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Decerpber 1977 $1.25

The Best of Outdoors in Georgia
1972-1976

George Busbee
Governor
Joe D. Tanner
Commissioner
BOARD OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Donald J. Carter Chairman
Gainesville-- 9th District Lloyd L. Summer, Jr. Vice Chairman
Rome-- 7th District
Leo T. Barber, Jr. Secretary
Moultrie-- 2nd District Dolan E. Brown
Twin City-- 1 st District Alton Draughon
Pinehurst-- 3rd District George P. Dillard
Decatur-- 4th District Mary Bailey Izard
Atlanta-- 5th District James A. Mankin Griffin-- 6th District J. Wimbric Walker
McRae-- 8th District Walter W. Eaves
Elberton-- 10th District
Sam Cofer
St. Simons Island Coastal District Leonard E. Foote
-- Waleska State- at- Large
James D. Cone Decatur-- State-at- Large
A. Leo Lanmar,, Jr. Ros well-- State -at- Large
Wade H. Coleman
Valdosta-- State-at- Large
DIVISION DIRECTORS
Parks and Historic Sites Division Henry D. Struble, Director
Game and Fish Division
Jack Crockford, Director
Environmental Protection Division J. Leonard Ledbetter, Director
Geologic and Water Resources Division Sam M. Pickering, Jr., Director
Office of Information and Education David Cranshaw, Director
Office of Planning and Research David Sherman, Director
Office of Administrative Services James H. Pittman, Director

OutdOOrS ip Georgia

Volume 7

December 1977

Number 12

FEATURES

Saltwater with Style
A Sound of Beagles A Quality of Water

T. Craig Martin 2 Joe Cullens 8
T. Craig Martin 12

Passenger to Oblivion

Bill Morehead 16

Georgia's Portrait From Space . . . Sam Pickering 23

Bobwhite Quail

Aaron Pass 30

Rookery

Ron Odom 33

Fort McAllister

Rebecca N. Marshall 37

To Have More Quail

Ron Simpson 40

.... Walker County's Ed Dodd

Bill Hammack 47

Elijah Clarke

Susan K. Wood 53

Sweetwater Creek State Conservation Park

Susan K. Wood 57

Yesterday's Blocks

Bob Busby 61

.... The Veterans

Bob Busby and Jim Couch 64

Phone-656-5660

MAGAZINE STAFF

David Cranshaw Aaron Pass

Editor-in-Chief Editor

Susan K. Wood
Bill Morehead
% Rebecca N. Marshall
Dick Davis
Bill Hammack
Rhett Millsaps . . .

Managing Editor
Writer Writer Writer Writer
Circulation Manager

Liz Carmichael Jones Michael Nunn Bob Busby Edward Brock Bill Bryant Jim Couch

Art Director Illustrator
Photo Editor Photographer Photographer Photographer

Outdoors in Georgia is the official monthly magazine of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, published at the Department's offices, Room 714, 270 Washington Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30334. Publication Number 217140. No advertising accepted. Subscriptions are $5 for one year or $9 for three years. Printed by Williams Printing Company, Atlanta, Georgia. Articles and photographs may be reprinted when proper credit given. Contributions are welcome, but the editors assume no responsibility or liability for loss or damage of articles, photographs, or illustrations. Second-class postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia. 31,000 copies printed at an approximate cost of $16,500. The Department of Natural Resources is an Equal Opportunity employer, and employs without regard to race, color, sex, religion, or national
origin.
Change of address: Please allow 8 weeks for address changes to become effective. Send old address as well as new address (old mailing label is preferred).
ISSN 0147720X

Editorial

Favorites
Welcome to "The Best of Outdoors in Georgia" and December of 1 977. This year is the fifth anniversary of OIG, and we thought we would pause for a backward look before jumping off into the new year of 1 978.
In this expanded issue we hope our faithful
readers of the past five years will rediscover a
favorite story and that newer readers will have the benefit of discovering some new information
in old stories. Also we feel that many of our stories are as relevant now as the day they were
written and are too good to be used only once.
Who selected this so-called best? To a large
measure, you did by your letters. Our first effort was to find those articles that generated a large volume of favorable mail. The Ed Dodd story was a hands-down winner in this respect. Next we polled the editorial staff for their picks. Whenever the lists agreed on a story, we considered it. Some stories were lost because their material had become dated. Others which were good did not make the grade graphically or
vice-versa.
In any event we ended up with these stories and we hope you like them.
Merry Christmas.

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Decerpber 1977

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with Style

Photo by T. Craig Martin

By T. Craig Martin

The brilliant green shape bounded over the turquoise water like a hunk of jade skipped across a farm pond. Once, twice, three times it appeared. Then the trolled balao disappeared as the line snapped out of the outrigger, and the heavy boat rod leaped into a throbbing arc. FISH ON! FISH ON! went up the cry as a waiting angler dashed to the rod in hopes of boating one of the sea's most beautiful creatures, the
dolphin.
A scene from the Florida Keys? No, this excit-
ing moment took place only a few miles south-
east of Savannah, in an area readily available
to the many Georgians who pass up this state's
offshore fishing as they head south to the Keys or to the Gulf. The same boat on the same day landed Spanish and king mackerel, bonito, and amberjack. Cobia, bluefish, and sailfish might have been found as well. So there really is no reason to leave Georgia waters if you want to
find great saltwater fishing.

Not convinced? Then stop by Savannah's

Tidewater Marina and talk to Captain John

Wegener, or any of the other skippers that sail

from there. They'll tell you Georgia's offshore

fishing ranks right up with the best in the world, and they might even take you out to see for

yourself.

Or follow Captain John as he takes his 41-

foot Hatteras out for a day off the Georgia

coast. Aboard are the skipper and his wife

Ruby, young First Mate Bob Edwards, Father
Wilfred Dumm of Savannah's Benedictine Mili-

tary School, Atlantan Jack Mott, and a couple
of Outdoors in Georgia staffers. A motley crew,

perhaps, but one that ought to suggest "if they

do can

can it, I

"
...

The day begins early, with dockside assembly

at 5:30 a.m., and will end fairly late, but the

fishing in between makes up for the exhaustion.

By 6 the Lady Barbara is under way, beginning

a 2!/2 hour cruise to the prime fishing grounds.

2

From August 1973 issue

Outdoors in Georgia

The course is about 125 degrees, and will carry the ship some 35-45 miles southeast of Savannah, although trolling begins within the first 20
miles.
Mrs. Wegener has soothed the landlubbers' stomachs with coffee and and donuts by the time prime fishing appears, and the mate has
rigged four trolling lines with balao while the guests napped. But by 8:30 or so the ragged bottom that fish favor has appeared on the
depth finder, and everyone musters aft to wait
for the first strike.
The rods, by the way, are heavyweight boat models, equipped with saltwater reels and 30
or 50 pound line. Two lines stream out behind
outriggers, two skim along behind the boat, which trolls about three to five miles an hour

iM**

Dumm Father Wilfred

had to expend more than a little effort

to bring in this amberjack. The fish opens its mouth to

create tremendous drag, a drag that has to be overcome by the

angler's muscle. This one went back after being tagged.

Photc s by T. Craig Wartin

for mackerel and dolphin. The bait, balao (or "ballyhoo"), is a small billfish that has been impaled on a hook, then wired to its shaft.
Soon a line whips taut and "Father Willie" takes to the fighting chair. He's in no mean condition, this priest, but the battle soon has him sweating and puffing as he struggles to gain line on his unseen adversary. For long moments
the battle goes on: the fish hangs back, the man
agonizingly tugs the rod tip toward the sky, then drops it back as he reels frantically, then
pulls upward again. And the man wins, this
time. Slowly, very slowly, a brown and white shape takes form behind the boat, that of a fish with its mouth gaping open to form a sea anchor, a technique that creates a tremendous
obstacle for the angler.
A sad sigh goes up from those who can iden-
tify him, for it is an amberjack (Seriola dumerili), a fish generally considered inedible, although great sport. He's tagged and sent
Decerpber 1977

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Even the glorious dolphin mounts a fine defense when hooked. Jack Molt landed his, but he earned the prize.
Outdoors ip Georgia

back, a gesture of cooperation with studies be-
ing carried on by the Woods Hole Oceanogra-
phic Institution.
The next battle begins with an incredible leap, and there can be no doubt that the adversary is a king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla). Six feet or more into the air he slashes, tearing the line off the outrigger and carrying it singing off behind the boat. This mackerel is
less lucky than many of his fellows: so far we've
lost about ten carefully rigged balao to his kin,
and mate Bob sighs in relief as we finally hook
one. The battle itself is not quite so grim as the
struggle with the amberjack, although this king weighs about 15 pounds. His sleek shape is
made for running and leaping, not for dogged
struggle against a stiff rod and heavy line. He's
soon consigned to the live well to wait for the sharp knife that will carve him into delicious
steaks.
Decerpber 1977

A few more mackerel are hung and lost, one
or two brought to gaff. And then, then comes that indescribable instant when the dolphin
charges across the water at our bait: he is like an arrow of green fire, a spear of iridescent emerald, a flash of icy chartreuse. Jack Mott takes over the fighting chair and the waving rod; and he watches helplessly as the fish
speeds away against the reel's full drag, seem-
ingly unhampered by the pull of the boat or the heavy tension on the line. Finally he tires (or becomes bored) and turns back toward the Lady
Barbara. Mott spins the reel, trying to gain line
before the dolphin dashes away again; and
gains a little. So it goes for minute after minute, until the small bull dolphin finally wears down.
As he comes alongside, other colors stand out: the royal blue along his spine and dorsal fin, the green shading to yellow along his sides, the brilliant blue spots scattered along his sides.
A glorious creature, game, powerful, aggres-
sive, and, finally, exquisite food for man.
Other dolphins are landed, a couple by Mrs. Wegener, and two are brought alongside with freshwater tackle by experimenting Outdoors in Georgia staffers, only to be missed by the gaff.
One of these intrepid staffers, however, lost some 50 yards of line and his bait to something out there: it hit, turned, and ran, stopping for nothing until the anguished reel gave way and the line popped like sewing thread. Which suggests that he who fishes for offshore species with
light tackle had better be ready to absorb major losses in line and mangled equipment. But nothing that day compares with the thrill of battling those dolphin on equal terms: 14 pound line against their 20-25 pound weight, light rod against their grim strength, freshwater reel against their fiery runs. They can be bested in
such an encounter, but the man who does so
will have earned his victory.
Later in the day Captain John finds some bonito. If the dolphins are the most brilliant fighters around, the bonito are the most dogged. They also are the largest fish of the day, averaging about 25 pounds; but it is not so much
their size as their astonishing strength that im-
presses the anglers. Again and again they wear the fishermen down, pull and haul on the line until the angler's eyes bulge and muscles cramp, until his entire body aches and sweats and strains and he forgets everything but the few inches of line that must be gained.
The bonito (Sarda sarda) is related to the tuna-- indeed some of that "tuna" sold in stores is, in fact, bonito. These are deepbodied, power-
ful fish, who specialize in long tearing runs and

Captain John took a few moments off to land a bonito. But he
scorned the chair, preferring instead a fighting belt to hold the rod.
Photos by T. Craig Martin

bull-like resistance. And all we can think of is
"if this critter fights like this, what does a 500 pound tuna feel like?"
As the sun wanes, Captain John turns toward shore, pausing only briefly to sample the flashing schools of Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus maculatus), for the tired anglers aren't eager to rig the light tackle that makes these fish a sporting proposition. As he guides the Lady Barbara in, the exhausted fishermen re-
treat into his air conditioned cabin to relax with
liquid refreshment and discuss the day's battles. An idyllic day, a day to be remembered for
years as a perfect example of the comfort and strain, relaxation and tension that combine to make offshore fishing a superb sport.
But carpets and air conditioning, handcrafted rods and teak decks are not necessary to the enjoyment of this sport. An open, but sturdy, runabout will serve as well on calm days, and a skilled angler with adequate tackle will outfish
the clumsy man with superb gear.
All that one really needs to sample Georgia's offshore fishing is a seaworthy boat with a moderately powerful engine (preferably with some sort of auxiliary power), a reliable compass, a good depth finder (to locate the ridges and dropoffs that indicate good fishing), and some fairly sturdy tackle. Heavy freshwater tackle is fine for trolling, and probably provides better sport if not as much meat. There's always the chance of losing all the gear, but that hint of danger adds a tang to the fishing.
Big spoons and feathered jigs work well for mackerel and dolphin, but balao seems the bait of choice. It's best to watch a pro rig these fish before trying it, for there's definitely a wrong way.
There are guides and charter boats available
all along the coast, but they often specialize in meat, rather than sport, fishing. They troll all day, never stopping, which forces their clients to use too-heavy tackle to combat the drag of the boat as they fight the fish. The light tackle
man will do well to reach an understanding
with the skipper before leaving port: the boat must stop-- sometimes, indeed, it must follow the hooked fish-- if light tackle is to work.
But whatever tackle he uses, or however he
chooses to reach the fishing grounds, Georgia's offshore sportsman can expect great fishing
and superb sport. All of the species mentioned
here are waiting out there, along with the true
big game fish, the billfish. There's no need to
drive or fly to exotic climes to find them; just head for Georgia's coast: an ocean of excitement stands waiting.
Outdoors it? Georgia

Ruby Wegener and Jack Molt struggle with a pair of 15-pound bonito, a struggle that only seems a mismatch. The bonito held their own quite adequately against the heavy tackle.

