SPRING 2001 • 1

TheBird ChaseTheBird Chase

COASTALHERITAGEV O L U M E 1 5 , N U M B E R 4 S P R I N G 2 0 0 1

2 • COASTAL HERITAGE

THE BIRD CHASEDuring the twentieth century, many of South Carolina’s rice plantations were turned into

hunting preserves, which later became a priceless necklace of wildlife habitat along the coast.

INTERNATIONAL PLAN HELPED PRESERVE WATERFOWL POPULATIONSHow duck populations were stabilized in North America.

PROPOSAL WOULD ESTABLISH CONSERVATION BANKRaising money to purchase development rights for sensitive property tracts.

EBBS AND FLOWS

ON THE COVERA drawing of a snipe hunter hangs on a clubhouse wall at the old Santee Gun Club.

PHOTO/WADE SPEES

Coastal Heritage is a quarterly publicationof the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, a university-based network supporting research, education,and outreach to conserve coastal resources andenhance economic opportunity for the people

of South Carolina. Comments regarding this orfuture issues of Coastal Heritage are welcomed.

Subscriptions are free upon requestby contacting:

S.C. Sea Grant Consortium287 Meeting Street

Charleston, S.C. 29401phone: (843) 727-2078

e-mail: Annette.Dunmeyer@scseagrant.org

Executive DirectorM. Richard DeVoe

Director of CommunicationsLinda Blackwell

EditorJohn H. Tibbetts

Art DirectorPatty Snow

Contributing WriterPeg Alford

�Board of Directors

The Consortium’s Board of Directors iscomposed of the chief executive officers

of its member institutions:

Dr. Leroy Davis, Sr., ChairPresident, S.C. State University

James F. BarkerPresident, Clemson University

Dr. Raymond GreenbergPresident, Medical University of South Carolina

Major General John S. GrinaldsPresident, The Citadel

Dr. Ronald R. InglePresident, Coastal Carolina University

Dr. John M. PalmsPresident, University of South Carolina

Judge Alex SandersPresident, University of Charleston, S.C.

Dr. Paul A. SandiferExecutive Director

S.C. Department of Natural Resources

CONTENTS

RIDING IN STYLE. A mule-drawn buckboard carried deer hunters atMedway Plantation in this 1937 photograph.

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SPRING 2001 • 3

“Lord, please send us a rich Yankee.”That’s what one lowcountry plantation owner, Sam

Stoney, Jr., said in the 1920s. Rice plantations, onceCarolina’s gold mines, had fallen into decline after theCivil War. Freedmen fled coastal plantations and culti-vated their own small farms, and a series of hurricanesruined ricefield dikes, which planters couldn’t afford torepair. While northern cities swelled with prosperity, theSouth Carolina coast remained mired in poverty. Manyplantation owners turned to Yankees for salvation.

From the 1890s into the 1930s, rich northernerspoured south to play in a region where a once-sophisti-cated economy had collapsed. Some of the biggest namesin New World commerce bought bankrupt estates alongthe South Carolina coast, luxuriating in the landscape

By John H. Tibbetts

A century ago, wealthy

Yankees began flocking to

South Carolina, seeking status

and sport, spurred by dreams

of aristocratic living.

Their surprising legacy has

been a dazzling experiment in

wildlife conservation.

that had spawned the most powerful strain of southernaristocracy. The Yankees were industrialists, hugelysuccessful financiers, newspaper titans, political giants,and old money high-hats, with names includingVanderbilt, du Pont, Roosevelt, Baruch, Luce,Guggenheim, and Pulitzer.

Some captains of industry who turned the mansionsof the Lost Cause into wintertime retreats and huntingclubs had been rich for several generations. Other mag-nates were nouveau riche, having become suddenly anddizzyingly wealthy in the Gilded Age or Jazz Age booms.There were no income or estate taxes, and families couldpass all their financial assets down generations. Plutocratsand their children, swimming in money, bought up landand houses around the country.

“Lord, please send us a rich Yankee.”

BIG GUNS. The southern aristocratic hunting culture, drawn largely from Englishtraditions, prizes elegantly designed shotguns, like this 20-gauge belonging to the Legendrefamily of Medway Plantation in Berkeley County. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

4 • COASTAL HERITAGE

“The industrialists were richand in search of status,” wrotehistorian George C. Rogers, Jr.“There was money enough to buyanything.” One way to conspicu-ously consume was to purchase abankrupt plantation in SouthCarolina and invite friends down tobask in the mild winter weather andshoot waterfowl in the formerricefields and quail in the longleafforests. Yankee swells bought housesand plantations in Camden andAiken, S.C., in Pinehurst andSouthern Pines, North Carolina, inThomasville, Georgia, and at a half-dozen other sporting playgrounds inthe South.

