Down Barnegat Way

As the dawn broke, clouds of brant took wing from the lee shore of the barrier island that separated us from the Atlantic Ocean. The day began clear with a stiff northwest wind. A bank thermometer in Brick, New Jersey, had shown 19 degrees, and the wind was making things even colder. As I sat in a sneakbox, thankful for the wind-breaking spray shield at my back, I was warmed by the excitement of being on legendary Barnegat Bay, one of America’s iconic wildfowling areas.
    Barnegat Bay is a broad thoroughfare of brackish water running from above Lakehurst, New Jersey, past Atlantic City, down to lovely Victorian Cape May. Immortalized in Eugene V. Connett’s Duck Shooting in the Atlantic Flyway, this estuary is separated from the Atlantic by the merest tendrils of barrier islands and hosts the majority of the fall migration of Atlantic brant. The area was once solid saltwater marshes, but modernity has encroached on the Bay as beachfront living has come into vogue.
    Brant are solely saltwater geese. Larger than canvasbacks but not as beefy as eiders, the average weight is a little over three pounds. As with Canada geese, there is no discernable difference between the sexes of brant, as both are black with shades of gray under their wings, dusky-white breasts and distinctive white crescent collars just beneath their heads. I’ve hunted waterfowl hither and yon for nearly 60 years, but I had never had a shot at a brant before last fall. In fact the closest I had gotten to the birds was one winter morning when my wife and I were staying on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor and I heard a croaking noise from behind the quarters. I looked out to see the golf course covered in brant nibbling at the grass.
    Brant have the distinction of having the farthest northern breeding grounds of all geese: near or above the Arctic Circle. During their breeding season Atlantic brant are found from the shores of northernmost Greenland to the islets of Queen Maud Gulf in arctic Canada and down through the northern reaches of Quebec and Ontario. When the days shorten, they migrate south through Quebec, staging at Sept Isles, and then proceed to Long Island Sound and Barnegat Bay, with some birds traveling as far as North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound.
    Brant, like other wildfowl, come and go in numbers along Barnegat Bay depending upon food availability. When eelgrass is abundant, brant are equally abundant. In years of little eelgrass, brant simply go elsewhere to feed and winter. Because brant feed preferentially on these grass beds, their movements can be somewhat predicted. According to guide Brian LaFay of Reedy Creek Outfitters, in New Jersey, “Brant are totally tide driven. At low tide the eel-grass beds are closer to the surface and easier to reach, and it’s during falling tide and slack tide when they fly.”
    But the story of Barnegat Bay goes way beyond brant. The history of the area and its sporting traditions have contributed greatly to the mystique and methods of East Coast waterfowling. Take the classic Barnegat sneakbox, for example. Perhaps the greatest duck boat ever made, the sneakbox is designed to row, pole or sail and is purpose-built to pull into the short grass of salt marshes, where, when grassed, it provides a cozy concealed blind. It doubles as transportation to and from the gunning area, shelter if necessary, and as a vehicle for retrieving birds should the gunner not have a dog.
    The original sneakboxes were made of wood by local Barnegat boatbuilders. Those classics and their modern copies are broad-beamed, shallow-draft boats varying in length from 12 to 14 feet. Round-bottomed with slightly rounded decks that rise a bit over the waterline, they draw only six inches of water. The hunter sits on the bottom amidships with a comfortable backrest that, when stowed, provides access to the storage area beneath the upper deck. The hatch is normally covered when not in use, and it can be locked so that decoys and gear may be left there, ready for the next hunt. Some sneakboxes are equipped with runners for sledding over ice and, with a centerboard, can be sailed by a skilled sailor. Ruggedly built, they are designed to ride out heavy weather and get the hunter safely to and from the gunning grounds.