Photo by T. Craig Martin

Photo by Bob Wilson

Decerpber 1977

As the sun goes down and the
fishermen relax in air-conditioned comfort, Captain John heads the
Lady Barbara toward her home
berth at Savannah's Tidewater Marina.

Sound i Beagles


-
By Joe Cullens
Photography by Bob Busby and Jim Couch

The cutting chill of a wintry morning has ebbed to
the dull ache of sub-freezing cold as a waiting storm etches the sky with grey, icy tracks. But the stillness that grips the broomsaged landscape like the
iron grasp of a feeding hawk suddenly is broken by the shuffling of a dozen pairs of stubby paws
and the snuffling of six well-tuned black noses
searching for an elusive cottontail. Anxious beagles criss-cross the brushy field in
ambling, circular fashion till one of them picks up a trace of that tell-tale odor rabbit! With a baleful yelp signaling the others in the pack, he's quickly surrounded by the other dogs as the pace quickens and the yelps increase in number and pitch.
A few yards ahead, the sage is scattered by
a rabbit on the run. Catching a glimpse of the fleeing cottontail, a rabbit hunter begins to coax the dogs
in the right direction with a series of high-pitched calls which ring across the field and attract the other
hunters in the group.

From December 1975 issue

Outdoors ir> Georgia

After setting the dogs "on trail," the hunters relax and listen while the dogs do their work. "They've turned him" brings the group to attention, and they begin to separate and ready themselves. The rabbit still has the advantage, though, for he streaks past a hunter in bounding, zig-zag evasion and disappears into the thick brush near the head of the field.
The dogs are puzzled by the rabbit's typical trick
A of doubling back on his own trail. few more
maniacal yelps and they are on the scent again. This time it's to no avail, though, for the rabbit has found a hole and disappeared. The aimless barking of the defeated hounds is little consolation to the
hunters, who vow soon to return to that lair
and flush its resident for another chase. The chase is really what rabbit hunting is all about:
the air of excitement pervading a rabbit hunt can be equalled by no other dog-hunting experience.
Sure, there is that heart-stopping excitement when
December 1977

the air explodes with a flushed quail covey, or in the "treed" howl from a good coon hound. But these can little compare to the urgent desire to solve the mystery in the wily cottontail's whereabouts.
After all, when a bird dog is on point, or a coon dog hollers "treed," you know the game is right in front of him, either up a tree or a few yards ahead in the grass or brush. With rabbits it's a bit different.
A rabbit can jump just about anywhere, and usually
does, in full flight from that bunch of sniffing noses and discordant yelps. Though the cottontail is fairly easy
-- game a reasonably accurate shot will score a -- clean kill he has the element of surprise in his favor
and seems to be uncannily adept at taking advantage of the confusion of the moment.
Rabbits are noted for their tactics of evasion.
As in Joel Chandler Harris' stories of Brer Rabbit, briar patches often become their "laughing place." The rabbit's ability to head out in one direction and wind up back in the same place a few minutes later
has been the bane of the beagle's existence since the whole thing began sometime in the fourteenth century.
For hundreds of years hunting was primarily a pastime for the nobility, and the forerunner of modern-day rabbit hunting was hare hunting in Europe. The hare hunts of those days were a far cry from the free-running outings of today.
The European hare can be compared best to the American jack rabbit. Hares are generally larger, with much longer ears and hind legs, than
rabbits. Biologically, hares belong to the genus Lepus, while the cottontail belongs to Sylvilagus. Hares tend to range wider than rabbits and are considerably
A faster. rabbit will usually seek a hiding place,
while a hare may continue the chase for a
considerable distance.
Beagles are the hunting dogs most commonly
associated with rabbit hunting, and are generally used in packs of four or more. The origin of the breed is uncertain, though they probably are descendants
of the larger harrier hounds, common in the
hare hunts of the fourteenth century. Beagles were quite popular in England during
Elizabethan times, though the literature of that period indicates that they were used strictly for hare hunting. Their small stature and keen nosing ability almost dictates such a restriction, since beagles must essentially work close to the ground.
10

Outdoors it? Georgia

The little dogs never cease to be a source of

amazement with their almost precognitive sense of

smell. Unlike other hunting breeds who sniff

the ground intermittently, the beagle keeps his nose

to the ground almost constantly, only lifting his

head occasionally to sound a call for rabbit "found."

Now Rabbit hunters?

that's a different story

entirely. There are still the classic hare hunts

on horseback, but American rabbit hunting has

developed into a sport all its own. There is a

dedicated air of disorganization, at times bordering on

chaos, with dogs barking and howling and hunters

doing the same.

The cottontail is a truly different quarry, and

a worthy one at that. Bounding out of a separate

exit hole, "ol' fuzzy tail" turns a hunter's eyes toward

a marshy branch, and the hollering, whooping bunch of
madmen on the loose sets the dogs to nosing again. Down the branch, an excited yip turns to

a jubilant wail as the dogs once again are on track.

This time they'll not be fooled by the rabbit's

quick moves. The hunters space themselves as the dogs
A turn the prey. jump, a turn, a twist, and a snap

of brush keys a hunter to direction, and moments

later a shot fractures the air. The chase is ended, yet

there is a sense of togetherness pervading the hunt that

must be felt to be appreciated. Hunters regroup

and unite with the dogs in common purpose to find

yet another chase to enjoy.



Decerpber 1977

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A lovely pastoral scene, right? Wrong. This is Coahulla Creek, a terribly polluted
tributary of the Conasauga. Pollution Control Specialist Dave Knight checks the stream's flow, while Ken Martin measures its dissolved oxygen.

Quality of Water?

Of more than 1,800 Department of Natural Resources employees, perhaps only 300 or so ever come to the public's attention. The Conservation Rangers are highly visible, as are depart-
ment officials and information officers who do
a lot of public speaking, and occasionally a biologist or engineer will become known for his work on a particular project. But there remain
hundreds upon hundreds of DNR workers whose

By T. Craig Martin
Photos by the Author
tasks are little known and less understood; in a
series of articles over the next several months,
OUTDOORS IN GEORGIA will present a sampling of these important, if little known, DNR
employees.
A field day in the life of a Pollution Control
Specialist from the Environmental Protection Division begins early and ends late. Take, for example, the day a three-man team from the

From October 1973 issue

Outdoors ii> Georgia

Knight examines the flow meter that enables him to check the
water speed. By measuring this speed at several points across the stream, the monitors can compute the volume of water that flows past this point.
Division's Water Quality Surveys Service recently spent examining the highly polluted Conasauga River in northwest Georgia. They left their Atlanta offices before daylight, worked through the day collecting and testing water samples from the Conasauga and its tributaries, and finally returned in the late dusk.
About three days a week are consumed this way, for the Service's monitoring unit must check some 50 stations scattered throughout the
state each month. Nearly 170 stations exist on some 52 streams, but most are monitored by
members of other state or federal agencies. The work is physically demanding, techni-

I
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cally rigorous and, to an outsider at least, relatively tedious. At each check point, samples are collected (some to be tested on the spot, others to be returned for laboratory analysis) and the stream's flow is checked. The routine is precise and efficient, for any variation in procedure
could invalidate the results.
Field tests determine, among other things, the amount of dissolved oxygen in the stream and the level of demand placed on that oxygen.
Simply put, the stream obtains oxygen from the air as it flows along, and from microscopic plants that grow suspended in the water. The stream remains in good shape as long as the

Careful records must be kept if the data is to be accurate and
useful for prediction.
December 1977

m-

The dissolved oxygen test takes a good deal of pouring and
mixing and shaking, as well as a keen eye to judge when the
liquid in the bottle (below)
becomes perfectly clear. Here Bob Arnsdorf runs through
the procedure.
r
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demand placed upon that supply by organic
materials (which must be purified by oxygen) does not exceed the stream's capacity to produce and replace the vital oxygen.
The variables involved here are more than a little complex, but two important factors checked by the monitoring team are the volume and flow rate of the stream. More water means that pollutants become diluted more quickly, and any given amount of pollution makes less inroads on a large stream than on a small one. Fast streams generally replace oxygen more quickly than sluggish ones, since they splash and tumble in the air more. Temperature also is important, for cold water can hold more oxy-
gen than warm water. These variables, of course, suggest why moni-
toring must be done throughout the year. Stream levels rise and fall, flow rates change, and temperature varies with the season. So the monitoring crew takes to the field in every month.
Field testing is only part of the job however/
Outdoors ip Georgia

*?sm

^11

Knight examines the outflow from Dalton's waste treatment plant. The treated water splashes against a barrier to add needed oxygen before it enters this stream, which flows into the Conasauga.

water samples are brought back for extensive laboratory analysis in Atlanta. There, much more complicated procedures are used to check the type and amount of suspended solids, and the nature and volume of bacteria in the water.
All the data collected in field and laboratory must be organized in some meaningful way, and the monitoring team takes care of that. They analyze and interpret the material, then
pass it on to others in the Division to serve as the basis for decision making.
One use of this information is in compiling
computer models of the streams. This will allow the Surveys Service's field engineering unit to predict the effect of pollution that enters a stream. This information will help municipal and industrial planners in developing waste treatment facilities.
Hot work in summer, cold work in winter; but work that must go on if Georgia's streams are
to survive man's onslaught. One of many rela-
tively invisible chores carried out by Department of Natural Resources employees.
December 1977

One of the reasons the Conasauga is in trouble: dyes
from Dalton's carpet mills flow untreated into this stream, and from here into the Conasauga.
TM
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Passenger
to Oblivion

by Bill Morehead

The first bird came in swiftly and soundlessly, heading for the dead white oak at the end -- -- of the old field. As it neared the tree it dipped low almost to the ground and, climbing at the last moment, made a fluttering stall to alight on the highest limb. It stood proudly, with its head and tail forming a straight
line.
Two more of its kind came across the field,
performing the same fluid aerobatics, to join the
first bird. Two more came. Then six. Then a
hundred, two hundred, a thousand.
And still they came. The 10-year-old boy,
watching with one hand holding a just-emptied slop bucket and the other resting on the split rails of the pig pen, moved a short distance and sat on a stump, fascinated. Just last Saturday
(he remembered he and his Paw had hitched the mule and jolted down the mountain in the old wagon to Lafayette to barter some turnips
for salt and sugar) he had heard that the birds were coming back. These were the first he had seen in nearly a year.

