Cover Photo: Ryan Cloninger
The sweet smell of seagrass and salt fills the air, drying and clinging to your legs. Several hundred assorted decoys silhouetted against the pre-dawn horizon bob, twist, and turn in the wind around you at shoulder height. They do not sit that high in the water; rather, you sit that low, standing inside a sunken box in the water. The waves lap at the edges of the blind, unnerving for the faint of heart until the first toll of Black Brant. Those were shortly followed by clouds of redheads and greater scaup, rising from the distant rafts in the middle of the Pamlico Sound of North Carolina. If not for the Gortex-wearing hunter and Cerakote-covered semi-auto shotgun, this scene could be playing out 100 years ago here in the Outer Banks, the Susquehanna Flats, or the Great Salt Lake.
A curtain blind hunt can only be accomplished legally in one area of the United States in the present day. All of the jurisdictions that once saw this effective method in place have outlawed it via federal and state regulations, with the exception of Dare and Hyde Counties of North Carolina. Another similar method that was phased out and also tied to the market gunning days of the past was the Sink Box. While many people use the terms curtain blind and sink box interchangeably, they are not the same setup. A sink box is a floating, weighted enclosure designed to sit flush with the water’s surface while placing the hunter below the waterline. Typically they utilize heavy decoys or other ballast weight to keep the box stable. Conversely, A curtain blind, or curtain box, is a stationary, bottom-anchored blind with an adjustable canvas curtain and wing panels that can be raised or lowered to adapt to changing tides.
A narrow spit of sand bars and barrier islands runs along the far eastern coast of North Carolina, north to south, for 200 miles, called the Outer Banks. The Pamlico Sound is the water located between Hatteras Island and the southern section of the Outer Banks and the mainland of North Carolina. The Currituck Sound is further north along the Outer Banks near the aptly named town of Duck. Curtain blinds are placed by duck blind permit holders along the shallow grass flat ridges within the Sounds that the massive rafts of diving ducks, occasional puddlers, brant, and other waterfowl choose to feed on during the winter months. One can see the migratory and historical significance of the region by the number of wildlife refuges that dot the estuary on both sides.
For those living and hunting in the landlocked states of the Midwest, think of these as a pit blind in the water, just much smaller. What makes this method legal under federal law is that the base of the blind is buried in the shallow water sandy flats, just like a pit blind in the soybean fields. The boxes have a curtain mechanism you can manually raise or lower with the tide (hence the name curtain blind). Typically, these curtain blinds have room for one or two hunters to stand in comfortably. Depending on the wind direction, ‘wave breaks’ made of wooden slats are deployed with larger decoys on top of them in order to keep them underwater and the wind-driven waves from overtaking the blind and flooding the inside.
It is difficult to undertake this type of hunting on your own, requiring years of knowledge for safe operation, placement of the blinds, as well as maintenance during the season. That being said, there are several guides and locals that you can connect with in order to fulfill this waterfowl hunter’s historical pursuit. A duck blind permit in Dare or Hyde counties will give the hunter the legal access requirement; then it is all about the invaluable knowledge of the underwater topography. According to local guide Captain Tim Hagerich of TnA Guide Service, a matter of inches in the depth of a blind location can determine what species you are likely to get into versus another. On the shallower end of the spectrum, you may be into pintails, brant, or other ‘grass ducks’, but a few inches more and you might be witnessing the flights of redheads and other diving ducks.
I know I, for one, will be making that step from the grass flats into the curtain blind this season, awaiting a bull sprig, colorful drake redhead, or black brant on a Nor’Easter wind.