By the early twentieth century,large stretches of the South Caro-lina coastal plain had returned torough country. University of SouthCarolina historian Walter Edgarpointed out: “Some lowcountryfarmers turned to truck crops, butwithout rice the lowcountryreverted to what it had been twohundred years earlier, a semitropicalwilderness.”

Although not a true wilderness,lowcountry forests were superb placesto hunt. Many northern millionairesof that era bought cheap land in theAmerican backwoods to enjoy arough-and-ready outdoors life. “Theyfelt it was their responsibility as aclass of people to get back to natureand to prove their manly skills,” saysLawrence Rowland, historian at theUniversity of South Carolina-Beaufort.

Some Yankees admired thesouthern elite’s faded elegance. Bythe 1890s, only a few decades afterthe Civil War, the northern publichad changed its attitudes toward theSouth. The abolitionist movementwas dead, Reconstruction hadcollapsed, and the disenfranchise-ment of southern blacks was under-way. In the North, as cities industri-alized and became increasingly dirty,crime-ridden, and swollen withimmigrants, white Americans looked

back on the antebellum era througha nostalgic haze. Yearning for simplerbygone times, they embraced a“national myth about the glories ofthe southern plantation past,” Rogersnoted. “The rich Yankees began tofall in love with the ready-madeplantations, all with historic pastsand with appropriate settings fortheir gentlemanly sports.”

Repairing old plantation housesor building new ones, some million-aires imitated the style of Europeanaristocrats. The W.R. Coe family, forexample, bought a plantation in theACE Basin (Ashepoo, Combahee,and Edisto river basin) and sentarchitects overseas to raid entirerooms from European castles; theirhome was designed around theserooms.

“Indeed,” Charleston editor

William Watts Ball wrote

in a 1929 letter, “the odor

of genteel Yankee wealth,

while not suffocating,

is pervading.”

Plantation owners eagerlyimitated the English gentry who,with expensive shotguns, stalkedOld World game birds such aspartridge, grouse, and pheasantthrough fields and forests. TheBritish had established a complexhunting tradition that includedskilled bird dogs and land steward-ship. Irrepressible Anglophiles, theAmerican industrialists hungered tobe just like dukes and duchessesacross the Atlantic. Rich Yankeesmanaged their southern estates tohunt bobwhite quail, a plump,chicken-like bird similar to the OldWorld partridge, though smaller andquicker. “A lot of the northernerswho came south wanted to establishthemselves as English-style landed

gentry,” says Charles F. Kovacik,University of South Carolinageographer.

Sometimes hunters blendedsouthern and English traditions inunusual ways. The gray fox, nativeto South Carolina, was lively preyfor those who hoped to emulate thered fox hunts of Great Britain. In1930, Richard S. Emmet, a NewYork lawyer, described a fox hunt ata lowcountry plantation. “Aspracticed at Cheeha-Combahee, thefield, emitting various versions ofthe ‘rebel yell,’ followed the houndson horseback in the early dawn,through a wide variety of difficultterrain that made up for the lack ofstone walls and fences to clear.”

Plenty of estates were notgussied up, though. There wereaustere hunting lodges and campsand meeting places where menescaped city comforts. The southerncoast from North Carolina toMississippi was exotic and roughenough to stimulate the blood. JohnUpdike recently described the long-lost world of “Florida when it was afar place, a rich man’s somewhatSpartan paradise, and not yet thegreat democracy’s theme park andretirement home.”

Many hunters traveled southfor brief wintertime vacations. Toreach ACE Basin estates, visitors inthe early days rode from New Yorkor Philadelphia by train to Charles-ton where they caught a passengerline called the “Boll Weevil” thatran once a day and stopped atWiggins in Colleton County.

Some families visited SouthCarolina so often that a few of theirdescendants assimilated into localsociety. Other landowners eventu-ally sold out and moved away. For atime, though, the arrival of richnortherners was teasingly consid-ered a second invasion of the South.“Indeed,” Charleston editor WilliamWatts Ball wrote in a 1929 letter,“the odor of genteel Yankee wealth,while not suffocating, is pervading.”

SPRING 2001 • 5

TOOLS OF THE TRADE. A duck boat holdsdecoys on an impoundment bank at Cheeha-Combahee Plantation in the ACE Basin.Large stretches of the South Carolina coastremain rural primarily because largelandowners have preserved huntingplantations from development. Protected byconservation easements, the 13,000-acreplantation is part of an impressive networkof private and public lands managed forhunting, forestry, farming, and wildlifebetween Beaufort and Charleston.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

6 • COASTAL HERITAGE

High-born birds

From the 1890s throughthe 1950s, quail huntingemerged as the most popularsport among the big-moneyset along the South Carolinacoast. Quail were onceplentiful in the sharecroppedareas. The birds thrived withinthe high weeds they found onold-style farms, eating leftovergrain in the days beforemechanized harvesters.