And still they came. He pulled a couple of
pecans from the pocket of his homespun overalls and cracked them absentmindedly as he watched the white oak become obliterated by the birds. Soon, the oak looked like a tree made
of birds. And the sun, setting right across the tip of McElmore Cove and behind Lookout
Mountain, gently cast its October gold across the chestnut grove on Pigeon Mountain and turned the russet-colored breasts of the birds into a sea of amber.
And still they came. The "kee-kee" sound of the perching birds was answered by the "tret-tret" of those alighting, until what had been a pleasant choir of a hundred voices became the stunning din of ten thousand.
And still they came. The boy's mind whirled
with images ushered in by the swarming birds. Food. Barrels of food. Feathers for new
-- mattresses and pillows. Cash hard money cash
A from the markets of Chattanooga. sandy,

16

From September 1974 issue

Outdoors it? Georgia

tough-as-nails, fallow field made rich again by the dung of a hundred thousand feathered
migrants: next spring, boldly thrusting green
shoots of healthy corn and peas would again mask the true barren nature of the field.
And still they came. The bounty called the
Passenger Pigeon returned to its namesake, Pigeon Mountain in northwest Georgia, arriving on that October afternoon in 1 874.
They had come again. But they come no more. Pigeon Mountain
stands waiting in 1974, little changed in 100
-- years, waiting for the birds to come home again.
But the birds don't come the passenger
pigeon is extinct.
-- Ectopistes migratorius the passenger -- pigeon was a little larger than a mourning
dove, its tail feathers were longer, the iris of its eye was red and its back was a bluish gray. The breast of the male usually displayed a vivid russet, but could vary from the red of the robin to the pale yellow of the mourning dove. The female, smaller than the male, looked more

like the mourning dove. The legs of both
sexes were red.
The "blue meteor" was thought to be the most numerous bird in the world. The Latin name means "migrant wanderer" and refers to the species which composed up to 40% of the total bird population of North America at the time of Columbus. Some 3 to 5 billion of these birds traveled from California to Canada to Georgia, preferring the east and mid-west to the western regions. In contrast, it is estimated that only 6 billion birds of all species inhabit America today. Migrating and nesting flocks were awesome -- sights. Alexander Wilson the founding father -- of American ornithology visited a breeding place near Shelbyville, Kentucky, in 1806. The site was more than 40 miles long and 6 miles wide! Averaging more than 100 nests to each tree, the site had a ground floor strewn with broken limbs and covered with a snow-like

Decerpber 1977

17

guano of ejecta, broken eggs and dead squabs.
-- Impressive enough but only 60 miles away
Wilson noted a similar site.
In 1813, Audubon described a migrating flock so large that "the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse." He traveled from
-- Louisville to Hardensburg, Kentucky -- distance of 55 miles and during all that trip
the sky was filled with birds. Three full days passed before the entire flight had passed.
In three hours, Audubon estimated the number
of pigeons passing overhead as one billion, one hundred and fifteen million, one hundred and thirty-six thousand (1,115,1 3 6,000 ) Only three hours worth of a three day flight!
From those days of extreme abundance to oblivion? How? The answer is not simple, extinction never is. What hindsight makes clear,
however, is that the survival strategy of the passenger pigeon didn't include the white man's
"taming of a continent." As the pioneers moved inward, they found the pigeons there for the taking; and with millions and billions seen yearly, nobody could hope to discourage their slaughter. Nobody did until it was too late. The slaughter was every bit as awesome as the number of birds: whole towns adjourned to the pigeon roosts during migrations and barrels upon barrels of pigeons were shipped to market.
Indeed, the activity was so common that a
new trade arose, "pigeon netting." Pigeon
netters were the look-alike counterparts of the
"buffalo runner." The dedicated netters
migrated with the birds, telegraphing each other and their markets of the pigeons' whereabouts
and casting their finely woven nets in the roosts at night. They captured unbelievably large numbers of birds, especially the young squabs,
to be shipped to market.

The birds usually were field dressed, salted,
-- and shipped to market in barrels with 44
dozen (528) birds to the barrel. In New York,
the market of 100 barrels a day could hold for weeks without a drop in price. In his book, The Passenger Pigeon (Univ. Okla. Press,
1 973 ) , A. W. Shorger notes prices ranging from
50 cents a dozen in Boston (1834) to $3.50
per dozen in New York City for staff-fed
birds (1884).
The kill increased year by year in the 19th Century and, as American society became better organized, so did the pigeon industry. The markets at first came to tolerate wild pigeons,
--then to expect them, and finally to demand them at any price. The most sought after birds were the young squabs, so nesting sites were
the best collecting areas.
But in the mid- 19th Century the destruction of the primeval forests took its toll, for the passenger pigeon demanded tremendous forests
in which to roost, nest, and feed. The mast
(especially beechnut) that these forests provided was the vital food for the hordes of "blue meteors" that visited seasonally.
Diseases must have played a large part.
No "flocking" animal escapes a periodic
epidemic, and the passenger pigeon was
not happy unless crowded by his own kind.
Birds weakened by anemia or injury provided
-- -- inviting hosts for innumerable diseases. And we now know a seemingly
unimportant aspect of the passenger pigeon's behavior suddenly became critical. All species
produce more young than can survive, and it is this phenomenon that leads to the "survival
of the fittest" biological principle. Survival
strategies, however, may differ. Some birds, like
the eagle, produce few eggs but care for their
Painting by Liz Carmichael Jones

18

Outdoors ip Georgia

December 1977

19

young tenaciously. Others, like the mourning doves, produce a few eggs at a time but stand ready to repeat the process if the young
don't survive.
The passenger pigeon's strategy was unique, but it worked well for millions of years. Indeed, based on numbers, the strategy was the most
-- successful of all until the 19th Century.
Ectopistes migratorius mated only once or twice a year. The nests were flimsy and the mating invariably produced only one white-colored egg, a little larger than a dove's. If the young squab was lost, little attempt was made to repeat
the process that season.
How did they survive? Over the years
-- before man and when living must have been
easier their numbers slowly grew until the billions of birds alive insured that, no matter
how many young were lost in a season, enough would survive to replenish the race. However many were killed or otherwise lost at a given
nesting site, somewhere other pigeons were
successfully rearing their young. An unusual
-- strategy to be sure but astoundingly successful
for millions of years.
Ecologists speak of a "threshold number" the minimal number of a species necessary
to insure its survival from year to year.
We don't know the exact threshold number for
the passenger pigeon, but we know it must have
been extremely large as compared to other birds. When, toward the middle of the 19th Century,
market hunting and massive destruction of the

forests assaulted the numbers of Ectopistes migratorius, the result was a net loss from year to year in the "standing crop." Sometime in the 1 850-1 870's the threshold number was
breached: this meant that no matter how
successful the nesting season was, fewer birds
would be around next year.
From 1 870 to 1 890 disastrous losses accelerated. Even market hunters realized this:
it was during this time that "pigeon netting" as a trade became obsolete; however, people just couldn't believe that an animal so abundant as the passenger pigeon could become extinct.
But they were wrong. Every reason under the sun was given for the decline of the passenger pigeon: mass drownings of flocks over large bodies of water,
wild diseases, fires, suicide, poisoning, tuberculosis, hot summers, cold winters, all were
blamed for the pigeon's decrease.
Hindsight--that most clear of all viewpoints --tells us that three things caused the
passenger pigeon to become extinct : the heedless slaughter, especially of the young at nesting sites; the mass association or flocking tendencies of the birds, and their slow
rate of reproduction.
In the 1 880's and 1 890's passenger pigeons
became extremely rare. The last known capture
in the wild was, according to Shorger, in Pike
County, Ohio, on March 24, 1900.

20

Outdoors \t) Georgia

December 1977

Drawing by Mel Wolfe
21

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Drawing by Mel Wolfe

It is truely an ill wind that blows no good: the decline of the waterfowl of North America, the near-extinction of the buffalo, and the complete extermination of the passenger pigeon provided the impetus needed to establish state
game and fish departments and resurrected the
old Biological Survey of the federal government.
And it assured the passage of the migratory
bird act, a bill to enforce conservation of our wildlife heritage. Quite simply, that is the
reason we have the wildlife we have today. The birds never came back to Pigeon
Mountain after that October day in 1874. Oh, a few were sighted for a couple of years afterward, but times were hard and the young boy bought a farm in Shinbone Valley. The soil there was better and he grew hard and strong raising strawberries and peaches and a little
cotton now and then. He had a boy who followed
after him, farming the same strawberry fields, and working red-necked in the summer's sun tending the peach orchard, and hunting the quail that lived on the chert ridges.
The first boy died and the second boy grew old and his daughter married a guy of questionable means and gave him a grandson and this boy now is a 10-year-old listening to the tales of his great-grandfather as told by
his grandfather. And this young boy resents
terribly never having a chance to see the likes of the "blue meteor" as it swarmed over Pigeon
A Mountain. thousand miles away, on a green
bluff where the Mississippi River accepts the Wisconsin River, stands a monument. The
monument reads
Dedicated
I o the Last Wisconsin
1 assenger 1 igeon
Snot At Bahcock, Sept. 1899 I his Species Became Extinct Through the Avarice and
I houghtlessness or Man
In 1974, in the year of the energy and
natural resource crisis, is it possible there's a lesson here?

22

Outdoors in Georgia

Portrait
From
By Sam Pickering, Director
Earth and Water Division Bill Morehead, Education-Research
Officer
An electronic density slice of
a frame showing the coast from St. Simons Island to Tybee Island. Marshland shows as green, open water appears black, and highland orange.

J

u

77;<? Ocmulgee, Oconee, AUamaha, and SaliHa River swamps, the coastal marshland and marsh nutrient sediment show in this view as shades of orange. Woodland is light green, and farmland black.

Every 1 8 days Georgia has its por-

trait taken from a satellite 570 miles

high. Each picture the satellite takes

covers some 13,500 square miles (a

square 1 1 5 miles on a side). The satel-

lite was launched July 29, 1972, and

has been operating continuously since

that date.
-- "ERTS" or the Earth Resources -- Technology Satellite is truly revo-

lutionizing the way we look at Geor-
gia. Since ERTS has been in orbit, the

Department of Natural Resources has

processed hundreds of outstanding,

cloud-free photos which cover the en-

tire state during various seasons.

Never before have we been able to

have such a comprehensive view of

our natural resources and their de-

velopment.

One of the basic problems today is

keeping up with the changes we make

We on the face of the earth.

build,

harvest, mine, clear, reclaim, impound

or channelize our natural resources

without an overall regional view of
what we are doing. We acquire and

develop property, exploit mineral de-

posits and plant crops with a view-

point that heretofore has been limited

to a few hundred feet above ground

level. Our nearsightedness seldom lets

us see more than a few hundred or a

few thousand acres at a time.

Thus, we have known remarkably

-- little about the natural heritage of
Georgia especially the "big pic-

We ture" of that heritage.

know that

some portions of the state support bet-

ter row crops, pastures, orchards, for-

ests, wetlands, or have terrain suitable

for heavy industry or for abundant

game and fish. Mineral exploration,

water studies and regional soils map-

ping have been done piecemeal for

small areas. But it has been very diffi-

cult to plot this information on a

larger statewide scale, much less to

analyze its distribution rapidly enough

to make needed changes. The data
that comes from ERTS gives us the

opportunity to see the state as a whole,

rather than in bits and pieces.
How are these photographs pro-

duced? .The ERTS spacecraft carries
four sensors which produce four simultaneous pictures as it passes overhead. The sensors are filtered to accept different wavelengths of light as they sweep over the earth and return four different photographs of the same area. These four photos (which record green, red, near infrared and far infrared light) show different features on the ground. Infrared records lakes, rivers and wetlands clearly, while green and red show wetlands, cleared fields, cities, mining operations and
highways. An electronic signal from
each sensor is converted to a black
and white picture on the ground. We
have combined these four black and white negatives to form color composites which accentuate and empha-
size various features.
The Earth and Water Division of the Department of Natural Resources
is using ERTS photographs to make
large-scale maps of the state to show many features never before recognized
or well mapped. We have completed

24

From November 1973 issue

Outdoors it? Georgia

a map showing all reservoirs, lakes,
ponds and open water bodies of larger than four acres for approximately half
of the state. This water map will serve
to locate lakes and ponds presently unknown to us for stocking and public
fishing. It will also help us make safety inspections on dams and aid in de-
termining where or even if a proposed impoundment should be constructed.
Similar statewide maps are being prepared showing the distribution of
woodlands, cleared land, unreclaimed mines and quarries, geological struc-
tures, urban areas, and swamps and
marshes.
These maps should be a boon to hunters and fishermen who don't quite know where to get that deer or that monster bass. The water map, for instance, will show sloughs, backponds and lakes where "hog bass" are likely to have never seen a lure. The woodland map will be a great help to all hunters. The swamp and marsh maps of the state will, in effect, be duck and woodcock hunting maps showing in detail where the swamps are (and not where they used to be). All of these maps should aid the camper seeking new and unusual sites. Copies of these maps, approximately 2' by 3' each,
should be available late this winter.
Many unusual features are becom-
ing apparent on these satellite photos which, because of their large size, were not previously appreciated. The Ducktown-Copperhill mining district, just across the Tennessee border, is striking, showing up as a 10 mile diameter circle where air pollution has killed almost all of the vegetation.
Patterns of muddy and clear water show plainly on many large lakes, especially Lake Seminole. If you're a
big time bass fisherman, would you
like to have a map of Seminole every
18 days showing where the clear and
-- muddy waters are? This is not possi-
ble now but it may soon be.
Interstate 95 along the coast is marked by a series of dredged lakes
-- where fill sand was obtained these
hidden small lakes and ponds may become prime fishing sites.
The wide, swampy flood plains of the major coastal plain rivers end
abruptly at the Fall Line (the southern
edge of the Piedmont). Want to know where the ducks are? Look at these

Coastal Georgia, from Cumberland Island to the southern tip of St. Simons Island. Highland is dark, and marshland is light colored.