We were joined on our trip by decoy carver Bill Perry, who had trailered his own hand-made wooden sneakbox from his home in Maine to the shores of Barnegat Bay. Perry’s sneakbox was inspired by a 1910 craft made by Perrine Boat Works, which, legend has it, made the first sneakboxes. (Original Perrines are on display as live demonstrations of sneakbox building at the Perrine Boat Works at the Tuckerton Seaport Works [www.tuckertonseaport.org], near Tuckerton, New Jersey.) Perry is a highly respected decoy carver who studied with decoy greats Lem and Steve Ward, of Crisfield, Maryland, and others. For this hunt he carved seven wooden brant decoys to add to our layout’s authenticity. In addition to making his own sneakbox, Perry has, on occasion, built wooden sneakboxes for individuals who appreciate this type of craftsmanship and are willing to wait for the job to be done right.
    I became interested in sneakboxes in November 2007 while strolling the Easton Waterfowl Festival, in Easton, Maryland. I happened upon the booth of Kirk Sherbine, who was displaying one of his Classic Barnegat Sneakboxes. The conversation quickly ran to old shotguns and bygone days, and then a plan was hatched: We’d meet at Barnegat Bay and hunt in the manner of yesteryear—canvas clothing, classic shotguns and all.
    Sherbine and his partner, Dave Enos, make their sneakboxes of tough fiberglass, complete with Coast Guard-approved flotation. In addition they can craft a boat to individual specifications within the basic 12- and 14-foot designs. I hunted from a sneakbox made for one of their customers in the Southwest who’d ordered a larger cockpit. Standard to this unique watercraft is a spray curtain that snaps to the rear of the front deck and is held taut by a rod. It serves to protect a rower from spray and, when the boat is set up as a blind, provides concealment and protection from the rain and wind.
    When we met that frigid morning in December 2008, we were four: Sherbine and Enos, Bill Perry in his handmade wooden sneakbox, and me. We launched our boats at the northern tip of Barnegat Bay, and although rowing would have warmed us considerably, Brian LaFay and Jay Andrews of Reedy Creek Outfitters towed our flotilla of four sneakboxes the few hundred yards to our gunning location. LaFay would have preferred hunting a different area, but the high winds had shelved that location for the following day. LaFay is a native of the area and has hunted brant all his life. He has developed an excellent brant call, a sample of which he sent me prior to the hunt. I found the call easy to use, and it did help bend flying brant our way.
    As for guns, all of us honored the old-time theme of the hunt. Perry and Sherbine carried muzzloaders—Perry’s a 10-bore William Moore made in the late 1850s that he had refinished, and Sherbine’s a modern Cabela’s 12-bore. Enos sported a lovely A.H. Fox Sterlingworth.
    I had my wonderful 32-inch Parker VHE choked Full and Full, a wildfowl gun if there ever was one. Ron Petty at Environ-Metal had sent me a supply of the company’s Classic Doubles ammunition, loaded with soft nontoxic pellets specifically for classic shotguns, and the old Parker seemed to love them—at the patterning plate shooting some of the most uniform and pretty patterns I’ve ever seen.
    Although we were clad in canvas coats and waterfowlers’ sweaters by Filson, everyone but Perry opted for neoprene waders, mainly because canvas waders are scarce and their modern counterparts provided some added comfort in the frigid temperatures. The sneakboxes were shoved onto the shore and situated so that our backs were to the wind. There the spray shields protected us and we were all quite comfortable.
    That first morning we set up on the western shore of a channel paralleling the Atlantic. According to LaFay, brant preferred the eastern shore, but because it was occupied with houses we couldn’t hunt there. We saw several large flocks of brant, some of which rafted in the open water to our north, and small bunches of black ducks, old-squaw (or long-tailed ducks) and scoters gave us fleeting once-overs but didn’t come close enough for a shot. At one point using LaFay’s brant call to woo a passing flock looked like it was going to work, but the small flock bent away at the last moment. We ended the morning with no one having fired a shot.

The following day we traveled south to the famous Brigantine Marshes, just south of Atlantic City. As surreal as the casinos rising from the cotton fields of Tunica, Mississippi, the Las Vegas of the East gave a similar tinge of strangeness to our hunt. Thankfully, the high winds had laid down, and with the weather cloudy, cold and threatening rain, the brant were on the wing. So, too, were black ducks, buffleheads and old-squaw.
    We were joined by Reedy Creek’s Ray Bukowski and LaFay, who used their large boats to tow our four sneakboxes into position about a mile from Brigantine’s boat ramp. As with the previous day, on the high tide the sneakboxes were slid into the marsh grasses at the edge of a channel leading to a larger bay. The idea was to intercept brant as they flew from a small protected cove out into the open water to feed. LaFay would set up below us with his powered boat blind to scoop up downed birds as they drifted toward him.
    We rigged out about four dozen decoys. Along with a couple of dozen brant were a set of black ducks and mallards, and farther out old-squaw and some bluebills were added to attract the divers. Strung out along the shore, the farthest decoy was about 30 yards from the Guns. Perry’s carved wooden brant decoys added to the spirit of our classic hunt. While intended as working decoys, they are beautiful in the hand—so well done that I decided to buy one rather than having a brant mounted.
All morning old-squaw and buffleheads skirted the edge of the rig, making for sporty shooting as they zipped by. The closer-in black duck dekes brought a couple of these divers to 20 yards, and the brant that decoyed came equally close. We often didn’t see the brant that came from behind our right shoulders until the last moment. Brant are swift flyers, so passing shots proved difficult despite the birds being well within range.
    Brant will fly in anything from small bunches of five or six up to clouds of birds congregating over an eel-grass bed. Typically, they fly in a long line, or string, somewhat like their Canada goose cousins. In smaller knots they are less organized, as are groups working the decoys. Brant, though wary, are not as difficult to decoy as other species of waterfowl.  We also found that they responded well to LaFay’s call, which reproduces the brant’s characteristic croaking, burring sound that lifts on the end somewhat like the call of a Canada. An approaching flock sounds like a bunch of bustling teenagers each croaking in his own voice.
    That second morning we hunted the falling tide, which dropped about four or five feet. By the time we were ready to pick up—just a couple of brant shy of a 12-bird limit and with a mixed bag of black ducks and divers—the sneakboxes were high and dry. Thankfully Sherbine, Enos and LaFay are young lads, and they made short work of sliding the boxes off the bank and back into the water. It is a tribute to the sneakbox’s design that the craft slides so easily, and after picking up the decoys we were on our way to the dock in short order.
    A number of years ago I participated in a similar old-time classic waterfowl hunt. In both cases I had a great time shooting classic shotguns and wearing clothing that was in style during the fowling days of yore. Fie on Gore-Tex, Thinsulate, fleece and modern materials; returning to wildfowling’s roots on a historic gunning ground and using the tools of yesteryear is such great fun that I may make it an annual tradition.

Author’s Note:
• For more information on Reedy Creek Outfitters, contact Ray Bukowski, 732-262-2099 or -691-0949; www.rconj.com.
• For more information on brant calls, contact Brian LaFay, 848-992-0621; Brian@rconj.com.
• For more information on hand-carved working decoys, contact Bill Perry, Perrydecoys@gwi.net.
• For more information on Barnegat sneakboxes, contact Classic Barnegat Sneakboxes, 814-443-3846; www.classicbarnegat.com.

John M. Taylor is a devoted waterfowler who has hunted and shot worldwide. In his 35-plus years of writing he has contributed to a variety of sporting publications in the US and abroad. He is retired from the US Army and lives in northern Virginia with his wife of 40 years, Peggy.