But after World War II, whenfarmers began using morechemicals and efficientequipment and field sizeincreased, quail populationsdropped.

Hunters now have a difficulttime finding wild quail on theSouth Carolina coastal plain.Plantation managers artifi-cially supplement coveys,releasing thousands of birdsearly in the fall so that somesurvive for wintertime hunting.

Duck and quail huntingoffer different experiences.Duck hunters rise before dawnand sit in a cold blind in themiddle of a pond, waiting forbirds, or paddle around incanoes, stalking their prey. Bycontrast, quail hunters, after aleisurely lunch, traditionallyride on buckboard wagonsthrough the afternoon woodsand fields to reach coveys.

Wild ducks were alwaysmore plentiful than quail alongthe South Carolina coast. But“quail were considered thearistocrat of the huntedbirds,” says Virginia ChristianBeach, author of a book onMedway Plantation. “Thegentlemanly thing was quail,”agrees Charles Kovacik,University of South Carolinageographer.

THE OUTDOORS LIFE

On the eve of the American Revolu-tion, South Carolina rice planters werenabobs of the slave states, the richest ofthe colonial elite. For decades, plantershad used slaves to cut down tens ofthousands of acres of cypress-tupelo foreststo build rice fields with massive dikes andingenious water-control structures. Here,rice planters grew the famous “Carolinagold” to sell on international markets.

The rice estates were extraordinarilyprofitable, allowing wealthy planters toape English aristocrats. In the 1770s,South Carolina sent more young people toEngland to be educated than any othercolony. One visitor to South Carolina inthe 1780s, the Italian aristocrat LuigiCastiglioni, was convinced that “most”South Carolina planters “were raised inEngland.” South Carolina’s elite copiedthe English gentry’s manners, morals,religion, furniture, architecture, and dress.

For generations, the English gentryheld certain notions about hunting—thatthe sport taught noble values and thatshooting wild animals made well-bred boysinto gentlemen. In short, how a manhunted defined his character. In the earlynineteenth century, English aristocratsbecame especially keen on “wing-shoot-ing”—the sport of killing birds as they flew.A South Carolina rice planter echoed thesetastes in his 1846 book. “Field sports areboth innocent and manly,” wrote WilliamElliott. “[T]he rapid glance, the steady aim,the quick perception, the ready execution;these are among the faculties and qualitiescontinually called into pleasing exercise;and the man who habitually applies himselfto this sport will become more considerate,as well as more prompt, more full ofresource, more resolute, than if he hadnever engaged in it!”

But Elliott fretted about disappearinggame. In most of the eastern United Statesat that time, sportsmen primarily shotbirds because larger mammals had beenkilled off. Buffalo and elk had long sincebeen hunted out of South Carolina. Biggame mammals were scarcer in his ownregion, Elliott admitted, partly becauseplanters had cleared forests for rice and

cotton fields where these animals oncefound refuge. Rice planters, the mostpowerful force in South Carolina politicsbefore the Civil War, caused widespreadchanges to the region’s wildlife habitats.Although acknowledging that planters hadcontributed to game declines, Elliott laymost of the blame on “a race of professionalhunters” who supplied “hotels and.... theprivate tables of luxurious citizens withvenison.” Elliott sneered at “this class ofmen” who “devote their days and nights tohunting.” Once a market hunter kills off allgame in one area, he “pitches his tent, orbuilds his cabin in another quarter; and re-commences his career of destruction.”

Even so, Elliott’s plantation was stillremote enough that deer, wildcat, and foxthrived on his land. An absentee landlordwho spent most of his time in northerncities, Elliott also boasted about the birds hecould shoot on his brief trips home: wildturkey, partridge, dove, golden plover,woodcock, snipe, and a wide variety ofducks. And he laughed scornfully at hishunter friends in New York who lackedtheir own plantations: “Ye city sportsmen! .. . who, with abundant pains and trouble . . .marshal your forces for a week’s campaignamong the plains of Long Island, or thebarrens of Jersey—and in reward of yourtoil, grab one brace of grouse . . . ye citysportsmen! who go so far, and so little foryour pains.”

Northern sportsmen—wealthy, urban,influential—competed fiercely with lower-class professional hunters for dwindlingsupplies of game in the nineteenth century.Professional hunters supplied flourishingtown markets with almost every kind ofwild bird and mammal and their meat,skins, or feathers; it was all legal andlegitimate.