Decerpber 1977

25

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26

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7/i/j co/or infrared enhancement shows the Georgia coastal marshes in bold relief as dark grey against the
scarlet high ground of the islands and mainland.
Savannah and Brunswick show as dark areas in this, coastal view. Interstate 95 is a thin black line, and marsh nutrient suspended in the nearshore area appears as a blue tinge. Farmland is dark, and woodland is light green.
photos. The Okefenokee Swamp
shows clear traces of old sandbars (telling us that it used to be a shallow
coastal bay).
What is the importance of a piece
of legislation like our mining reclama-
tion laws? Using ERTS imagery, we
can compare the effects of reclamation as required by Georgia law with similar mines in north Florida where reclamation is not required.
Outdoors ip Georgia

T~r
i

This detail of the AUatoona-Lanier area shows farmland, highways, and urban areas as black, and woodlands
as bright green.
A detailed close-up of the "forks"
area of south-central Georgia where the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers join to form the Altamaha. The
wetlands and hardwood river swamps, lakes and ponds show as light areas. These areas are prime
fish and wildlife habitat.
Nutrient-laden water washed from the coastal marshlands is distinguishable as much as 15 miles offshore. These nutrients sustain the micro-
-- scopic sea life, which in turn attract
small fish and the small fish attract commercial and sporting fish. Are these photos from space potential saltwater fishing maps? Probably.
The little satellite orbiting the earth
every 18 days is providing Georgia's
Decerpber 1977

I

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rv.t.

27

The abundant impoundments (Allatoona, Morgan Falls, Lanier, Hartwell, Tugaloo, Rabun, Seed, Burton, Chatuge, Nottely, and Blue Ridge) of north-central Georgia show as silver flecks across the Blue Ridge and Cohutta Mountains.
The deeply folded and faulted rock strata of northwest Georgia have
caused a wrinkled ridge and valley terrain. Prominent in this view are
A llatoona Reservoir, Rocky Face and Rocky Mountains, Taylor's Ridge,
and the Cohutta Mountains.

Department of Natural Resources with
brand new information. An atlas of
selected photographs covering all
parts of Georgia is now being pre-
pared for publication by the Department. Also, 2' x 3' composite photos of the entire state on red and far infrared "scans" will be published.
--If you are an outdoorsman in Geor-
gia ERTS provides your kind of space information. You really can't
afford not to know about it.

These huge circular depressions between the Alapaha and
Withlacoochee Rivers, known as
'Carolina bays," are thought to be shallow meteor impact craters.

28

Outdoors \t) Georgia

Wildlife
Profiles:

By Aaron Pass
Art by Liz Carmichael Jones

uat

The bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) is well known and well loved by most southern sportsmen. Despite
the quail's relatively small size (about 1 1 inches long, weighing 8 ounces) he
commands the respect of a zealous following of hunters who rate the quail as the number one game bird in the
southeast. So dominant is the quail on the southern sporting scene, that the phrase, "gone bird hunting," means literally quail hunting to the exclusion of other feathered game.
The bobwhite himself is a small, chunky bird bedecked in a variegated plumage of black, shades of brown, and russet-red. The belly is covered
with white feathers tipped in black,
giving a somewhat scaled appearance. The cock bird is distinguished by a white band above each eye and a white throat; on the hen these areas are a
buff-brown. The common name, bob-
white, comes from the cheery two-note mating call of the cock bird. This dis-
tinctive whistle is only a portion of the rather varied quail vocabulary.
Mating occurs in April and May
when cocks and hens pair off. This ini-
tial pair will stay together through the incubation of eggs and the rearing of the young birds, on into the winter.
An average clutch of 14 eggs is laid
in a ground nest, and both the cock

and the hen share the incubation duty. About 23-24 days are required for the eggs to hatch. If the nest is destroyed during the incubation period, the pair will probably re-nest. If the brood hatches out and is lost, it is likely that no re-nesting attempt will be made. The brood and the parent birds form the covey, the basic family unit of
quail populations. Particularly large
coveys, or those with young of different ages, are the result of two family groups joining.
The quail is a member of the Galli-
naceous order of birds, which identifies him as principally a ground dweller. The bobwhite can and does fly and
may occasionally perch on limbs, but
by and large he keeps his feet on the
ground. On the ground he nests, rears
his young, feeds, roosts, and generally
lives out his life. It is within this ground level stratum, that the quail must supply himself with the daily necessities of food, water, and cover from his enemies.
The bobwhite quail is essentially a seed eater, feeding predominantly on grass and weed seeds, and waste grain in agricultural areas. Fruits and ber-
ries are often eaten, as are insects, but these are seasonal luxuries. Cover for roosting and nesting, and for escape from predators, is another essential.

30

From December 1973 issue

Outdoors it? Georgia

Decerpber 1977

31

For roosting and nesting, quail prefer low, grassy cover with an open overstory for escape by flight. Escape cover is usually thick and brushy for defense against both terrestrial and airborne
predators. Quail are a true prey species near
the bottom of the food chain. They feed primarily on vegetable matter, converting it to protein which is sought by the meat-eating predators. Almost any predator will take a quail when
given the opportunity. Foxes, owls,
bobcats, and hawks are all quail predators, but all this predation, under normal circumstances, does no harm to the quail population. It is even bene-
ficial in that the natural predators tend to selectively take the sick, weak, and crippled birds, preventing the spread of disease or parasites through the
whole covey. These same predators also prey heavily on cotton rats, a prime habitat competitor and nest
spoiler of quail.
Like most prey species, quail counter predation with a high reproductivity potential. The quail population buffers the effects of predation (includ-
ing human hunting), disease, parasites, and inclement weather by simply
overproducing young. This surplus is trimmed throughout each summer, fall, and early winter to bring the quail
population down to a viable number
during the year's most severe period late winter. This annual mortality usu-
ally amounts to 70% -80% loss from
spring to spring. The hunter's bag is taken from this normal loss factor which will occur to the same degree whether the quail are hunted or not. If there is no hunting, other decimating
factors such as disease or starvation will account for the loss.
Quail hunting is a hallowed and revered tradition in the south. Southern quail hunting was in its heyday when small farm agriculture was the dominant land-use pattern. This created a patchwork pattern of grain and cotton fields, interspersed with creek bottoms and brush-filled gullies. This combination of food and cover areas in close association was ideal quail habitat and the quail population boomed.
Since World War II, however, landuse has changed. People have moved to the cities and many family farms
have been reclaimed by the forest.

Modern agriculture is big business and intolerant of the "wasted space"
that used to be quail cover. This change in land-use has had a
telling effect on quail. With the continuing advance of forest land and
high-efficiency agriculture, the quail
population has declined from the
"boom days" of the early part of the century. Newer problems in the form
of urban and suburban expansion into the countryside, and the "clean farming" philosophy combined with the heavy use of pesticides and herbicides in modern agriculture are also factors which adversely affect the quail popu-
lation.
Quail depict graphically the interrelationship between wildlife and its
habitat. As the usable habitat expands,
the wildlife adapted to that habitat will
also expand its population. When the
habitat shrinks, either naturally or due to man-induced changes, the wildlife population will also shrink.
There are a number of techniques which can be applied which will benefit quail populations, and cost little more than simple consideration. Lack

of cover is often a prime limiting factor on an efficient clean farm. Quail
habitat can be increased by a number
of methods. Leaving a brushy border strip around fields is a great help. This border strip should be "knocked back"
by mowing or disking to keep it from becoming too dense for quail use. This same procedure, applied to "odd" field corners, drains, and roadsides
adds greatly to usable cover, by providing cover intrusions into fields and pastures to increase quail utilization of the waste grain found there.
Woodland owners and managers
can very simply increase their quail populations by the controlled use of fire and by adequate tree thinning. This combination provides for a healthy undergrowth of grasses and weeds which provide quail food and cover in a pine forest. Since fire can be damaging to hardwoods, food
plantings are recommended for this type of woodland. These plantings
should consist of species adaptable to the region; the lespedezas, millet, peas, or any kind of the cereal grains
all work fine.

32

Outdoors it? Georgia

ROOKERY

By Ron Odom
Photos by the Author

A white ibis. December 1977

As I watch from a perch on the crest of an old sand dune, the scene in the tangled swamp below is unforgettable. The partially submerged
trees and shrubs, growing over the stagnant pool of fresh water, teem with bird life. Thousands of graceful herons, egrets and ibis congregate
here to rear new generations of young birds. The darkly stained water provides an excel-
lent background for the bright colors of spring emerging above. Large patches of pale green duckweed float lazily on the water near the
heart of the swamp, giving way to emergent
vegetation such as pickerelweed and arrowhead around the perimeter. Scattered blooms from the pickerelweed frame the entire rookery in blue. Willows, buttonbush, myrtle and cabbage palm dominate the shrub layer and provide nesting sites for the thousands of wading birds, some of
which have now detected our presence and are circling over the rookery. Many of the flying
adults begin to light in the tops of a broad expanse of pines, live oaks and underbrush thick-
ets which surrounds the 30-acre swamp. The swamp appears to be absolutely impassable.
The treetops surrounding the rookery are
dotted with hundreds of adult birds, mostly
common egrets with their snowy white plumage
clearly visible against the dark green background of the loblolly pine. Beautiful, long flowing plumes adorn the egrets' backs during
breeding season and flutter in the gentle, warm
south wind.
Dense clusters of frail nests dot the shrub vegetation, causing branches to droop from the weight of their burdens. The nests, the branches

From May 1976 issue

33

--
and the water below are heavily stained. Young
herons instinctively attempt to void their wastes over the side of the nest and are only partially
successful. Additionally, frightened young birds have a habit of regurgitating their last meal
regardless of who or what is sloshing under the
nests. This products a foul smell, making one wish he were wearing a gas mask, helmet and
raincoat. Eggs are visible in many of the nests,
as are young. How do the birds avoid confusion
and mix-ups in such a dense nesting situation?
As we walk down the dune to the water's
edge, a huge cottonmouth is aroused from his place in the sun and slithers through the mat of
water pennywort toward open water. As we watch him disappear a lively discussion begins
on the merits of wading through this particular
rookery, and we decide that perhaps we should
enter the water about 40 yards to the north. The trees are full of scrambling and fluttering young, with both young and adults croaking and squawking in a manner not easily described or forgotten. Alexander Wilson in 1832 compared the noise to "that of 200-300 Indians choking or throttling each other."

An even more violent disturbance occurs toward the middle of the pond where my binocu-
lars pick up a quarrel between a young night
heron and young common egret. The quarrel is
about which bird is to remain perched on a par-
ticular branch. The common egret chick loses
the battle abruptly and tumbles 12 feet to
the murky water. He thrashes momentarily and
begins to swim toward the base of the tree to begin another assault on the night heron. Sud-
-- denly the egret chick disappears only to re-
appear some 30 seconds later, lifeless dangling from the mouth of an eight-foot alligator. As the gator moves slowly to the far bank with his prey, we are reminded of the continuous struggle for survival on the part of these mag-
nificent birds. Predation is common in these
large rookeries. Occasionally birds have been
known to eat each other. The more common
predators are crows, snakes, raccoons, mink and hawks. In addition to the many predators, the
frail, poorly constructed nests are extremely vulnerable in severe weather, especially nests
which are built low in the marsh grass. Large
~ Common egrets and young (upper right).

numbers of nests and young have been lost to high water during the annual spring tides.
Although major nesting areas along our coast appear to be secure and well-protected at this time, our wading birds are not without problems. Predators, such as the alligator, are an ever-present danger. Good, secure nesting areas are not necessarily good feeding sites. Adult birds, continually trying to satisfy voracious appetites of their young, often need to fly miles to
find suitable feeding areas.
The site described above is typical of the larger rookeries on some of Georgia's coastal
A barrier islands. visit to one of these rookeries
can be a very rewarding and interesting experi-
-- ence provided one can stand the nauseating
odors, filth, ticks, redbugs, mosquitoes, flies, briars, poison ivy, cottonmouths and alligators.
Last summer the Game and Fish Division, in
cooperation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, surveyed the Georgia coast for wading bird rookeries. Rookeries were located by air, and
several visits on foot were made to each, recording biological data. The survey located 25 active rookeries east of 1-95. Rookery size varied
from approximately 20 great blue* herons nesting in the tops of pines on a small hammock, to approximately 6000-7000 birds representing six different species nesting on a small marsh island in the Satilla River. Rookeries of 50,000 birds have been located in other states along the Atlantic coast. Most of Georgia's larger rookeries

December 1977

Young night herons.

were found on barrier islands, while other rook-

eries occurred on the smaller hammocks be-

tween the barrier islands and the mainland.

