As our loons head south over the next few weeks, are they hunted?
No, but they once were.
It’s hard to imagine a summer evening at a North Country lake without loons calling. As a professional biologist, I avoid putting human superlatives on nature, but even for me, loon sounds are magical, stop-you-in-your-tracks magical. I can’t imagine anyone trying to hunt them for this reason, as well as the fact they are probably pretty fishy tasting.
If, however, you lived 75 years ago along the North Carolina coast, you saw silent loons in winter. They were very difficult to hunt while they were at sea, as they would dive at an approaching boat, and they ride low in the water making them a tough shot.
The Shackleford Banks of North Carolina is a narrow east-west barrier island that separates the open Atlantic on its south shore from Harkers Island to the north. Shackleford Banks was settled by the early 1700’s by people who made their living catching whales, mullet and dolphins. The devastating San Ciriaco hurricane of 1899 forced inhabitants inland to Harkers Island. The banks became part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore in 1966.
Migrating loons fly very high and well off shore, out of shotgun range. However, loons in spring along Shackleford Banks take off to the north from just offshore, bringing them low over the banks and within shotgun range. The original Shacklefordians took advantage of this to put fresh meat on their tables, albeit loon, after a long winter of eating dried fare. By the mid 1800’s the spring hunt was well established.
In April and May, with a northeast wind, hunters would depart Harkers Island before dawn, and walk across the dunes of Shackleford Banks to await the first flights of loons at daylight. Hunters didn’t require much concealment although during World War II they sometimes hid behind beached anti-submarine buoys. Hunters were stacked up behind one another, and there were few places a loon could fly over without being in range. One hunter might shoot over 15 loons.
Residents defended loons as good table fare. They even claimed that they preferred them to ducks and geese, and that to residents of Harkers Island the fishy taste was “barely discernible.” One cookbook refers to loons as “Harkers Island turkey.” A second use of loons was to make the bones into fishing lures that were used to catch bluefish and Spanish mackerel.
It became illegal to kill loons in 1918 with the passing of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but the hunt continued in that local area for quite a while, and during World War II there were other things to worry about. But the hunt became too popular, and the locals were joined by others from some distances away. This was too much for law enforcement to ignore, and in the late 1940s an undercover agent settled locally and began documenting the loon hunts. The intel gathered by the agent set the stage for a big raid on May 6, 1950.
On that morning, the loon hunters were joined by 11 federal and state wildlife enforcement officers who staged a coordinated raid, apprehending nearly 100 hunters. It was estimated that the hunters had killed 200 loons on that morning. Hunters who were apprehended were fined $25 each, which is about $350 in today’s dollars. The raid basically put an end to the illegal loon hunts. Residents reacted negatively, commenting that their father had done it, their grandfather before, even before their forefather had moved from the Outer Banks. “You weren’t a man until you had shot a loon,” some said. One can only hope there were other criteria for manhood.
I don’t bear a grudge against the loon hunters, as I think you have to understand the context in which they participated. I’m glad to have read about the tradition, and glad it’s ended. Nothing adds more to my northern Minnesota experience than the sounds of loons.