After the Civil War, over-hunting bysportsmen and professionals reached a crisis.Two important technological changesspurred wildlife declines. English manufac-turers built better shotguns and moreefficient cartridges, which Americanhunters adopted, enabling them to killlarger numbers of game. And the railroadbecame the economic and social equivalentof today’s Internet, altering how Americanslived and played. In the 1880s, it had

SPRING 2001 • 7

become common for wealthynorthern hunters to take vacationsin the South, traveling via rail; nomore bumping by carriage over badroads for days or weeks.

It was a time when gameregulations were minimal andlightly enforced or nonexistent.Appetites for wild meat andoutdoor sports were growing, butanimal populations were not.

Passenger pigeons, for ex-ample, became the main attractionin a popular sport—trap shooting,in which contestants shoot at birdslet loose from traps or at objectslaunched into the air. This wasexcellent practice for shooting outin the fields and woods. Trapshooters especially prized passengerpigeons, which flew erratically andwere hard to hit.

Commercial hunters nettedvast numbers of passenger pigeonsand shipped them to cities asfodder for city sportsmen to shootduring trap shooting events.Only very prosperous hunterscould afford the cost of shippinglive birds, and the ability to kill awild pigeon “on the wing”—thatis, in flight—became a sign of up-scale manhood. “Wing shootingwas big in England at the time, andpeople thought that’s what weought to be doing here,” saysKovacik. By the 1890s, after yearsof over-hunting, the passengerpigeon was extinct, and trapshooters began aiming at claypigeons instead.

In the 1880s and 1890s, ladies’hearts went aflutter over hatsdecorated with brilliant feathers.To gain gorgeous bird plumes,commercial hunters decimatedtern, heron, gull, and egretrookeries along the entire Atlanticcoast from the tip of Florida toMaine, noted environmentalhistorian Jennifer Price in a recentbook. Massachusetts upper-crustladies, outraged by the slaughter,gathered for afternoon teas to

organize for reforms in the millinerytrade. They called their group theAudubon Society, one of the firstimportant conservation groups in theUnited States. Soon there were stateAudubon Societies across thecountry.

Although recreational hunterswere a major part of the problem, bythe 1870s sophisticated sportsmenunderstood that this frenzy of over-hunting had caused a wildlife

catastrophe. Finally, in 1900,Congress passed the Lacey Act—thefirst federal conservation measure,which prohibits the interstateshipment of wild species killed inviolation of state laws. Spurred on byPresident Theodore Roosevelt at hisbully pulpit, Congress established thefirst national wildlife refuges. Thesemeasures were important victories for

EATING OUT. In 1937, Medway Plantation owner Sidney Legendre (right) hosted a picnic in abroom-sage field. By World War II, there were more than 140 hunting estates in coastal SouthCarolina and many more in other southern states. Socialites made wintertime tours from estate toestate around the Deep South.

the early conservationist movement,but decades would pass before over-hunting abated.

GOING SOUTH

In 1894, President GroverCleveland fell out of a boat whilevisiting a Georgetown-area riceplantation on a wintertime duckhunting trip. At 265 pounds, Cleve-land was a hefty man, and it must

have been difficult to haul suchvastness out of the drink. Eager forlively stories about the president,newspapers blared this story across thecountry.

Some Carolina plantations, suchas Medway Plantation in BerkeleyCounty, were already known ashunting retreats after the Civil War.But it wasn’t until Cleveland’s rescue

8 • COASTAL HERITAGE

that many northern hunters learned thatthe Carolina coast was an excellent placeto shoot wintering waterfowl.

By that time, professional hunterswere killing huge numbers of migratingwaterfowl in the mid-Atlantic area for themeat trade, ruining sportsmen’s outingsthere. Well-off duck hunters begantraveling to the far reaches of the DeepSouth by railroad, searching for placeswhere competitors had not yet ruined theoutdoors life.

Northern hunters established clubsthat leased and later purchased land inSouth Carolina. The Santee Club,incorporated in 1898, eventually ownedabout 23,000 acres bordering on the SouthSantee River and the Atlantic Ocean.Men from Philadelphia and New Yorkdominated the Santee Club, limited to 30members at a single time. Knowledgeablehunters considered this property one of thebest places in the nation to bag ducks andgeese that migrated from Canada, restingand feeding for a time in former rice fields.Yet few South Carolinians were activeclub members in the early years—just onein 1900 and one in 1934. Joining a clubwas an expensive proposition.

