Few areas in the country can compare to Currituck County when it comes to duck hunting. Since the late 1800s, hunters have traveled to the county for the abundunt wildfowl and outstanding hunting conditions, and for many gunners it has been the defintion of a sportsman's paradise. One such gunner is Travis Morris, whose family has lived in Currituck County for generations. For more than sixty years, Morris has plied the county's waters in search of mallards, widgeons, teal, coot and more, all the while amassing a wealth of knowledge on the history and tradition of duck hunting in the area.

In this fourth installment of stories about the tradition of duck hunting on Currituck Sound, local resident Travis Morris delves into the history of the Currituck, Pine Island and Narrows Island private hunting clubs. These fascinating untold stories of the clubs weave together documents from old files with a variety of firsthand interviews and accounts. From stories of the clubs' prestigious members and guests--such as J.P. Morgan and William Vanderbilt--to tales from local guides of some of the old float box rigs, fans of Morris's Currituck books won't be disappointed by this latest volume, and first-time readers will find themselves transported out to the marshland, drifting along to the sound of duck calls.

"It takes stubborn dedication and passionate optimism to brave the frosty, wet conditions for the chance to shoot ducks and geese. And yet the tradition continues every year as more than one million waterfowl occupy the waters of the Chesapeake. Whether you are setting decoys or watching the sun rise from a blind, hunting the bay is as challenging as it is rewarding. No one understands that better than the generations who have experienced it, from the goose pits of Rock Hall and Chestertown to the frothing whitewater of the Tangier Sound. Join author and hunter C.L. Marshall as he recounts more than forty years of stories and anecdotes chock-full of dogs, good friends and fast-paced waterfowl action"--

Currituck County, established in 1668, is the oldest and most northeastern county in the state of North Carolina. It is thought that the name "Currituck" was derived from a Native American word for "wild goose." The county covers 273 square miles of long peninsula that runs north and south along the western shore of the Currituck Sound, which, until the early 1800s, was open to the transatlantic shipping trade. In Currituck County, photographs from the 1860s through the 1960s capture the county during the Civil War, Reconstruction, World Wars I and II, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and technological advances of the 1950s. With the opening of the new Wright Memorial Bridge, dedicated on November 5, 1966, an ever-increasing flood of vacationers traveled through Currituck County to the Outer Banks, and local businesses evolved to accommodate these thousands, and later, millions of visitors. The images seen here show a way of life in Currituck County before the development of tourism.