Brother and Manley Gaskill

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Using an air-cooled engine powered boat, 1952, Snowball Gaskill and Lynwood Parker went up the banks to the High Hills area to hunt–looking for geese–they stayed in a “pup tent’ and shot geese–16 , in fact–on their first trip there.  They went to the same creek the next year and later Lynwood and “Brother” and  his brother Manley built their camps on that creek.

Lynwood Parker and the Gaskills built  their camps about the same time.  Manley and Brother wanted to have access when desired instead of sharing or needing to request use from Lynwood.

Brother reflects—“At 12-13 years of age,(that age “you’d take anything”) camping in a tent to hunt was not a big drawback, but later years the camp became more important.

There was a pond behind the camp–seen on the 1976 NPS map

Bringing home a goose at Thanksgiving, Christmas or other times caused the turkey to go gladly back into the freezer.  “Dad said , we can go to the banks anytime to shoot redheads,” but they went to the high Hills for Geese.

When they, on occasion, caught a cripple and tied him up,…that goose brought them a  successful hunt—“every goose seen came to us”.   Snowball told the boys, “he (the goose) can untie a knot before you can” and  had them use leather straps or particular tying to retain their “decoy”.

Their camp was a 12 by 16 rectangle–one room–dedicated to hunting.  There were two bunk beds with a 5 brick propane heater between them.  In the morning, you could reach over and turn on the heater before getting out of bed.  There was also a two burner gas stove and lights powered by a 12 volt battery.  They had built the camp on pilings scavenged from “light poles’ on Shackleford Banks and dragged up to their camp site.  Brother remembers being told they were only about 2 miles south of Portsmouth.(see map above for position of camp). Brother said you could not stand to stay there except in winter because of the bugs, though he did go over a couple of times in summer to harvest clams and plant them  in the creek where they could be found in winter.

“Snowball” (Clem Gaskill) was on that creek “more than us” early on  Eventually, as he aged and leg troubles from “hardening of the arteries” gave him leg aches” , 

Snowball would leave the blind earlier than others and took joy in cooking–especially oysters.  He would also put out his 80 yard nylon net to catch trout and bluefish–he liked to stew them.  He liked clams and oysters–stewed oysters.  While hunting, the boys could see Snowball off harvesting oysters–and to the north, Jule Hamilton was getting oysters for his camp too.  They were “as big as your hand”.

As they gathered supplies for a trip, his dad would take sweet potato pie and turkey leftovers, other items and always a stick of butter.  Brother wondered why till after his 5th or 6th trip he saw Snowball dropping pats of butter onto the stewed oysters.

Lynwood Parker may have insulated the inside of his camp.  he was remodeling his parent’s home and had materials form the remodel to use in his camp.  His camp preceded the Gaskill camp a little.

Brother went with his dad  on what would be his last goose trip.  His mother, who always loved goose (“loved geese better than anything”), was battling leukemia when they went to High Hills to hunt–Snowball wanted to bring her a goose.  It was the only time they ever hunted on a Sunday in hopes of bringing her a goose home.  “Snowball” told them not to tell her that they hunted on Sunday “cause she’d not  take a bite of it”.  They brought two geese home but she passed before it could be prepared.  It was “Snowball”s only Sunday hunt and afterwards, he went there no more.

Duck blinds were sink boxes–partially submerged boxes along the marsh.  They found stick-down decoys and even cast metal decoys along the marsh but didn’t think to gather them.  They couldn’t imagine why someone would want a decoy that wouldn’t float.