After Carolina hunting trips, million-aires began buying up bankrupt riceplantations. The new owners oftencombined several smaller estates into onegigantic holding. In 1905, Bernard Baruch,a native South Carolinian who became arich financier in New York, bought all ofthe plantations at the foot of WaccamawNeck, a total of 17,000 acres. He called hisnew plantation Hobcaw Barony, and laterbuilt a white-columned, Southern-stylemansion. Baruch never installed a tele-phone in his grand house, though he didkeep a ticker tape.

Captain I.E. Emerson, a NorthCarolinian who manufactured and soldBromoSeltzer, visited the Santee Club in1905 and 1906. He liked the area so muchthat in 1906 he bought a tract of land inGeorgetown County, including severalformer rice estates. Emerson called his newproperty “Arcadia Plantation.” Withadditional land purchases, Arcadia grew toabout 12,000 acres. In 1936, Emerson’sgrandson, George Vanderbilt, inherited theproperty.

After the 1929 market crash, landseemed a safer investment than stocks, andYankee purchases proliferated. By World

War II, there were atleast 140 huntingplantations along theSouth Carolina coastalplain, according toKovacik. And therewere dozens morehunting estates inNorth Carolina,Georgia, Alabama, andMississippi. Socialitesoften made wintertimetours around the Southfrom estate to estate.

By managing andselling timber, landown-ers found that theycould pay for theirhunting pleasure andkeep plantationfinances in the black.But timber sales wereoften not enough.Arcadia Plantationinitiated chicken and

SCOUTING PARTY. On a quail hunt, conservationists Hugh Lane (left), Charles Lane (center),and Weldon Schenck ride through Cheeha-Combahee Plantation in Colleton County.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

SPRING 2001 • 9

turkey operations to provide cash.Other landowners tried row crops,truck farming, and cattle. “Theykept these places open any waythey could,” says Lew Crouch,manager of Cheeha-CombaheePlantation.

Hunting estates kept manylocal families alive, too. In ruralareas of the South Carolina coastalplain, the economy was scarcelybreathing in the 1930s. Localpeople were glad to get a touch ofYankee money, working as huntingguides, game wardens, householdstaff, and laborers.

The old order had to face up tonew realities. Prestigious SouthCarolina families, fallen on hardtimes, became financially depen-dent upon the new elite. “Some ofthe old southern aristocracy werehunting guides” on land that theirancestors once owned, saysRowland. “You can imagine how

bitter that could’ve been. Yetfriendships evolved—there werehunting and fishing guides whobecame very close to thenortherners.”

New landowners made minimalinvestments in the rice fields,stabilizing embankments, repairingwooden water-control structures,and planting small rice crops. Afterharvests, plantation managers leftsome grain in the rice fields to drawducks, which arrived by the thou-sands—a legal practice then andnow. The head gardener of ArcadiaPlantation described the abundanceof the coast: “At times, late in theafternoon, I can recall . . . seeing somany ducks circling these fields thatthey would literally block out thesun.”

Although ducks and quail werethe prime quarries, plantationhunters also sought wild turkey,rabbit, dove, deer, fox, wildcat, feral

cattle, and wild pig. They had a fieldday with South Carolina’s fabulousnatural wealth. Six members of theSantee Club went out at 4:00 in themorning on Nov. 15, 1902, and inseven hours they shot 242 birds,including mallards, widgeons, bluebills,teal, sprig, and one spoonbill. At first,there were no limits on how manyducks a hunter could bag. “Early on,there was a fair amount of over-hunting,” acknowledges JohnFrampton, S.C. Department of NaturalResources (DNR) assistant director ofdevelopment and public affairs.

“Greed is a relative thing,” saysBob Perry, DNR wildlife biologist. “Ifyou went to Murphy Island (in theSantee Delta) where there were100,000 ducks and you killed 100mallards—well, today, that’s soundshorrible and greedy. But it was a timeof no limits.”

In 1918, the federal governmentsigned the Migratory Bird Treaty,

By the 1950s, duck and geese popula-tions throughout North America began to fall

steadily due to hunting pressure and agriculturalpractices, particularly wetland drainage in the UpperMidwest and Canada.

In the 1980s, however, the United States, Canada,and Mexico signed the North AmericanWaterfowl Management Plan, whichcalled for greater cooperation amonggovernment agencies and privatelandowners to save waterfowlhabitat. The plan encouraged statesto establish “focus areas” in water-sheds that are vital habitat for waterfowland other wetland-dependant species.

In South Carolina, the focus areas are theSavannah River, the ACE Basin, Cooper River,Santee River, and Winyah Bay. The ACE Basinpreservation project resulted from this internationaleffort to protect waterfowl habitat.

Largely due to this international plan, duckpopulations have stabilized throughout North Americasince the late 1980s, according to Tommy Strange, S.C.

Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR) waterfowl projectleader.

