File:Coast watch (1979) (20472301748).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_10 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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A lot of Harhers Island history is carved out of wood and shaped like a ducle. So, it might seem, is some of the future. But the wooden waterfowl these days are far more lileely to decorate a mantel th an hoh atop a saltwater wave. The decoys that once coaxed game hirds such as canvashachs and hluehills into shot sun range are now attracting flochs of tourists and collectors. Carving decoys is a Down East tradition turned evolving art form and emerging cottage industry. Like quilts and other folk arts, the handcrafted creatures that draw admiring crowds and premium prices today were an ordinary item of daily life a generation ago. They were tools for securing food. Ducks and geese were a source of protein, a tasty one. Hewing decoys out of a log was a natural part of a culture where people depended on nature, and them- selves, for their needs. "This part of the country was poor country," says lifelong resident Curt Salter, 69, as he smooths a handful of
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tupelo into a sharp-billed loon head. "You couldn't afford to buy everything." Although money might have been scarce, waterfowl were not. Core Sound and the surrounding waters and marshes that provided the area's fishing liveli- hood also beckoned to hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese, swans and loons each fall. "They'd look like an island out in the sound, there were so many," says Salter. So abundant were the birds early in the century that market hunters filled boxcars with game birds bound for city restaurants and butcher shops. Hunters crafted their own "rig" of decoys to bring the bounty nearer their boats. For puddle ducks such as pintails or teals, a dozen decoys might do. Canvas- backs, redheads and the like that preferred open water would be fooled only by a "raft" of 100 or more wooden relatives. Some decoys always got lost in the marsh or carried off when hurricanes washed away the nethouses where they were stored, making carving an annual task. "That was part of hunting," Salter says. "Not just going out and shooting. Getting your blind and your boat and your gun ready, that was part of it." Carvers used cedar, cypress or whatever wood was at hand, but they 12 HOLIDAY 1997

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