in the back of my mind. But, I feel it was a good time to move on. I can kill ducks anywhere. So without all the old friends that made 825 Horne Road so special it just wasn't ever going to be the same again.

Maybe in time I'll regret the decision. But for right now, I think I am OK with it.

27 August, 2011 - Hurricane Irene devastates Goose Creek Island. Virtually every home is destroyed. An eight foot storm surge covered the island. The eye wall of the hurricane was over Lowland for 2 1/2 hours. Terrible, just terrible.

Aerial Photos

About a thousand years ago, when I was stationed at HQMC, I got some really good maps of the Pamlico Point area.

I was hanging out over in the Pentagon one day, either in the Command Center or the WWMCCS
Center and saw a really awesome map. It was comprised of about 50 satellite photos, all overlapping each other. The detail was fantastic.

I mentioned that I'd like to get a set of photos like that of the mouth of the Pamlico River. One of the guys that worked there sat down at a computer terminal and asked for some details on the location. I told him just west of BT-9. He looked on a broad overview map and found the area I was talking about and I pointed out just exactly where I was interested in. (My duck hunting area.) He told me he'd see what he could come up with.

A couple days later he called me over in my office at the Navy Annex and told me he had some pictures. He said I could come over and see if they were the right area. I went over that afternoon and he had about 25 photos, probably 24"by 36" that all overlapped each other and covered the exact area I wanted. I thanked him and he asked me what type of an exercise was going on down there, or was it classified and I couldn't tell him.

I told him there was no Marine Corps interest in the area, that it was where I hunted and that I had never seen a good map of the area, until now. Well, he went ballistic! Hollering and ranting and raving like a mad man. I asked what was wrong and he asked me right back "Do you know how much it costs to move a satellite and take a camera run like that?" I told him no, but that I really appreciated it.