But while habitat management has improved, ducknumbers have apparently continued to fall steadily inSouth Carolina. Now the state has “more winteringhabitat for waterfowl than waterfowl to use it,” says

Bob Joyner, resident biologist at the YawkeyWildlife Center in Georgetown County.

Some observers, however, argue thatthe state’s waterfowl survey does notreflect how birds have adapted tochanging conditions. The survey routes

have traditionally focused on coastalareas, though in recent decades many ducks

have found quieter places farther inland, awayfrom disturbances on the coast, according toKenny Williams, regional biologist with Ducks

Unlimited. “Many ducks are spreading out to anexpanded habitat base in other parts of the state,” hesays. “Beaver ponds and privately owned plant and floodimpoundments, where disturbance and hunting pressurecan be controlled, are providing some excellent huntingopportunities away from the immediate coast.”

International plan helped preserve waterfowl populations

10 • COASTAL HERITAGE

Sources:

• Beach, Virginia Christian. Medway.Charleston, S.C.: Wyrick & Co.,1999.

• Burroughs, Franklin. The River Home.Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

• Carter, Henry H. Early History of theSantee Club. No date.

• Casada, Jim. “Old Time Hunt Clubs.”South Carolina Wildlife, November-December, 1991.

• Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: AHistory. Columbia: University of SouthCarolina, 1998.

• Elliott, Wm. William Elliott’s CarolinaSports by Land and Water. Columbia:University of South Carolina Press,1994.

• Gaines, Francis Pendleton. TheSouthern Plantation. New York:Columbia University Press, 1925.

• Kovacik, Charles K. “South CarolinaRice Coast Landscape Changes.” InTall Timbers Ecology and Manage-ment Conference, ProceedingsNumber 16. Tallahassee: Tall TimbersResearch Station, 1979.

• Linder, Suzanne Cameron. HistoricalAtlas of the Rice Plantations of theACE River Basin–1860. Columbia:South Carolina Dept. of Archives &History, 1995.

• Marks, Stuart A. Southern Hunting inBlack and White. Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1991.

• Phillips, J.C. “Conservation of ourMammals and Birds.” In Hunting andConservation. George Bird Grinnelland Charles Sheldon, Ed. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1925.

• Price, Jennifer. Flight Maps: Adven-tures with Nature in Modern America.New York: Basic Books, 1999.

• Rogers, George C., Jr. The History ofGeorgetown County, South Carolina.Columbia: University of SouthCarolina Press, 1970.

• Rutledge, Archibald. Hunting & Homein the Southern Heartland. JimCasada, Ed. Columbia: University ofSouth Carolina Press, 1992.

• Sprunt, Alexander, Jr., and E.Burnham Chamberlain. SouthCarolina Bird Life. University of SouthCarolina Press, 1949.

• Tindall, George Brown. The Emer-gence of the New South, 1913-1945.Louisiana State University Press,1967.

which decreed that all migratorybirds were protected fromexploitation. In 1925, conserva-tionist J.C. Phillips wrote thatthis law, in tandem with markethunting restrictions, “hasproduced really astonishingresults, more wonderful than thewildest optimist had prophesied.”

The federal governmentestablished hunting regulationson waterfowl, limiting the duckseason’s length and the numberof bagged ducks allowed. First,the limit was 25 waterfowl perday, then 15, then 10. Today, thedaily limit is six waterfowl in themigratory flyway that includescoastal South Carolina.

Most of the hunters whocame to South Carolina in thefirst wave were probably notconservationists by today’sstandards. These men (and somewomen) often killed as manyanimals as they could. Likemany people of their era, thenew plantation owners regardedvarious wild creatures as pestsand vermin, putting bounties onthe heads of eagles, foxes,bobcats, alligators, and hawks.

Even so, the new ownerswere responsible for protectingvast tracts of wildlife habitatalong the South Carolina coast.While improving their lands forhunting, estate owners benefitedmany nongame species. Theformer rice fields attracted notonly ducks but also colonialwaterbirds such as woodstorks.By preventing extensive wetlanddrainage for large-scale agricul-ture, plantation owners pre-served endangered plants andanimals. For many landowners,however, protecting nongamewildlife was probably uninten-tional in the early days.

Despite a new era of limits,duck numbers did not reboundquickly. The Santee Gun Club

noted “a very great decrease” inthe number of ducks that visitedits marshes between 1900 and1933, according to memberHenry H. Carter, who wrote ashort history of the club. As aresult, some clubs and planta-tions set their own bag limits.The Santee Club establishedgame restrictions that weretougher than state and federallaws, according to TommyStrange, DNR statewidewaterfowl project leader. Otherlandowners, such as TomYawkey in Georgetown County,created refuges on portions oftheir property where no huntingwas allowed.