Peak numbers of birds present in these 25

rookeries on any one visit represented approxi-

mately 18,000 birds. The total nesting popula-

tion was comprised of white ibis, great egret,

Louisiana heron, snowy egret, cattle egret,

black-crowned night heron, green heron, little

blue heron, glossy ibis, yellow-crowned night

heron, anhinga and great blue heron.

Although Georgia's wading bird population

is small when compared to that of Florida or

South Carolina, significant numbers of birds are

produced in this state's rookeries. Further,

Georgia's major nesting sites appear secure since

ownership is either by the federal or state

governments or by responsible, conservation-

minded private owners. Although there are other

environmental threats to Georgia's wading

birds, the threats are not as serious as in many

other states. But we must recognize that addi-

tional development of our coast is inevitable.

If we carefully plan this expansion of our

human population in ways that are compatible

with coastal wildlife populations, future genera-

tions may also be able to experience the sights

and sounds of a Georgia rookery.

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Henry Ford, well known as an auto magnate, isn't usually associated with the Civil War. But because of
his interest in this period of history, one of Georgia's finest examples of earthwork fortifications was preserved.
Fort McAllister, about 26 miles south of Savannah, had been almost forgotten by the time Ford purchased it. Weeds and grass blanketed its parapets, and trees were entrenched on its bombproofs. Like the proverbial old soldier, the fort was fading away, until Ford took
charge of its restoration. He rebuilt the walls of marsh mud and sand, renovated the hospital area, and restored
the hot shot oven (where soldiers heated the shot to be fired at wooden boats). Today Fort McAllister looks almost exactly as it did in the 1860s.
The fort, overlooking the Ogeechee River, was one of several built to guard the four waterways that led into
A 10-inch Columbiad stands between
earthworks at the restored fort. This type of
cannon was common to coastal
fortifications during the Civil War.

Savannah. Fort McAllister also protected rice and cotton plantations bordering the river, as well as the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad bridge that lay four miles above
the fortifications.
But its importance didn't lie in what it defended. Although Savannah had been strategic at the beginning
-- of the war the city was one of the greatest cotton ports -- in the South its value lessened considerably after the
1862 capture of Fort Pulaski. This fort had protected Savannah's port, and once the port was blocked from the sea, the city was no longer a southern supply center.
Fort McAllister's value lay in its construction. It was
built of the very cheapest materials: timber, sand, earth,
and mud. And it couldn't even begin to compete, in
beauty or in cost, with grandiose brick or rock forts like
Pulaski.
Pulaski cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it was designed for beauty as well as defense. The North-
ern engineers who built it thought it was impregnable,
-- and indeed it was against the cannon of its time. The
spherical shot fired from smoothbore guns was easily
deflected by the masonry walls. As the Civil War

Decerpber 1977

From December 1975 issue

37

Above, forerunners of bunkers used in modern warfare, the earthen bombproofs absorbed high velocity shells without sustaining significant damage.
Right, underground passages now house
a projectile display, while a diorama depicts the successful Union assault on
the fort.
Far right, outnumbered by elements of Sherman's Union forces, Ft. McAllister's Confederate garrison fought in vain. The fort was overrun and fell after 15 minutes of hand-to-hand fighting on
the earthworks.

38

Outdoors it? Georgia

progressed, projectiles designed for newer rifled cannon traveled faster and farther, and gave greater penetration on their target. These could not be deflected as easily, and the brick was too brittle to offer proper
resistance.
So Fort Pulaski fell after only 30 hours of bombardment. Fort McAllister, on the other hand, was attacked nine different times and each time successfully withstood the assault. The secret of its success lay in its lowly
construction. The marsh mud and sand walls absorbed
the impact of the shells; resistance was by absorption
instead of attempted deflection. And any damage could
be repaired quickly: the soldiers had only to shovel the earth back into place and remount the guns.
Ironically, Fort McAllister helped the North as much
as the South, because it provided their troops with a
testing ground for new ironclad vessels. The well-known battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac had demonstrated the value of these ships, and the Northern army began building more of them. The first one completed was the USS Montauk, whose revolving turret housed an 11 -inch Dahlgren gun and a 15-inch gun. The Montauk attacked Fort McAllister in January of 1863 but did little damage to the fortifications. The ship itself also was only slightly damaged; fifteen direct hits scored

by Confederate gunners barely dented its armor.

In March three more ironclads participated in an

attack on the fort, with the same results.

Even though the ships sustained little damage, one

serious problem was discovered during the fighting. The

bolts that held the plating were of poor quality metal,

and the impact of shots striking the outside of the turret

caused part of the bolts to fly off and ricochet from wall

to wall. This flying metal presented a much greater

danger to the crew than did the Confederate shelling.

Fort McAllister was well prepared to withstand naval

attacks, but it hadn't been built to fend off land ad-

vances. Most of its heavy weapons faced the river, and

its soldiers were experienced in shelling ships, not in
hand-to-hand combat. When General William Sher-

man's forces attacked the fort in 1864, there was little

its defenders could do. And their problems multiplied

when Sherman's troops captured a Confederate picket

who revealed the location of mines that had been placed

in the woods surrounding the fort.

The fall of Fort McAllister marked the end of Sher-

man's "March to the Sea," and the end of his campaign

in Georgia. The fort and its troops had done their part

to defend the state, but the Confederacy had lost its last

stronghold on Georgia's coast.



Decerpber 1977

39

To Have
More Quail

By Ron Simpson Photography by Bob Busby

Probably more is known about management of the bobwhite quail
(Colinus virginianus) than any other
upland game species in North Amer-
ica. Despite this plenitude of information, relatively few Georgia land-
owners ever attempt to manage
quail.
Most don't know how, because no practical management information has ever reached them. Others may feel quail management is too costly.
in loss of productive agricultural acreage and in monetary outlay. Still
others may have tried some manage-
ment without any technical assistance and realized little or no increase in the number of quail during the hunting season.
Quail populations can be increased on most areas if the right
habitat management practices are
implemented. And this often can be accomplished at minimum cost. For
advice on correct management practices, landowners should contact the
Game and Fish Division. Profes-
sional wildlife biologists are avail-

40

From January 1976 issue

Outdoors ip Georgia

able through an extension service, and their recommendations often
can determine the management an area needs to produce the desired re-
sults at the least cost.
Federal cost sharing on certain wildlife management practices is available. For detailed information about a particular county, contact
that county's Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service office.
Before discussing recommended
practices, it is wise to look at the bobwhite's life history. Understanding the quail helps in understanding
why certain practices are important. The familiar "bob - bob - white"
whistle, heard as early as February, is a sure sign that the breeding season is not far off. Covey break-up
and pairing (the bobwhite is monogamous, one male mating with one female) starts in March. Usually
there is about a 15% surplus of
males, insuring that all females have a mate.
May, June, July, and August are the most important nesting months.

A few nests may be built as early as
March or as late as October, but this is not the norm. Quail select nest sites where vegetative ground cover is about 50%; cover of this type offers optimum screening for nests and adequate passageways for quail movement.
If the nest is broken up, the female will usually re-nest. The number of eggs laid in a nest decreases with each new attempt: hens in Georgia lay an average of 16 eggs in nests built in April but average only
9 eggs in August nests. And contrary to many stories about multiple
broods, a pair of quail will raise only one brood of chicks per year. Renesting occurs only if previous at-
tempts fail. Studies have indicated that chick
mortality between hatching and 15
weeks may be as high as 50%. This loss can be reduced by habitat man-
agement practices that consider the special needs of young quail. The chick's diet must be high in protein; this is supplied through consumption

of animal matter. Management that produces an abundance of insect life at the quail's level, and which pro-
tects the feeding birds, will increase
chick survival.
The annual diet of a bobwhite is comprised of 60-65% seeds, 15-
20% fruits, 15% animal matter, and 5% green forage. The impor-
tance of these varies with the sea-
sons. Peak fruit consumption occurs in the late spring and summer, when such foods are available, and consumption of animal matter is greatest in summer and fall.
The bobwhite uses a variety of
different covers. In addition to the
nesting cover, quail must have protective cover for feeding, roosting, loafing, and escape. One area of
cover may often serve a dual role.
Generally, feeding and loafing cover has grass and herbaceous vegetation which is slightly more open or sparse than roosting and escape cover.
The greatest loss of bobwhites in
Georgia, excluding chicks, is during either the hunting season or the

Decen?ber 1977

41

For successful nesting, quail depend on good nesting habitat, favorable weather, and an adequate food supply.

Controlled burning is a variable technique in quail habitat
management. It removes dead ground litter and encourages the
growth of plams which furnish the birds food and cover.
After burning, a fresh, green understory sprouts if the forest has
been properly thinned.

breeding season. Where habitat conditions are good and hunter harvest is low, spring and summer losses
will equal or exceed those of the
winter.
A quail population is controlled
by the quality of available habitat.
-- There can be only as many quail as
the habitat will support no more, no less. Losses from other factors such as predation, disease, and, in some cases, starvation, must occur if
the excess is not harvested. Summer
quail production usually exceeds the ability of the habitat to support all birds through an entire year.
Natural mortality approaches 80%,
so hunters should be able to harvest
30-50% of the birds without endan-
gering next year's population. Historically, predation and pre-
dator control usually have received considerable attention in quail management programs. But more often than not, these attempts were inef-
fective. As mentioned previously,

natural mortality will maintain a bobwhite population that is balanced with what the habitat can support, and predation is simply one of nature's methods of preventing overpopulation.
Predation is usually a problem
only where man has changed the
A ecological balance. quail popula-
tion that does not exceed the habitat's carrying capacity is highly re-
sistant to predatory pressure. Many
of the quail taken by predators are those that are diseased or crippled. Although foxes, bobcats, hawks, and owls do take an occasional quail, they can actually aid the bobwhite population by taking a large number of rodents. Rodents com-
pete with quail for food, and when
the rodent population is high, they can destroy a substantial proportion of the quail nests on an area. Because this balance between predators and prey species is so complex, no control of predators should be at-

tempted without substantial reason and professional advice.
The vast majority of the habitat improvements needed for quail are related to food, cover, or both. Unmanaged land in Georgia usually produces little food and has either too much or too little cover.
The following management practices are the ones most commonly used in the Southeast. They are pre-
sented to give people interested in
managing quail some knowledge of what is involved in producing more
birds.
Quail habitat management is based on varying or diversifying forest, brush, grass, and cultivated land
to produce the maximum amount of
food and cover. However, shuffling all of these land-use types on a farm
for maximum quail benefit is seldom
feasible or economically justifiable.
An alternative is to manage each
type individually. Management prac-
tices are designed to duplicate in one

42

Outdoors ip Georgia

December 1977

43

In agricultural areas, waste grain can be an important food source for quail, particularly if it is near protective cover.

-

4/ '

'



habitat the same situation that exists where the different types meet or border each other.
The widespread, and probably most beneficial, management practice used in pine and low-grade hardwood stands is controlled burning. Burning removes the thick litter
(pinestraw, leaves, grass, etc.) that is
usually present in unburned stands, and it stimulates the germination of the leguminous plant seeds such as partridge pea, lespedeza, and butterfly pea. These are very important bobwhite foods in late winter. Insects necessary for chicks after hatching are also greatly increased by burning an area, and the cover is thinned enough so that the insects can be found by chicks.

