page_title: Waterfowl hunting
section_title: Atlantic flyway
hierarchical_section_title: Waterfowl hunting / Flyways / Atlantic flyway
caption_attribution_description: Persistent URL: floridamemory.com/items/show/255970 Local call number: C015854 Title: Former professional baseball player Dazzy Vance duck hunting in Crystal River Date: January 1952 Physical descrip: 1 photoprint - b&amp;w - 3 x 4 in. Series Title: Department of Commerce Collection Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida 500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL, 32399-0250 USA, Contact: 850.245.6700, Archives@dos.myflorida.com
context_page_description: Waterfowl hunting is the practice of hunting ducks, geese, or other waterfowl for food and sport.
  Many types of ducks and geese share the same habitat, have overlapping or identical hunting seasons, and are hunted using the same methods. Thus it is possible to take different species of waterfowl in the same outing. Waterfowl can be hunted in crop fields where they feed, or, more frequently, on or near bodies of water such as rivers, lakes, ponds, swamps, sloughs, or oceanic coastlines.
context_section_description: The Atlantic Flyway is a migration route used by waterfowl flying from northern Quebec to Florida in the autumn and back in the springtime. This is where duck hunting first started some of the largest and grandest waterfowl hunting clubs and clubhouses in North America. Look at photos of the "Whalehead Club in the Outer Banks of North Carolina" which is no longer a hunting club, but is a historical building today, built in the grand style of the gilded age of waterfowling. North Carolina waterfowl guide and writer Joe Guide states, "some of the greatest and grandest of Waterfowl Clubs along the famous Atlantic flyway developed following the Civil War era, and the largest ones were financed by Northerners loaded with money due to the great industrial revolution period beginning around the mid 1870s—and most of the grand waterfowl clubs ended due to the great depression years due to economic conditions. It might surprise you that a majority of the grand Atlantic Seaboard Waterfowl Hunt Clubs did not have southerners as "members" until well into the 1950s, however, they all used locals as caretakers, guides, paddlers, and cooks". Diver hunting is the major waterfowl activity along the coastal regions of the Atlantic, however, local populations of greater snow geese seem to be increasing in number, as they have started breeding with lesser snow geese and their migration range is ever increasing.
  Ducks and geese are born in the tundra of Quebec, and fly south in autumn to Chesapeake Bay and Virginia's famous Back Bay, and the James River, and then move southward through North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida for the winter. Northeast and northwest Florida get a great number of teal and divers as the winter progresses. In the northeastern states the Saint Lawrence River, the coast of Maine, Long island harbors, Barnegat Bay, Great Egg Harbor, Little Egg Harbor, Absecon Bay, Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, Virginia's Eastern Shore and Back Bays saw presidents and captains of great industry spend part of their winters at their wildfowling clubs. North Carolina's Outer Banks, and the Core and Pamlico Sounds have been known for centuries for great waterfowl hunting drawing people from throughout the big cities of the northeastern states. In South Carolina there was Georgetown's and Charleston's old rice fields, and backcountry marshes and freshwater rivers and lakes that continued to draw ducks in great numbers until the Santee National Wildlife Refuge stopped feeding the ducks in the winter months of the 1980s due to the economy and changes in National Wildlife Refuge policy across the nation. In the 1960s to the mid 1980s the upper Santee swamp's upper Lake Marion region used to winter over 150,000 mallards each and every winter's duck count.
  In the Chesapeake Bay area well into the 1930s one of the biggest threats to waterfowl was "local poachers" using flat boat boats, mounting huge 12 foot black powder swivel guns. Most of these ancient weapons have been confiscated and are in museums, although a few families have hidden theirs as family keepsakes.
caption: Retired professional baseball player Dazzy Vance hunting waterfowl on Crystal River in Florida which is on the edge of the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways.
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