Duck Hunting Camouflage Stands Out At Town Dock

Camouflage has its benefits. But sometimes, camouflage stands out. That was the case two days before New Year's when a boat with fake grass, half a dozen duck hunters and one black dog gently motored across the harbor toward the Town Dock.



We caught up with the boat a few minutes later at the Town Dock where we found hunting guide Bernie Corwin, who's based in Otway -- “You could just say Harker’s Island” -- in Carteret County . It’s been home to him since he was an infant. ”I wasn’t born there,” Bernie said, “but it’s the only place I remember living.”



He and his daughter had taken four hunters from Charlotte out hunting near Adams Creek on the other side of the Neuse. Around noon, the crew was getting hungry “I told them, ‘We can either go home (to Harker’s Island) and then come back. Or go over to Oriental.” The crew opted to cross the river and have lunch here.

Bernie had never before come to Oriental by boat, much less with 4 armed customers. And with an eye for not alarming the locals, he says he advised his crew that “’y’all don’t have to have your guns out’” on the approach to the Town Dock.

And that's what the rest of his hunting party was doing while Bernie stayed back at the town dock. They'd gone hunting for lunch -- without their guns -- in Oriental. The guns on the boat was the reason Bernie remained with the boat. (Usually visiting boats to the Town Dock don’t need to leave someone on watch)

While he waited Bernie demonstrated how the duck blind works -- “it’ll just take a second”. With a quick movement, the sides of the boat took on the look of a winter marsh. Or a hula skirt. As for the morning’s haul of ducks, Bernie said that his customers “shot a few. But they missed a whole lot." He paused, "I wouldn’t tell them that. But they did.”


We don't see sailboats with this disguise.

One contibuting factor for the low duck count -- there were five ducks shot -- may have been the warm-for-winter weather and clear skies. “It’s a pretty day, “ Bernie said, “and that's not a good day for duck hunting.” As he explained, it all centers on the ducks' metabolism. When it’s warm, Bernie said, ducks loll about and don’t need to eat a lot. That tends to keep them on the ground and out of the skies -- and out of the hunters' sights.

“But when its cold and nasty, their metabolism increases and they have to eat". They fly more, in search of food, and at the same time, expose themselves. Said Bernie, "That's basically how it works.”


You've heard the expression - "a Dead Duck". This is one....

A hunting guide for 35 years, Bernie said that the Neuse River where they'd hunting on this day before New Years Eve was actually a better place to find sea ducks than places that were closer to the sea, such as the Core Sound where he had taken his four customers the day before.

A few moments later, the squish of boots could be heard coming down Hodges Street as Bernie’s daughter, the four hunters (and the black dog) returned with lunch in hand. In short order, they were back out to the waters. A slight bit of cloudiness moved in. Perhaps it would give them better luck.

Dyad - The Snowmen Cometh

Building snowmen on the town dock in Oriental wasn’t part of the itinerary for the crew of Dyad. They had simply not planned to see any snow this winter.

Eric DuHamel and Lyne La Montagne and their two children, Kevin and Roxanne set out in mid-October from their home in Pike River, Quebec near Lake Champlain. They were on board Dyad, the 34-foot catamaran Prout Snowgoose they’d bought in June. Destination: the Bahamas. Lyne in particular was looking forward to the 8 month journey and a winter away from the north. A lifelong resident of Quebec, she does not like cold.

But for Lyne and the rest of the Dyad crew, the escape from cold has not been going as they hoped.


Kevin, Roxanne, Lyne and Eric

Things keep happening delaying their progress south. They lost a spreader off of New Jersey. Their engine, a Volvo diesel, began acting up on the Pungo River.

Then, on December 12th, they approached Oriental and just past the breakwater, their engine gave out. The gasket head had warped, blown up, Eric says. It took a week and a half to fix. (When we asked what line of work he’d been in before heading to sea, Eric laughed as he answered, “mechanic” though he noted that he’d worked on airplanes and turbo engines. The mysteries of the Prout's diesel engines were another matter...)



During their delay in Oriental, the weather did not get much warmer. In fact, while tied up to the town dock, two months in to their trip away from Quebec, they woke up Monday morning December 22nd to a very familiar scene. Snow.

A thick (for Oriental) blanket of snow covered town, a few inches gracing the town dock. 8-year-old Kevin wasted little time getting to work on a snowman. As snow continued to fall and passersby stopped and watched, he pushed snow in to a mound near the front of the dock. It was, he said, a “bon homme du neige”. Soon his 10-year-old sister Roxanne was on the town dock making one of her own. Thanks to Kevin’s early bird work which had used up most of the snow, the snow pickings were rather thin on the dock. But, he lent a hand by tossing snow off the deck of Dyad so he sister had snow to make a bon homme du neige of her own. A few snowballs were observed flying as well.

The snowmen lasted more than a day, but warming temperatures on Tuesday took their toll; one snowman’s eyes became mere pennies again on the town dock.

Eric says that if he keeps the engine troubles ‘out of sight’, the trip so far has been ‘pretty good’. While the Bahamas had been the original destination, the family now had their sights set on Florida before heading back to Quebec next June.


Kevin and Eric in the pilot house

Before taking off a few days before Christmas, Lyne La Montagne called over and said she wanted to send a message. “We want to thank town for the time we spent here, “ She and Eric said they’d made a lot of friends. Eric added that he’d been taken aback by the outgoingness which he said he was unprepared for. “We have fallen in love”

Lyne noted because of their engine troubles they exceeded the 48 hour stay limit at the town dock. But not to worry. Oriental was repaid with the memory of a couple of bon hommes du neige in return.

See more photos of the Dyad crew during Oriental's rare snowfall - click here