>d \
February or early March is the best time to burn, but if hardwood
undergrowth is dense, a burn delayed until the undergrowth begins to leaf out assists in controlling and reducing this problem. The frequency with which a site is burned depends on soil fertility and moisture. Average sites probably need burning once every two years, poor dry sites once every three years, and rich moist sites every year.
If all ground cover will be removed by burning, selected areas of cover should be protected from the fire. Clumps of desirable shrubs (wild plum, hawthorn, hackberry, sassafras, blackberry) 20 to 30 feet in diameter provide protective cover
and should be saved. One to two

acres of broomsedge, wiregrass or
various other clump-type grasses
suitable for nesting should be pro-
tected for early nesting attempts.
Harrowing or constructing fire-
breaks will keep the burn from such
areas.
If a stand of timber is so dense that direct sunlight cannot reach the ground, burning alone will be of little value. Such a stand should be
thinned. Food and cover plants in
the developing understory vegetation will then be able to receive the sunlight necessary for growth.
Thinning of over-stocked timber is also a beneficial forest management practice; it releases the remaining trees from an over-crowded situation and increases their growth rate. In stands where there is a long rotation period, such as saw-timber or pole timber, the forest canopy opened by a thinning will gradually be closed as the trees grow. Several thinnings are necessary during the full rotation period to maintain a productive understory.
Cover and food may also be pro-
vided by introducing various plants recognized as valuable to quail.
Some of the best ones are Clemson combine pea, kobe lespedeza, Ko-
rean lespedeza, bi-color lespedeza, wild plum, and hairy vetch. Insect
life, as well as seeds, are made more available to quail by many of these
plantings. In fact, the quail popula-
tion on some areas may actually benefit more from the insects produced and consumed by quail chicks
than by the seed produced in these
plantings.
The size of food patches should be at least one-fourth acre. The number of patches needed is determined by the vegetative character of the managed area and by the de-
sires of the manager. A minimum
of one cover area, planted or na-

44

Outdoors it) Georgia

tural, should be developed for every
1 acres of managed land.
Small openings, as well as thin-
nings, in quality hardwood stands can be developed to increase the
quail productivity in these areas.
They should be about one-half acre in size and can be planted in food plants such as Clemson combine pea
A and partridge pea. border strip of
serecia or bi-color lespedeza about 15 feet wide can be added for cover. Again, the dictates of the land and
manager will determine the number and distribution of these.
Pasture and cropland are almost always very low on cover for quail, because of heavy cattle grazing and today's "clean" farming practices. Clearing every fence-row and cleaning areas of low productivity, even
when they may not be worth farm-
ing, decrease the natural diversity
and the value to quail. Heavilygrazed areas are also normally low
in quail benefits.
Open pasture and cropland can be made more habitable for quail

by allowing border fence-rows to revert to natural vegetation, and by developing thickets and hedge rows across the fields for cover. Quail will not use the middle of even a 20-acre pasture or field, they will use only the edges where there is protective
cover.
The extent to which an area may
be crossed with the thickets and hedge rows must be decided by the farm manager.
In pastures these should be plants such as wild plum and hawthorn that are seldom grazed by cattle. These plants will protect some quail food plants from grazing, as well as providing cover. Fencing of cover lanes and food patches is an effective, but costly, practice.
On cultivated land, a hedgerow or
cover land can simply be a strip about 15 feet wide which is left out of cultivation. Permanent lanes can be established by leaving the same strip uncultivated for several years. Grass, shrubs, and tree species usually need only 3 to 5 years to

become established. If more rapid development and results are wanted, these strips can be planted in pine with clumps of plums, etc., at regular intervals. These clumps of protective cover add to the diversity of
land barren of quail benefits.

Where cultivated land is bordered
by woodland, a 15-to 20-foot strip can be left between the two. It can be planted or left to revert naturally to desirable species like beggarweed and ragweed. Serecia or bi-color lespedeza are two of the perennial species that can be established between woodland and cultivated land.

These are but a few of the prac-

tices that are beneficial to quail.
Some may be more satisfactory on
one area than on another. Consult
Game and Fish Division biologists

to determine which practice or prac-

tices to use. There may be some

simple practices for small areas that

are compatible with the major land-

use and which will provide all the

bobwhites' life requirements.

()

December 1977

45

46

Outdoors it? Georgia

Walker County's

Ed Dodd

and the Worlds Mark Trail

By Bill Hammack
Photography by Bob Busby

Ed Dodd, creator of the internationally-enjoyed comic strip, "Mark Trail," leads two lives.
-- First he is Ed Dodd a down-to-earth, outgoing,
thoroughly likable man, an outdoorsman, a conserva-
tionist, world-traveler, artist/writer, hunter, fisherman,
pipe-smoker, who lives in a place called "Lost Forest," whose walking companion these days is a 16-year-old Scottish border collie/ cocker spaniel named "Mose," a dog who succeeded a 200-pound St. Bernard named
"Andy."
He is also Mark Trail, the comic strip friend of mil-
lions of readers around the globe, an outdoorsman,
conservationist, traveler, photographer/writer, hunter,
fisherman, pipe-smoker, who lives in a place called "Lost Forest" and whose huge St. Bernard is named
"Andy."
Ed Dodd says "Mark is my alter ego. But he can do things 1 can't do. He does things I'd like to do. And he's a lot younger. Mark was 30 years old this past April 15."
Most people are surprised when they learn Ed Dodd
is 74, born in 1902 in LaFayette in Walker County, Georgia. Most folks peg him maybe in his early 60s.
-- His close-cut hair is steel gray and his face is leathery
from all sorts of weather the snows of Canada and the broiling sun of Africa and nearly everywhere in between. Erect and flat-bellied, he walks at a fast clip. His eyes reflect the calm strength of a man who knows who he is and where he is and what he's doing, the eyes
of a man you'd like to have side with you but whom
you'd hate to cross.
Mark first appeared 30 years ago, seeming the same age as he is now. Ed Dodd then was 44 years old. He considered himself a middle-aged failure. He had been
working hard all his life, scratching and scrabbling, but

he had never made what he calls "the big time." He
says "I had been hacking along with a cartoon feature
-- called 'Back Home Again.' I'd sold it in 1930 and I
kept hacking away at it a long time 14 years. It ap-
peared in about 75 or 100 newspapers. I kept it sold
and it brought me some bread and a little meat, but I wasn't making any money. I don't think I ever made
more than $60 a week. I realized I wasn't getting any-
where. I beat my brain for ideas. I'd been an outdoorsman all my life, but I reckon the outdoors was so close to me I just couldn't see it as a subject for a comic strip. The realization dawned on me that I ought to
draw and write what I know best. So I started working on an outdoors strip. I worked hard on it. I worked
hard trying to sell it. After two years of writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, pounding the pavement trying to sell the strip, I was beginning to get
discouraged. Then the New York syndicate bought it.
The day it came out in the paper, I happened to be
standing on a corner when a New York Post delivery
truck came up 7th Avenue. It was a cold, misty, rainy
A -- day. poster on the side of the truck the whole side -- of the truck was a great big blow up of Mark's head,
and God Almighty, that was the biggest thrill I ever had in my life. I knew then, / knew, I was finally on the way. Tears just busted out and started streaming down my cheeks."
Lady Luck, who had been slamming Ed Dodd with
brass knucks, slipped on her silken glove and began
caressing him and his brain child Mark Trail. Mark
-- Trail was an instant success instant if you don't count
the years of long days and longer nights that Ed Dodd
sweated and stretched himself through as he doggedly
pursued his dream. Some people who may have gained

Decerpber 1977

From August 1976 issue

47

Tom Hill works on the Sunday cartoon panel for
Mark Trail.

a little wisdom as they trudge along down here say that

to get on the good side of Lady Luck a person has to

show her plenty of perseverance and a lot of hard work.

"When Mark came out, men were returning from the war," Ed Dodd says, "and they were thinking about

heme and hunting and fishing and the outdoors. And the

strip caught on."

Mark Trail, an outdoor life adventure strip with a

lively story line and top-notch drawing, also speaks up

for conservation, and later when wide public interest

in conservation was aroused, it boosted the strip's al-

ready impressive popularity. Today it appears in 400

newspapers worldwide, the 30 overseas in five lan-

guages. Combined daily circulation of these papers is

20 million, and using the generally accepted yardstick

of between two and three readers per copy, that makes

around 50 million persons who can follow the adven-

tures of Mark.

The adventures are produced by an all-Georgia team.
Mark's daddy, Ed Dodd, writes the story. Tom Hill of
Atlanta, who joined Dodd in 1946, and Jack Elrod from Gainesville, who came aboard two years later,

handle the drawing, and Barbara Chen from Savannah

Tom does the lettering.

Hill also is editor and artist of

the Sunday strip, which highlights interesting facts

about wild creatures and the outdoors pictured in Hill's

meticulous drawings. Ed Dodd says Hill is the best

wildlife illustrator he has ever seen. The team stays

48

seven weeks ahead on the strips, Dodd maintains a three-month lead with the story. They accomplish their
-- work in a place that pleasures the spirit and charms
the eye a studio that looks out over a dancing creek
and a singing waterfall, a big room full of light in a stone and unpainted cypress house that rambles around a forested hillside. The house, Ed Dodd's home, was designed by the late Atlanta architect Herbert Millkey, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. Millkey spent a lot of time with Dodd, studying him, his personality, his life style, and created a hollow sculpture of cypress and
stone, a friendly-looking, comfortable-looking house,
that expresses Ed Dodd the way a bust of him by renowned Georgia sculptor Julian Harris depicts him.
The house was four years in the future when Mark
was born, but within a few months of the comic strip's
appearance, Dodd left New York to come back home to Georgia. He started looking for somewhere to sink roots. He knew what he wanted. He had inspected more
than a score of sites when one day a real estate agent took him out to some pretty wild woods on the west side of Sandy Springs. "As soon as I saw the waterfall
and the creek," says Ed Dodd, "I knew I had found my home. When Herb Millkey completed plans for the
-- -- house, not a bank in Atlanta would lend me a dime to
build it. In 1950 that's when work started on it the house was considered too advanced, too far out."
But Dodd was able to swing the construction, for money from Mark Trail was coming in; the feature
syndicate sold the comic strip to 46 papers the first week it hit the market and the number kept growing. First newspaper to buy was The Atlanta Journal.
Mark Trail ranges far and wide in his comic strip adventures, but sometimes Dodd brings hometown friends into the strip. One of them is Jack Crockford, Director of the Game and Fish Division of Georgia's
Department of Natural Resources. Years earlier, Crock-
ford had told Dodd a sad little story about a youngster who had tried to make a household pet of a wild crea-
-- -- ture a fawn with the usual unhappy results. Dodd
soaks up stories like this all over the world for possible future use and when one of them fits into his longrunning narrative, perhaps to stress the importance of conservation or to illustrate humane treatment of creatures of the wild, he smoothly makes it a part of the
comic strip. When he used the storv of the fawn, he felt it natural to introduce his friend who had told it
to him; so in that episode, Jack Crockford made his
appearance. Tom Hill, who drew Crockford in the
-- strip, has brought other friends into it Jack Elrod,
whose drawing table is just behind Hill's, Barbara Chen. "Drew myself in once," Hill says. "Drew myself in as
a trumpet player. Don't know whv. I can't play the trumpet." Has he ever drawn Ed Dodd into the strip? Hill grins. "Many times."
When a character who may wear Dodd's seamed,
leathery face appears, he has been created along with
all the other people of the strip by Ed Dodd, and the
words in the balloon above the character's head, like
Outdoors \r) Georgia

all the other balloons, are words that Dodd has written. "I write the sequence in considerable detail," Dodd
says. "I describe the scenes, the costumes, flora and
fauna, all the details. And I write the dialogue, trying
to keep it cut to the bone and still say what I want to say. Editing copy in a comic strip is just ferocious these days because they're reducing the size of the strips in printing them. So you have to make one word do the work of three, since you have to increase the size of the lettering if you want it reproduced big enough to
be readable. That means we have to decrease the size
of the drawings."
The drawings in Mark Trail are authentic down to the fine details because of Ed Dodd's singular memory
and his library, in that order of importance. "I have a hell of a time remembering names, but I can remember
how a north woods lumberjack is dressed right down
to his shoestrings," he says. "I've been lucky enough to ramble around all over the United States and Canada and other parts of the world, and somehow I can retain
the memory of how all these places look. And then I
take a lot of photographs in case I ever need them to
polish an old memory that may be growing dim." Besides his picture files, Dodd has built a library of
about 5,000 volumes, along with copies of the National
Geographic from 1910 to the present. He files outdoors
-- magazines from everywhere for example, there's a
stack of copies of Outdoors in Georgia. "I do some research to double-check," he says. "I try to write stories
with scenes in places I have some familiarity with. No
matter what sort of drawing appears, no matter what part of the country the scene is set in, no matter whether
the subject is a canoe or a snowshoe, or a bow and ar-
row or a particular gun, there's somebody somewhere who knows exactly what it looks like, and if the drawing is wrong, he says, 'This guy's a faker'."
Ed Dodd couldn't know how to be a faker even if
he had a list of instructions. He's a straightforward
man who's knowledgeable in an astounding sweep of