One conservation effort wasparticularly important in thefirst half of the twentiethcentury. Landowners andhunting clubs kept out poachersand market hunters who drovespecies to extinction. TheNational Association ofAudubon Societies encouragedlandowners to set up guards toprotect rare bird colonies soughtby plume hunters. One of theoldest recorded heron-egretcolonies in the country waslocated on land owned by theSantee Club, guarded by itsgame wardens. The colony isstill thriving, protected today bythe Nature Conservancy.

In 1949, ornithologistsAlexander Sprunt, Jr., and E.Burnham Chamberlain noted:“On these great estates, most ofthem owned by Northerners,wildlife is infinitely better offthan in other days when theycould not be maintained andpatrolled as they deserved.Poaching was common . . . andthere was little oversight ofwoods and rice fields . . . On thevast majority of the plantationsthe season’s bag of game is onlya fraction of the number of birds

SPRING 2001 • 11

GRAND ENTRANCE. The old Santee Gun Club, limited to 30 members at a time, was one of the greatwaterfowl hunting sites in North America in the first half of the twentieth century. The clubhouse, built in 1905,and surrounding property north of McClellanville are now managed by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.Many of the South Carolina coast’s valuable public lands were once private hunting preserves. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

12 • COASTAL HERITAGE

Contacts:

Charles F. Kovacik, USC,(803) 777-5234.

Bob Perry, SCDNR,(843) 546-9489.

Tommy Strange, SCDNR,(843) 546-8665.

John Frampton, SCDNR,(803) 734-3937.

Lawrence Rowland,USC-Beaufort,(843) 521-4153.

Bob Joyner, SCDNRUSC-Beaufort,(843) 546-6814.

Kenny Williams,Ducks Unlimited,(843) 745-9110.

which find protection from the poacherand the night hunter.”

Beginning in the 1950s, a fewlandowners began experimenting withinnovative land management tech-niques. At that time, the great majorityof foresters managed timber primarily forfiber, clearcutting large stands of fast-growing trees. By contrast, GertrudeLegendre, owner of Medway Plantation,and manager William Baldwin encour-aged slow-growing longleaf woods byannually burning the woods and selec-tively harvesting, which benefited quailand wild turkey populations. Baldwin’sforestry management also aided rarespecies such as the redcockaded wood-pecker, though few people in those dayseven realized that the now-famouswoodpecker existed. “With our loggingand burning practices, we were promot-ing wildlife habitat and aesthetics, notjust producing fiber,” says RobertHortman, Medway’s current manager.

Baldwin and other plantationmanagers continued to rebuild earthendikes that once surrounded the old ricefields. Many of these ponds attractedmigrating waterfowl. But resourceregulations have since prohibitedcomplete rebuilding of the dikes; onlyexisting dikes can be repaired. Today,about 70,000 acres of former rice fieldsremain impounded in South Carolina;another 74,000 acres of ponds have

deteriorated. These ponds are returning totheir natural state as forested wetlands, butsome landowners want to reconstruct thelong-broken dikes. Fishermen are opposedto new dikes, because these open-waterareas offer easy access to excellent fishhabitat. In the upper Cooper River, a teamof Sea Grant scientists is studying theecological succession and functioning of oldrice fields to provide scientific guidance toplantation property-owners and naturalresource managers.

MODERN CONSERVATION

One windless December morning atMedway Plantation, a flock of wood ducksand ringnecks swam and fed in the bluewater of a former rice pond. Startled byvisitors, the dark birds flew up, wheelingslowly in loose formation across the graysky toward another pond beyond the trees.In our era of gobbling development, whenhistoric landscapes disappear every year, it’sremarkable to see a place that has changedlittle in decades. Medway and numerousother hunting plantations are protectedfrom development because of innovativemeasures undertaken by dozens of landown-ers over the past 20 years.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Hilton HeadIsland emerged as an internationally knownresort, and development spread quicklyalong the coast. As property values andtaxes escalated, landowners sold off tracts

to developers. Plantations were dividedup for subdivisions, golf courses, and stripmalls. But other estate owners, includingTom Yawkey and the Santee Gun Club,gave large tracts to conservation organiza-tions and the state DNR. A few landown-ers set up foundations to manage proper-ties. Hobcaw Barony is operated by theBelle W. Baruch Foundation, dedicated tomarine, coastal, and forestry researchunder agreements with Clemson Univer-sity and University of South Carolina.