Decerpber 1977

Above: Ed Dodd's waterfall sings to the house in
Lost Forest, nearly hidden by the trees. Left: The living room.
subjects, and his convictions run deep and he expresses them clearly. Born and raised in a rural environment, his natural tendency toward conservation was reinforced
by one of the greatest American conservationists, Dan Beard. "He wrote a lot of books for boys, and I ate them up," Dodd remembers. "My father used to subscribe to Boys' Life and American Boy for me, and Mr. Beard had an article in each one every month. He described this boys' woodcraft camp he had on Big Tink Pond in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, 117 miles west of New York City. When I was 15, I wrote him that I wanted to come up there but I didn't have any money, and would he give me any sort of a job to
49

>i
ol 1

The FOLLOiy/we
DAY, BIDDY'S
PICTURE IS
SEEN BY THE
STATE GAME AND FISH
PEOPLE

HE
LOO

A HEY, THIS IS

2X

TERRIFIC PICTURE.'..
A CUTE KID AHD A
PRETTY LITTLE PEER ...LET'S RUM IT/

Here's a strip from a Mark Trail episode that pictures
Jack Crockford. In the drawing, he is "Joe," the
official who tells "Ray" to get the deer.
pay my way. Took me two years to sell him on the idea. He finally let me come up. Said I could blow the bugle
and wait on his table. So I got a bugle and learned to blow it. Waited on his table, and that was the best thing that could have happened, because I got to know
him and his family just like my own. They eventually came to be just like my own family. I stayed there.
Finally worked up to camp director. Beard was a wild-
-- life artist, a great artist illustrated some of the original
Mark Twain books. He didn't get into the Boy Scout movement until he was around 65. He founded a group he named the Boy Pioneers. Ernest Thompson Seton,
another great conservationist, got a bunch together he
called the Woodcraft Indians. And in England, Lord Baden-Powell started an organization known as the
Scouts. These groups, and some others, were pulled together by William D. Boyce and the Boy Scouts came into being. Dan Beard was the first scout commissioner and Seton was the first chief scout. I stayed with Dan
Beard a long time. He influenced me more than anyone except my mother and father. He took me under
his wing. I'd been trying to draw ever since I was a
child. He gave me a lot of criticism, told me what to do. He was a distinguished old fellow, with that white mustache and goatee. We'd walk down Broadway and people would turn around and stare at him. He looked
kind of like Buffalo Bill come to life. For years, I'd go to his house like I'd go home. I'd call up and say I

wanted to come spend the night. I had a room there, up in the attic. I last saw him when he was 91. He died the next year. Last time I saw him, I knew he wasn't going to keep going much longer, but he was still full of beans. He was the kind of man who paid attention to young people. He didn't preach, but he made his points decisively. I had been smoking cigarettes and one day in camp, I leaned over and a cigarette fell out of
my pocket and rolled in front of him. He didn't say anything. He just gave me a look. That was some look. Just shriveled me up. Then he shook his head."
Ed Dodd smokes no cigarettes any more. He smokes
Granger rough cut in a pipe. Conservation practices he
learned from Dan Beard and those he absorbed with
his rural raising form the foundation of his strong con-
servationist philosophy today. "We're presently facing
a dangerous situation," he says. "On one hand, there are a lot of thoughtful, rational people who have been deeply interested in conservation for many years, who approach it from a scientific standpoint. On the other hand, there are people who get emotional because they're hung up on the Bambi syndrome. Talk about
conservation of deer to these people, and immediately they see every deer as an adorable little Bambi. So they
-- -- fight like all get-out to prevent any deer from being shot.
In their tragic ignorance tragic for the deer they
don't know or they refuse to face the knowledge that they're trying to condemn their adorable little Bambi
to the cruel suffering of a slow death by starvation. True conservationists have been aware a long time that a deer herd will literally eat itself out of house and home.

50

Outdoors ip Georgia

IOE,
r this/

AMD I KNOIV
IT'S GOING TO
BE ROUGH f

-- The real conservationists are the hunters deer hunters -- and duck hunters and bird hunters and fishermen.

They have contributed more to conservation than any

other group on earth. The anti-hunters don't contribute

anything but talk. They don't buy hunting licenses,

they don't buy equipment, they don't go to camps. What

they do is put out propaganda like that "Guns of Au-

TV tumn"

program that's slanted and one-sided and

doesn't give the true picture. It's the money from hunt-

ers and other true conservationists that pays the bills

for enlightened conservation and propagation practices."

Dodd warns that "While the anti-conservationists are

shrillest in their irrational attacks on hunting, they're

also attacking fishing. What we've got to do is fight

their propaganda, their lies, with the only defense that
-- can overcome them the truth. We've got to keep ham-

mering home the truth about conservation. Sportsmen

and sportswomen are not only conserving game, but

they're bringing game back. For example, because of

hunters and other conservationists, there are more deer

in Pennsylvania today than there were when old William

Penn made a treaty with the Indians when he set up his
-- colony. If a person doesn't want to hunt for whatever -- reason it's his or her privilege not to hunt. At the
same time, who gave the anti-conservationists the right

to tell me that I'm doing something wrong when it's not illegal and not immoral? And what is, in my belief,

helping the game? Hunting is a deep-seated urge. It's

atavistic, goes back to the dawn of mankind on this

earth. I'm absolutely against shooting or harming any

endangered species, but where game is plentiful, I think

December 1977

hunting is the greatest sport in the world. It's absurd to

talk about the horror of killing and inhumane treatment

of wild animals when the only alternative is forcing

them to starve to death, which is far more horrible."

Like most hunters, save those who hunt for meat
-- and there are still those who have to do that Dodd

finds rewards in going hunting that transcend bagging

a bird or a deer. "We get outdoors, next to nature,

where we belong," he says. "We live artificial lives in

these canyons of steel and concrete we've fabricated.

We're naturally a woods-roaming people."

Dodd roams the woods these days in his Lost Forest

with his old dog Mose. "Mose," he'll say, "you're a

TV beauty." Mose has been on

coast to coast, he's

appeared in half a dozen documentaries and he has had

his picture in papers all over the United States. At the

patriarchal canine age of 16, Mose is a beautiful dog and he's still eager to join Dodd in walks. Dodd mav have

inherited his fondness for walking. His father, a Baptist

minister who died in 1972 at the age of 97, liked to

walk. The elder Dodd's influence may also be reflected

in his son's religious attitude. Ed Dodd says "I think man is moral or immoral depending on how successfully

he moves toward God."

Ed Dodd may have the best of two worlds here below.

In one of them, as Ed Dodd, he is not only a successful

writer/artist doing what he loves doing, but he is also a

successful humane human being with friends all over the

globe. In his second world, which is also real to him. his

alter ego, Mark Trail, can do anything Ed Dodd's

imagination wants him to do.

%-

51

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1776 1976
Elijah Clarke
Patriot or Scoundrel?

By Susan Wood
J_/ lijah Clarke, the "Hero of the Hornet's Nest" of Wilkes County,
led hardy pioneers who fought In-
dians and British in Georgia to remain free settlers on their chosen land. Clarke could inspire little more
than a handful of men (and women)
to such defiant courage that whole regiments of British or whole bands of Indians would think they'd surely met their match.
A born leader, Clarke was the
man everyone in Georgia's back-
country turned to in time of fear, confusion or defeat, so trusted that
400 women and children followed
him some 350 miles over snowy mountains to safety in the Wautauga Valley of North Carolina.
For Clarke was first, last and always a frontier fighter, in early days out of necessity. Moving his family from British-oppressed North Carolina to Wilkes County, Georgia sometime after 1773, Clarke found himself deep in Indian wilderness. Clarke's Fort soon became the place
Clarke lived in what was Wilkes
County, in a log cabin very much
like this reconstruction.
Photo by Susan Wood

December 1977

From July 1976 issue

53

The museum at Elijah Clark State
Park displays uniforms, documents and letters, circa 1780.
Illiterate, Elijah Clarke has created
much controversy and confusion
over the spelling of his name. Here, his purported signature omits the
"e". More recent discoveries,
however, indicate that the usual signature was "Elijah Clarke." The state park, though, is Elijah Clark State Park.

of refuge for neighbors' families left
alone when Clarke led his "Wilkes
Riflemen" to battle. His Dragoons, numbering any-
where from about 40 to more than 300, left their Christmas dinner once to chase marauding Indians who had
brutally killed a neighbor family.
These men fought for their very sur-
vival against Indians, and then the British headed for Wilkes County to capture it. Having fled from strong British rule in North Carolina, the pioneers were not to be overcome even by well-equipped, well-trained
British who greatly outnumbered the
patriots.
Led by their leader Elijah Clarke, the riflemen soon became masters of guerrilla tactics. Almost always outnumbered, they found it necessary to "hit and run" if they were to be successful. As such a frontier leader,
Elijah Clarke is said to rank with the
legendary "Swamp Fox," Francis Marion. He loved danger and was at his best in a fight, and so his men came to be.
Among members of his loyal band
was Nancy Hart, the feisty, redhaired spy who on at least one occasion dressed up as a man to be able to walk about unnoticed. Piling her hair under her hat and pretending to be insane, she once strode into Brit-
ish-occupied Augusta, talking to soldiers, noting the strength of fortifications and taking one Tory prisoner.
Clarke's wife, Hannah Arrington
Clarke, also traveled with the army, tending her smallpox-scarred hus-
band and teen-aged son John who fought alongside his father. Hannah nursed their wounds and saw them
through malaria, leaving her other

seven children with Wilkes County
neighbors.
Stout-hearted Hannah, the genteel up-country lady, defended their own home against storming Indians be-
fore the Revolution. When on one
-- occasion, Clarke and his men left a
score of neighbors women, chil-
-- dren and elderly men safely har-
bored at Clarke's Fort, rampaging Indians attacked. Though the men, knowing they were outnumbered,
had decided to surrender, Hannah angrily protested, "Never will we give up while I can load a gun!" So with the women loading rifles and muskets, the men put up such a de-
fense that the Indians soon retreated, thinking the Dragoons were still
there.
Hearing of the attack on his fort, Clarke vowed never to rest until he had pushed the Indians back across
the Oconee. As it turned out, he
didn't rest even then. Clarke and his frontiersmen dis-
tinguished themselves as Revolutionary patriots in 1779 at the Battle of Kettle Creek near Washington, Geor-

gia. As Redcoats marched on their homes, Clarke and his spirited frontiersmen joined forces with Col. John Dooly of Wilkes County and Col. Andrew Pickens of South Carolina to turn back the British. The 400 motley men with their hit-and-run
tactics relentlessly defended their land. Col. Clarke saw a chance to close in on the enemy's rear and seize a strategic hill to turn the tide. This Battle of Kettle Creek was a turning point of the Revolution in Georgia.
Fiercely, belligerently patriotic,
Clarke wanted more than anything to recapture Augusta, in the hands of traitor Thomas Brown, Clarke's former neighbor from Wilkes County. In September 1780 after many battles and many more wounds, Clarke and 300 men joined Col. James McCall of South Carolina with but 80 men to march on Augusta. Nancy Hart, using her guise as a crazy peddler, had already been into Augusta and reported to Clarke what she had found. After fierce fighting, Clarke's companies ap-

54

Outdoors it? Georgia

Photos by Cathy Cardarell

peared on the verge of victory when British reinforcements arrived and
the patriots were resigned to retreat.
They left Col. Thomas Brown badly wounded and very angry; Brown or-
dered brutal revenge against all patriots and their sympathizers.
In 1781, though, the pioneer soldiers, bitterly angry over the destruc-
tion of their homes and determined to get their own revenge, readied for another march on Augusta to recapture it and hang traitor Thomas Brown. This time they succeeded. Col. Clarke, face pock-marked from
a recent bout with smallpox, inspired
the once-dejected men from all over the South. The furious three-week
battle was finally won, thanks to support received from Col. Lighthorse Harry Lee.
When the Revolution finally ended
in 1783, Clarke resumed his protec-
tion of the frontier against the In-
dians. Clarke had been granted several large tracts of land in Wilkes and Washington Counties in payment for his valiant Revolutionary effort, received other lands through a variety of means and had purchased some
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additional property in and around
Savannah. Clarke, now land-hungry,
was vitally interested in protection of his new lands. Because of his reputa-
tion as a fierce Indian fighter, Elijah
Clarke was soon named to a commission to make treaties with Cherokees and Creeks. Negotiations
brought to Georgia all the land east of the Oconee River, as Clarke had
once vowed. And after taking his seat in the new House of Assembly, Clarke was named to the only com-
mittee that dealt with Indian affairs. 1793 found Spain sending agents
from Florida into the Indian nations of Georgia to organize Indians against Georgia. Long an ally of the Indians, Spain had set up trading posts in Indian lands and soon began sending arms and ammunition to Indian warriors. Georgia protested vehemently to Spain and appealed to the U.S. Government for assistance
--but official response was neither
immediate nor satisfactory. This doubtless angered at least one of the
-- frontiersmen Elijah Clarke.
About this time, the French Am-
bassador to the United States, Ed-
mond Charles Genet, was attempting
to raise troops to seize Spanish-held Florida and Louisiana for the French.
In Georgia, there was great enthusiasm for the French Revolution. Georgians were said to wear the colors of France to show their loyalty. In taverns throughout Georgia, toasts were made to "our brothers in France." Clarke, though really only loyal to himself, was always on the side opposed to the Indians, allied
with Spain.
An offer was made to Col. Elijah
Clarke to join the invasion so Clarke, always the fighter, agreed because, after all, he would be only protecting Georgia from a possible invasion from the Spanish-backed Indians. Resigning his commission as Major General in the Georgia Militia,
Clarke recruited many of the same Dragoons who had stuck with him
before, several hundred in all, and marched to the banks of the St. Mary's River, poised for action. The situation was fast becoming an inter-
national incident when Thomas Jef-
ferson, acting for President George
Washington, demanded that the

Decerpber 1977

55

These reconstructions of Elijah Clarke's first and second homes house the Elijah Clark Museum. The smaller house (at rear) is a replica of Clarke's first home, later used as a kitchen.

French recall the instigator Genet. They did, leaving Clarke and his
men stranded with no support even
from the state they were protecting. Though the attack did not occur,
Clarke and his men were called
heroes by Georgia back-country citi-
zens for sacrificing so much for the
safety of Georgia. Neither the federal nor state government, however, felt Clarke's actions were at all
heroic.
Meanwhile the Creeks in north Georgia had been rampaging, killing settlers and their families indiscriminately, so history books tell. In defense of the Indians, it must be brought out many Georgians, among them one Elijah Clarke, invaded the lands the government had officially
given to the Indians. Indian plunderings and rampages were, for the most part, in retaliation for plunderings and rampages by the back-country men, eager for land and wealth.
Realizing that they were men with-
out a country, Clarke suggested to his stranded troops that they create
their own republic on the Indian side of the Oconee. Not realizing that
such action might be treasonous, Clarke believed that only through
this new republic could he and his men help protect the western border of Georgia. The Trans-Oconee Republic as it would later be called

soon had its own Constitution, its own officers and a Council of Safety. Each man was promised, among

other things, 640 acres and an addi-

tional 500 if the republic survived

the year. Clarke claimed that he had

acquired this land through an earlier

treaty with the Indians, but no one

knows this to be true. At any rate,

Clarke proceeded to lay out Ft. Ad-

vance, the first of six planned out-

posts, across the river from the U.S.

Fort Fidius.

Clarke had hoped that their mere

presence on the border would terrify

the Indians and, indeed, the rampage

ceased almost immediately. Resi-

dents of western Georgia, of course,

welcomed the peace and the protec-

tion by Clarke and his men. Again,

Clarke's followers were heroes in the

eyes of some Georgians. Clarke felt

that with the Indians pacified, neither

the state nor federal government

could be bothered by his new re-

public. In fact, he believed that the

government had no constitutional

How right to interfere.

wrong he

was . . .
To make a long story short, Clarke

and his disappointed, disillusioned

soldiers were finally forced out by

state militia forces who burned the

last vestiges of the Trans-Oconee

Republic.

About this same time, Elijah

Clarke and his sons, John, who later became a governor, and Elijah, Jr., who studied at Yale, again ran afoul of the government when they became involved in the infamous Yazoo Land Fraud.
Now aging, scarred and tired, Eli-
jah Clarke was ready to put down
his gun and enjoy the rest of his days
in relative peace. But this may not
have lasted long. Reports have recently been found indicating that Clarke led yet another expedition against the Indians in 1796. The old frontier soldier died in Wilkes County on December 15, 1799, and was buried at his home, Woodburn, in
what is now Lincoln County.

History books have portrayed Elijah Clarke as a true hero, a pa-

triotic soldier.

But Clarke's actions can be seen
-- in another light less heroic, but
probably more realistic. Recent research has shown that there was an-

other side to Elijah Clarke.

The Georgia patriots from Savannah (Lyman Hall, Button Gwinnett and others) regarded Elijah Clarke as an "upstart" who was not interested in the good of Georgia but in what was best for him. They apparently felt that if he had Georgia's good at heart, his actions should have been within the legal framework of the new government. Clarke did, however, break more laws than
he obeyed.

"Opportunist" has been a word

ascribed to Elijah Clarke, and may-
be that is a good description. He has also been called a hustler. When he

began his incursions against the In-

dians and the British, Clarke was

broke. Somehow he emerged from the Revolution a rich man, a man

with much land and many slaves.

Some land was deeded to him by the

How state, it's true.

much remains a

question.

So maybe old Elijah's heroics were just based on greed, admittedly a very human trait. The first taste of
wealth apparently whetted his appe-
tite. So when his fortunes began to dwindle, Elijah banded together his loyal followers and rode off in search

of greater wealth.

Elijah Clarke was human, after all.

56

Outdoors \t) Georgia

Sweetwater Creek

**9&t December 1977

.

-

By Susan Wood
Photos by Bob Busby
Hidden somewhere in Douglas County due west of Atlanta sprawls 867 acres of one of Georgia's newest and most historic state parks. Sweetwater Creek State Park lies
nearly undisturbed, a still virtual
wilderness, hiding remnants of what was once one of Georgia's most prosperous industrial sites. But over a century ago the town supposedly
vanished in one day, and now only
a ghost town remains. Getting to Sweetwater Creek is an
adventure in itself. Over dirt roads and one-lane bridges paralleling the Interstate, past houses with "real character" you might say, around seemingly endless curves, you finally pass the George Sparks Reservoir
and you're almost there. No signs mark you way; you blaze your own
trail.
On a hot, muggy morning all is
still and quiet along the narrow path to the edge of the creek, which is more like a river than a creek. At

From September 1976 issue

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the creekbank, too, stillness per-
vades. The brown water moves slowly, cicadas and brown thrashers chorus somewhere in the thick woods, multihued butterflies meander as if they had all the time in
the world. And here even people
walk slower, breathe deeper . . . until a murmuring becomes audible in the distance. Intrigued, you quicken
your pace up and down little hills over tiny flowing springs. Louder
and louder, faster and faster, then you know. Yes, the slow, brown water has met the rocks of the shoals and the roar is almost deafening.
The sun is high by now, no breeze stirs, the air just hangs. From this first craggy overlook, you glimpse two streams merging furiously. White
water swirls, casting a semi-hypnotic
spell over you. Then you notice you're standing on a once-carefullylaid rock wall and behind you curve
A stairs now leading to nowhere.
ghost town, remember? Hear the
echoes?
Curious, you walk faster along the wall to see where it leads, and suddenly you come upon a mighty brick structure, a skeleton telling of some long-ago existence. The brick shell of a five-story mill, circa 1842, is all that remains of a once-prosperous textile mill where workers made cloth for uniforms, powder bags and
tents for the Confederate Army. Now
trees 100 years old tower above what was once the roof. For when he came marching through Georgia, oP Bill Sherman, ever a vengeful man, ordered one Major Tompkins to put the torch to the mill and town, arrest all employees, owners and managers, charge them with treason and deport them to Indiana. In other
words, Sherman wanted New Man-
chester, the town which had grown up around the mill, wiped off the map. His orders were carried out on July 9, 1864 when the trained op-
eratives of New Manchester and
Roswell were hauled off in 110 wagons to Marietta, then Nashville and on to Indiana.
Now the multitude of gaping win-
dow holes look desolate, ravaged. Outside the mammoth skeleton,

Shrouded by encroaching forest, the skeletons of
-- New Manchester stand like a ruin of a past
civilization which indeed they are.

Decerpber 1977

59

--

--

shoals rush by, oblivious to time
and her cruelty. Once these shoals provided power for the mill; now the millrace flows every so slowly. Where once old and young alike sweated and toiled is now overgrown with trees and weeds. Vines have climbed the tall brick walls, 50 feet high, 24 inches thick, and the imposing rock archway, carefully hand-laid 125 years ago. Moss and lichens shroud the home-made, imperfect bricks which tell the story of the workers who in the 1850's playfully carved their names into the bricks, not mindful that by this they would be remembered so many years later.
Laborers at the factory spun cotton into yarn, wove it into cloth, then bleached and dyed it first in peacetime, then in war. Others worked from daylight to sunset operating a flour and grist mill while
nearby leather workers made shoes and other leather goods. The Sweet-
water, later New Manchestser, Manufacturing Company also made ma-
chinery here, and the brand name became well-known throughout the
South. Because of their wartime production and the vehement secession-

ist sentiments of one of the owners, past governor Charles J. McDonald,
Sherman wanted New Manchestser
wiped off the map. The once-prosperous town even
boasted its own post office, opened in 1859. The flourishing company sought to build a rail line in 1856
from Atlanta to Sweetwater Factory in what was then known as Campbell County. The mill was doubtless the
center of community life in New
Manchester. Couples even said their marriage vows standing by their looms overlooking the shoals. Today foundations of more than 12 struc-
tures, among them the company store, machine shop and community
house, have been found. There's an eerie feeling there deep
in the woods amid ruins of a lost town. Those holes in the brick walls
--what made them? The charred re-
mains of campfire within the tower-
-- ing walls are they, too, remains
from a century ago? The noise
is it the imagined rumbling of the
50,000 pound wheel? Or a 727 cir-
cling for landing at Atlanta-Harts-
field International Airport some 20
-- miles away? The gunfire Union

soldiers or the East Point police at

their nearby firing range? These re-

mains are so desolate, yet serene

remind us of the hardships of the

past.

But there's more to Sweetwater

Creek State Park than the fascinating

ruins. If you can tear yourself away

to wander on past the mill, you'll

find boulders in the swirling water

get so big that trees grow out of

them. Care to wade in the stream?

The meandering trail gets steep and

rocky in places but is worth the
rugged climb. Up one almost sheer

cliff, you'll overlook a promising

little fishing cove and can look back

upstream for almost a mile. If you

look closely you may find some tiny

fresh water clam shells along the

water's edge or maybe some gems

such as garnet along the rocky trail.

Or fresh signs of beaver at work.

Sweetwater Creek State Park is a
day-use park. No camping is allowed

since the park is open only from

7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. But its

unique beauty will fascinate you, its

uncrowded quiet will delight you.

All in all, Douglas County's ghost

town is well worth the search.

&

60

Outdoors h) Georgia

XZt[S
[Jolocks
oti [Bob iljusbu

December 1977

From December 1975 issue

-- (bvocative of long gone days crusty
old duck hunters, hand-made duck boats and vast flocks of waterfowl
Outdoors ip Georgia

-- against a red dawn hand
carved decoys are treasures of memory.

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k -X
,/
December 1977

cjhe
eterans

Scarred and rusting, they lie tangled in a shoebox, on a shelf, in a garage jar from the lakes they were crafted to swim, from the bass they were designed
to tempt.
Time, technique, and salesmanship decreed the end of their era and forced them into premature retirement. But
-- wise old anglers still search usually -- unsuccessfully among the hundreds
of new lures for a few that can com-
pare with these, the veterans.

64

From March 1975 issue

Outdoors it? Georgia

LPhotos by Hjoo ujusby ana ^fim (^oucn

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