In 1987, a group of landowners,government officials, hunters, andenvironmentalists collaborated toconserve the vast landscape of riverbottomlands, salt marshes, and uplandforests in the ACE Basin. Some landown-ers gave estates outright to trusts and

PROPOSAL WOULD ESTABLISHCONSERVATION BANK

This year, state Rep. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, introduced abill to create a “conservation bank” to raise up to $32 millionannually to buy development rights for sensitive property tracts.The bill would take the state portion of state deed recording feesto establish the annual grant pool. This portion now enters thegeneral fund. “There are 31 states in the country that haveland protection in a major way,” says Hugh Lane,a landowner and conservationist. “The state ofSouth Carolina needs to catch up and startpreserving ecologically valuable landscapes.”

The money would be given in matching grantsto nonprofit organizations, local governments,and state agencies such the S.C. Dept. ofNatural Resources Heritage Trust Program. Tohelp preserve habitat, the bank wouldconcentrate on efforts to buy developmentrights from willing landowners.

SPRING 2001 • 13

government agencies. But perhapsmore important, dozens of land-owners donated conservationeasements to nonprofit organiza-tions. Over the next decade, morethan 125,000 acres were protectedfrom development. Noting theACE Basin’s success, otherproperty owners along the coasthave since donated easements toland trusts and conservationorganizations.

This was nothing less than arevolution in the history ofconservation. For the first time, afamily could apparently protect aproperty’s rural land uses forever,while still maintaining title toland.

When a property ownerdonates a conservation easement,he promises not to subdivide anddevelop it; he is giving away his“development rights” on that land.But he retains other rights ofownership and can work his landfor farming, forestry, hunting,nature-based tourism, or otherrural and traditional uses. Alandowner thus reduces futurespeculative profits, but also cutsfuture inheritance taxes and allowsthe next generation to hold ontofamily property. In some cases,landowners have substantialincome tax benefits from donatingdevelopment rights.

“It takes a special type oflandowner to do this,” saysCrouch. “These landowners don’tgive a damn about the money.They want the property to stay thesame.”

With this conservation tool,hunters and plantation owners,perhaps more than any othergroup, have helped to preserve theSouth Carolina coast’s rurallandscape, argues Charles Lane,landowner and chairman of theACE Basin Focus Area Task Force.“There is an enormous reservoir ofsportsmen in South Carolina.These people are influential in the

community, and that has been a keyto the ACE Basin’s success.”

With sprawl moving so quickly,government can’t afford to buy all ofthe ecologically rich areas. Yet largeblocks of private land are increasinglyimportant habitat for endangeredspecies and migrating waterfowl,scientists say. Now conservationistshope that many more plantationowners will donate easements to landtrusts. However, a new generation oflandowners, squeezed by estate taxesand high maintenance costs, might

have to sell all or part of theirproperties.

There are still dozens ofhunting plantations along the SouthCarolina coast, with great forestsand fields and thousands of formerrice fields. These estates, purchaseddecades ago as exclusive sportingplaygrounds, are now somethingmore important—a necklace ofirreplaceable habitat strung from theSavannah River to Winyah Bay andup the Black, Pee Dee, andWaccamaw rivers.

TODAY’S CATCH. These quail were shot at Cheeha-Combahee Plantation. The bandedbird was farm-raised and released in autumn to supplement wild birds for winter hunting.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

14 • COASTAL HERITAGE

Coastal Heritage is printedon recycled paper.

Web Site: http://www.scseagrant.org

287 Meeting StreetCharleston, S.C. 29401

NON-PROFIT ORGU.S. Postage PaidCharleston, SCPERMIT #248

Coastal Zone 01Cleveland, OhioJuly 15-19, 2001

This biennial conference willfeature lessons learned by coastalmanagers around the world andmodels of successful partnershipsamong nations. Speakers willexamine how local and regionalissues are connected to worldwideinfluences of culture and com-merce, climate, and biology. Formore information, connect to theconference Web site atwww.csc.noaa.gov/cz2001

Estuarine ResearchFederationSt. Pete Beach, Fla.Nov. 4-8, 2001

Join your colleagues in sunnySt. Pete Beach at the TradewindsConference Center for the Estua-rine Research Federation’s 16th

Biennial Conference. Themes forthe conference include detectingestuarine change, marine restora-tion/conservation, modelingestuarine processes, and ecologicalimpacts of invasive species anddisease. For more information, visitthe Web site: www.erf.org

Second InternationalConference & TradeShow on MarineOrnamentalsOrlando, Fla.Nov. 27-Dec. 1, 2001

The aquarium hobby is second only tophotography in popularity in the UnitedStates. The vast majority of ornamentalmarine specimens are harvested from thewild. The long-term goal is to developculture protocols that can be used byindustry to reduce harvest pressure fromworldwide reef ecosystems. This confer-ence will address efforts toward accom-plishing that goal. For more information,visit the conference Web site:www.ifas.ufl.edu/~conferweb/MO